AROUND THE GALLERIES Dan Rule
Published: The Age, A2, May 1, 2010.

WHAT Grant Nimmo: if you are a big tree, we are a small axe
WHERE Anna Pappas Gallery, 2–4 Carlton Street, Prahran, 8598 9915, annapappasgallery.com

There’s a genuine sentimentality and veneration to Grant Nimmo’s idyllic landscapes and human encounters. Though his crystalline mountainside vistas, anonymous family gatherings, fluoro smiley faces, dreadlocked hippies and seemingly indiscriminate lashings of neo-psychedelic colour adhere to tropes of the 70s postcard as much as naïve, early high school perceptions of “cool stuff”, this show transcends any snide sense of irony. Indeed, these oil-on-linen paintings both recast a particular, time-honoured, utopian aesthetic, and summon the arcane sense of wonderment it espoused. In I Think I See a Magic Door shards of black, soft pink, purple, yellow and green tile the icy blue of alpine peak, a headless female form lounging in the foreground; in I am Absolutely and Well and Truly Inside a Bucket, a “Happy Tooth” replete with dreadlocks hovers in front of a mirrored mountain scene like a stoned premonition. Elsewhere, a yellow smiley face, the yin and yang and the SMS era acronym “LOL” rise from a dark, ominously beautiful forest scene; a pro basketballer is captured mid-dunk; pallbearers carry a coffin that reads “F*** THIS”. It’s a piece of poeticism that so beautifully encapsulates Nimmo’s work. What might seem kitsch appropriation or hipster irony at a glance is in fact seems more a celebration of the opposite. These images are the celebration of an activated imagination. They are teen wonderment unlimited. They are the total awesomeness of life. Tues to Fri 10am–6pm, until May 8.

WHAT Simryn Gill: Gathering
WHERE Heide Museum of Modern Art, 7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen, 9850 1500, heide.com.au

Running alongside a lovely collection of video works by young Melbourne artist Charlie Sofo, this expansive survey of the recent work of celebrated Malalysian-Australian artist Simryn Gill courts themes of exploration, collecting and unearthing subtle lyricism in the apparently prosaic. Following on from a major photographic exhibition at CCP last year, Gill’s Gathering brings together several different series of photographs with found and collected objects, not to mention her sublime sculptural works. Her brilliant May 2006 series is a highlight. The project saw Gill take over 800 photographs of her immediate neighbourhood using a discontinued film stock that had reached its expiry date, shooting a roll a day throughout the month. While we bare witness to Gill’s deepening sense of place and connection to her home suburb, we also behold the closing of a chapter; the final time she will use a particular material. The most striking work is 2007 sculptural work Throwback, in which Gill recreates the mechanical parts of a 1985 Tata truck (that had spent its life as a roadwork vehicle in Malaysia), using materials from the local environment such as reconstituted termite mounds, river silt, fruit skins and coconut husks to recast the original parts. It is a powerful allegory for interconnection between object, places and history. Tues to Sun 10am–5pm, until July 18.

WHAT Matthew Shannon: 17.04.10–15.05.10
WHERE Conical Inc., Level 1, 3 Rochester Street, Fitzroy, 9415 6958, conical.org.au

This new collection of aural, visual and robotic works from Melbourne artist Matthew Shannon functions in the realm of perceptive deconstruction. Spanning across all three spaces at Conical, Shannon’s series of “special effects” espouse a rethinking not only of what we see and hear, but the signifiers, rules and structures that govern our means of interpretation and perception. We learn that the droning, textural, seemingly abstract sound work Sol Lewitt at the Speed of Light, is in fact a re-processed recording of the late American artist’s 1969 paper Sentences on Conceptual Art, as sung by John Baldessari in 1972. In the video work One Side Makes You Bigger, Shannon employs pre-CGI movie special effects, injecting milk into brine via a hypodermic needle to create a simultaneously vast and microscopic explosion of what appears to be smoke clouds. Perhaps the most striking work, though, is Shannon’s Hors Champ, a robotic, 2.4 x 2.1 metre white wall that automatically moves about the space on a hidden set of wheels, the floorboards creaking spookily beneath its weight. It is both a spectacle in itself and a point of erasure. Framed as the “physical manifestation of the editing process in film production”, the work effectively decides which parts of the gallery vista we can view, which are obscured, and in what order. On the one level, it could be read as a fateful metaphor for the increasingly sophisticated schema of political, corporate spin in the media. If selectively erased, rearranged and re-edited, raw data can tell any story that is required. Wed to Sat noon–5pm, until May 15.

WHAT The Nothing
WHERE West Space, Level 1, 15–19 Anthony Street, city, 9328 8712, westspace.org.au

Excellently curated by West Space’s new program coordinator Kelly Fliedner, this succinct group show explores the gulf between human knowledge and understanding. Haughty as it sounds, The Nothing approaches its point of enquiry in a surprisingly (and quite joyfully) playful manner. Deborah Ostrow’s television installation Deviations of Nothing, Sanne Mestrom’s space-sensitive An appearance, uncertain and Lou Hubbard’s light sculpture ET are highlights. The standout, however, is Damiano Bertoli’s brilliant Continuous Moment, a montage focussing on aesthetics of empty Miami Vice suspense scenes. Wed to Fri noon–6pm, Sat noon–5pm, until May 8. 

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