AROUND THE GALLERIES Dan Rule
Published: The Age, A2, May 8, 2010. 

WHAT Emidio Puglielli: Photoworks
WHERE Stephen McLaughlan Gallery, Level 8, Room 16, Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston Street, city, 0407 317 323, stephenmclaughlangallery.com.au

For Emidio Puglielli, photographs represent raw materials and starting points rather than outcomes. The Melbourne artist and curator’s “disrupted” photographs work not in the realm capturing a referent, but in highlighting the process, physicality and socio-cultural role of the photograph itself. In his concise new series at Stephen McLaughlan Gallery – the aptly titled Photoworks – Puglielli manually alters and treats a various aging and vernacular photographs, sanding back the photographic surface and attaching rows of map pins. In Snow Disruption, a scattering of pins splay out across much of a vintage silver gelatin photograph, even covering half the subject’s face. In Shadow Disruption, two strategically placed pins give a photograph of a Jack Russel Terrier a whole new identity. The rough, sanded surfaces of Snapshot Disruption and Sand Dune Disruption, meanwhile, afford their source materials a ghostly, aged quality, as if time is being erased. Indeed, there’s an unnerving, almost violent quality to Puglielli’s works and one gets the feeling that that’s the point. By attacking, erasing and puncturing the surface of the photographic object, he both amplifies and deconstructs the photograph’s role as personal and cultural vestige. Wed to Fri 1pm–5pm, Sat 11am–5pm, until May 15.

WHAT Joshua Petherick
WHERE ACCA @ Mirka, Tolarno Hotel, 42 Fitzroy Street, St Kilda, 9697 9999, accaonline.org.au

Joshua Petherick’s dabblings and noodlings into fictive obscura and mysterious graphic materials often aren’t as convincing as his legions of well-connected fans would have you believe. But being convincing isn’t really what Petherick’s unusual art is about. He’s about creating hints of potential narrative, strands of arcane meaning and whispers possibility. It’s what makes his work so seductive or, depending on your disposition, frustrating. His new show at the odd ACCA satellite space at Mirka assumes a typically speculative course, with Petherick constructing a seemingly precarious series of shelves via a series of wine display cases – a clutch of altered images, warped coins, open magazines and various bits and bobs housed within them. Illusions and allusions abound here and active viewing will be rewarded. Daily 10am–midnight, until July 18.

WHAT Jessie Boylan: The Sound of Jets
WHERE 69 Smith Street Gallery, 69 Smith Street, Fitzroy, 0424 625 336, 69smithstreet.com.au

There are hints of innocence amid the arid, austere landscapes, tangled razor wire, fortified walls and implied violence that dominates Jessie Boylan’s new collection of photographs from the Israel/Palestine border; there are practical attempts to live a normal life. A makeshift soccer pitch sits unused in a rundown alleyway; new playground equipment glows a bright blue against an otherwise severe town and desert scape; a tree blossoms at the foot of concrete-fortified borderline through Bethlehem. It’s both heartening and terribly unsettling. In one sense, Boylan’s photographs seem to imply the possibility of reprieve. Despite unending conflict and violence, there is hope in the innocence of childhood, the will to live and the core empathy of humanity. But there is also a sense of suffocation to these photographs, a kind of ambient violence. Even if it’s absent in these scenes, it’s somewhere close, somewhere within earshot. Like The Sound of Jets, it is a relentless psychological presence. Wed to Sat 11am–5pm, Sun noon–5pm, until May 16.

WHAT Benedict Ernst: Pebble Botanica/(It Will be a) New Garden
WHERE Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, 26 Acland Street, St Kilda, 9534 0099, lindenarts.org

Showing as part of Linden’s hit-and-miss Innovators program, Benedict Ernst’s respectively minute and gigantic sculptural installations each take an unconventional approach to notions of landscape. In the large-scale work, a colossal “garden” – built from expandable foam, polystyrene and plastic plants – surges from the garish artificial grass earth. White neon lights ring the base, bathing the structure in cold, sterile light. It is entirely inorganic; a tower of waste growing toward the sky. At the foot of the structure sits an upscaled garden bench, an invitation to relaxedly gaze at the monolith. The miniature-scale sculpture perches atop a shelf nearby, it’s tiny plants and foliage arranged in modular, almost architectural groupings. Ernst’s work seems a deconstruction of our perception of landscape. He draws us in by utilising familiar visual and spatial cues. The altered scales and materials, meanwhile, allow us a fresh vantage. Sat to Sun 11am–5pm, last day tomorrow.      

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