AROUND THE GALLERIES Dan Rule
Published: The Age, A2, May 22, 2010.

WHAT Points of View
WHERE Tolarno Galleries, Level 4, 104 Exhibition Street, city, 9654 6000, tolarnogalleries.com

There is little in the way of clear curatorial brief that binds the six young artists that comprise Points of View, but this expansive new groups show at Tolarno proves nonetheless dynamic. While the push seems to be for Brendan Huntley, whose charmingly arcane, neo-totemic sculptures and drawings are afforded their own semi-enclosed space in the gallery, but the standouts are elsewhere. New Zealand-born artist Jake Walker’s small-scale, re-imagined landscapes are quietly enthralling. Using a relatively muted colour palette, he weaves wraithlike human forms, faces and abstractions into vast, at times imposing mountainsides, valleys and riverbanks. It seems an ode to memory – to the imprint of the land – the inseparability of psychology and place. The other highlight is Melbourne artist Riley Payne’s new collection of astonishingly rendered graphite works. Following an equally impressive exhibition at TCB in early March, Payne’s meticulous works pair close-cropped botanical studies with dry, smirking phraseology, leaving the viewer in an odd middle ground. A field of mushrooms is emblazoned with the words “super mario brs.”; a sunflower reads, “let’s all get totally nuclear”. It’s beautiful, abject and hilarious all at once. Elsewhere, Dan Moynihan’s “post-cinema” seating arrangement dominates the centre of the space, while Connor O’Brien’s series of small and large-scale photographs are interestingly installed, but not necessarily all that interesting. Tues to Fri 10am–5pm, Sat 1pm–5pm, until June 26.

WHAT Owen Leong: Birthmark
WHERE Anna Pappas Gallery, 2–4 Carlton Street, Prahran, 8598 9915, annapappasgallery.com

Owen Leong’s digitally altered photo works float in a kind of post-cultural either. Uniformly staged, composed and lit, this set of 12 portraits of Asian Australians seems an astute and poetic meditation on an ugly, backward, but in some cases, still existent typecast. Leong’s subjects are young, beautiful, sensuous and of different gender and heritage and ilk. Their eyes, however, are blackened uniformly, their faced masked by the ornate wing patterns of the migratory Bogong Moth. On first pass, the allegory seems clear enough. Leong’s works show individuals tarred by the same brush – the Bogong, the pest – their uniqueness quashed and blackened out. But there’s something transcendent about Leong’s works that makes them anything but morbid and one-dimensional. An added complication is a number of his subjects’ slight androgyny. Indeed, difference and distinctiveness shines through at almost every vantage: bone structure, a scar, a piercing, a hairstyle, the hint of a gesture. Human qualities. In Australia, the Bogong may have been cast as a pest – migrating in hoards, reproducing at will – but despite attempts to homogenise, Leong’s moth-people cannot be defined so easily. If one studies without prejudice, each and every set of Bogong wings possesses the most inimitable of patterns and characteristics. Leong – quietly, gracefully and beautifully – acknowledges the fact. Tues to Fri 10am–6pm, Sat noon–6pm, until June 5.

WHAT Misha Hollenbach: Forewards
WHERE Utopian Slumps, 33 Guildford Lane, city, 9077 9918, utopianslumps.com

Misha Hollenbach’s happily wonky works seem an ode to pop cultural happenstance. The found photographs, pixelated digital prints, collages and neo-grotesque sculptures that comprise his latest show at Utopian Slumps’ new city space channel a kind of oddly exploratory spirit. A drunk asleep in his chair, an upturned image of a hand entering a rubber glove, a beautiful man with his mouth agape and eyes rolled back; this is the bizarre, discarded cultural flotsam that can be found in the morass if we only care to stumble upon it. A recurring motif is the blank face – be it that of a mannequin with its face chiselled off, or a portrait with the face cut out or covered via collage – a kind of non-image that somewhat perpetuates Hollenbach’s approach. The expected and planned are void. Ugly, esoteric, purely aesthetic or otherwise, the magic is in the droll twists of fate. Wed to Sat noon–6pm, until June 5.

WHAT DongWoo Kang: Candlelight Protestival
WHERE Kings Artist Run Initiative, Level 1, 171 Kings Street, city, 9642 0859, kingsartistrun.com.au

Screening alongside Trevor Flinn’s trio of video works and Soda Jerk’s re-edit of The Wizard of Oz as part of the Next Wave Festival, Korean-born artist DongWoo Kang’s exploration of Korea’s Candlelight Protestival makes for a dynamic and powerful documentary experience. Gathering amateur, internet and international news footage from the massive ‘candlelight protest/festival’ – which saw over 100,000 people take peacefully to the streets of Seoul on New Years Eve 2008 – to create a triptych of sub-narratives, the multi-channel video work proves a chilling study of media political spin-doctoring and the limits of Korean democracy. Wed to Sat noon–6pm, until May 29. 

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