AROUND THE GALLERIES Dan Rule
Published: The Age, A2, June 12, 2010. 

WHAT Chronox
WHERE Lamington Drive, 89 George Street, Fitzroy, 8060 9745, lamingtondrive.com

While there is a technical, mathematical fascination to Chronox – the collaborative installation project of Lachlan Conn and Michael Prior – its resonance is one of a far more esoteric, otherworldly character. In the darkened gallery space, a ceiling-mounted data projector intermittently illuminates a loose, grid-like arrangement of geometrical sculptures on the floor with gently pulsing, spinning light configurations that drift in and out of phase. Three turntables, set in the far corners of the space, play vinyl records pressed with locked, fragmentary sound loops, their undulating rhythms finding an unlikely synchronicity with the projections and one another. The magic lies herein. Even when we change tracks on each of the record players – lift the stylus and lower it to another loop – a new, slightly altered synchronicity forms amid the shuffling sounds and soft, purple light. No matter the combination of sonic and ocular rhythms, this glowing world in miniature evidences a new, interlocked cadence. It is as if we’ve entered the unwitnessed mechanisms of time itself; a world in parallel, unaffected by the rotation of the globe and passing of the seasons. Chronox is a virtuality that transcends the arbitrary ticking of a clock. It is a world that exists between the cracks. Wed to Fri 11am–6pm, Sat noon–5pm, until July 3.

WHAT David Jolly: Love Town
WHERE Sutton Gallery, 254 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, 9416 0727, suttongallery.com.au

There’s something oddly atmospheric about David Jolly’s deft oil and enamel paintings on glass, captured so beautifully in this new series of chronological landscapes, painted from the artist’s own photographs of an all-night music festival set amid dense bushland. There’s a kind of haze, a rare attention to variations of light and the ambience of landscape. Much of this is to do with Jolly’s uncanny painterly technique. Indeed, Love Town’s vistas are rendered from foreground to background on the reverse side of framed glass. It’s an incredibly direct and responsive technique; any sense of texture of surface is removed to reveal a vivid, flat, luminous image. But there’s also the sense that the Jolly is effectively dabbling in various mediums and vantages at once here. His paintings’ referents aren’t the actual landscapes themselves, but their photographic documentation. Indeed, Love Town engages not just with notions of memory and landscape, but with the characteristics and qualities of the analogue photographic medium. As if to illustrate the point, two of the 15 works capture the half-exposed end of his roll of film. This is place, memory and landscape – twice filtered. Tues to Sat 11am–5pm, until June 19.

WHAT Jill Orr: Vision
WHERE Jenny Port Gallery, Level 1, 7 Albert Street, Richmond, 9429 6006, jennyportgallery.com.au

Jill Orr’s large-scale, subtly performative portraits of children from Avoca Primary School forge a duality between the external and internal. Presented as diptychs, the monochromatic photographs capture each child with eyes open – staring directly, intently at the lens – and eyes closed. The effect is striking. They are at once inclusive and intensely private. We witness the façade, the public face, only to be left yearning for the personal, introspective details – the dreams and fears and troubles and contentment. In an interesting twist, each of the children’s faces is painted in white clay. One might think this would work as unifying mask. Far from it. By painting the surface of the skin, Orr draws attention to the minutiae, the surfaces and ‘landscapes’ distinct to each and every one of us. Wed to Sat 11am–5pm, until July 3.

WHAT Amelie Scalercio: Tiny Movements
WHERE C3 Contemporary Art Space, Abbotsford Convent, 1 St Heliers Street, Abbotsford, 9415 3600, abbotsfordconvent.com.au

The spectre of death lurks betwixt and between Amelie Scalercio’s petite, technically profound ballpoint pen-on-paper renderings. But the young Melbourne artist’s drawings are far from morbid. Rather, they embody an intriguing duality. Pairing spectacular volcanic eruptions with the names of celebrities who died of heart attacks – James Brown, John Candy, Roy Orbison, Bettie Page and Scalercio’s cat included – her works, on the one level, seem to muse on death as momentous media event. But in something of a psychedelically intonated twist, when we inspect these eruptions more closely, eyes, hair and ghostly facial features begin to emerge amid the morass of smoke and lava. It seems a reconnection with the individual, rather than the celebrity enigma. With or without media hyperbole and event, Scalercio’s work casts death as deeply personal and singular. 10am–5pm, last day tomorrow.

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