UTOPIAN SLUMPS - UNEARTHING ART’S NEW UTOPIA
Published: Broadsheet Winter Print Edition, June/July 2010.
Infamous gallery space Utopian Slumps has a new CBD address and a revised carter. We spoke to founder and director Melissa Loughnan about the gallery’s coming of age. By Dan Rule.
Melissa Loughnan was resolute, if only in relation to a few key criteria. When she reopened Utopian Slumps at its new premises, there were to be no rats, no leaks and a safe, secure stockroom. Oh, and pole dancing classes downstairs? They were definitely out.
“Looking back, it really was quite hilarious,” she says smilingly of Utopian’s original, somewhat charmingly grotty setting, jammed between two warehouses in Easey Street, Collingwood. “In the evenings I’d be installing shows and the pole dancers would be having classes downstairs, playing the same Britney Spears song over and over again, learning their routines.”
“During the day, my neighbours would be playing really loud Australian hip-hop and there’d be weed smells and aerosol smells wafting around.”
A sigh, a laugh. “So as you can imagine, it wasn’t the kind of place that you could work in as a gallerist long term.”
We’re sipping tea in the stockroom and office of Utopian Slumps’ brand new incarnation, on the ground floor of handsome little red brick building midway down Guildford Lane, in an unusually peaceful little pocket of the CBD. A patchwork or artworks line one wall; installation works occupy spare space; the debris and clutter and evidence of her recent move punctuate the otherwise open floor plan. An exhibition by PAM designer and artist Misha Hollenbach fills the adjoining gallery space with arcane collages, sculptures and found images.
It’s a hive of activity, one that the 28-year-old curator and now commercial gallerist can envision taking the Utopian Slumps brand – which was established over three dynamic, widely celebrated, cult-like years at Collingwood – to a new plateau.
“Moving into the city was just like ‘Okay, I’m becoming an actual business now’,” she says. “I guess it’s just about growing up. The first Utopian Slumps was my friendly, quiet rebellion. This is the next stage of my maturation.”
That’s not to underestimate the original Slumps’ achievements. Following its inaugural show by renowned Melbourne collective DAMP in February 2007, the space’s stint in Collingwood saw it host some of Australia’s most dynamic emerging artists and help stimulate new discourses on craft aesthetics, anti-art and some of the more innovative investigations into installation practice.
Indeed, during its short time on the scene, the then not-for-profit enterprise effectively reinvigorated a whole range of marginalised art practice, the folk-art and craft-inspired installations of Dylan Martorell and Nathan Gray, immersive sculptural and installations works of Dan Moynihan and Susan Jacobs, and multi-disciplinary explorations of Elvis Richardson and Charlie Sofo included.
Chatting with Loughnan – who has Master of Art Curatorship, a Post Graduate Diploma in Art History and a BA in Creative Arts, all from Melbourne University – it soon becomes apparent that it’s a quality she has been unwilling to part with. Her shift to a commercial setting has hardly dampened she and assistant curator Helen Hughes’ intent.
“I really feel as though the curatorial model has stayed the same,” she says simply. “It has just professionalised. It’s the same with the business model. It’s coming from the same place and I’m working with the same artists that I have in the past.”
“I don’t feel that I have to play the game,” she continues. “I’ll still be having occasional installation shows and that’s why I kept a stockroom, because I thought it was really important to release the gallery from the necessity of having to have a saleable show every month. Sometimes I just like doing things for the sake of it, and I’ve always said that my aesthetic is an ugly/beautiful aesthetic a craft-based, of-the-hand aesthetic. That hasn’t changed here.”
A glance at Loughnan’s nine-strong stable of represented artists seems to confirm her point. From the aforementioned Hollenbach, Martorell and Gray, to the divergent painting practices of Mark Rodda, Jake Walker, Amber Wallis and William McKinnon, pattern-based painting and sculptural works of Starlie Geikie and cryptic paintings and collages of Steven Asquith, the roster is of a distinctly Utopian ilk.
“All the artists are coming from very different angles, but they’ve got something unifying them too,” says Loughnan. “I’ve always been interested in multi-disciplinary creativity as well. I really like that Nathan and Dylan always have sound accompanying their work and there’s always events running through their exhibitions; Starlie comes from a craft, but also very academic background; Misha comes from fashion and design.”
“Pretty much all the artists that I’m commercially representing have exhibited before in the Collingwood space. But their work is reflecting the shift too. Like, Misha had the Changes show at the old space in 2008, but his current show here is a little more slick and a little more grown up, because the space is a little more slick and a little more grown up.”
Finding the right real estate was crucial to striking a balance between maintaining the Utopian ethos and the operating successfully in a commercial gallery context. After much searching and a false start or two, the Guildford Lane premises emerged as a clear standout.
“I made sure it was down a laneway,” says Loughnan. “There was a giant crack in the floor that I filled, but I don’t mind that you can see that I filled it. I’ve kept the peeling paint, there’s exposed brick, the bars on the windows are a bit shitty, but you know, that’s kind of perfect to me.”
“I feel like I’ve kept the vibe, but just grown up a bit and professionalised it. I’ve turned it into maybe a more uniform white cube, but I feel like we haven’t lost heart and soul of the origin.”
As such, Loughnan hopes to that the space can help alter the commercial artistic climate, if only a little. “I’ve wanted to kind of reject that sense of snobbery,” she says. “A lot of these artists, five years ago, would have just been deemed craft practitioners, not worthy of commercial representation or of collectors taking notice of them. But I think things are changing.”
And while the challenges and politics of breaking into Melbourne’s already established commercial art market are plenty, Loughnan seems to be making more friends than enemies. “The other day this guy from Belgium came in and it was like ‘How the hell did you find out about the space?’,” she laughs. “I haven’t advertised anywhere.”
“It ends up that he had a list of galleries that someone had given him, and when I read it I was so excited.”
“It was like: Anna Schwartz, Sarah Scout, Neon Parc, Block Projects, Tolarno, Utopian Slumps,” she pauses, flashes a smile. “I was just so flattered that in a really short period, we were on this ridiculous list of commercial galleries.”
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