AROUND THE GALLERIES Dan Rule
Published: The Age, A2, July 3, 2010. 

WHAT Rick Amor: I Cover the Waterfront
WHERE Cowen Gallery, State Library of Victoria, 328 Swanston Street, city, 8664 7000, slv.vic.gov.au

Much like New York photographer Anthony Hamboussi’s five-year survey of Newtown Creek, the industrial waterway that divides Brooklyn and Queens, celebrated Australian artist Rick Amor’s plein-air oils and watercolours of the Melbourne waterfront observe a city in the midst of great change and flux. Painted for the most part around Port Melbourne and the Maribyrnong River from 1993 to 2007, Amor’s works capture the rusting relics and empty, mudded acreage of a once busy portside industry. The puddles of an empty Lorimer Street lot reflect a menacing grey sky; the Westgate arcs over distant Altona smokestacks. But among these post-industrial scenes are the seeds of new infrastructure, the same developments that have since altered our cityscape so irrevocably. The towering central pillars of the Bolte rise out of an otherwise decrepit 1998 Lower Yarra scene, the uncompleted bridge deck hangining ominously in either direction. There’s a lovely sense of immediacy to these paintings, each of which were completed hastily onsite. Light, hue, texture and atmosphere take the place of finely rendered details. You can almost hear the lapping of murky Yarra, the din of traffic; almost smell the rank, oil-stained puddles. Though perhaps what is most fascinating about Amor’s paintings is their complexity of mood and sentiment. His view of the city’s polluted backyard isn’t just one of decay and scourge, but one of a fleeting phase in the city’s history. His grittily familiar vistas are alive with both memories of our past and the seeds of possibility. Wandering amongst these works, Amor’s sense of past and potentiality, one might suggest, is far more interesting and exciting than the clean, lifeless streets and the gleaming, mock-utopia that took its place. Mon to Thurs 10am–9pm, Fri to Sun 10am–6pm, until September 5.

WHAT Karl Scullin and Lauren Bamford: Two x Two
WHERE C3 Contemporary Art Space, Abbotsford Convent, 1 St Heliers Street, Abbotsford, 9415 3600, abbotsfordconvent.com.au

Melbourne’s Lauren Bamford and Karl Scullin – better known by his musical moniker, Kes – bring their photographic practice to a gallery setting for the first time with this extensive series of portraits, each of which feature two indie rock scene subjects. Each artist takes a very different approach to portraiture. Scullin’s work, much of which has been lifted from album covers he’s shot of several Melbourne bands, is loose and situational, relying heavily on texture and hue. At least one his subjects, which include the late Rowland S. Howard, is often hidden, blurred or obscured from full view. Bambford’s work, on the other hand, is highly formalised. Her high-contrast monochrome prints, presented as diptychs, capture musical and artistic subjects, centre-frame, posing in their domestic or creative spaces. It’s an interesting collection from two very talented photographers, though strangely, both their styles assume a very masculine quality when recontextualised in a gallery setting. On an album sleeve or as part of a magazine editorial, these photographs would seem soft and evocative. Yet, in a gallery setting, they show just how comparatively brawny and hairy-chested the rock aesthetic is. Wed to Sun 10am–5pm, until July 11.

WHAT Cluster and Connect
WHERE Sutton Project Space, 230 Young Street, Fitzroy, 9416 0727, suttonggallery.com.au

This curious group show from talented young curators Genevieve Osborne and Helen Hughes tentatively engages with ideas of social connectivity and its relationship to space and architecture. The show spans countless vantages on its curatorial brief, some more successful than others. Andrew McQualter’s work, in which he and a fellow participant visually “mapped” their plans for a more effective mode of government, offers a kind of discursive take on drawing. Meanwhile, Sydney artists Pat Foster and Jen Berean’s large-scale picture frame, blank except for a swathe of opaque plastic sheeting, offers a critique of contemporary minimalist architecture. Simon Taylor fragmentary collages and lurking shark fin make arcane references to the blockbuster film and its changing social function in the age of the download. A clear highlight is the striking work of Antonia Sellbach and her late father Udo. While the younger Sellbach’s work comprises modular, hand-painted triangles, which she reconfigures and installs in various environments, Sellbach senior’s layered, moveable, screen-printed acetate sheets allow the individual viewer to create their own abstract image, essentially eroding the divide between artist, or author, and audience. Fri to Sat 1pm–5pm, until July 10.

WHAT Marian Drew: All That Remains
WHERE Dianne Tanzer Gallery + Projects, 108–110 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, 9416 3956, diannetanzergallery.net.au

There’s an inherent spookiness to Marian Drew’s meticulously arranged photo-works. Displacing formal principles relating of historical European still in a contemporary Australian setting, the large scale prints that feature in All That Remains see dead, native Australian birds photographed atop ornate, stitched tablecloths. Drew’s allusion seems clear enough. These works toe the troubling interface between a comfortable, urban, domestic existence and its inherent destruction of nature; they question just what form our relationship with the natural environment really takes. Tues to Fri 10am–5pm, Sat noon–5pm, until July 17.

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