AROUND THE GALLERIES Dan Rule
Published: The Age, A2, July 24, 2010.

WHAT Bindi Cole: Sistagirls
WHERE Nellie Castan Gallery, Level 1, 12 River Street, South Yarra, 9804 7366, nelliecastangallery.com

Melbourne-based Wathaurung photo artist Bindi Cole has built a reputation on her performative, often highly personal traversals of identity. Set amid the remote Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin, new series Sistagirls proves one of her most visually lush and surprisingly sensitive bodies of work yet. The show captures members of Tiwi Islands transgender community – which apparently makes up around two per cent of the 2500 strong population – adorned in full, glamorous garb and lit-up with studio lighting against a seemingly dichotomous series of island backdrops. “Jemima” poses relaxedly, one hand on a hip, a parasol in the other, on the bank of spectacular waterhole; “Bimbo”, dressed in a loose white frock, reclines on the sand of a deserted beach, a pair of what appear to be Tokwampini bird sculptures beside her; bikini-clad “Frederina” poses suggestively beside an odd, toadstool-shaped fountain. What makes Cole’s photographs so effective is their eschewal of expectation. Her stunning subjects – “Buffy”, cheekily glancing over her shoulder as she wanders across the local footy ground or “Ajay”, gazing longingly from her veranda – ever so beautifully complicate their surroundings. The aesthetics of glamour, let alone transgender glamour, are not at all part of mainstream descriptions of Tiwi Islands life. This visually rich, unmistakably tender collection adds another layer. Tues to Sat noon–5pm, until July 31.

WHAT Greatest Hits: New Basic
WHERE The Narrows, Level 2, 141 Flinders Lane, city, 9654 1534, thenarrows.org

Melbourne art-dude trio Greatest Hits – Gavin Bell, Jarrah de Kuijer and Simon McGlinn – seem to have achieved a level of fandom so breathless it’s almost toxic. That said, they tend to deliver the goods, whatever those goods might be. This new exhibition at The Narrows follows countless recent shows around town and numerous choice moments, including their plastered door and cigarette-smoking rock at West Space, resin-entombed Hawaiian shirt at CCP and giant wax rainbow as part of the recent Next Wave Festival. Suffice to say, it’s filled with their usual scattering of confounding, nonetheless amusing objects and oddities. In what seems at least a material (and perhaps phonetic) continuation of the wax rainbow, a wax Rambo – a life-sized cast of Silvester Stallone’s head – sits proudly in the middle of the space. Elsewhere, a half-inflated globe filled with Listerine emits a minty-fresh aroma, while a computer screen plays a video of another computer screen playing different videos. There are some prints too; spray-painted postcards scanned and blown up to create lurid, fluorescent holiday images. It’s hard not to laugh, but in a good way. The waft of Listerine all about, New Basic is the result of three boys with an art education playing muck-about. The rest is up to you. Wed to Fri noon–6pm, Sat noon–5pm, until August 14.

WHAT Shannon Smiley: Ordinary World
WHERE Lindberg Galleries, Level 2, 289 Flinders Lane, city, 0403 066 775, lindbergcontemporary.com.au

There’s the suggestion of an almost menacing darkness, a kind of anxious unknowing, to the dense, wild undergrowth of Shannon Smiley’s Unknown World. The young Melbourne artist’s incredibly detailed, beautifully rendered large-scale canvases are without horizon. Knotted, entwined plant-life fills all but meagre glimpses of sky and space. But it’s these precises glimpses – of depth, of setting, of context – that afford Smiley’s paintings their significance. These untamed scenes are, in fact, of an urban ilk. We begin to notice the section of chain-link fence all but consumed in the twisting branches and foliage, the thin strip of asphalt inching into the foreground. Indeed, Smiley’s works capture not the unknown of the wilderness, but the corridors of knotted green that shadow Melbourne’s train lines, stations and forgotten spaces. It makes for an interesting about face. Where these works might cast the creeping vegetation in an ominous and threatening light, the sense that the undergrowth is in the process of reclamation gives them an entirely different psychological weight. Nature is not something to fear. It just is. Tues to Fri 11am–5pm, Sat noon–5pm, until July 31.

WHAT Kain Picken & Rob McKenzie: A History of Manners
WHERE Uplands Gallery, 247 High Street, Prahran, 9510 2374, uplandsgallery.com

It’s difficult to find an orientation amid this scattering of works by longtime collaborators Kain Picken and Rob McKenzie. Two hammocks, made by Colombian weavers, hang on adjoining walls, the phrase “A History of Manners” emblazoned horizontally on one work and repeated on the other. McKenzie’s trio of compact, abstract acrylic and pencil drawings seem to repeat a kind of loose, woven pattern. Like the hammocks, Picken’s lone painting – an oil-on-canvas recreation of a fabric swatch that he gave to another artist to complete – sees him remove himself from the process of production. It’s one motif from a body of work that for the most part seems little more than abstruse. Tues to Fri 11am–5pm, Sat noon–4pm, until August 7. 

•