AROUND THE GALLERIES Dan Rule
Published: The Age, A2, July 31, 2010.
WHAT Lin Onus: Meaning of Life
WHERE Counihan Gallery, 233 Sydney Road, Brunswick, 9389 8622, moreland.vic.gov.au
This stunning survey of late Yorta Yorta artist Lin Onus finds its grounding in the translation and interface of visual languages. Working across various print-based mediums throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Onus’s work pairs traditional techniques with a kind of contemporary take on landscape and naturalist painting. There are several standouts. While his early linocuts possess a potent political dimension – especially works like Quadroon’s Dilemma, which sees a man at crossroads, one path leading the bright city lights and the other to the bush – his later screenprints, created at Port Jackson Press, make for a incisive mergence of styles and cultural outputs. Works such as Garkman, Goonya na bilda and the lovely Gumbirri Garginingi see Onus use traditional rrark patterns, textures and colouration to render native frogs, turtles and fish, only to use an array of layered printing techniques and Western landscape styles elsewhere in the works. His collaborative series with Brisbane-based artist Michael Eather, which charts the far-fetched adventures and tall stories of a dingo and stingray, is another joy. Poetically and graphically, Onus’s work espouses the true potential for transcending cultural difference. Wed to Sat 11am–5pm, Sun 1pm–5pm, until August 7.
WHAT Group 03
WHERE Murray White Room, Sargood Lane (off Exhibition Street, between Flinders Street and Flinders Lane), city, 9663 3204, murraywhiteroom.com
Highlights abound in this happily divergent show of Murray White Room’s represented artists. Curated to coincide with the Melbourne Art Fair, Group 03 traces a host of diverse painting, print, photographic and sculptural styles and techniques. Tony Clark’s brooding acrylic and permanent marker ink paintings tower above the far end of the space. Part of his ongoing Sections from Clark’s Myriorama series, the panelled works subvert the idealised 19th Century landscape paintings with dramatic shifts of palette and the removal of core visual cues and themes. A kind of abject horizon dominates, explosions of lurid blue staining the sky. Elsewhere, Pat Foster and Jen Berean’s series of opaque digital print and etched glass works, Alex Pittendrigh’s bronze sculptures and Lyndall Walker’s stunning pair of photographic portraits prove similarly impressive. Perhaps the most surprising suite of works, however, are Eliza Hutchison’s spectacular shredded Twilight movie posters. Comprising two photographic prints and an incredible, bouffant like sculpture, she weaves intricately hand-cut paper strands into flowing, hair-like locks, plaits and knots. In the process, she reduced Hollywood celebrity culture to an ornate rubble of disposable fragments and slivers. Tues to Fri 11am–6pm, Sat noon–5pm, until August 18.
WHAT Sean O’Carroll: Psychologies
WHERE New North Editions, 15a Railway Place, Fairfield, 9018 3081, newnorth.com.au
Sean O’Carroll’s large-scale photo-works are of the body and mind. In each of the superimposed portraits that comprise Psychologies, a central protagonist is depicted at work or in their domestic environs, only to be observed by their ghostlike naked double – the bluster, fears and emotional baggage stripped clean. These are not stereotypically beautiful people, perfect people or necessarily photogenic people. They are real. Warts, hairy backs and all. But in their naked states, these are people without judgement; they are unsullied by the troubles of life. Their role seems to be one of support for their clothed, working selves. In the adjoining series, O’Carroll captures three young boys playing with toy guns, the dichotomy between childhood innocence and young boys’ fascination with fictional violence stark for all to see. Tues to Sun 10am–4pm, until August 7.
