June 2008 Issue

2008 Biennale of Sydney: Revolutions - Forms that Turn

2008 Biennale of Sydney: Revolutions - Forms that Turn
June 18 to Sept 7
Sydney


Also of interest
Gordon Bennett: Retrospective
Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art
May 10 to August 3
Queensland


Gordon Bennett's suite of paintings, Shadow Reflections, comprises 15 double portraits depicting a settler type, painted upright and in full light, with an accompanying shadowy portrait of a tribal Aborigine.
Each Aborigines' dark-skinned face is doubly darkened by shadow and turned upsidedown underneath the settler: face facing face. It is an unsettling juxtaposition, as if on looking at his or her reflection in a muddy pool, the settler sees the uncanny reflection of an Aborigine looking back.

Created 15 years ago, and never previously shown, this suite remains relevant to the 2008 Biennale's theme, Revolutions: Forms that Turn.


Gordon Bennett, Artist and Shadow Reflection, 1993, acrylic on paper, 76.5 x 57.5cm

Taisho Chic: Japanese modernity, nostalgia and deco

Art Gallery of New South Wales
May 22 to August 3
Sydney


Japan in the early 20th century was a place of great change. The essential question of the day was: how could one be both Japanese and modern at the same time when modernity was defined as Western?

Nowhere was this more evident than in the arts, particularly images of women. On one hand, there was the liberated, self-confident, fun-loving modern girl, who, dressed in Western fashion and decorated her home in Western style; on the other, the good wife and wise mother, who epitomised traditional Japanese femininity.

The balance between modernity and nostalgia, - the clash, and the embrace - is captured in this exhibition.


Enomoto Chikatoshi (1898-1973), Snow, ca.1939, hanging scroll, ink and colour on silk

Susan Fereday
Under a Steel Sky

West Space
June 20 to July 12
Melbourne


Under a Steel Sky is a collection of found snapshots, digitised and magnified for exhibition. All the photos were made in America in the 1950-60s and taken inside cars. Remarkably consistent in mood, aesthetics, subject matter and implied narrative, these snapshots come from entirely separate sources. Most would fit seamlessly into Robert Franks' art-documentary series, The Americans (1958).

Originally made neither as critique nor nostalgia, they present the Zeitgeist of American post-war consumer-culture as a kind of sleep.

The American dream is a journey through landscape that appears - always, securely - on the other side of surface.


Susan Fereday, Begin in the Middle, from the series Under a Steel Sky, 2008, type C print, 92 x 92cm

Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori
Dulka Warngiid: Land of All

May 27 to June 21
Alcaston Gallery
Melbourne


Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori was born c.1924 on the South side of Bentinck Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria.



In 2005 she decided to try her hand at painting at the Mornington Island Arts & Crafts centre. Her immediate love of paint and the full spectrum of colour triggered an outpouring of ideas including depictions of her country and her ancestral stories.

Her works are usually immediately considered to be abstraction, but her fascination with colour seems as significant as the content itself.


Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, Dingkarri, 2007, synthetic polymer paint on linen, 196 x 101cm.
Image courtesy the artist, Mornington Island Art & Craft and Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne

Hijacked

Australian Centre for Photography
June 13 to July 19
Sydney


Hijacked brings together some of the most diverse and exciting new photography from Australia and America. Focusing on contemporary young and emerging photographic practitioners, the project embraces their youth culture, alternate life styles, urban landscapes and artistic experimentation.

The exhibition explores issues about contemporary photography. It also provides a platform for social commentary on youth culture, art and the impact of commercialisation on the identity of individuals and artistic movements within society.


Juha Tolonen, Lounge, 2004

Bon Scott Project

Fremantle Arts Centre
May 17 to June 29
Western Australia


Inspired by Australia's most iconic rock and roller, the Bon Scott Project is a multi-faceted program celebrating and critiquing the life and times of Bon Scott, lead singer and co-lyricist of AC/DC (1974-1980). His grave in Fremantle, where he grew up, is the most visited in Australia and is now listed by the National Trust.

Nineteen artists have created works inspired by the intense "taking life by the balls" spirit of Bon and his music. Often irreverent, unconventional and exciting, the works explore notions of masculinity, remembrance and rebellion.


Curated by Jasmin Stephens and including selected artists who were interested in Bon, but not necessarily fans.


Cecilia Fogelberg, When I lost my virginity with Bon, my backyard, Sweden, 1989, 2008, acrylic paint, texta, instant coffee on paper, 70 x 84cm
photo: Andrew Curtis

Claire Mooney
Over & Out

Bus
June 10 to June 28
Melbourne


This exhibition began from a piece of text that ponders the uncertainties and paradoxes of scientific principles and abstract thought.

From these uncertain beginnings, Mooney has constructed a series of works on canvas that adopt the format of pages of a book.

In these over-size versions, the text is subjected to a series of lo-fi 'information processing' systems, variously circled, numbered, annotated, categorised, painted-out and looped together with thread, creating a frenetic mass of dysfunctional classification, and generating a multi-coloured visual field.

This calls to attention the often absurd relationship between the abstract, theoretical world and the physical world.


Claire Mooney, Over & Out I (detail), acrylic, permanent ink and embroidery thread on canvas, 62.5 x 90cm

Vera Moller

Vera Moller
Philip Bacon Galleries
June 10 to July 5
Brisbane


Vera Mšöller, has trained in botanical science and theology and these studies inform her paintings and small sculpture.

Her subjects are imaginary species of undersea plant life - mutant outcrops of the coral reefs that are close enough to reality to seem plausible. She is attracted by the surreal aspects of these forms and her pictures have echoes of Yves Tanguy's airy spaces in which blobs of protoplasm mimic both stones and living organisms."

- John McDonald, extract, Spectrum, The Sydney Morning Herald, September 2007


Vera Moller, ovolinum, 2008, oil on linen, 92 x 76cm

LOOP: New Australian Video Art

a NETS Victoria touring exhibition Ararat Regional Art Gallery
June 19 to July 27
Victoria


Loop: New Australian Video Art showcases innovative contemporary video art by five of Australia's leading artists, including Daniel Crooks, Shaun Gladwell, Jess MacNeil, Arlo Mountford and Daniel von Sturmer.

Testing the boundaries of this visual medium, the works in Loop present a spliced meditation on time, space, motion, place and perspective.

Curated by Daniel McOwan, the Director of Hamilton Art Gallery, Loop, provides regional audiences with the opportunity to access and engage with contemporary video art, which is rarely presented outside of metropolitan art spaces.


Daniel Crooks, Static No.9 (a small section of something larger), 2005 still from DVD
Hamilton Art Gallery Collection

John Pule

Martin Browne Fine Art
May 28 to June 22
Sydney


Niuean born artist John Puhiatau Pule is one of New Zealand's most respected artists; a writer and a painter who breathes poetry into even the most critically aggressive works.

"While Pule's early artworks were based on the structural tradition of the hiapo, his more recent works largely abandon its linear formality. Recurring symbols and motifs in his work include hybrid bird-like lizards, botanical motifs, birds and clouds, the Christian cross and the church, and his own poetry.
Pule combines Niuean motifs with recognisable Polynesian and Western symbols in a personal response to the colonisation of the Pacific and the broader issues of displacement, migration and return."
- The 5th Asia Pacific Triennial Of Contemporary Art, abstract.


John Pule, Heart Angel Bird Ladder, 2008, oil, oil stick, varnish, enamel and ink on canvas, 200 x 400cm (diptych)

Kotoe Ishii
Spinning

Centre for Contemporary Photography
May 22 to July 5
Melbourne


Red wool is a material used constantly in Kotoe Ishii's work.

In this video work, Spinning, a girl endlessly pulls a strand of red wool from her mouth. The action is one of expulsion and discovery. As she pulls on the string, the girl draws out childhood memories and experiences trapped inside her body, exposing her true self and exorcising her past.

The calmness of the protagonist through this enigmatic action challenges traditional notions of femininity, replacing them with an uncanny speculation on identity and embodiment.
Spinning is presented in association with the 2008 Next Wave Festival.


Kotoe Ishii, Spinning, 2007, DVD, dimensions variable

Petrina Hicks

Stills Gallery
June 18 to July 19
Sydney


Petrina Hicks' young subjects inhabit edges. They exist between the worlds of child and adult, between the quest for perfection and the persistence of imperfections, and somewhere between human and digital creation.

The strength of Hicks' work is in the subtle shifting of the seductive effects of commercial photographic techniques. At first glance seamless and perfect portraits later betray small and unsettling gaps.
As Hicks interrupts the usual dynamic of image consumption, she transforms what are essentially studio portraits into images that speak more broadly about what it is to be human.
Petrina Hicks, Lambswool, 2008, lightjet print, 120 x 120cm

The Monobrow Show

Hell Gallery
May 31 to June 21
Melbourne


The Monobrow Show is an exhibition of self portraits by 55 Australian and international artists, including Ronnie van Hout, Samantha Vawdrey, Callum Morton, Lucio Auri (Ger), Helen Johnson, Raafat Ishak, Elvis Richardson, Giles Ryder, Scott Jackson(NZ) and Mark Hislop, to name a few.


Harry Pye, Self Portrait with Monobrow, 2008, acrylic paint on cardboard, 28 x 30cm

Urban Myths, Modern Fables

24HR Art
June 20 to July 26
Northern Territory
The exhibition brings together the work of artists of Indian and Pakistani background. Drawing on the notion of a myth, a perpetuating narrative featuring heroic or supernatural characters and events or the idea of a fable, an aphoristic or instructive story, these artists use narrative to comment on the world.

Urban Myths reveals how the circulation of beliefs about culture in the contemporary world is socially mediated; partial, sensational and incomplete.


Hitesh Natalwala, It suddenly struck her, fate had taken a turn for the worse, 2007, paper collage, 29.8 x 21.2cm

Leanne Cole
White Trash

Dianne Tanzer Gallery
June 7 to 28
Melbourne


"Many of the items in bins are not typically considered waste items, but due to the increasingly disposable nature of consumer goods, items which are considered new today are often redundant tomorrow, and are thus promptly discarded.
This phenomenon, prevalent mainly in Western cultures, has been dubbed "adulterous consumption". The individual bins represent this rampant consumerism, and are of varying sizes and shapes to illustrate the varying lifestyles and socio-economic status within our consumer-driven community."
- Leanne Cole


Leanne Cole, White Trash, 2008, ceramic and mixed media, dimensions variable

Neil Healey
Body Language

Caloundra Regional Art Gallery
June 4 to July 6
Queensland


"One of the great paradoxes to confront Western artists of the 20th Century has been the question of how to explore the intricate nature of the human body while simultaneously embarking on a journey to discover new insights into abstraction."
- Neil Healey

Healey's intricate explorations of human bodily functions, are guided by his personal history as a critical-care nurse, and his curiosity for Western medical literature and imagery.


Neil Healey, R50 (Spin / Tilt), 2008, oil, ink, lymphatic stain & acrylic on canvas, 122 x 122cm

Giles Ryder
Dark Matter

John Buckley Gallery
May 28 to June 14
Melbourne


Welcome to Ryder's artificial universe, a cosmological simulation of colour and light. Giles Ryder has set a trap. Gazing at his work, I can be convinced that the universe seems full of light. The glorious colours of the night sky echo throughout the room.
Ryder's work emulates the glittering blues of young stars. Glowing nebulae shine in pink and purple. Yellow and red neon reveal the ancient hearts of vast galaxies.
- Excerpt from catalogue essay, Dark Matter,
by Bryan Gaensler


Giles Ryder, Plasticising Glamour (casanova visits hell), 2006-2008, neon, light bulb, foam, paint, plywood, plinth, transformer, U.F.O hub, 138 x 60 x 40cm

Kate Rohde
flourish

TarraWarra Museum of Art
April 20 to July 20
Melbourne


Kate Rohde has produced a new installation specifically for the TarraWarra Museum of Art.
Inspired by paintings from the Rococo period, Rohde emulates the fantastic and stylised portrayals of the outdoors and more specifically of European gardens. The elements include a series of tall hedges dividing the gallery into four separate and intimate spaces. In these enclosures, Rohde has built vitrines that feature flora and fauna motifs associated with the seasons.


Kate Rohde, flourish: winter, 2008, mixed media installation

Graham Blondel
Dog Days

A-Space on Cleveland
June 11 to July 5
Sydney

Kelpies, dachshunds, terriers and many other breeds of dogs get a make-over in floral motifs in an exhibition that reflects on Blondel's lifelong affection for dogs and their influence upon his life.
Always amusing, the associated paintings and drawings in Dog Days attest to this two-way symbiosis.


Graham Blondel, Pack of Dogs, 2008, acrylic on cast resin, 30 x 38 x 15cm approx