Exhibition dates: 16th October – 28th February 2009 . “Curiosity is a vice that has been stigmatized in turn by Christianity, by philosophy and even by a certain conception of science. Curiosity, futility. I like the word however. To me it suggests something all together different: it evokes concern; it evokes the care one takes for what exists or could exist; an acute sense of the real which, however, never becomes fixed; a readiness to find our surroundings strange and singular; a certain restlessness in ridding ourselves of our familiarities and looking at things otherwise; a passion for seizing what is happening ...
Archives for “portrait”
Exhibition dates: 17th December 2009 – 28th February 2010 . “I draw from everything – from the National Security Archives collection to old material from the FBI’s website to postings by the ACLU. I concentrate on the content. It tends to be very rough material about what’s happened to soldiers in the field, about the good and bad choices they’ve been forced to make, and what has happened to detainees and civilians. I also go to material that’s almost completely gone, either whited out or blacked out, because that represents the issue. You don’t have to spill words when the page is ...
Exhibition dates: 22nd January – 18th April 2010 . You saw it first on Art Blart! Many thankx to Sue, Erin, Alison and all the crew at the National Gallery of Victoria for inviting me to the media opening (and for doing such a splendid job!) and to David Hurlston, Curator of Australian Art at the NGV, for allowing me to interview him. The photographs of the exhibition proceed in chronological order. There are a couple of lovely photographs using long exposure (especially the very last photograph one of my favourites). Enjoy! Marcus . . . . . . Ron Mueck ‘Dead Dad’ 1996-97 . . Ron Mueck ‘A girl’ 2006 installation photograph . . . . . Ron Mueck ‘A girl’ (details) 2006 . . Ron Mueck ‘Wild Man’ 2005 installation photograph . . . Ron Mueck ‘Wild ...
. Here’s my pick of the twelve best exhibitions in Melbourne for 2009 that featured on the Art Blart blog (in no particular order) – and a few honorable mentions that very nearly made the list! . . 1/ ‘The Water Hole’ by Gerda Steiner and Jorg Lenzlinger at ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art) . . Gerda Steiner and Jorg Lenzlinger ‘The Water Hole’ 2009 . “The most effective bed has a small meteorite suspended in a net bag above it. The viewer slides underneath the ‘rock’ placing the meteorite about a foot or so above your face. The meteorite is brown, dark and heavy, swinging slightly above your ‘third ...
. One thing always struck me about Sue Ford’s work when I saw it. The work had integrity. Whatever she produced it was always interesting, valid and had integrity. She followed her own path as we all do – and her voice was clear, focused and eloquent. I loved her series ‘Shadow Portraits’ – an erudite investigation into the nature of Australian identity if ever there was one! Vale Sue Ford. . The Age obituary for Sue Ford . . . Sue Ford ‘Dissolution’ 2006 from the Last Light series . . Sue Ford ‘Silhouette’ 2006 from the Last Light series . . Sue Ford ‘Apparition’ 2007 from the Last Light series . . Sue Ford ‘Transparent’ 2007 from the Last Light series . . Sue Ford ‘Shadow Portrait II’ 1994 – 2002 . . Sue Ford ‘Shadow Portrait III’ 2003 . . Sue Ford ‘Shadow Portrait ...
Exhibition dates: 28th August – 21st February 2010 . . Max Pam born Australia 1949, lived in Brunei 1980–83 Road from Bamiyan 1971 gelatin silver photograph 20.1 x 20.1 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1979 . . Max Pam born Australia 1949, lived in Brunei 1980–83 My donkey, our valley, Sarchu 1977 gelatin silver photograph 20.1 x 20.1 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1979 © Max Pam . . Max Pam born Australia 1949, lived in Brunei 1980–83 Sisters 1977 gelatin silver photograph 20.1 x 20.1 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1979 © Max Pam . . Max Pam born Australia 1949, lived in Brunei 1980–83 Tibetan nomads 1977 gelatin silver photograph 20.1 x 20.2 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1979 © Max Pam . . ‘Long Distance Vision’ is a disappointingly wane exploration ...
Exhibition dates: 16th October – 28th February 2009 . Hot off the press straight to you here at Art Blart! Photographs of the exhibition ‘Ricky Swallow: The Bricoleur’ at the National Gallery of Victoria Australia, Federation Square. The photographs are in the chronological order that I took them, walking through the three spaces of the exhibition. A spare, visually minimalist aesthetic to the show, where every vanitas, every mark (in)forms the work as transcendent momenti mori. Review to follow. Many thankx to Sue, Alison, Jemma and the team for the usual excellent job and for allowing me to document the exhibition. . “I’ve always been interested ...
Exhibition dates: 15th August – 27th September 2009 . . Installation view of ‘Scenes’ by David Noonan at ACCA . . Thoughts Limited colour palette of ochres, whites, browns and blacks. Rough texture of floor covered in Jute under the feet. Layered, collaged print media figures roughly printed on canvas – elements of abstraction, elements of figuration. The ‘paintings’ are magnificent; stripped and striped collages. Faces missing, dark eyes. There is something almost Rembrandt-esque about the constructed images, their layering, like Rembrandt’s ‘Night Watch’ (1642) – but then the performance element kicks in - the makeup, the lipstick, the tragic/comedic faces. Mannequin, doll-like cut-out figures, flat but with some volume inhabiting the ...
Opening: Thursday 27th August 2009 Exhibition dates: 28th August – 21st February 2009 Artists: Christine Godden, Max Pam and Matthew Sleeth . A small but social opening of the latest photography exhibition at NGV Australia. Wonderful to see Edwin Nicholls and Sophie Gannon from Sophie Gannon Gallery, Richmond in attendance along with Dr. Isobel Crombie, Senior Curator of Photography at the NGV and Susan van Wyk, curator of this exhibition and Curator of Photography at the NGV. Also in attendance were the NGV Director, Gerard Vaughan and Frances Lindsay, Deputy Director of the NGV. The exhibition was opened by Associate Professor Christopher Stewart from ...
Exhibition dates: 24th April – 9th August, 2009 . . John Brack ‘The chase’ 1959 . . John Brack ‘Two typists’ 1955 . . John Brack ‘Collins St, 5 p.m.’ 1955 . . John Brack ‘The bar’ 1954 . . John Brack ‘The conference’ 1956 . . John Brack ‘The block’ 1954 . . John Brack ‘The fish shop’ 1955 . . “One either has a subject, or one has not.” John Brack . This is a solid retrospective of the work of the Australian artist John Brack (1920 – 1999) presented by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. John Brack is, quintessentially, an Australian and more specifically a Melbourne artist. Melbournians have a love hate relationship with his work – loving the earlier paintings that view the working classes of 1950s Melbourne through a nostalgic, humorous, sardonic lens (when originally ...
Exhibition dates: 6th June – 2nd August, 2009 . Photographs from the exhibition are in the chronological order that they appear. . . Tacita Dean ‘Grobsteingrab (floating)’ 2009 . . Tacita Dean ‘T & I’ (Tristan & Isolde) 2006 . . Tacita Dean ‘Totality’ 16mm colour film 2000 . . “The subjects are connected to the medium I use. It’s all about light and time and phenomena to some extent, like a rainbow or a gust of wind or even an eclipse or a green ray, things like that. And this is the language of light. It’s not the language of binary pixels.” Tacita Dean1 . “The value of her [Dean's] work, writes Winterson, is one of the virtues of art itself: it is ...
Exhibition dates: 30th June – 25th July, 2009 . . Guo Jian ‘No.c’ 2009 . . Guo Jian ‘No.d’ 2009 . . This exhibition of eight new paintings and one older work by Chinese artist Guo Jian presented at Arc One Gallery in Melbourne is, with the exception of one outstanding painting, a disappointment. The new work addresses, variously, themes of consumerism, stardom, sex appeal, the military and Chinese culture. Using old photographs as reference and inserting the body and face of the artist into the canvases, Jian examines the paradoxes that exist between Western/American and Chinese culture to limited effect. Using a restricted colour palette in each painting Jian’s ‘mis en scene’ places ...
Exhibition dates: 13th June – 4th October 2009 . You saw it first on Art Blart! Installation photographs from the latest Winter Masterpieces blockbuster from the media preview on the day the exhibition opened at NGV International, Melbourne. Thank you to Jemma Altmeier, Media and Public Affairs Administrator at the NGV for the invitation. Photographs were taken using a digital camera, tripod and available light. There is a posting on the Melbourne Jeweller blog about this exhibition, complete with interesting drawings of the jewellery – well worth a look. Fantastic to see my friend and curator of the exhibition, Dr Ted Gott, at ...
