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 “space”
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 ...
. 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 ...
Exhibition dates: 22nd July – 15th August, 2009 . . Sarah Amos ‘Red Walk’ Collagraph and Monoprint 2009 . . Sarah Amos ‘Storm Loading’ Etching and hand drawing on Shiramine Japanese paper 2009 . . . Installation views of ‘Intersections’ by Sarah Amos at Gallery 101, Melbourne . . An interesting exhibition of Collagraphs (a type of collage printmaking)1 and etchings is presented by Sarah Amos at Gallery 101, Melbourne, work that is full of delicate coloured layering, topographical mapping and nodal, rhizomic and Spirogyra-type structures. The ‘flux’ of the work, it’s musical cadence if you like, is the fusion of palimpsestic markings as viewed from the air – the dotted contours, the ploughed fields, the beautiful spatial layering that ...
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 ...
An elevated concrete car park located in the inner-city of Melbourne.
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: 25th June – 25th July, 2009 . . Marco Fusinato ‘Double Infinitive 3′ 2009 . . Marco Fusinato ‘Double infinitive 1′ 2009 . . ‘Double Infinitives’ by Marco Fusinato at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne is an excellent exhibition of large UV ink on aluminium images sourced by Fusinato from the print media. The images are made up of a dot pattern familiar to those who have examined photographs in the print media closely. Larger and smaller clusters of dots form the light and shade of the image. As you move closer to the works they dissolve into blocks of dots and become and optical illusion like Op Art from the 1960s. Fusinato contrasts ...
Exhibition dates: 5th June – 18th July, 2009 . Photographs of the exhibition and interesting observations by Karen Thompson on the Johannes Kuknen talk can be found on the Melbourne Jeweller website. . . Johannes Kuhnen Rings 1971 . . Johannes Kuhnen Ring 1973 . . This is a superlative exhibition, one of the highlights of the year so far in Melbourne. The exhibition presents work from the early 1970s to contemporary work and evidences the breadth of vision of this master craftsman and artist, the arc of his investigation showing a consistency of feeling for the energy and form of his materials over many decades. Technically the work is superb; conceptually the work ...
Exhibition dates: 18th June – 11th July, 2009 . Many thankx to Warren from The Narrows for supplying and allowing me to use images 1, 2 and 4. Photographs 1, 2 and 4 are © Tobias Titz 2009. . . Installation view of ‘LE MONDE v. DER MOND’ by Matthew Hale at The Narrows, Melbourne . . Matthew Hale ‘Page 150 of MIRIAM DIVORCEE’ (detail) 2008 . . Below is the only text I could find on the work – some of which was displayed in London earlier this year. . “DER MOND v LE MONDE is Mathew Hale’s first solo exhibition in London for five years. It consists of five works: one two-projector and one ...
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 ...
Exhibition dates: 1st May – 13th June, 2009 . Three very interesting exhibitions at Craft Victoria at the moment: ‘Babel’ by Natasha Dusenjko, ‘Gleaning Potential’ by Simon Lloyd and ‘Cycle’ by Liz Low. I particularly liked the delicacy and textuality of Natasha Dusenjko’s sci-fi towers and bone fragments and the wonderful box of 6 red bricks (small and large) that you can buy from the Simon Lloyd show, like blocks for a child builder. There is an excellent and erudite review of the exhibitions at Daniel Neville’s ‘The Theory of Nevolution‘ blog, a site that I have also added to my Blogroll. Marcus Bunyan ...
Exhibition dates: 6th May – 30th May, 2009 Review by Marcus Bunyan for the Art Blart blog Anne Marie Graham ‘Jungle with Cassowary’ 2008 “Anne Marie Graham’s painting career now spans more than six decades. Observed with a penetrating and affectionate gaze, her images are beautiful records of Australia’s vast landscape. Each work is an engagingly optimistic view, evoking the mystery and fragility of Australia’s rich environment. This survey of recent paintings concentrates on the tropical Queensland landscapes around Noosa and the Cairns Botanic Gardens. As she casts he vision over mountains, rain forests and panoramic vistas or as she leads us into an intimate world ...
Exhibition dates: 8th April – 2nd May 2009 Mark Strizic ‘Eastern Market Destruction – 1′ 1960 “‘Melbourne – A City in Transition’ is a collection of iconic images of Melbourne city life taken with a sympathetic eye for humanist detail. Strizic accurately depicts the joys and hardships experienced in everyday life with a fresh and living memory. He successfully captures the vicarious essence of suburban life. His portrait of Melbourne includes the city, harbour and river banks – streets and trams, pavements, arcades and lanes, stations and bridges, billboards and facades and public sculpture. We see people going about their daily activities – commuting, ...
Exhibition dates: 18th March – 4th April 2009 Peter James Smith links the culture of science and of human experience, bringing together mathematics and the power of nature in realist imagery that is balanced by strong mark making and text. Redolent still life and landscape images juxtapose with astronomical, poetic and historical observations in the painted images. Handwritten citations, notes, jottings, diagrams and erasures float on the loosely painted surfaces of stretched linen, paper collage and found pieces which bring a Beuysian sense of the charismatic object. A sunset, a violin, a book of verse, an installation of old bells or ...
Exhibition dates: 18th October 2008 – 19th April 2009 “Archives contain elements of truth and error, order and disorder and are infinitely fascinating. As both collections of records and repositories of data, archives are able to shape history and memory depending on how, when and by whom the materials are accessed. Their vastness allows for multiple readings to be unravelled over time. Photography is naturally associated with archives because of its inherent ability to record, store and organise visual images. With this in mind, this exhibition brings together artists drawn largely from the permanent collection of the NGV who explore the idea of ...
Exhibition dates: 25th February – 14th March 2009 “We live in a world where high achievers are congratulated, yet true achievements are not related to what we can get done, but to how deeply we aware of how wonderful it is to be alive. In this exhibition, flowers are not only a predominant source of visual inspiration, looking at them also engenders a kind of appreciation and wonder. The fragile and ephemeral flower provokes in me an awareness of the human condition that reveals the true nature of our existence. My goal is to create images which are strong and soft, bold and ...
“Ocean Without a Shore is about the presence of the dead in our lives. The three stone altars in the church of San Gallo become portals for the passage of the dead to and from our world. Presented as a series of encounters at the intersection between life and death, the video sequence documents a succession of individuals slowly approaching out of darkness and moving into the light. Each person must then break through an invisible threshold of water and light in order to pass into the physical world. Once incarnate however, all beings realise that their presence is finite ...
9 December 2008 – 15 March 2009 “Rosalie Gascoigne’s art comes from, is inspired by, and in turn reflects the spare countryside of the southern tablelands and the Monaro district, a unique natural environment that lies relatively close to Canberra, the artist’s home of more than fifty years. Gascoigne’s transformation and re-investment in her work of battered and weathered materials sourced in the landscape surrounding Canberra also highlights the importance of collecting to her oeuvre, as different materials appear in works from across the decades … Gascoigne’s knowledge and love of language and of Romantic poetry is evident in many of her ...
