Monika Behrens @ Gallerysmith

Saturday, 18 June 2011

Monika Behrens @ Gallerysmith

Monika Behrens’s exhibition at the Gallerysmith in North Melbourne is dominated by a huge quadriptych, Shock ‘ n ‘ Awesome. Composed of four large canvasses, it depicts in an allegorical language the Allied invasion of Iraq. A multitude of plastic toy soldiers of every shape and model, accompanied by military toy machinery, surround or make beeline towards rose buds, which are strewn across the canvases in bouquets or individually. The allegory of the composition becomes clear in an instance. Toy soldiers personify invading forces; their different colours represent various nations that willingly danced to America’s political tune. As for the rose-buds, rose is an actual symbol of Iraq. What an unexpected, simple and powerful metaphor it represents! How aptly it is used by Behrens in these paintings! Simultaneously representing rose as a nation, and a rose as a symbol of fragility, we are witnessing and anticipating these flowers to be literally and allegorically crushed under the innumerable armies of the attacking soldiers. The metaphorical association of roses as symbols of femininity, and the inherently vulvic arrangement of their petals also foretell of the atrocities the native population would endure during the invasion.

These paintings draw an immediate parallel with the art of John Brack, whose ‘pencil’ paintings recreate various famous battles and military campaigns, especially those of the Napoleonic wars, and where different colours of pencils similarly represent vari-coloured uniforms of warring nations. However, Brack’s paintings were not inspired by various military skirmishes in which Australia participated under the spell of American hegemony throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Behrens’s paintings, on the other hand, which directly engage with such current and litigious events, are as topical as they are courageous, and perhaps the most direct comment on the international military involvement in the Middle East we have seen in this country’s galleries since the largely overlooked and misread installation by Jenny Holzer at the ACCA earlier last year.

On the opposite wall of the exhibition space, Behrens displays a suite of six or so paintings, which depict upturned wine and champagne glasses with toy soldiers and military machines within them. They continue the theme of the exhibition and also raise a multitude of similar semantic connotations, such as the physical fragility of the soldiers as well as the all-too-real possibility of the mutual annihilation of the warring nations: think of what would happen to the two Koreas should a conflict erupt on that peninsula. It reminds me of an obvious dictum about ‘people who live in glass houses’, or, as it has been eloquently summed up in a recent TV show, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”

However, one cannot talk about these paintings without discussing their incredible painterly merits. As evident from these photographs – and infinitely more so when you view them in the flesh – these works are a masterful tour-de-force by this young and undoubtedly talented artist. The hyper-realistic tromp l’oeil of these paintings is astounding; the brushwork is barely visible on their smooth painted surfaces. The translucent quality of glass is rendered most meritoriously, reminding me of the excellent crystal vase paintings by Arthur Streeton. The effectiveness of these paintings is increased by their limited colour palette, effectively contrasting the fragile glass vessels against predominantly black or dark-blue backgrounds. My favourite work in the exhibition is undoubtedly Precarious Revolt, where complex swirls and folds of a red scarf burst forth from the overall sombre gamut of the picture, and are expertly contrasted against the strategically introduced model of a green tank.

It is such a pleasure to see an exhibition by an artist who so obviously can paint, and who is not lazy with her brushwork, modelling and colour application, which, bizarrely, is almost a rarity nowadays… Furthermore, it is highly commendable for an Australian artist to acknowledge the existence of the world beyond the confines of a studio environment and engage so bravely and openly with highly contentious and divisive contemporary issues.

www.gallerysmith.com.au  //  www.monikabehrens.com

[© Eugene Barilo von Reisberg 2011. This article is copyright, but full or partial use is welcome with full and proper acknowledgement.]

Clemenger Award @ the National Gallery of Victoria

Saturday, 16 January 2010

Dear Diary,

The list of finalists for the 2010 Clemenger Award at the National Gallery of Victoria reads like a roll-call of some of Australia’s most commercially successful artists. The extended wall text at the entry to the prize exhibition states: “Each participating artists is provided with an honorarium … providing support in the research and development states [which] enables artists to benefit from pushing their work in unforseen directions …” If that’s the case, the Clemenger people ought to ask for their money back from a number of finalists, as many artists have not progressed beyond the usual offerings to be found in their respective commercial galleries.

Let me expand upon this.

Among this year’s finalists are many of my favourite contemporary artists. They include Louise Hearman, Stephen Bush, and Guan Wei among others. As much as I like their work, as much as it appeals to me on so many levels, and as much as I continuously recommend them to my colleagues and clients for exhibitions and / or acquisitions, I felt it was a shame that these artists have not utilised their chance to come up with an innovative body of work or extend on their usual disciplinary practice.

For example, Louise Hearman has neither produced anything new (in the conceptual as opposed to chronological sense), nor pushed her work “in unforseen direction”, as the Clemenger dictum quoted above would have led us to believe. As much as I like her paintings in this exhibition, which are consistently good, always produced to her own high standard of execution and sophisticated sense of colouring, I do not believe they represent a dramatic departure from her previous body of work in a commercial setting.

Stephen Bush, whose works open the exhibition display, likewise, has not departed from the artistic direction previously seen in his Sutton Gallery exhibitions. He definitely knows how to use colours advantageously for a splendid, luridly spectacular effect, but otherwise I feel he is still on the path to regain the popular momentum and conceptual depth of his previous body of work. Environmental messages are apparent in these paintings, but its disparate elements make me think of Louise Hearman’s apparitions superimposed on Dale Frank’s backgrounds.

I have always been a fan of Guan Wei’s work. His arrival in Australia has benefited his career and the cash flow, but the works, which had previously carried a very strong anti-establishment message and protested against the climate of political and ideological oppression, are now becoming more and more esoteric and decorative. The splendid large-scale God of Longevity is the case in point. The inspiration behind the piece is the history of trading routes between China and Australia long before the arrival of the British fleet in 1788, a part of Australia’s history which only recently came under closer examination. The images from Asian, European, and Aboriginal iconography laconically fill the picture plane; four large banners with constellations pay homage to the shape of Chinese scrolls and depict the importance of astronomy in pre-modern navigation; while the original Chinese carvings (which were found in Australia and thus bear witness to these important early economic ties) are displayed in the cabinet below. However, there is something disarmingly decorative about the entire installation, lacking the gutsiness and complexity of his earlier pieces, or even that of the recent wall paintings, which the artist created for the ACCA.

Destiny Deacon’s It’s Playback Time consists of works which continue the exploration of Aboriginality in her photography through the use of “golliwog” dolls. Originally I have interpreted Deacon’s use of “golliwogs” as an obvious and fitting metaphor for the Stolen Generation. However, the dolls in this body of work represented Deacon’s inward look at the scenes of everyday domesticity of indigenous community, whether peaceful and humorous, or with references to the alcohol addiction, domestic violence, and racial abuse. One cannot help but feel that many of the works contain semi-autobiographical references.

The exploration of Aboriginal identity continues in the works by Julie Gough. Her 224 minutes long DVD features the views of Tasmanian towns, filmed from a car window, while the running text at the bottom of the screen lists land grants to the early settlers. According to the accompanying wall text, the work is an indictment against the expropriation of indigenous land. However – and rather disturbingly – without the lengthy explanation of the wall text, the visual record of four hours’ worth of driving through neat little towns and well-maintained roads of the Tasmanian isle, accompanied by the names of the early settlers, can be ambiguously read as a celebration of Australia’s pioneering spirit – the very opposite of what the artist was trying to achieve. Same reticence about the delivery of a powerful statement can be observed in Gough’s large installation work, Forcefield 2, where the pages of a controversial book on Aboriginal history are pasted on the floor in a format too small to make it legible. If the artist wanted to learn how to use the power of text in an artwork in order to deliver a strong political message, she just needed to check out Jenny Holzer’s exhibition at the ACCA just down the road, who also uses “running” words and appropriates “found” text in her works, but without reserve, ambiguity, or the need for extended curatorial explanations.

Dennis Nona provides an interesting juxtaposition to Destiny Deacon and Julie Gough. His work does not have a strong political or ideological message; it does not break new boundaries in art; but at the very least it is superb from the production and quality of execution point of view. Nona references his Torres Strait Islander background in chased skulls of brass and bronze with pearl shells in Baidan Aw Kuik Byerb Ibaik, which are the perfection of metalwork, while his giant etching and aquatint Mutuk is once again a tour de force of the most detailed and painstaking work in this complex medium.

Perhaps only three artists have really pushed their own boundaries and have gone beyond what one would expect to see in the stockrooms of their respective commercial galleries by creating complex multi-media interdisciplinary works worthy of the National Gallery of Victoria’s exhibition space. They are Julie Rrap with her photography, installation, and projection Castaway (2009); Janet Lawrence’s Vanishing (2009), where her usual elegant wall piece, in muted black and white, is exhibited alongside a closely related installation and video projection; and yet another of Dom de Clario’s idiosyncratic installations, Cathedral (2009), which looks unlike anything seen at his last exhibition at John Buckley’s: a Volkswagen Beetle complete with his own garden, keyboards, and aquarium.

From all this cacophony of sights and sounds, Ah Xian clearly emerges as the undoubted winner of the 2009 Clemenger Award, with his Concrete Forest (2008-2009). The artist made a dramatic shift away from his traditional and colourful works in porcelain and cloisonné to casting in the concrete monotone. Each bust is indented with impressions of leaves and grass, referencing the impression left by foliage in wet concrete. However, the artist also emphasises the inherent danger of suburban sprawl and urbanisation, whereby a random concrete imprint would be the only record left to us of the disappearing species of flora. The Concrete Forest is thus a memorable monument, delivering a powerful message about the human interaction with and its impact on nature and the environment.

Sadly, this is the final edition of the Clemenger triennial award, which has been running since 1993. One can only hope that it would be replaced in its stead by another inter-disciplinary award of national significance.

Jenny Holzer at ACCA

 

 

  

 

Saturday, 2 January 2010 

Dear Diary,  

What would be a better way to kick off an arty year then by going to the Jenny Holzer exhibition at the ACCA. She is one of the seminal international artists of the last two decades, and it is great to see her works in Australia. The exhibition features her text-based LED installations and projections (for which she is primarily known) as well as works on canvas. 

The large exhibition space features her eponymously titled projection works, where the lines of contemporary poetry continuously roll along the walls, floor, and ceiling. The room is darkened and sparsely furnished with bean bags, in which I sank to immerse myself in the visual experience. The projection melded together two art forms in one – contemporary poetry and contemporary art. Given that Holzer has been practicing text-based projections for more than two decades, the work can thus be seen as some kind of an extravagant, room-sized forerunner to the Amazon’s Kindle. 

The next set of rooms features Holzer’s works on canvas and LED installations. The viewer needs to allow the time to “read” and truly understand these works. The first room features giant hand prints, at least six feet tall, which at first look deceptively like an amateur attempt at interior decorating. But the more one looks at and examines these works, the more their dark significance becomes apparent, and the proverbial hair stands at the back of your neck. 

Each work also features a separate imprint of the index finger and the side imprint of the hand. Each hand- and finger-print is unique, and as I watched such meticulous recording of these features, I felt stripped of the sense of privacy and individuality. The small print on the canvasses indicated that the hand- and finger-prints were left on military documents – one’s unique features, whether deservedly or not, recorded for ever in the military archives. 

The meaning of these hand-prints was explained further in other canvas-based works and the mesmerizing LED installation, Torso. They feature transcripts of interrogations, post-mortems, and subsequent investigations from the case files of American soldiers accused of the abuse of military power during the US-led invasion of Afganistan and Iraq, which were frequently perpetrated against mere civilians. The human right of being innocent until proven guilty seemed no longer applicable. 

It is inspiring to see a famous artist of the international renown to make such a strong, powerful political stance, and use her artistic voice to question the US foreign policy and human rights violations. It reminded me of Botero’s suite of Abu Ghraib paintings, which many leading international museums had “politely” refused to exhibit. The Holzer exhibition at the ACCA is therefore a brave step for the artist as well as for the institution. 

I was surprised at the absence of an insightful essay in the accompanying exhibition booklet. ACCA is not usually known for such curatorial lapses, and certainly there is never a shortage of writers willing to contribute to ACCA’s publications. However, I feel the reason for this absence is not an act of curatorial laziness, but that of a careful political balancing. Any in-depth essay on this exhibition could not have ignored political and human rights’ issues raised in Holzer’s works – a very sensitive area given Australia’s support of the US-based military actions in the Middle East. I wonder what would Kevin Rudd say faced with this exhibition? Given the Henson debacle, perhaps, once again, whatever his advisers and speech writers would tell him to say… 

 [© Eugene Barilo von Reisberg 2010. This article is copyright, but the full or partial use is welcome with the full and proper acknowledgment]