Sydney: Old Blood for New: Louise Bourgeois at Kaliman Gallery

Louise Bourgeois
Kaliman Gallery, Paddington
until 29 September















Though done some years ago, 96-year-old Louise Bourgeois' exquisite 36-page fabric book Ode à l'Oubli (Ode to memory), 2 pages of which are pictured, is the hottest thing Le Flaneur has seen this week, and is a must-see. It is a complete set (#9 of an edition of 25), with each 'page' separately framed. There are also some excellent etchings and drawings.

The wonder of Louise Bourgeois is that her practice is steadfastly personal, refuses to indulge in facile art-historical or social references, yet sits at the hip pinnacle of late 20th century art, and she is revered as one of the most important 'feminist' artists of her age. This upper-class frenchwoman (who is reputed not to have left her New York apartment for a decade) has for sixty years pursued her intensely idiosyncatic work with single-minded purpose, producing extraordinary sculptural tableaux and objects loaded with potent overlays of meaning – by turns sinister, lyrical or ominous, distilling her simple materials into objects of archetypal power. It is this quality that quietly imbues Ode à l'Oubli. It may be interesting to know that her well-to-do family had a Left Bank tapestry gallery in Paris in early 1920s, and that the young Louise used to make drawings for tapestry restorations, but this knowledge is not required to appreciate the work. Go see.

Vasili Kaliman deserves special praise for bringing this exhibition to Sydney, and for a fine cataloque. At a mere $500K for the set, we predict an Australian insitiution will purchase this work, especially with AGNSW and MCA so flush with new benefactor funds. I wonder who'll get in first?

Sydney: New Blood for Old

A big week past for young Art-a-Turks, with openings at the MCA (Primvera), Artspace (Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship), and Stills (New Blood), among others. The Dobell Prize for Drawing (featuring somewhat older and more venerable blood) was also announced at Agnes Capon's on Thursday.

New Blood
Magnum Photo 60th Anniverary Exhibition
Stills Gallery, Paddington
until 22 September

Left: ©Trent Parke, Sharkbay 2006 from Welcome to Nowhere. Courtesy the artist, Magnum Photo and Stills Gallery

What is it about Trent Parke's work? The sole Australian member of legendary photo agency Magnum is notionally a documentary photographer, but his photographs are about so very much more than verité. Contrasting with his urban images more recently shown at stills (eg the Coming Soon series), this time round Parke goes walkabout in regional Australia, resulting in some beautiful, arresting and panoramic photographs (Welcome to Nowhere series). These large and often vivid colour works are very different in style from the moody and disturbing black and white work with which he came to fame (Minutes to Midnight etc), and are much more 'descriptive', but they all contain an edgy quality, a spooky emptiness where small town Australia meets the vastness of the land perhaps?
Although Parke is the unspoken star of this show, everything is excellent, with stunning work from Jonas Bandiken (Satellites series - outstanding), Antoine d'Agata, Mark Power and Alec Soth. Treat yourself.

Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship finalists
Artspace, Wolloomooloo
until 8 September

Left: ©Sam Smith, installation view Video Camera [HDW-F900/3]/ Video Lens[HJ11x4.7B], courtesy the artist and Artspace, 2007

A damp and chilly Wednesday night saw Artspace packed with a lively and thirsty crowd to hear Sam Smith announced as this year's winner, from a strong field it must be said. We'll leave you to decide whether Smith's giant wooden video camera and lens (with screens) is a worthy recipient. There were a quite number of 'highly commended' entries, so the judges probably had difficulty deciding themselves. Le Flaneur's standouts include Mitch Cairns' paintings (and DVD), Rolande Souliere's car tail-lights, Emma White's witty fimo-clay wall installation, Grzegorz Gawronski's seriously cynical ARS flowchart (and DVD), and of course the irrepressible Soda_Jerk's sublimely low-res video remix of Aussie 'outback' cinema classics (called Picinic at Wolf Creek), complete with talkings 'roos, lurid fake blood and jump-cut editing. It's interesting to compare this work with Tracey Moffat's widely criticised video remixes. Whereas Moffatt essentially creates thematic compliations of film moments, S_J take it much further, scratch it up, and produce work that is much more than the sum of its parts.

Will any of this work stand the test of time? The jury is out, but in the meantime it's good, clean fun.

A la semaine prochaine, salut.

Lux & Logos at Carriageworks

Jonathan Jones and Ruark Lewis
Homeland Illuminations
Performance Space at Carriageworks
until 8 Sept

Last week Le Flaneur saw the launch of this powerful and atmospheric installation, a collaboration between two artists working in (until now) seemingly quite diifferent idioms. Ruark Lewis has sometimes described himself as a poet rather than an artist, and his trademark use of stencilled texts has resulted in a distinctive body of work over the years. Jonathan Jones has developed his own equally recognisable style using flourescent tubes. The two visual languages come together successfully in this large floor installation, with a text drawn from the oral history of a senior Warudjari man – Jones' grandfather – and his accounts of working as a wool classer in Western NSW in the 1930s and 40s. The text is stencilled onto packing crate planks – quite colourfully for the often monochrome Lewis – with the illuminated flouros on the underside, and my understanding is that the configuration is variable and experimental. The work has many possible layers of meaning and repays thoughtful study, with the words, strung together without breaks, resonating in the mind as a kind of abstract poetry. There is of course a thoughtful accompanying artists statement. It's a work ripe for institutional aquisition.

Embarrassingly, LF completely missed the audio component. This addition from the artists:
Visual hierachies aside, this work(sculptural installation) was sub-narrated by developing a parallel score from the oral history. This was structured in the form of an audio-collage. We assembled this aural component with the help of vetran new music composer Rik Rue. This accompanies the work on a set of headphones.

The beauty of incomprehension

The week past was a busy one for Sydney contemporary art, with RoslynOxley9, GBK, Grantpirrie and Kaliman all opening new shows of significant ‘early-career’ artists. Some of these shows come with an elaborate subtext which may or may not be necessary to full appreciation of the work, hence this week’s ‘beauty of incomprehension’ title.

The explanatory texts supporting conceptual art are often evocative, sometimes hilarious, but seldom illuminating. A dialect of mainstream ‘Academese’, they can seem to the outsider like a secret code, with their own rules and absurdities. What was it that the SMH’s ‘esteemed critic’ unkindly said of Charles Merewether’s Biennale 2006 (Zones of Contact) catalogue introduction? “A flotilla of clichés adrift on a sea of jargon” or something like that. An esteemed blogger’s recent SMH article about 2008 Biennale Director Christina Christov-Bakargiev’s exposition on her theme ‘Revolutions that turn’ was equally funny, if more benign.

Let’s face it, if words could explain art, there’d be no need for the art, and the power or presence of a work of art is essentially a mysterious thing. Le Flaneur always approaches art ‘explanation-less’ - initially anyway - and tries to let the work speak for itself on its own terms. If it does, then the artist’s or curator’s text can be interesting. Or not. But if the work fails to be eloquent on its own terms, the supporting text will not improve it.

And incomprehension can be an excellent thing - opening us to all sorts of associations and ensuring a mini voyage of discovery when we encounter complex, difficult and conceptually obscure art. Far better than ‘getting it’ in 20 seconds, a sure sign of lack of depth. Jeff Koons has made a career out of this kind of exquisitely shallow joke-art, but we only really need one Jeff Koons.


TV Moore
Fantasists in the Age of Decadence
Roslyn Oxley9
until 25 August

Left: © TV Moore, Installation view, 2007
Courtesy the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

TV Moore certainly understands this, and his artist's statement accompanying this show leaves us really none the wiser, instead inviting us to explore and find in it what we will. I’ve always enjoyed his sense of mise-en-scène, turning white cubes into evocative mediated spaces, and this show is no exception, featuring several projections, DVD screens, stills and objects/installation. The dimly lit main space was thronged with people at the opening, and seemed to invite us to hang out there, but it would be interesting to visit on a quiet day – I’m sure the experience is very different. In the small room, Michael Bell-Smith’s series of DVD animations Home Mechanics, is also well worth seeing.


Chris Fox Lubricant City
Hitesh Natalwala Let’s Talk
Galley Barry Keldoulis
until 25 August

Left: © Chris Fox, Installation view, 2007
Courtesy the artist and Gallery Barry Keldoulis

GBK continues its commitment to showing diverse contemporary work from both Australia and the developing world (India, South Africa), and facilitating the re-configuration of the Danks Street space in interesting ways. Chris Fox’s large floor installation Lubricant City presents us with a particle-board peninsula and islands on which sit a series of oil-rig-like structures - elaborate constructions made from old food-machinery parts and wooden struts. Though available for sale individually, these objects obviously derive a large part of their meaning from their juxtaposition, and to view them as stand-alone sculptures would be a completely different experience. I’m not sure the objects are resolved enough in themselves to hold up outside of their installation context, but it’s certainly an interesting show. Hitesh Natalwala’s works on paper are also good, and highly collectable.


David Rosetsky
Nothing Like This
Kaliman Gallery
until 25 August

Left: © David Rosetsky, installation view, 2007
Courtesy the artist and Kaliman Gallery


David Rosetsky is another artist that understands context and mise-en-scène, for example the complex and atmospheric multi-screen installation Untouchable which won the inaugural Anne Landa Award in 2005. Which is why I found this show a let-down. I think it has as much to do with the gallery context and the plasma screen medium as with their content. I had just been at the TV Moore show (see above), and by comparison this work seemed completely overwhelmed by Kaliman’s brightly-lit white cube. Plasma (or LCD) as a medium has a kind of depthless glossiness that well suits the Sunrise program, and the screen-based works, situated in a pristine blue swimming pool/beach and shot on film with a DOP no less, appear to be ‘about’ the banality of youth media culture, Big Brother style. Fine. The antiseptic white cube may well be part of these intentions, for Rosetsky is a renowned ironist, but I suspect not. To me it’s an example of the exhibition context diminishing rather than enhancing the work, which fails to be interesting enough in its own (cinematic) terms to really bother with the subtext. Ouch. I'll pay for that I'm sure.

Todd Hunter
All Times Through Paradise
Recent paintings
Grantpirrie
until 1 September

Left: © Todd Hunter 'Dead Wood Aches', 2007
oil on canvas, 172 x 160 c
Courtesy the artist and Grantpirrie

Todd Hunter’s abstract-into-landscape paintings are refreshingly free of any subtext, being just what they are, and able to stand admirably on their own feet, so to speak. In fact my one criticism of this show is that there may be too many similar paintings hung too close to each other, and this works against our ability to perceive each one as a world in itself. Take any one canvas and isolate it and you have a luscious, ‘lickable’ and sensual celebration of paint, and its ability to do what no other medium can. Lovely stuff.

Till next week, adieu.

The state of design?

Sydney Design 07
11th International Design festival
Powerhouse Museum and other venues Sydney-wide
from August 4
Full program: www.sydneydesign.com.au

Sydney Design kicked off on rainy Friday evening, and the black-clad ones were out in force to hear the often acerbic (unpierced)-tongued architecture writer Elizabeth Farrelly deliver that rare thing – a genuinely funny and interesting launch speech. Praise the Lord. The exhibitions and events program is extensive and Sydney-wide, but it’s a great opportunity to revisit the often-underrated Powerhouse, whose permanent exhibitions are constantly evolving and which has a strong emphasis on interactivity and engagement. Take the kids, they won’t be bored.

The PH deserves credit for driving Sydney Design, working between the major disciplines, and fostering links with other galleries and design orgs, and its distinctive event communications are beginning to achieve the media critical mass needed to penetrate public lethargy and create a sense of excitement and ownership among Sydneysiders, many of whom have discovered design in a big way in the last decade.

This process has a way to go of course. Think of Milan’s Salon del Mobile. While some Milanese probably groan and leave for their coastal villas, it is an event that has come to almost define and envelop the city, spawns an immense fringe, brings billions into the economy, and does much to reinforce not just Italian design, but design in general, with Milan as the centre of the universe. Venice has done it with art. For several centuries in fact.

For a city of 4.5 million Sydney Design ain’t bad, but Melbourne is doing better, having established the National Design Centre at Fed Square, and Victoria even has a Minister for Design. The results were manifested in the Melbourne Design Festival last month. Obviously Melbourne’s city centre (and laneways), with its concentration of galleries, showrooms and ateliers, lends itself better to generating a sense of involvement and excitement, and the NDC’s position in Fed Square situates it at the heart of Melbourne life. It’s also interesting that while the Labour state government is an enthusiastic advocate for design, the original vision (including Fed Square itself) we must grudgingly admit, was Jeff Kennett’s. No equivalent bipartisan vision is evident in NSW.

If Sydney is ever to move into the big league as a ‘design city’ the State Government needs to better support the City Of Sydney’s efforts and to put some substantial resources behind this. Forever putting out transport fires (not literally I hope), constantly on the defensive over planning and infrastructure, obsessively focussed on bringing in the big events we probably DON’T need (eg APEC), our government seems to have no conception of how to harness the existing ingenuity and vitality of its creative and design communities, and leverage this into economic benefit for the city and the state. In fact I'm not sure they even see the opportunity.

Perhaps there’s a case for umbrella-ing even more design events into a Design Month in August? It’s a time of year when people are paying attention and resigned to being indoors. Last Saturday’s Saturday Indesign, (a biannual initiative supported by Raj Nandan's Indesign publishing group since the demise of Designers Saturday) is an industry day focussed on commercial showroom visits, and effectively already part of it. The biannual (?) Sydney Esquisse, which has never managed to achieve its own critical mass, the Object Gallery sponsored St Margarets Architecture and Design Festival (September again?), and various initiatives by Marrickville Council (where many artists and designers actually live and work because of more affordable rents) could be too. Then there are the various design awards run by the DIA, AGDA, and Inside magazine. Individual organisations can’t do it all alone. It need an overarching organization, to say nothing of policy vision and funding at state government level.

Shoot me down if you think this is a naïve and utopian vision. Perhaps spreading disparate events across the year is better? But while I'm making rash suggestions, what about Elizabeth Farrelly in the NSW upper house as Minsiter for Design? Her meetings with Frank Sartor would certainly be interesting.

A toute a l'heure.

A Bill of Rights for Australia

Kevin Rudd has been much criticised by left and right for ‘me too-ism’ on the economy, the NT intervention and The Haneef Affair, and the government is making much of this, while simultaneously objecting to Labour’s differences on such issues as IR, Iraq and Climate Change. It’s time this debate grew up.

The fact is that Australia, like most developed democracies, is moving towards a centrist, consensus style of government, and Rudd is that kind of politician. We most resemble countries like Canada, Switzerland, Sweden and the UK, both in terms of our political culture and our egalitarian values. The vast majority of Australians agree on the kind of society we want to live in, and what kinds of services governments should be providing.

For example: affordable universal health care; good public education; sustainable environmental management; an independent judiciary; respect for human rights; justice for Indigenous Australians; a fair go in the workplace balanced with a dynamic economy; efficient transport and infrastructure; effective defence forces; multilateral-based foreign policy; good-neighbourliness… and so on. One could haggle about the emphasis, but these are surely the common political values that have sustained Australia’s social contract since Federation, and allowed Australians to travel the world with pride in their country’s reputation.

Because these values are not enshrined in a bill of rights, we rely on a continuation of the tradition of political consensus. The problem arises when a Government, whether of the left or the right, uses its mandate to impose a narrow political ideology on the people, even in the face of widespread opposition, for example the invasion of Iraq, climate change scepticism, and arguably recent workplace laws. There are no doubt examples on the left, but our (self-avowed) most conservative leader since Menzies has imposed his personal ideology on Australian society to an unprecedented degree. He has seen his constituency as essentially business, both large and small, and his style of government has been largely inspired by the wedge-and-divide strategies of the Republican-governed USA. George Bush once smugly described his political base as “The Haves… and the Have-Mores”, and he wasn’t kidding. The world’s richest nation fails to deliver affordable health-care to a quarter of its citizens, has some of the worst education outcomes in the developed world, and its foreign policy continues to guarantee the recruitment of a new generation of jihadists.

Mr Howard fails similarly to govern for all the people. He’s way out of kilter with the underlying centrist trend in politics, and it’s time for him to go gracefully. The next decades will be defined by consensus-builders like Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull. Australians don’t need or want leaders to define our values, or to impose their personal morals on us. We need good technocrats – an executive that will effectively implement our commonly-agreed values, do it cost-effectively, govern for all of us, and be chucked out pronto if they don’t. Which is why a Bill of Rights should be incorporated into the constitution.