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.