Paris: Photography in the city of light

LF doesn't usually post pre-announcements but this festival of photography, commencing next Wednesday 31 October at venues across Paris, and featuring Ricky Maynard at the Australian Embassy, will be unmssable.
More info at www.photoquai.fr

Australia: on the road

LF has been too busy to post, but these are worth checking out (reviews forthcoming):

Melbourne: NGV
Gordon Bennet retrospective - outstanding show of a major talent

Canberra: NGA
Indigenous Art Triennale - Brenda Croft's long-awaited inaugural triennale is unmissable
Robert Raschenburg - quietly astonishing

Sydney:
Mori Gallery until 27 October 2007
Sanngeeta Sandrasega 'Untitled' - Not to be missed
Daniel Boyd 'The fatal impact: the invasion of the South Pacific'

ACP: Matthew Sleeth

Sherman Galleries: Heri Dono - great show from the Indonesian installation artist. Also Janet Lawrence.

SCA:Fauvette Loureiro schlarship finalists: Alex Gawronski. Paul Ogier, Rachel Scott, Bronwyn Thompson, Mimi Tong
Hmmm... worth a look.

Martin Brown: Roy Jackson - the abstractionist's abstractionist? Luverly.

Grantpirrie: Tim Silver - always compelling.

That's it for now.

Azaria Chamberlain is alive and well and living in Puducherry

The Kingpins
Great Undead
Kaliman Gallery, Paddington
until 27 October

Left: ©The Kingpins (and Jaya Arts and Digital), Crotchet Trilogy 2007, oil on canvas. Courtesy the artists and Kaliman Gallery Sydney.

Oh what fun! Art as entertainment.

Thursday night's opening on Sutherland street denuded other worthy exhibitions as hipsters flocked to the show of the moment - the fab four's garish installation of painting, embroidery and sculpture (but no plasmas, whew!), which is a gorgeous goddess-fest; an orgy of kitsch that encapsulates all sorts of delicious cultural connundrums.

Having others do your paintings is a tradition that goes back to the ateliers of the rennaissance, ironically refreshed along the way by Duchamp, Warhol and Koons, and the danger is that if that's the only joke then we've heard it many times before. Thankfully with the KPs, it's not - it's just one more irony among many. All (?) the paintings were done by two Pondicherry (Tamil Nadu, or more correctly Puducherry Union Territory) outfits - Muthu Arts and Jaya Arts and Digital - and stylistically they evoke the lurid depictions of deities and (culturally interchangeable?) cinematic billboard narratives seen throughout India. The implicit cultual commentary is fabulous. I'm sure the artists were paid fairly, but the idea that Australia now sources art production (along with programming and call centre services) from the developing world is irresistible.

In terms of imagery, there's something for everybody (with a sense of humour). Azaria Lives! proclaim several small canvasses, and she manifests as a variable amalgam of Xena/Dingo/Thylocene Woman/Screen Siren (with crotchetted accessories, see left) across a range of larger works. There's also the appliqué backdrop from their Great Undead and Let's dance performances.

Oh, and Kaliman has a new blog, where you can see pix of the opening and find out more about the artists' antics: http://kalimangallery.blogspot.com/

Un Allemand en Paris: Gunter Forg at Lelong

Günther Förg
Peintures, aquarelles et photographies
Galerie Lelong Paris
until 20 October

© Gunter Forg, both Sans titre [Untitled], 2007. Acrylique et craie sur toile. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Lelong Paris.

Günter Förg's large abtract paintings are on view for another couple of weeks and are well worth seeing. There's a huge freshness and vitality to this work, which utlises lush, painterly marks to create energetic gridded forms. Pure abstraction has been somewhat out of fashion in Europe these past years, and this show has a refreshing confidence that paint on canvas, without an elaborate conceptual subtext or ironic reference to the history of painting, is enough. Vive la surface!

According to the press release: "Grilles ou trames, entrecroisements de lignes verticales et horizontales, déploiement de touches de couleur libres, il n'y a dans les peintures de Günther Förg ni symboles, ni métaphores, ni sens caché. Ce que vous voyez est ce que vous voyez, la manifestation d'une liberté, d'une grâce, d'une simplicité et d'une audace : obtenir l'intensité visuelle la plus grande avec les moyens picturaux les plus réduits. «Se rappeler qu’un tableau, avant d’être un cheval de bataille, une femme nue ou une quelconque anecdote, est essentiellement une surface plane recouverte de couleurs en un certain ordre assemblées» (M. Denis)

[Grids or screens, intersections of vertical and horizontal lines, use of touches of free colour; in the paintings of Günter Förg there are neither symbols, metaphors, nor hidden meanings. What you see is what you see, the manifestation of a liberty, grace, simplicity and audacity: to derive the greatest visual intensity with the most reduced means. "One refects that a picture, before being a war-horse, a naked woman or an unspecified anecdote, is primarily a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain way" (M. Denis)]

Forg is professor of painting at Munich's School of Fine Arts.