I've just come back from Brunswick Council gallery and their two current exhibitions: a groups show called Trouble in Toyland and Keiko Murakami’s Kizuguchi. I have to say, I was a little disappointed by both.
The stand out artist was Van Sowerwine, with 3 huge photographs and an amusing stop motion animation. The photographs are dark and menacing, each featuring a single toy in a human like fashion that stop you in your tracks. Sowerwine was also the artist behind Play With Me, an installation I saw at the CCP in 2002 which I loved. She captures disturbing moments in both her animations and images with leave the veiwer just that little bit unsettled.
Anna Hoyle exhibited tiny glittery inks like watercolours, little scenes of animals racing around. Although techically they were amazing, I felt that the words she added around and through the work only really detracted from it. They were an unnessecery speedhump to enjoying the work.
Other work was a cute sculpture by Martine Corompt The Anxious cat, Christopher Langton’s towering inflatable Captain America like Plastic Man and Michael Doolan’s metallic looking ceramic toy figures.
Curatorially, I wondered how the art interacted with each other. Sowerine's work was in one corner. Hoyle's work occupied a little nook of it's own. Doolan's work inhabited a glass case, totally cut off from the gallery space or the other work. I felt that every grouping of work was separate to every other, rather than the exhibition being one coherent whole. And that might be partly the odd shape to the gallery itself. You can't really flow around a room that has a doorway to another gallery in the middle of one of the walls and a nook like space attached to another wall. I do think that almost all spaces can be worked with, but there was something a little stilted in the presentation of this show, which was a shame.
The second exhibition was Kizuguchi, which is explained in the catolouge as "the exhibition’s title ‘kizuguchi’, means a “wound or cut to the body” in Japanese." Most of the work was a gothic lolita style doll figure looking out of the frame with a wound somewhere on her body. The same pose and the same face just painted in different colours seemed a little lazy to me. Unlike, say, Hazel Doony's Dangerous Career Babes, where the exact same pose but different props and costume are utalised to great effect, Murakami's paintings arn't different enough to be different, but arn't similar enough to work as an exploration of pose vs props. The other problem with most of her works is that they're very, very similar to a lot of other work I've seen in this style. This might be because she's on the cutting edge of cool and popular or it might be that everybody's doing it.
She did have some lino prints of a weird shape that stood in for a head, with a weeping eye and tiny bodies, and I thought they worked much better than her other works. They conveyed emotion without being overly cheesy and they showed a well thought out use of colour and shape. It would have been great to see more of these
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Friday, October 10, 2008
HANA - The Essence of Life
I haven't seen many exhibitions during Fringe, which disappoints me a little, but I've been so busy with Totem that I jsut haven't been able to find the time.
But I did drop by Collingwood Gallery on Smith St to see Hana, an exhibition from 30 Japanese artists on the theme 'The essence of life'. The word Hana means 'flower, essence, spirit and beauty'.
The styles are incredibly diverse, from Izumi Ishihara's graphic style to Kou's oil on board works reminiscent of looking at old children's book characters through the sepia haze of time. I really liked these paintings
There was Misa Tsutsui's work, which was a style recognisable from the Sailor Moon type characters. A single figure on each canvas, pretty but not really remarkable. Kisho Tokutomi's work, jsut around the corner, were incredibly detailed, again the single figure but this time with highly patterned kimino garments and executed beautifully.
There were also landscapes, absracts, highly graphical work to the traditional (and beautiful) black ink Shodo work. On the other side of the gallery were some 3d objects, hats, and some incredibl silver and pearl jewellery. One of my favourites was a number of sweet sculptures from Nazomi Ueno called "It's my turn, bear" "It's my turn, rabbit" "It's my turn, mouse" and "sloth" These were 4 small sculptures on wooden plaques of a wooden chair with the aforementioned animal sitting and fishing off it, except "sloth" which was the same size and shaped plaque but with a little sloth hanging off a hook. Very cute.
Hana was an interested window into another culture's art world. You can see traditional influences and artists applying those influences to modern situations. It didn't really make me think, but i did spend an interesting half an hour in there.
But I did drop by Collingwood Gallery on Smith St to see Hana, an exhibition from 30 Japanese artists on the theme 'The essence of life'. The word Hana means 'flower, essence, spirit and beauty'.
The styles are incredibly diverse, from Izumi Ishihara's graphic style to Kou's oil on board works reminiscent of looking at old children's book characters through the sepia haze of time. I really liked these paintings
There was Misa Tsutsui's work, which was a style recognisable from the Sailor Moon type characters. A single figure on each canvas, pretty but not really remarkable. Kisho Tokutomi's work, jsut around the corner, were incredibly detailed, again the single figure but this time with highly patterned kimino garments and executed beautifully.
There were also landscapes, absracts, highly graphical work to the traditional (and beautiful) black ink Shodo work. On the other side of the gallery were some 3d objects, hats, and some incredibl silver and pearl jewellery. One of my favourites was a number of sweet sculptures from Nazomi Ueno called "It's my turn, bear" "It's my turn, rabbit" "It's my turn, mouse" and "sloth" These were 4 small sculptures on wooden plaques of a wooden chair with the aforementioned animal sitting and fishing off it, except "sloth" which was the same size and shaped plaque but with a little sloth hanging off a hook. Very cute.
Hana was an interested window into another culture's art world. You can see traditional influences and artists applying those influences to modern situations. It didn't really make me think, but i did spend an interesting half an hour in there.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Containment and Klaus Rinke
About a week ago I happened to be in the RMIT School of Art and Ceramics gallery. I wandered into the show, CONTAINMENT, not having any idea about the show or the artists.
As you see more and more exhibitions you grow to understand more and more what you like and what you don't. You also grow to understand what media you're drawn too and what you arn't. Ceramic sculpture has never really grabbed me. I can appreciate it, but it doesn't draw me in like photography or soft sculpture. Maybe that's because I'm not a ceramist, I've never really worked in clay. I don't really know, but whatever it is, I was dubious about finding anything I liked in this show.
I was wrong.
The first artwork I came across was Sally Cleary's series of 9 exquisite works of fired clay and found feathers on photographs. They capture perfectly the experience and feel of discovery of objects on the ground and in trees, presenting debris caught in branches, down drains and at the paths edge. They captured my attention for ages, they were so beautiful.
There was also Tina Lee's The Karens, which was the same 70s squat vase cast over and over and glazed different soft pastel colours, laid out in a tear drop shape on the floor pointing towards the viewer. The physiology of the mass produced is comforting to us because it's everywhere (from Lee's artist statement). The Karens embodied this really well. I wonder though, had I not have read the artist statement, whether i would have understood the comforting nature of this artwork or rather would I have viewed it as a statement of the blandness of mass produced repetition. Either way, there was a heartwarming 'waitingness' to the vases, as if they sat there patiently waiting for people to take them home and love them.
I also wandered over to RMIT gallery, and saw Klaus Rinke's recent drawings. Rinke is an German abstract artist, a leader of the avant-garde in Germany, says the press release. The exhibition is comprised of huge charcoal drawings that stretch from floor to ceiling. The charcoal is on rough, unfinished canvas and it's beautiful. I love being able to see the physical artistic process in the work. The works are, for the most part, huge organic shapes outlined with a thick black line and then shaded. Rinke has used a huge brush in parts, dragging through the pigment which marks the charcoal like pencil lines. And the very size of them (the smallest being 370x285cm) completely dwarfs you. But for all that, I'm still not sure what he's trying to say. I find abstract work more difficult to interpret than I do with ceramics, so it was a day of non-easy art all round. I find with abstract work that you need a path into the piece, a way into understanding. Often that can be the title of the work or the exhibition. But Rinke isn't always partial to helping in that regard.
Wandering around the gallery, trying to understand the work, I find one with a predominant dark shape that reminds me of a replica Queen Nefertiti bust my mother had when we were growing up. It's called She-Untouchable which is pretty cool, I figure that fits well with my connection to it. But across the room there are two that are very similar in shape to each other which are called The Curious One and Top-Heavy. The Curious One has a shape suggestion of an owl, with a circle where the eye should be, which helps with the overall owl feel. The Top Heavy title seems to refer only to the shape itself. I'm not sure why one is given such a suggestively descriptive title when the other is more shape related.
Papa-syndrome is suggestive of a child's head looking diagonally up to a totally abstract shape. Is it referencing the missing or distant father-figure that comes up time and time again? I'm not convinced this is it. The composition doesn't seem to lend itself to a father trying, and failing, to comprehend his child either. I stand in front of it for a couple of minutes trying to figure it out, but I just can't.
The largest piece is called My Egyptian Family, which is composed of two people shapes on the left and the rest is taken up with a huge and complicated shape that seems familiar but I just can't grasp what it is.
I leave having seen some beautiful art that I didn't fully understand.
As you see more and more exhibitions you grow to understand more and more what you like and what you don't. You also grow to understand what media you're drawn too and what you arn't. Ceramic sculpture has never really grabbed me. I can appreciate it, but it doesn't draw me in like photography or soft sculpture. Maybe that's because I'm not a ceramist, I've never really worked in clay. I don't really know, but whatever it is, I was dubious about finding anything I liked in this show.
I was wrong.
The first artwork I came across was Sally Cleary's series of 9 exquisite works of fired clay and found feathers on photographs. They capture perfectly the experience and feel of discovery of objects on the ground and in trees, presenting debris caught in branches, down drains and at the paths edge. They captured my attention for ages, they were so beautiful.
There was also Tina Lee's The Karens, which was the same 70s squat vase cast over and over and glazed different soft pastel colours, laid out in a tear drop shape on the floor pointing towards the viewer. The physiology of the mass produced is comforting to us because it's everywhere (from Lee's artist statement). The Karens embodied this really well. I wonder though, had I not have read the artist statement, whether i would have understood the comforting nature of this artwork or rather would I have viewed it as a statement of the blandness of mass produced repetition. Either way, there was a heartwarming 'waitingness' to the vases, as if they sat there patiently waiting for people to take them home and love them.
I also wandered over to RMIT gallery, and saw Klaus Rinke's recent drawings. Rinke is an German abstract artist, a leader of the avant-garde in Germany, says the press release. The exhibition is comprised of huge charcoal drawings that stretch from floor to ceiling. The charcoal is on rough, unfinished canvas and it's beautiful. I love being able to see the physical artistic process in the work. The works are, for the most part, huge organic shapes outlined with a thick black line and then shaded. Rinke has used a huge brush in parts, dragging through the pigment which marks the charcoal like pencil lines. And the very size of them (the smallest being 370x285cm) completely dwarfs you. But for all that, I'm still not sure what he's trying to say. I find abstract work more difficult to interpret than I do with ceramics, so it was a day of non-easy art all round. I find with abstract work that you need a path into the piece, a way into understanding. Often that can be the title of the work or the exhibition. But Rinke isn't always partial to helping in that regard.
Wandering around the gallery, trying to understand the work, I find one with a predominant dark shape that reminds me of a replica Queen Nefertiti bust my mother had when we were growing up. It's called She-Untouchable which is pretty cool, I figure that fits well with my connection to it. But across the room there are two that are very similar in shape to each other which are called The Curious One and Top-Heavy. The Curious One has a shape suggestion of an owl, with a circle where the eye should be, which helps with the overall owl feel. The Top Heavy title seems to refer only to the shape itself. I'm not sure why one is given such a suggestively descriptive title when the other is more shape related.
Papa-syndrome is suggestive of a child's head looking diagonally up to a totally abstract shape. Is it referencing the missing or distant father-figure that comes up time and time again? I'm not convinced this is it. The composition doesn't seem to lend itself to a father trying, and failing, to comprehend his child either. I stand in front of it for a couple of minutes trying to figure it out, but I just can't.
The largest piece is called My Egyptian Family, which is composed of two people shapes on the left and the rest is taken up with a huge and complicated shape that seems familiar but I just can't grasp what it is.
I leave having seen some beautiful art that I didn't fully understand.
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