mystique of the proletariat

Monday, October 6, 2014

Dole / Dolour: An Allegory for the Fifth Corner of the World

σκότος ἐγένετο ἐπὶ πᾶσαν τὴν γῆν

In the evening
after work,
shadows fall
across the world.
And the city quiets
And calms itself.
And now the city is ours
The weak and broken ones
Come out to play
Take over the city.

Went to the Top Gallery in the Salamanca Arts Centre, a small room torn brick, convict sandstone, rough wood. A room that echoes the cries of those worked to death in the old days. Drunk and trapped. The scrap heap. Dolour -- endless unhappiness. This seemed an more than suitable place for these particular art works.

I went, as an invite to see an exhibit of photographs by Liam James passed across my facebook feed. The exhibit was called “Dole / Dolour: An Allegory for the Fifth Corner of the World.” I was instantly intrigued by the title, and normally I do not like photography as art. This is simply my hang-up and I apologise to photographers the world over. For me too often it is simple point and click, a mechanical reproduction of an object, allowing no understanding of the maker, of the ideas behind the work.

With this exhibit more was involved. Not simple happy snapping, not facile photoshopping. The photographs were all well thought out and the artist seemed to have something to say, and to know what that was.

These are the photographers of a maker, rather than a reporter, or a decorator.

Don’t be told what you want don’t be told what you need
There’s no future no future no future for you

Dole / Dolour, sorrow, emptiness, no future for you. There is a time, about the age of twenty five, when many us, (those of us that think and do not just follow) come to the conclusion that all the word worlds of teachers and parents -- that one can be what you want, that is just takes perseverance and commitment -- were no more than big fat lies.

Work will not save us, love will not save us, our future dream is a shopping scheme.

A future rolling forward of endless cycles of waking up, coffee, work, lunch, work, Friday nights drinks down the local, all leading to the goal of self imposed debt bondage. Marriage, house, children. And finally pointless, stupid, inexorable death.

Liam faces this future squarely, without flinching. His wonderful, well staged, well coloured, crafted photos bring these feelings of relentless boredom, of pointlessness to our gaze. His works shows how all this drabness is wrapped up with a system of objectification. And how it is that many of us desire, more than anything, our own slavery, fighting as passionately for slavery as for liberation.

The subjects of his photos aret mostly young men and women, and they avert their eyes from the gaze of the (assuredly elder, assuredly judgmental) viewers, looking up, down or off in the distance. Looking one thousand yards past the viewers into a doleful future.

When the subjects do look at the viewer, it is with irritation, with anger.

The artist, in his statement, wants to search for a new national identity, this is an important goal, as all around a reinvigorated national identity of spite and fear rises. This triumphalism gives birth to, and counters the art works, sets the scene, frames the works, and holds us in it's embrace as we step outside the gallery, back into a world of objects, processes, statistics, and prices.

This is an interesting and provocative exhibit. An exhibit which on first glance appears simple, but over the days and nights will slowly chew into your brain and make you question the world of objects.

Dole / Dolour: An Allegory for the Fifth Corner of the World is on display until the end of the month, until 30 October. You can visit a web site that Liam James maintains.

Monday, September 22, 2014

RACT Insurance Tasmanian Portraiture Prize

I went to the RACT Insurance Tasmanian Portraiture Prize award night. This competition is the result of a highly successful partnership between RACT Insurance, Clemenger Tasmania and Tasmanian Regional Arts. Looking at the variety of works on display, one can safely say that the future of portraiture is safe in Tasmania. This exhibit is more vibrant and daring than similar prizes.

This award takes a different path than most portraiture award. A few things stand out to make this award unique. Quoting the Conditions of Entry, “The submitted work must be a titled portrait of a living Tasmanian.” This has the effect of making the prize a local prize. This can be both good and bad. Good in that it supports local artists, who due to the nature of the world tend to get swamped by the sheer size of the north island. Bad in that it feeds on an isolating tendency. What you wish to give weight to is, of course, up to you; but for me I would support the idea of a prize that seeks to support and nurture local artists. As we live in a world based on the idea that big eats little, sometimes little needs a helping hand. How else can little mature and start devouring.

Due to the nature of portraiture it often behaves as a sort of aorist medium; an exploration of the past, the contemplation and mulling over of a life, of past achievements. To overcome this tendency the RACT Insurance Tasmanian Portraiture Prize conditions stipulate that the artist must be under thirty. As youth are inherently forward looking, this stipulation is fabulous, in that it provokes a disruptive alchemy. A work like this year's winner would not be allowed in the Archibald Prize, due to the condition that the painting, “Must be a portrait painted from life, with the subject known to the artist, aware of the artist’s intention and having at least one live sitting with the artist.”

A third aspect that to me makes the prize unique is the emphasis on submitting a short (300 word) artist statement, describing the reasons the portrait subject was chosen. This statement is an important part of the process, as it helps determine the intention of the artist, and if the finished work has accomplished that intention. It allows us to understand the inspirations that flow around and artist, and their works.

There is no point in trying to describe all the paintings in an exhibit of over thirty works. I will only mention the works that won awards on the night.

Jesse Hunniford won the inaugural Packer's Prize for the work “Am I a Man or a Puppet?” This work, described in the statement as “a visual and physical journey into childhood and paternity through textiles and the act of making”, is an example of how the artist statement and the work -- a photograph of a hand puppet -- combine to create a new form of portrait. It is also important to note that a work such as this may have not been allowed in many other Portraiture Prize competitions.

The Sponsors Choice award went to Tilly Cough of West Launceston for the work “Dad.” A beautifully rendered pastel drawing of the artist's father. A work that seeks, -- here I am paraphrasing from her statement -- and succeeds in finding the flaws and roughness of her subjects, the imperfections that make them perfect.

The 2014 runner-up prize was awarded to Shannon Terry from South Hobart, for her work “A small idol of mine.” A pencil drawing of her cousin Sarah. Shannon said, “The lens in which she views the world is one of which I admire immensely. She holds strong views in politics. Symbolically, the grey I create serves to remind us that there is neither a black nor white perspective in life”

The winning work this year was by Cameron McRae, of Hobart, with a work he called “David Foster enters the Burnie Betta Milk Wearable Paper Art Prize.” This was a cheeky, satirical, amusing look at recent events in Tasmanian political history through the medium of portraiture. Again, this sort of work would not be allowed in some other competitions. Which makes one wonder if a trip to next year's Archibald Awards is actually a good thing or not.

The paintings will be on display in Hobart at the Long Gallery until the 5th of October. It will then travel to the Sawtooth Gallery in Launceston, from Friday 31 October until Saturday 22 November. Finsihing the tour at the Burnie Regional Art Gallery, in Burnie from Friday 12 December until Saturday 31 January. This exhibit of young Tasmanian talent is definitely worth a look!

One could argue that the last 20 years of history have been an attempt to destroy our spirit of co-operation, our spirit of optimism. The youthful, daring, amusing, satirical, experimental nature of the works on display prize can act as an antidote, a pharmakon, a charm, to protect what can be protected from this world-historical fear.

I will leave the last word to the winner, “I said that if I win I would be able to insure my car, so this a win all around.”

I want to thank my pal Ian Milliss for helping me to clarify my thoughts (like turning butter into ghee)

To see some other media related to this exhibit: Tasmanian Times, The Hobart Mercury non-story, and an amusing example of victorian prudeity from The Advocate.

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Tell Tales

So on a beautiful full moon night, one of those nights when the stars hide away and the moon swollen and full makes the world glow silver; I drove into town to see Tell Tails, a new performance piece by Bridget Nicklason-King.

The sort of night that is the power of women.

Tell Tails was a show inspired by Bridget’s granny. One can imagine the performer as a child listening intently as her grandmother told wild stories of adventure, danger and love. All completely true…and then some.

Old, old, ancient the stage is, older than writing. And the sparse, black stage is a new universe, a unique self contained world. This evening we were expected to believe that we were on the beach, on the edge of a wild salt sea. A churning sea made of broken glass. Tossed and smashed by fierce waves the empty wine bottles shatter and shatter again, until they are ground into dust, into sand of the beach. And the sand can be melted, reformed into glass, endlessly rocking.

And like the poet who uses the flowing, alternating vowel to create emotions, or as the cunning raven who picks up objects to alert and inform the others, so too the performer uses flowing alternating gesture, motion, to grasp ideas, to create meaning.

Not quite mime, rather something more like to dance, to an art of motion. Not quite a narrative. Rather Tell Tales was like a strange utopian burlesque. Music and dance. Comedy, clowning, cabaret, chaos. Wine, sand, and popcorn.

House lights off, a spot light, and Bridget Nicklason-King starts off the show hiding under a red sheet. Strange, protean, shapes under the sheet. A cluttering noise and we see her, bound, trying to come out of, trying to free herself from, this tattered worn and well used gladstone bag. Like a child being born? Does she wobble around like a baby foal unsure on its feet? Or is this a ecstatic, drunken, dance? One review, not seeing the bag as a uterus, saw it as Pandora's box “releasing its torrent of horrors before collapsing into the last rays of hope.”

Both views I am sure are right in their own way, and at the same time wrong. Wrong in the sense of not being concrete, not being complete.

But here is the point where the work may cause a divide. If you want your art, if you want the theater experience, to be all wrapped up and tidy, if you want all the various strands to come together in a neat bowpackage -- this work is not for you. If, however, you do not mind having to add structure, to fill in the spaces, if you understand that art, like life, is not neat and tidy, but rather fraught with errors that extend and liberate us; if you think that the genius and the fulfillment of art is to play, than this is a work for you.

The supporting staff around Bridget did a very good job, the set design, lighting, and sound blended together to support the performance, and were always discrete.

The only negative I can find is more a problem with the space. Bridget ended the show swimming in the broken glass sea. However due to the line of sight, I was unable to see this very well. I could, however, hear -- which in many ways is not a negative at all, but further to the idea of having to add elements to the show.

To find out more about this performance piece and Bridget Nicklason-King you should click on this link.

Speaking of magical islands.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

hands up don't shoot

This being my response to Ferguson, and the over the top police response. the video at the end was filmed by Peter Charles Macpherson

My lumps my lumps my lovely baton lumps

After Los Angeles riots
After Rodney King
A commission investigating
The beating found that
Police were perceived
An occupying army.
Not community members.

I had no alternative
But to elevate the level
Of our response.