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MVA Seminars 2008
MVA Seminars 2007

2009 MVA Seminar Program
Ian Bunn
Ian Bunn
Respondent: Kristin McIver
Is it possible to chronicle memories? The absence of a close friend creates a void in memory and a distortion of appearance as our mind weaves a fabric of memories into a distorted vision, a Francis Bacon impression composed of liquid features. Yet one can intimately recount acute details of a single moment in time, 30 years ago, a parade of black ants writhing on terracotta under an intense beam of magnified light, a childish experiment. This is the fickle nature of memory. Elusive. Fluid. Interchangeable.

Ian Bunn’s works are temporal mindscapes that traverse the indeterminate space between memory and experience. When viewing his work, one is acutely aware of the passing of time, and the merging of memories. Presented in the VCA Student Gallery as two highly colourised video works, and 16 digital stills installed in a rigid grid formation, the works appear as attempts by the artist to harness life’s convoluted memories.

A white television mounted on a plinth in the centre of the room projects a slowly undulating, interwoven collage of time. Photographic collages fade into one another, woven together by the textural surface of the artists own paintings produced during the same period, to form abstract memory scapes that teeter on the verge of recognition. Blended with the photographs they become a fluid collage which could be the visual incarnation of a struggle between the voyeuristic observations of Seurat, the distorted portraits of Bacon, and the politicised abstractions of Kiefer.

Behind the television is a large projection on the wall of what could be the same video, playing at a different timeline and further emphasising the time shift that occurs with memory over time. Initially the viewer could be mistaken into thinking the projection is a direct replica of the subject on the television screen, however it emerges that the videos represent a different period in time, creating an ambiguity of form that defies any memorial certainty.

The integration of video motion into the artist’s practice is a considered appropriation of time-based subject into a time-based medium. Bunn’s earlier painted works have become a secondary part of the work; the viewer is presented not with originals, but with copies of the artworks, incorporated into the increasingly obsessive documentation of the artistic process...as if the creation of the paintings themselves is merely another step in the quotidian process.

On the adjacent wall, the 16 digital stills extracted from the video works declare their presence in blinding colour saturation, as deconstructed memory stills. Just as a photograph captures a moment in time, these stills capture moments in memory. Fragments in time woven together to form splintered recounts of experience – they could be impressions taken from the same day, or perhaps pieced together from distant memories.

The artist’s obsession with documenting experience is evident, but the mass of daily experiences visible in previous work is reduced to a more ingestible format in a subtle and abstract manner. The viewer is invited to share in the artists’ daily experience – interactions with colleagues, accounts of current affairs, machines of war, visual travelogues, sporting icons and the artist at work in his studio. Common experiences blurred through abstraction and layering, to the point whereby the viewer could be contemplating their own memories.

The artist merges this content in such a way that the works become animated self-portraits painted with memories that hover between figuration and abstraction. However notably absent from these documentary portraits is the artist himself. Aside from a few stills, the viewer witnesses the world occurring around the artist, but is excluded from his private internalisations both through the omission of any personal reference and also the formal merging of subject. Time and its elusive quality are exemplified through external sensory experience only.

Bunn’s journalistic works document the memory of experience, yes. But furthermore they illustrate the experience of memory.

Respondent: Tiziana Borghese
Colour in Motion: Art and a Personal World

“Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's
view of the universe”. Marcel Proust (1871 - 1922)

This is certainly true of Ian Bunn’s recent exhibition in the Postgraduate Gallery, at the Victorian College of the Arts. Ian’s world is unique, a cacophony of visual sounds, screaming for the viewers’ attention in spasmodic flashes of intense colour and manic impressions. Ian is a record keeper, a diarist, who meticulously and compulsively collects photographs from newspapers, from his experiences as a student at the VCA and from his private life. Superimposing abstract expressionist splashes of colour on everyday scenes, like falling asleep after a hard day in his studio, the images take on a life of their own, in true Freudian paranoiac-critical association, which may reflect the artist’s deliberate intentions, or may not. The intention is tangential. The experience to the viewer is idiosyncratic depending on the viewer’s vision and personal perspective.

I sat in the gallery, watching the projection on the wall and the images on the monitor, mesmerised, trying to find a link, a connection, a meaning between the wall and that screen. At times… a flash… a gem of synchronicity… a connection… Obama and war, master chef and a student class at the VCA, Japanese observers of the lunar eclipse (in a scene reminiscent of the cult film The Heathers) and a tribute to Michael Jackson, Benvenudos a Honduras and an aeroplane circling a transmorphic globe, a pristine artist’s studio degenerating into chaos as superimposed cracks penetrate its white and ordered state. Is this a comment on the creative process? ... On Ian’s personal experiences in a hot house environment, which has been his life and passion for the last five years? Is he about to crack?.. Or is this perhaps a metaphor for his creative breakthrough from his focus on painting in the past to new fields of investigation which include video projection and photography? There is no answer: the synchronicity fades as the loops on both projections distance the images previously connected and conjure up different associations, different meanings… or maybe it’s all in my mind. I question my grip on reality.

I become aware of a Chinese dragon… funny I’m sure it wasn’t there the first time around… a table full of photographs, some scattered mementoes, posters of the much loved and missed lunchtime forums, clipped notices on a wall…..Bruce Nauman?...Edvard Munch? They disappear too fast to read or absorb….they are just fleeting allusions to Ian’s world….a fragment of the data collection which forms an integral part of his practice. A world which Ian presents to us in cryptic, random order, inviting further investigation, a need to probe beneath the surface, to question, to interpret.

Ian’s universe is colourful, made up of stained glass type visions in a high key palette. As I watched the rhythmic splatters of paint, at times playfully heightening an image, at others obscuring it to the point of oblivion, I was reminded of Chagall’s stained glass windows in Tudley, with their magnificent, strong, black lines outlining his signature floating figures. Miro’s black calligraphy came to mind, as did the windows of Chartres Cathedral and Notre Dame. Projected on the wall Ian’s paintings become imbued with a luminosity not seen in the original works…Yves Klein’s blue, Calder’s bright reds and yellows, Munch’s ephemeral colour juxtapositions. Complimentary, secondary and primary colours flash before the viewer in an orgy of visual stimulation, too fast to be absorbed… one minute they’re there, the next they’re gone… time to move on to the next image, the next hidden, subconscious memory or serendipitous association.

Like Proust’s petite madeleines, the hypnotic persistence of colours remind me of childhood collections of marbles, swap cards, Derwent pencils, crayons, soft toys and smarties, and the delight of experiencing a multiplicity of bright, alluring colours and their seductive qualities. The transparency of the projections catapult me to a time and memory of playing with a plastic transparent, multicoloured tea set, at age 5, and discovering the iridescent transformation of the original colours when the rays of the sun filtered through their watery contents to produce colours of intense beauty.

I make a conscious effort to return to the here and now. The photographs, which form the third part of the exhibition, are presented as fundamental to the video/projection loops. In a cyclical referencing, they are the basis of the work exhibited. Their stillness is in marked contrast to the constantly moving, animated, images on the wall and monitor. It is here that we note Ian’s indebtedness to Seurat, and pointillism, and Jackson Pollock’s physicality. Of note is the elongated shadow of the artist, which hovers in one of the photographs, like a phantasmagorical echo of times past.

Collecting and documenting is the corner stone of Ian’s world, and it would be amiss not to mention that the works on exhibit are a result of a meticulous, almost manic gathering and diarising of selected images from January to July 2009. They are presented here as a collection in a manner reminiscent of James Joyce’s ‘stream of consciousness’ or the meanderings of a Jack Kerouac novel. They flow from newspaper reports, to personal photographs, to exhibitions visited and fellow artist’s works, to essays written, to classes attended and to his research and investigations of art books. They give a snap-shot of Ian’s interests, preoccupations and interactions. They are Ian’s practice and his universe.

Proust suggested that “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes”. Ian’s vision of everyday events, and his obsessive documentation, is presented to us in a manner which challenges the viewer to see the mundane through “new eyes”. Through a kaleidoscope of colours and associations he invites subjective interaction and, perhaps, an altered vision, or recognition of what he identifies as worthy of notation in his world and ours.

Veronica Aldous
Veronica Aldous
Respondent: Bethanie Nichols
On entering the gallery space the viewer is met with an experience of colour. Three of the gallery walls are covered with a number of coloured canvases. On the main wall a large vertical diptych of dark purple is hung just left of the centre. This is the darkest canvas and the depth created by the hue and the application of the paint, creates a pause in the presentation, a space that has the potential for meditation. From here the periphery vision is affected by the other colour panels, which surround the main painting in a salon like hanging arrangement. To the right of the diptych is a medium reddish orange rectangle; below to the right of this is a slightly smaller dark green square that has traces of a grid that is evident at a distance but that fades upon closer inspection. Higher, and to the right of these canvases is another dark blue rectangle. The arrangement of the coloured canvases, along with the spaces in between and the shadows that are created around the canvases, bring to mind aspects of Piet Mondrian’s formal abstractions so that the whole display of paintings becomes like one abstract work of art.

To the left, on the other side of the diptych, are another two canvases; hung low is a medium size red canvas and hung high is a small magenta pink canvas that has a green/blue opal jewel attached to it. This jewel looks like an Indian bindii. This reference to Indian culture creates another level of meaning to the coloured works and allow the work to become more about the symbolic and spiritual use of colour and allows the possibility for the work to attach itself to the idea of spiritual transcendentalism that the artist is interested in. The combination of these canvases, side by side, on the same wall create an overall experience of colour, intertwining two important aspects of the artists investigation. By hanging the large diptych to the left of centre on the wall she has created a place where the viewer can pause and be aware of potential levels in the work.

The use of three walls to hang the work envelops the viewer in colour fields and the vibrations that are created between the individual blocks of colour. The warm canvases are solid, opaque colour that acts as formal interruptions to the blue and green canvases, which act as spaces for the viewer to move back and forth into. They appear to being swirling spaces, which invite a more sublime, mediative experience for the viewer.

On the floor under the main wall of paintings is a large rectangle of red linoleum with a smaller stack of coloured lino atop it pushed right into the corner. It makes me think of a simple bed like matt on the floor. In this way the artist has moved the fields of colour from the picture space of the wall, out into the physical space of the gallery. This move has created a change in the experience of the viewer and the potential for a transcendental experience

The stack of 8 small canvases on the floor sit at an askew angle to the wall and are similar in size to the small light box on the wall above it. The light box brings a difference to the overall work, as does the use of the colour as objects in the physical space. The colour canvases on the wall are easily understood as investigations into the language of abstract painting such as that of Rothko and Mondrian. As a result notions of the sublime and the symbolic potential of colour through its associations and vibrations on their way to a transcendental experience become part of the language of the work. The artist has in the past made use of coloured squares of Perspex box-like objects on the wall to contrast and interrupt the fields of moving colour on the canvases, as she has done in this hanging with the use of opaque solid colour on the warm hued canvases. The light box is a new addition to the overall language of the work. It changes colour from blue to green, yellow, purple and pink. Sometimes it pulses and sometimes it changes colour quickly. The coloured light is framed within a white border and it cannot help but be visually linked with the stack of canvases on the floor because the power cord leads the eye down to the stack below. The colours of the canvases on the floor seem to be the same colours that appear interchangeably in the light box. This to me seems only faintly linked to the rest of the work, which could be seen as one complete work because of the way that the space between the paintings has been considered and so has become part of a whole installation. With the light box and its relation to the stack of canvases I begin to think about theories of additive and reductive colour as I compare the two different displays of colour. Also, I see these objects working within a physical space rather than leading me to the potential of a transcendendant space. My first association to the stack was that it reminded me of a stack of books of the floor and the light box with its pulsating colour was linked in my mind to some science fiction, futuristic computer communication, like when a computer talks and the sound of its voice is transformed into colours.

The other floor piece I also find problematic. It makes me think of a bed or a meditation matt. It is a piece of linoleum with a faux marble texture on it, which, I can almost make a link to some of the painted surfaces, however, I find that the use of this domestic material does not correlate with the language of the rest of the work. Colour wise it is understandable bearing in mind the artist’s intent to interrupt and to play with colour and surface but I find it difficult to escape from the banal purpose of the material.

Overall the hanging of the work especially on the main wall successfully investigates the notion of colour, abstraction and the potential for the transcendental experience. I am less sure of how I am to read the progression of the objects into the physical space and how this can be negotiated or read in relation to the artist’s intent to disrupt the visual field.

Respondent: Yeo-Won Chung
When you walk into the room assorted sizes of canvases are hung across the corner of the room through the main wall. In Aldous' work the spatial play between coloured ground and synthetic substance makes a subject of its own. The proportion of each canvas varies from small note book size to large scale window screen but not bigger than that. The works are placed on the white wall in an arbitrary order. The placement of each monochromatic painting and the spare gap between each painting activates against the white wall creating a rhythmical movements over the whole arrangement. The giant wall represents as the main background and each monochromatic painting takes visual attention which produce optical illusion in the open space.

The work has been executed mainly with secondary colors. Such as pure violet and peach orange are mainly employed throughout the work and an occasional use of forest green and soft pink dilutes the optical vibe between violet and orange. Instead of allowing primary colors such as red blue and yellow which signifies its own limit, the use of secondary value allows to escape from a definite point of its departure. Therefore the displacement of secondary color fields infuse the sensuality of the visual perspective. The artist stays with a particular selection of color in each work and persistently stays with entirely one color to intensify the value of its originality. Therefore each work gains a totality of the individual field to represents the voice of its own. This indication of presenting an explicit color scheme allows the viewer to absorb into the pictorial allusion at the same time as increasing the aesthetic merit of the sensuality in the use of substance.

The traces of hand marks in the work suggest how the paint is applied. This manipulation of hand movement allows the work to gain an organic nature of chromatic value. The process continues throughout the whole frame therefore the medium is covered right to the edge of the canvas. It extends the chromatic value that has been employed in each canvas and intensifies the visual effect. There is no mixture of white or any other color used to divide tones or hues in the painting. The artist has allowed the thickness of paint to produce the various effects of tonalities. The artist has revisited the painting a number of times in selective areas until it has its texture so as to produce darker tonal values. The more paint creates deeper illusory pictorial space and waves through the shallow space in the frame. This intertwined movement of the medium provokes a sentimentality value to the work. The hand marks indicates the history of time that the artist has invested with the work. At the end, the works allow an absorption into the situations of what is happening in the painting.

There is a certain distance between each of the works. The format of arrangement is conducted in order to communicate to the surroundings at the same time confronts its own gender to the viewer. Diverse application of the paint as well as introducing different material such as light box and hard mat floor highlights and provides different aspects of perceiving the arrangement of the works.

The hard peach orange color floor mat activates versus the above painting that has the equivalent color scheme. The stack of rectangular floor mats at the corner of the left side of the room also intends to be connected to the rest of the paintings. The concept of placing a decorative object right in the center of the painting engages with the execution of placing the floor mat on the galley space. At the right side of the room there is an A4 size light box surrounded by similar size paintings. The light box gradually changes its color in every half seconds. Under the light box, there are several paintings stacked on top of each other reaching just below the knee height. The transparent coloured light box contrasts with the opaque colored paintings. This marriage of opposites, of the organic nature of the oil paint opposed to the artificial substances, reflects their contradictory perspective value in the work. The artist is therefore allowing the material itself to convey the equivalent voice as the rest of the paintings. The combination of displaying artificial materials with painting creates a tension between the work and at the same time expands the possibilities of justification between the art and the object. This explicit use of monochromatic hue and the process demonstrates the substantial value of abstract painting. The use of various executions in the work signifies a broad creation of color field. Throughout the work the artist delivers eternal narratives which take beyond what is presented on each frame. The work produces multiple sensual experiences through various executions of making the work as well as numerous modes of displaying in the space.

There is no particular meaning to the work other than the evidence of the process. There is no suggestive form or illustrations to depict certain shape or vision but the physicality of material and the experience of itself allowing the works to speak of themselves and deliverer a subconscious mind. It is not about the skill or techniques but the engagement of the work and the experience of the process. The history of time and the absent of mind which creates a perpetual dialogue between the work and the viewer.
Angie De Latour
Angie de Latour
Respondent: Ian Bell
Angie deLatour’s work in VCA student gallery is arranged as a frozen formula. On the large neutral wall six paintings are arranged and bracketed by a larger painted work on either side wall. The untitled works are in close proximity and read as a suggested line of textual imagery or a visual formula of counterparts linked by a cohesive palette and repetition of themes.

In reading this arrangement, poetic licence has identified the larger painted portrait of a photograph of a young woman absorbed into a mobile phone screen, cushioned in comfort by the cuddly furry shadow of a pillow, as ‘Big XY_Next_Gen.’ because this is where the figure is introduced and the mystery begins.

From left to right, a small landscape painting of a ridge forested by a shadowy brocade of deep forest-green pines against a gentle sky, lit in soft greys and delicate dove pinks, sits beside a portrait of the figure in an interior setting, facing a blank stonewashed wall, haloed by a warm, intimate, umber shadow. A second landscape is a painting of a snapshot view: a bristly wood, wild twigs whistling like the spindly screeches of disturbed birds over a pit of black charcoal shadow. In the next painting of the figure the subjective view is focussed on an obscured hand-held screen, pressed by a leathery shadow on the wall. The full-stop in this sentence is a third landscape: a screen of trees meshed in broken lace-work, febrile and burnt in the dark tones of a deep umbra.

On either side of this arrangement two larger mountain-scapes conclusively bracket the story with the depiction of vaporous mists and ominous forests.

These are sitting works, inviting the viewer to sit, still. The artist sits to paint, the model sits up in her bed and the figure portraits sit between the landscape stills, embedded in the chain of events. On the wings of this tableau the two larger ‘Romantic’ pictures bookend, protect and enfold the tale, stilling the hang in contemplative quietness, but with foreboding drama and a threatening disquiet. These images perform as tablets, the pages of a book in relief, defying the flatness of the printed photograph. ‘Photographic’ in appearance and initiation, the smaller canvases quietly express a ‘fabric-ness’, sustaining the delicate brushwork in a comforting palette of warm bronzes, coppery denim, flaxen ochres, leathery umbers, peat browns, Prussian blues, forest green hues and soft misty greys. The artist’s hand is gentle, affectionate and soothing, but there is a boding intimation and lurking menace in the shades of the copses and forests.

With consistent reference to the screen, literally and aesthetically, dark forces loiter beneath the surface. Suspicions are aroused in this ‘Cluedo’ of masked memory. Key signifiers are contained on the side in the flat-screen blue panels. Here the palette is cooler, verging on icy, and darker, drifting towards the perilous. The dimensions of a domestic wide-screen TV, these wild-screens of foggy mists and epic mountains, shadowed in the mysteries of the abyss, intimate a mythical apprehension. This terrain may be drawn from the primal depths of New Zealand’s historical geography, the vistas of the Bavarian Alps or the fogs and forests of Nova Scotia.

Most powerful is the final work in the series. An overwhelming shadow of velvet indigo and mottled pitch is seeping in a painted soak, spreading into swirling smoky blue mists of cloud with the insidious delicacy of the finest, feathery stroking of the brush. The painter’s hand, superbly clothed in the glove of the Sublime, slight and beguiling, with sleight and bewitchment, veils the mask of memory in flirtation with the supernatural.

The most recent screens are colder, less revealing, more elegant and deftly seductive. Highlighting the paradox, this body of work seems to freeze, superbly, moments of motherly warmth within the stormy atmosphere of background, upbringing and apprehension. But as post-photography painting, celebrates the subversion of Dionysian practice by embracing sanctuary, contemplation, comfort and pleasure in the dark light of mystery, where death may glow with its greatest vitality.

Respondent: Zofia Nowicka
Angie deLatour exhibits her new paintings in a two-person show at the VCA Student Gallery.

Five identical small-scale canvases arranged in neat row are hanging on a large VCA gallery wall. Two represent a young woman and the other three a fragmented landscape. On the same wall a portrait of presumably the same woman hangs in the distance, solitary, separated from the rest by its scale and the self absorbed activity she immersed herself in, oblivious to the world around her. This world of fragmented people and nature is flanked by two blue landscapes hanging on the opposite walls.

The proportion of small paintings placed on such a large wall create an optical illusion for the viewer. I am not certain whether I am looking at the paintings or peeping through the holes to see the world hidden behind. I like that ambiguity.

The artist approaches her subjects in a realistic manner suggesting that she uses photography as a source to complete the work. The nature she captures through the lens is later reinterpreted and reconstructed on the surface of the canvas. In her choice of composition, thickness and application of paint, brushstrokes and the distribution of light she is presenting their beautifully crafted, complex surfaces for our contemplation. In these carefully composed paintings, the trivial and non-descript nature of reality is transformed into the transcendental.

 The artist executed her work with a monochromatic colour scheme although the blue landscapes fall strongly into analogous colours. I am intrigued by these two paintings, so different to the others exhibited in this show. Are they heralding new approaches to the subject and its realization?

From a distance they almost fall into the category of abstraction, but on a closer inspection the faint shapes and contours of the canopy of the trees and branches start to emerge. The work suggests a fusion of abstraction and representation. As in her earlier work she uses the camera lens to choose her subject for subsequent analysis.

It is evident she celebrates traditional technique, transcending the materiality of the paint. With their subtleties of value, blurred edges, and satin surfaces, these two paintings seem to be immaterial apparitions.

I am tempting to link her work to Gerhard Richter although it is difficult to do it on the basis of sauch a small show. Richter uncovered a new way of looking at the relationship between photographs and painting. He share this exciting moment in an interview for the New York Times Magazine: “I was surprised by photography, which we all use so massively everyday," "Suddenly, I saw it in a new way, as a picture that offered me a new view, free of all the conventional criteria I had always associated with art. It had no style, no comparison, not judgment. It freed me from personal experience. For the first time, there was nothing to it: it was pure picture. That's why I wanted to have it, to show it—not to use it as a means of painting, but use painting as a means to photography." Using both mediums painting and photography Angie is searching for her own language. I am looking forward to see her next solo show.
YeoWon Chung
YeowWon Chung
Respondent: Sharon Billinge
Chung’s firmly abstract paintings can be enjoyed for the funny shifting space they create and their luminous changing colours. There is no invitation to narrative within these pieces. The veils of colour and grided lines do not prevent us ascribing meaning but they are being used here as an optical means to enhance the sense of depth and impose a formal structure. The manipulation of medium to create depth is the pervading force. The exhibition splits into three distinct explorations into this with each wall presenting suggested solutions. The evidence of process is everywhere. My immediate impression is that there has been a struggle in the making of this work. Some sort of frustrating pursuit, which has ended with some hard won victories, as well as unresolved outcomes.

On entering the space the large red and blue triptych commands attention. Like open throats or jointed corridors the repetitive shapes pull us into the centre of each piece, guiding us with the diagonals they form. The red crosses then pop towards us forcing the repeated shapes into our peripheral vision and making the bounding sides of the canvas pull forwards to envelop us. When viewed from a distance the darker shapes in the centre canvas stand out and the indistinct boundaries and thinly covered flat areas of canvases suggest that the work is unfinished. Where the work appears more blended (as in the far left canvas) this is not so apparent. Having said this I don’t see this raw quality as a bad thing. These canvases have a life about them. They wriggle and refuse to stay still. The clean unblended juxtaposition of blue dripping over red in the far right piece conveys freshness whilst accentuating the pull and push of the piece.

On closer inspection the paintings change. Thicker lines of paint are visible and the contrast of thick and thin passages helps to separate shape from ground. The vitality of the strokes used prevents the pieces becoming static. Semi translucent veils of colour simultaneously obscure and reveal parts of the image with the red areas containing subtle colour modulations that also pulse against one another.

The three green canvases take a different approach. From a distance they take on a certain amount of depth. Almost like fog or mist with indistinct shapes sliding around in the distance. But at close quarters they become like a barrier of colour. Without the diversion of illusionary depth my mind grabs at narrative. They begin to look like windowpanes streaked with condensation with greasy lipstick smudges on the surface.

I turn to the final part of the exhibition and the two small canvases to the right of the arrangement have an immediate effect on me. They are tighter, more coherent and function as stand alone pieces. They are beautifully crafted and seem to have had attention poured into them along with the layering of paint. I have a feeling of suspension, of being held between the vague background and the grids that cover it. There is an indeterminate space within the confines of these canvases. It is slippery and seems to merge and change as I try to pin it down. Both pieces glow and seem to reflect light. As I get nearer the effect is diminished as the surface treatment and subtle shifts of colour become more apparent. Marks of past grided forms push out at me from beneath the layers of paint.

I’m not immersed in paint; the feeling is much more removed. Like looking through a small window into part of an uninhabited world consisting of sliding twisting shapes.

I find myself thinking of the abstract expressionists. There is a revelling in medium evident here but with a constraint in the painting arm. These are not unrestrained gestures and abandoned spillages. These paintings have inched into life. They have been carefully let out a small piece at a time and then locked down before they spiral away out of control. Each step has been monitored and judged before proceeding - the resulting images being pressed and confined like a specimen on a microscopic slide. The paint has not been used to sculpt form in a representative way but rather to capture space within its layers. Chung plays with our depth of focus covering larger blurred shapes with more distinct sharper lines, forcing us to read this as a difference in focus and therefore a difference in space. For abstract pieces these have a lot in common with the old masters and their use of optical perspective, colour theory and glazing.

When Chung is successful she creates organic forms compressed into submission, layered portals with an odd kind of distanced beauty, that speak of volume and space. I am attracted to the visible struggle in her work to find an end point. I feel the work is dependant on the artist letting go at the right time and prompting the viewer to complete the broken form or arrangement. To pull back from being so immersed in the task that countless end points fly by and countless beautiful variations lie buried under layer upon layer of paint.
Respondent: Yifang Lu
Upon walking into the gallery space where there were nine oil on canvas paintings on the wall, I felt a sense of serenity. On three of the walls, a set of evenly sized canvases were lined up with each other. They looked somewhat moist with translucence; the delightful gentle green colours were warm and calming. On top of the pigment and running marks lay soft brush strokes outlining abstract shapes and forms that gave me a ghostly phantom like presence. Each set possessed a different kind of quality in not just the choice of colours but also the layering. The layering effect builds up a beautiful image, providing a sense of depth to the art work.

In the middle wall lies three larger square paintings alongside each other. Together they look like a misty forest or a rainy day on the lake; an imaginary place that is filled with tranquillity. The aqueous nature of the painting provides a certain sense of mystery. Also, the unevenness of the painting due to the various bumps portrays an organic nature.

On the wall to the left, there are three small panels. They are spaced out in a line and all possess a green tone. The panel on the far left has a thin layer of paint with simple linear forms painted over it. On the other hand, the middle panel is slightly thicker, and the pattern seems to be somewhat submerged into the underlying paint. This effect is amplified in the rightmost panel where the patterns and shapes seem deeply lodged into the canvas. I believe this shows a natural progression of her work; with the degree of development increasing from left to right.

On this wall to the right, there is a range of captivating strong colours that is not normally seen in Chung’s work. The strong black forms along with a splash of red in the middle are very eye-catching and emphasize rawness. The messy brush strokes are busy and active, and make it seem like a draft sketch of human parts; rather than a completed product.

The feeling I get from seeing all this work is that there is a hidden level of energy in all the paintings; that the use of layering is used to subdue some of the roughness of the lines and patterns. In some ways these patterns seem like scars that have healed over time.

I have seen her drafts and they are well-planned like a blueprint; this illustrates her passion and attention to detail. It seems like she chooses to soften her work by adding layers of colour with the liberal use of media. It rounds the sharp edges and makes me feel calm, comforted and enlightened at the same time.
Tiziana Borghese
Tiziana Borghese
Respondent: Han Nae Kim
Underwater, spaceship, transform, light, shadow, dream, sixth sense, ritual, harmony, hope, womb, autobiography, identity, mute, Zen, ghost, life, spirit…

Soon as I enter the room, a virtual journey through Tiziana Borghese’s psyche begins while receiving visual information which consequently transmits words and fills up my brain. The words may sound random but if I interpreted them correctly, they must be all rooted to its creator, the artist and her life.

The first impression on the overall presentation is somewhat different to what I expected. The scale is reduced, the palette is brighter and my eyes even witness a sense of happiness. I read this change as a good sign since I understand it is the artist’s personal life which controls the fundamentality of her work. However, I am not foreign to the next thing I notice; each and every photograph is filled with an aura of spirits. Without knowing its nature, I am already embraced by the mysterious force; which is physically or visually absent but most strongly present in my mind. This force is neither coercive nor alluring. It is more likely of an encounter that we might experience in Saint-Chapel cathedral while having a shower of breathtaking, jewel-like stained glass reflections. Yes, it is a holy one. It is definitely a welcoming beacon.

Most works are displayed in pairs except the triptych which takes up the very centre of the wall space. I find no sequence in the arrangement but there exists a certain sense of rhythm that guides me through. The illusions I perceive are lyrical and calm, almost left the impression of floating, even though strong chiaroscuro, the theatrical employment of light and shadow dominates the picture planes. It is due to sfumato technique that harmoniously balances the application of dramatic shades. These painting-like photographic images are of found materials, mostly simple and non-precious, however, they are reclaimed through creative process the artist carries out. And most surprisingly, I start to sense this mystic being that vaguely unveils its own presence over the translucent film of mundane life. I guess the artist is well aware of the outcome she will achieve when she manipulate the scenes indirectly. Thus, Borghese views the world through the eye of camera and capture the moments which entail stories to be shared and issues to be questioned. Her photographic images are not perfect in technical terms but what lacks in them actually brings a sense of vitality to the work and let it breath like an organism. I remember the artist once stated that she does not call herself a painter or a photographer, but a hybrid of both. I suppose, in her production methodology, the juxtaposition of diverse mediums, from found objects to installation is studied and integrated with the help of photography. As a contemporary artist living in the time of conversion, it seems more than natural that she fetched and adapted every possible means to create the world beyond imagination where unspeakable speaks and repressed subconscious unfolds.

‘Although art is oriented toward every fantasy and extreme, it adheres to reality’. An old critic and philosopher, Arnold Hauser’s view on contemporary art echoes in Borghese’s art world of an acute rendering of our own reality. Growing in isolation within the modern society, the self must learn to develop identity by reflecting society. Identity is familiar yet a hackneyed expression. However, the question of identity merits discussion because self-identity is not a passive essence developed by foreign influences. It is an active one, which is created by an individual amidst a foreign world. And they mutually contribute to, and also directly promote influence on society. In accordance, identity flows endlessly with the pulse of society. The artist features the conflict between the material abundance and the spiritual poverty that has been aggravated in the current society.

By looking at the works where butterflies appear, I am reminded of the alienated human souls. And at the same time, I am possessed by the invisible energy coming from the areas where emit bright light from darkness. Is it a sanctuary? A womb? The ultimate place the artist wishes to lead us would be similar to that of ‘cocoon’, I presume. The comfort zone where one can sleep, revived, have some time to face the true self and be prepared to transform. What an essential space for the people living in the 21st century, who are forced to live as a cog in a cogwheel without knowing.

Some ample time passed after the moment I stepped in to the gallery. It was then I realized there was another gaze that had been observing the observer; myself. This mutual experience, once again led me to think about the self and my identity in a deeper level. It also triggered the emotional instability, which is common to moderns, and let me have a time for introspection. And soon after the time gone, I felt as if I received a gentle pat on my shoulder as a reward. I believe what the artist initially pursued within the series of work is not important any more, since it is the viewers’ turn to resume the dialogue through their own vision and mind. There could be a range of hidden meanings still waiting to be excavated but the joy of discovery and spiritual healing are only allowed to the observer who dares to open and reveal what lies beneath the surface.
Respondent: Nicole Belle
Tiziana Borghese’s large photographic works use short depth of field, forcing the viewer to look deeper. These works are about feeling. Borghese has created an alternate world with its own set of rules which are consistent with that world, but not ours.

These works remind me of the magic and memories of childhood. There is a sense of darkness and ambiguity. In the first work on the left I see a winged creature trapped in a cell without bars, but restrained by a force field of white light. The use of butterflies is ambiguous, I question if they are constrained or free: if they are inside or outside. These butterflies symbolise caged freedom. Technology constrains our environment. I search deeper into the butterfly-effect and question, “Where is society headed, are these images of a time in the future, the past, a time long forgotten?”. Perhaps both, a dimension running alongside our own, which we can access through imagination and may help us become aware of our impact and situation. The life of a butterfly is so relatively short compared to ours.

Borghese is mixing ideas in a Surrealist/Dadaist manner, using dream-like imagery and emotional response. The palette is strong in contrast – bright and dampened – like close-up sections of Polaroid photographs I recall from childhood… reminding me of a dark room on a sunny day as the light seeps in through cracks in the curtains. I see dust in the foreground, and remember my childhood experience of metamorphosis where I first experienced dust particles illuminated by the sun. I feel the oxygen being cut. Is it the future or a time long gone, and forgotten? Is it another version of Borge’s Garden of Forking Paths? This fantasy is a parallel universe where ambiguous shapes and constructions exist. Boats in the sky. Peeking monkey fish. Real sea monkeys and giant tiger moths feeding on blood red explosions of energy and light. The red holes may be implosions – gateways, like black holes, transporting to yet another dimension.

I keep asking myself the question – what are these images? I am entering an imaginary world guided by Borghese. Entangled. Am I entering Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli world? A world of spirits, mystical creatures and keepers of the earth – reinforcing the interconnectedness of all things. Moving in all directions, I see licks of Turner through colour and swirling movement in the photographs at the centre of the exhibition. These long photographs evoke images of artificial kelp forests, plastic bags in water, releasing new fish into the tank and their trapped existence where I ultimately play God. They are all lit from above and behind, giving the feeling that there is something beyond. There is no sense of earth’s gravity. Searching for more reference points, smothered by wet plastic, water droplets, which could be blisters, trapped penguins, seals with six-pack plastic wrapped around necks. I begin to realise I am in water deeper than that! There is life here – amoebas, textured forms moving in and out of focus. What has been released? Unrecognisable, these forms are only known to this realm. Emerging from the textures and lurking behind arterial clots, wet scabs and flaking skin, cellular or cosmological, floating in heavy air or water. I am constantly asking questions when viewing this work. The works in the centre are obviously different projects with the same theme – fantasy, magical worlds representational of what one feels when viewing Borghese’s work.

At the photographs on the far right I stand, enquiring. A psychological investigation. Somewhat like the invisible tennis ball scene from Antonioni’s film Blow Up - I interpret and place my own logic onto the work. Is this just mine, or is this a shared reality? There is no reality like mine. My head tilts and I see the work from different angles. Am I in outer space? What are the lights? Like stills from a science fiction film, I wonder, are they space ships, an environmental cleanup mission happening underwater in an amphibious land, are they fireflies in the distance, is it the simultaneous view of three people’s near death experience? I find myself reeling-in and toning down my imagination and my emotional response to the work. I am immersed in the windows of internal reality of Borghese’s fantasy world. Like the internal space created by Hal the ships controller from Kubrik’s film 2001 A Space Odyssey, there is no real perspective other than the self-contained realm of fantasy. This is a dream, which could turn either direction. An alien-scape with three suns, reflected. Or three moons? Exploding blood in the sky. Creatures emerge from the darkness. A beautiful alien landscape which is far from the earthly experience. I tilt my head and I see a vertical horizon. Out of the darkness of my imagined sideways sky, floating forms emerge from the textures, rectangular blobs, fossilised alien beings move through the sky, crystal Viking ships float in the squared landscape. This land of three suns is heavy in atmosphere. This sci-fi realm has endless possibilities. Near a pyramid form, a giant butterfly is either trying to escape or enter this biosphere pyramid garden. Its short life will be cut shorter if it cannot feed on the red embryonic nutrients inside. I am happy to enter this contract of belief, playing and dreaming questions and answers raised by alternate realities.

External noises in the gallery create a deeper experience. Knocking footsteps, clacking high heels, construction noise – I am being watched and there is something outside my reality as I look deeper into the photographs. Echoing electrical sounds like space ships hover above. Footsteps transform into unseen teleportation devices popping and clacking bodies in and out of this existence. Nearby construction work become words and voices of creatures creeping out of the textured sky. When the gallery door squeaks open I refuse to look around. I want to stay here in the fantasy. My awake dreaming. Looking through the square magnifying glass. This is not voyeuristic. This experience is not taboo. This fantasy is now mine and I feel I do not want to look away or return to the human earth world with all its gravity and known rules. I can stay in this fantasy and dream. This film never ends and this experience is something I take with me on my memory card.
Bethanie Nichols
Respondent: Veronica Aldous
Bethanie’s work represents for me a couple of threads that I find genuinely engaging. The first one is related to her choice of materials used. The second relates to the inherent bravery needed to allow time with the materials, working until something comes together. These two elements lead to work that creates a possibility for challenging what is real and what is natural.

Regarding the materials she has used here, there is a strong inherent ethic of choosing to use recycled materials that represent a concern for the environment and to not add unnecessarily to land fill. She is recycling old wooden furniture contrasting it with plastic shopping bags. The materials echo a sense of the hunting and gathering that is related to a past more natural supply and demand process. The older wood also suggests much older buildings and structures that evoke memories of generations gone by who had used the furniture and of the original carpenter who made the furniture. Another response arises which I feel is related to devaluing meaning and possible readings by questioning aesthetic values. There is a transforming of the value of the materials that is intriguing and poses questions about beauty and the sublime in an art object.

The second area of interest for me is the process of her art-making work. I read it as being involved with a lot of time investigating what can be done with her collected materials. Then there is also a sense of time in the production phase once a direction is taken. There is time involved in cutting the wood and plastic into needed shapes and quantities, and the time needed to construct and manipulate particularly the plastic into the planes or fields of textured plastic attached to underlying grids. Engagement with the materials with decisions made may relate to the materials’ own qualities or other practical factors. Her process might involve periods of not knowing what will happen until a direction is taken. The hunt and gather evolves into a process of assimilation and digestion then creative building with periods of repetition to complete the object. The flow of a kind of play creates a performance with found objects and builds a personal working ethic that has created a juxtaposition and lateral use of image that re-images the materials.

The result is a sense of an other world or sense of other space of altered reality. The nuances of colour in the wood and even the plastic create a sense of beauty in their own world. The light inside two of the objects gives a sense of life to the materials. The plastic bags and furniture pieces can also infer the domestic environment but with shifts from the expected. One crescendo for me is the line where the plastic and wood meet. There is a line that gives a sense of a pencil line freely drawn and meandering over the object. Subtle crescendos are what I find the most engaging. Not flashy, but quietly attractive, the objects creates their own yardstick to measure value systems related to meaning, beauty or a form of sublime that are not predictable in nature. The material research has created an alternate land where a gem might be discovered, where intricacies from mundane elements and combinations of materials suggest a questioned sense of value systems.

Bethanie’s past work has been more architectural. At her Red Gallery show in 2007 and 2008 work here at the VCA she was more involved with working in a space and what occupies that space. Her paper constructions and the shadows they cast manipulated the negative space. This work extends into placing objects in space and the negative space is still referenced by subtle hints like the plastic meandering tentacles that snake across the floor or up the wall. The space surrounding the objects may be arbitrary but at times appear to contrast with the surfaces of the materials and the constructed frameworks of wood still could be seen to reference interior architectural spaces. Attaching two objects to the ceiling with fishing wire gives a sense of mobility to the piece standing on one wheel and possibly security to the other pieces where it is used. Including these references to the ceiling has added also to a subtle sense of reference to the space outside the objects and the possibility of movement.
Respondent: Georgie Roxby Smith

I see dead people….. By Georgie Roxby Smith

The paranormal, mutated domesticity, embedded histories, metamorphosed and frozen in time. The world shifted and stopped. I keep listening for strange noises, dripping – blood or water? A silent knock. A strange supernatural hum. A physic disturbance. Something happened here.

The installation work of Bethanie Nichols transports the viewer to another time, space shifting us into a parallel reality. Archetypal images of haunted houses, young girls playing in white frilly dresses – the giggling voices of ever-present ghost children hanging in the air. The clean basement coolness of the gallery complements the otherworldly feel of the work. The trace of other artists entrenched in the floors – the objects magnetised upon it.

Before me a strange transmutation of a bed careers through the room, a self-standing lamp structure is frozen mid flight. An overturned chair bleeds squid like tentacles, which threaten to entangle and entrap. Each object is embedded with the signs of ‘woman’s work’ – woven into its fabric. Drawn from the past yet thrown into the future by the use of cheap plastic bags, whose throwaway nature and mass production are a violent juxtaposition to the careful time and gentle patience invested in these tapestries and the objects they impregnate. Reminiscent of feathers or down, each carries the illusion of spectral movement.

Internally lit, the sculptures cast a curious ghostly glow. The touch of others hands on these objects is inescapable. An old woman’s chair, which sat by the fire. The cot of a sleeping baby now fully grown or dead or sitting, elderly, in their own fireside reverie.

The artists’ intuition is dominant here – as if she were tapping into the objects’ myriad of pasts and energies, channelling them into new forms, each an amalgamation of their combined histories. What would our memories look like if we materialised them and combined them into one pulsing mass? They are hanged. The fury of domesticity.
Han Nae Kim
Respondent: Ian Bunn
About the size of an apple seed, the Laccifer lacca mounts the indigenous Indian and Thai kursum tree to copulate during its brief yet terminal reproductive cycle.  Feeding on the tree’s sap, sucked from the gently stirring twigs and branches, the female excretes a constant flow of amber coloured resinous like excrement, deposited onto the tree branch to form the cocoon that envelopes her and incubates the eggs she lays.  This resinous substance, “lac”, a word derived from Sanskrit, an ancient Indic language, meaning one-hundred thousand is coincidentally the number of ‘lac bug’ cocoons to produce just 500g of shellac flakes, referred to in the tablet and confectionary industries as ‘beetlejuice’.

The intricacy involved in the amazing process that results in the creation of this wonderfully natural material has a direct correlation with the elaborate yet delicate creations within Han-Nae Kim’s amazing work. The volumous clouds of charcoal dust infused with the rich shades of tan imply a warmth, if not a heated core that radiates and permeates life through a possible reactionary creation.  The aesthetic generated within the work evokes a dialogue to the figurative forms with all manner of potential narratives.  Kim’s superbly rendered  forms often appear in partial states of being, appearing to emerge fleetingly from the clouds to provide only an exquisitely detailed fragmented hint of their submerged totality that remains concealed within.

The intensity of Kim’s aesthetic creations reflect profoundly upon the materiality of her mediums. The warm colours range from very dark browns, reds, oranges and yellows to a very light blonde.  The natural colours being influenced by the specific sap of the individual tree the ‘lac bug’ lives on. Similarly the charcoal’s differing characteristics and properties are dependent upon the type of plant material used and the temperature at which it was burnt.  These differences to softness, weight, fragility, blackness, and porosity enable Kim to work her piece with an intensity that is rarely obtained with the use of these individual materials.  Their combination further tantalizes the viewer with the richness of tones created through the intuitive application, erasure and reactivation of the materials.  The resulting and distinctive markings from the artist’s hand are clearly visible, helping to bring the viewer closer to the fantastical mind that created the illusionary world within the work.

Kim’s work projects the ever so subtle hint of the blues and greens for which Shellac as a low temperature fuel finds a use in pyrotechnic compositions. Ironically the charcoal produced by a slow process of pyrolysis has a historical application as a constituent of gunpowder, a resemblance uncannily reproduced visually within the smoky clouds of her work – almost a pseudo alchemy.  Kim’s choice of materials, combined with graphite pencils are often applied to large scale scroll like paper substrates that hang vertically floor to ceiling, enabling the viewer to appreciate the intensity and the beauty of the work.

Viewing Kim’s work is an engagement with the mysterious, in a similar vein to Gerhard Richters observation that “We only find paintings interesting because we always search for something that looks familiar to us.  I see something and in my head I compare it and try to find out what it relates to.  And usually we do find those similarities…”1.  Kim gives us glimpses of readily identifiable forms, encouraging the viewer to keep the engagement and to search deeper for what else is hidden amongst the luscious yet murky layerings of charcoal and shellac.  Seeking perhaps hints of more anthropomorphic shapes one regularly finds within cloud formations. “When we don’t find anything, we are frustrated and that keeps us excited and interested until we have to turn away because we are bored.  That’s how abstract painting works.”2

1) Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting.  Storr, Robert.  Art Publishers,  New York 2002 p304
2)Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting.  Storr, Robert.  Art Publishers,  New York 2002 p304

Respondent: Angie de Latour
Han Nae Kim’s recent work currently showing at the VCA student gallery, is
a mélange of formidable technical skills, unlikely media combinations and hefty themes.

Two related works hang on separate walls. The first is grand in scale, occupying an area of roughly four square metres. Made up of four pieces—one small narrow sheet of aluminium, surrounded by three larger sheets of rag paper in varying sizes—this mixed media drawing is predominantly abstract. Each piece is separated by a narrow gap which situates the work within an implied grid. A large roll/scroll of blank paper, supported by a metal rod, is attached to the work with hooks that screw into the wall through the surface of the paper. Situated between the top and the centre of the drawing, the span of this addition partly obscures the drawing behind it, creating a dynamic horizontal interruption.

Shellac in various shades from light gold to reddish umbre, forms gleaming pools in a spread of Vesuvian activity. The medium used to create this explosion of resinous ooze and seep, is made from the secretions of the lac bug. The varying depths of shellac application produce a viscous, burnt-toffee sheen. Areas of velvety pitch black charcoal merge into the shellac, moving up and out in undulating ripples which are echoed in the skin-like surface of the works on paper. The dull reflective surface of the acid-pitted aluminium plate interrupts these textures.
 
Charcoal is applied to the etched surface of the aluminium in a range of densities, creating a contrast between dark, heavily encrusted areas and light vaporous rendering. The artist integrates the dry black medium into the shape formed by a wash  of shellac, creating an illusion of a traditional Oriental landscape. Four life- sized butterflies cause a shift in scale that draws the viewer closer to the work—macrocosm to microcosm.

Organic forms emerging from abstract areas invite narrative and compete with surface texture for attention. A huge bee-creature explodes across the top area of the largest drawing in this group, beginning a process of alchemy and decomposition. The largest piece from the main work is allowed to hang unattached at the bottom—unlike the remaining three, which are carefully taped to the gallery wall. This draws attention to the materiality of the work. Does this paper come from the same roll that is mounted onto the work?

The grand theatre of Symbolism, Romanticism, Wagner and Keats, suggested by this vast memento mori, is abruptly interrupted by the three-dimensional presence of the roll. The blank paper resting on its metal rod injects humour and irony into the work. Attention is diverted to process. We are temporarily distracted from the inevitable creep of time, the death end of the cycle of life, by the potential of the present—a welcome blank page.
 
The second smaller work is a triptych, made up of two etched aluminium sheets on each side of the central drawing. The gallery spot-lighting accentuates the molten gleam of shellac on metal. A crystalline collection of insect wing fragments gather around a huge, charcoal-rendered human eye—a witness surrendering to the sleepless persistence of decomposition.

Han Nae Kim’s work is loaded with ambiguity and complexity. Abstraction, symbolism and pagan alchemy, join forces with personal and collective memories, to take their place in the dark and resinous surfaces of these dramatic works.
Sharon Billinge
Respondent: Yeo-Won Chung
In Sharon Billinge’s recent exhibition, the initial work that captures the audience’s eye is the wall painting. The larger than life size of the figure is presented on an even larger rectangular background made up of multiple, loose strokes of light orange paint. There has been no attempt to control or retain the consistence of the drips in the orange background. The artist allows this fluid effect to operate as natural layers, which resemble ocean water or a dream space. The process is apparent as the light layers of orange marks gradually become darker as they reach the ceiling. This background becomes an organic structure field to the figure. Covering the entire section of the wall provides impact and captures the audience’s attention. It provides a transparent space for the semi-detailed depiction of the figure form. Presenting the stylized brush works on a gigantic scale allows us to know who she is as a figurative artist.

The depiction of the figure has been achieved with loose strokes of turquoise sky blue tones. The figure form seems to be floating in the air or in water or trying to land on the ground. Curious narratives arise when looking at the figure. This sense of ambiguity continuously appears throughout Billinge’s works. The two figures are opposite to each other in the corner of the room. The corner of the gallery wall operates as the division between two paintings. The artist is using the wall as if it is the canvas or the work material not just the supportive construction. This procedure evidently shows the artist’s understanding of the gallery space and allowing the nature of the wall to be part of the painting work. This combination of harmonizing the physicality of the wall and painting techniques takes away the convention of the ideology to the wall painting and both become as one element. Therefore, viewers are focused entirely on the painting and the active gesture marks of the paint.

There is no particular shadow or depth other than the natural effect of the layered strokes with slight tonal difference. This spatial play with ambiguous positions of the figure and the background creates coherence and seems to give a calmness and gentleness, which holds the figure in place. Putting the figure at the same height with similar treatment of form also maintains the balance and settlement of the whole composition. At top of the wall painting there are two long strips of small size portrait paintings. Each rectangle has been divided into small sections occupying the space as background field for the portrait forms. The artist repeatedly uses mature female figure form though out the work. The depiction of face form has been modulated using mainly turquoise monochromatic field. It’s as if the artist has continuously observed the model the details of the face expression change in each section of the rectangular fields. Optical effect has been achieved by using oranges and blues. This juxtaposition creates volume in the face forms by revealing sections of the background. This effect highlights the subtracted area of the face form that continuously appears in the work. This calculated system of leaving certain areas unpainted makes it seem like the skin has been taken off the face. The blue tone of the face also brings the medical environment or samples of laboratory experiment records to mind.

The avoidance of eye contact with the viewer, the frozen form of expression and the pale color palette with the absent forms creates a certain distance between the viewer and the work. Is the artist then trying to produce emotional language through color or facial expression?. This emergence of abstract quality of color relationship and descriptive representation seems to be a valuable and critical element in this work. The repetition of the figure brings up the question of the narrative between the artist and the figure. Who is she and why is the artist painting her? Each work makes you wonder about the artist’s intention with the use of repetition in this exhibition. There is no absolute answer but what the mark suggest.

Billinge’s work therefore evokes curiosity and mysterious narratives. However in other hand, the work allows us to see the true value of the quality of the paint application that the artist engages with and obviously desires to push further.
Respondent: Yifang Lu
First of all, I noticed that Sharon’s work is not clearly visible from outside her gallery space; this is most likely on purpose, as she might be intending her audience to walk into the space to be properly engaged. Perhaps to be able to sneak at it from a distance would spoil the intentions of the artist.

The first thing that caught my eye was the overwhelming orange dripping background that brightens up the corner of the room. When focusing on the two large female figures, I feel as though I’m floating in the air, looking down upon them. Yet along the top of the painting there is a row of small facial portraits. This confuses me, as looking at these portraits I do not feel the same kind of perspective. The result is that my eyes shift both up and down, perhaps in some ways a visual trick.

The dripping marks in the background with the brush strokes of the stylishly crafted hair create a sense of movement to the work. The woman’s eyes are closed; this makes it seem like they are trying to imagine a space around them, and it makes me feel the same way.

The painting encourages me to slowly shift my focus from the lower sections where the body lines are vague and unclear, to the hair that is full of volume, definition, and contrast. The colours chosen for the body figure lines are gentle, calm, and feel weightless on her body, whilst the colours become stronger and more concentrated towards her face and hair. My focus then continues moving up towards the series of portraits.

The 18 portraits above appear to illustrate the same woman, with each image possessing a different coloured background; as though capturing a range of different emotions. Some of these portraits seem somewhat obscured by the colours of the background; perhaps to make a connection between the emotion and the feelings represented by the colours.

These series of portraits appear to tell a story; the story about this woman. I wonder how did the artist start from these small images to the large figures? Is it a contrast between stillness and motion? The stillness of the face on the larger figures to the smaller but dynamic and ever-transitioning emotions of the 18 portraits- from happy to sad, tired or energetic, lost and frustrated. These are the senses I feel when viewing this work.

Overall, this large wall painting is enjoyable to view; it is fresh, bold, and yet soothing in a way. A set of samples on the side show how the artist had tested the colours; to see how the aqua blue and black would go with the orange background. It gives viewers an insight into the journey of how this work was created, and makes viewers feel involved with the process.
Zofia Nowicka
Respondent: Ian Bell

the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body the body

If I write this the hand cannot maintain uniformity in forming the words; the body interferes with mechanized regularity. If I type this on my laptop I can perform consistently by using copy and paste. If I use my headphones to amplify the performance of the computer I can enjoy the kachicking of the mouse. A typewriter would charm with mechanical clickiness as the spongle punctures the paper with the printed letter. In the photographic works by Zofia Nowicka at Gallery VCAM, the artist’s hand is not evident but evidence of a consummate skill in digital production is compelling. These images are silent, the process surreptitious.

A small body of work. Large format digital photographs of an audience, the larger body, at a performance, in half-light, theatre-light, engaged, viewing, focussed. The photographer is focussed on the audience, secreted. The subjects are in the dark, oblivious to the presence of the camera. Dramatically captured by the performance, the viewers have been digitally captured by the artist, off stage, and are now being viewed by the viewer in the gallery space.

The space of the theatre is placid, the gallery space is still. These are still photographs of a live event. In the tradition of still life, with a painterly eye, Zofia Nowicka shows immaculate, sleek digital prints of the now, stilling a past event by capturing human moments. The patrons have purchased tickets, possibly on-line, or at the box office, been allocated seats, organised their treats, and are doing what humans do. In the order of the theatre they are respectfully performing human acts, wiggling about, chatting to each other, entranced by the show, not taking mobile phone calls, enjoying the presentation, occasionally enthralled, and in several scenes rising, applauding and celebrating the experience. This is not a regimented panorama. These are Australian images, large format, informal and relaxed.
The order of the venue is betrayed only by a suggestion of patterning throughout, as the weave of a fabric only maintains an apparent support for the activity of the carpeted imagery. This spectacle is textured and fruity. The palette recalls the lushness of the traditional still life, the lighting and tone reflective of Rembrandt and the Dutch Golden Age, comfortable and urbane. The casual outlook is contemporary, unadorned but glowing, sparked with subtle glints of gold and vermilion, elegantly smeared by errant camera movement. These are not the reminders of totalitarian parades; brutally mastered and machine-gunned into mechanised precision for the display of power.

Beneath a superb surface these participants are treated with respect and a kind eye, but lurking in the mysterious reaches of lost light are the dark reminders of cultural repression and regimentation. There is a warm joy in these works which sit peacefully in a contemplative space with a powerful presence and an illuminating charm. 

Respondent: Han Nae Kim
I hover about the space filled with stark and cold air. The room hums with a lament for the unknown. The solemnity of Zofia Nowicka’s works temporarily freezes my vision. From a distance, the dark oeuvre of the artist strongly dominates both physical and mental observations.

While expecting images of something deadly or brutal, I firstly approach the wall where four rectangular photographs of different sizes are hung. The colours become richer and denser as I get closer to it until I am reminded of the hues in the 18th century Romanticists’ paintings. As if Nowicka borrowed Gericault’s palette for ‘The Raft of Medusa’, every single work encapsulates the old master’s magical application of subdued, yet, powerful colours. The Closer look also reveals its dynamic force kept in the majestic stillness; think of a finely sculpted gargoyle before you.  In believing, all creation metabolize interactively, I feel a sense of energy coming from the images that longs for mutual metabolic activities. The glimpses of crowd gradually but explicitly expose its existences that have been veiled by darkness. I realize the series of images are from concert or performance scenes, however, it is not the performers on stage but the spectators who grab the artist’s eye. Nowicka carefully selects fragments of what she finds it to be more intriguing spectacle, which seldom provokes attention in general.

 Some blurred images indicate the artist’s intention of capturing moments in a very raw state. Especially the two on separate walls show a sense of liveliness through its crude and bare quality achieved by overexposure. One of them almost appears like a field of withered lavender and canola, although I still recognize a mass of people engaged in something that I can only pretend it to be there. It is presumable by using any cognitive knowledge and it may involve observing the individuals among the crowd in order to perceive the nature of the spectacle.  I can almost hear the roar of crowds in the pictures where people show their excitement by laughing and cheering, whereas I can read some sort of seriousness from the stern faces and less movement captured in other photographs. It is, thus, an index to the world of presumption. The information gathered; from observation, recognition and ultimately by having empathy with whatever that makes my eye linger on; let me have a wider or even ambiguous vision.

The images are not much digitally altered, however, there are certain styles or rules that exist in the cropping. It is where I find difficulty explaining because it seems the artist spends most time selecting and fragmenting images to suit her own regime. To my understanding, there are virtual lines, grids and patterns that divide up the surfaces and accordingly, a sense of balance and harmony develops within. Furthermore, it is quite exotic to spot a few dots of saturated colours, such as purple, blue and green. Actually, I find it oddly humorous as well.

The cohesive body of Nowicka’s work is highlighted by the mirror-like, glossy surface of the photographic paper she uses. It gives a strange impression that the spectators are submerged in pools of polyurethane. The allure of undulating sheen engulfs everything in the room and there I see myself among the spectators; the reflected self intermingles with people, colours and shades. Turbulence in between the reflected self and the gazing self starts to emerge and it leads to an experience of dichotomy of the self-identity. This experience begins with questioning the boundary between presence and absence. What is perceived is interweavement of reality and illusion at which it blurs my vision and judgement. I am left behind with this disturbed mind thinking how vulnerable I am. In fact, the metamorphic coexistence of photographed images and the reflected beings arouses such a doubt on what I see and believe. But there certainly is an immobile gap in between the real and illusion. It is just becoming more complex to distinguish because of the confusion which has been caused by mass standardization in the society.

German philosopher, Martin Heidegger located the crisis of Western civilization in mass ‘forgetfulness of being’. As we witness and experience the surge of dehumanization in modern society, it is quite desirable to raise the question concerning the ‘sense of being’ as Nowicka does through her work. Are we lost in the anonymity of the city where mutual negligence overflows? Is it that we follow the real or a mere illusion?

To obey or disobey that is the question.
Kristin McIver
Respondent: Bethanie Nichols
Wow! POP! Bam! What a carnival! What a spectacle! Colour has been used in a powerful way in Kristin McIver’s new work. The entire back gallery wall has been covered in vertical stripes of colour. In bold, saturated red, pink, orange, yellow, green and blue. These coloured stripes do strange things with the space inside the gallery. Free standing on the floor space in front of the wall, in the centre of the gallery, is a neon sign that says “ORDINARY” in a disco/deco font.
So, is this an ordinary spectacle or a spectacle of the ordinary?

Vibration and illusion are at work between the colours on the wall and between the neon tubes in the font as well as between the structure and the wall. The neon light is mounted on a structure reminiscent of a billboard and so I wonder at the type of ‘advertising’ at work here. On offer is bold, enticing and hypnotising but ultimately hollow.

The formal elements of text and colour, line and space are used simply but create a bold statement. The direct use of the wall to apply colour in these stripes makes me think of wallpaper and the boisterous noise inside of a circus tent. The two elements of the installation create contrasting and conflicting notions of desire. One for the spectacle and one for the ordinary; both are doing their best to lure me; the stripes dizzying, intimidating in scale and the neon blindingly dulling my senses into submission. Is this fraudulent? Is the artist trying to trick my senses and my mind? The work relates to my senses through its visual vibrations and draws me in like a fly attracted to a bright light. Yet at the same time the coloured stripes thrust forward and seem to shrink the gallery space, while the centred neon sign repels closer inspection.

The stripes are claustrophobic; the walls are closing in on me and bring to mind a recent trip I took to some new housing estate as a favour for a friend to pick up a bed. The scale of the houses, which were recently built, struck me; they were all butted up against each other like inner city terrace houses. I was amazed at the inversion of space, the compromise that had been made with the outside space for the scale of the inside space. As in this gallery, where the unbroken stripes of colour give no glimpse of white to rest the eye. Also in the same vein, the mammoth scale of the coloured wall create a somewhat cramped space for the remaining work in the gallery, which is also, ironically, about spectacle. This direct use of the wall links the work to concepts of architecture, spatial design and to public displays, through the visual link to the billboard. This work presents vacuous desires that display the promise of satisfaction, momentarily satisfying desires through the display’s audacious blast of visual illusions.
Respondent: Nicole Belle
I entered the VCA Student Gallery space, which contains a sign hiding in the darkness like false advertising. I immediately switch the neon light on. Kirsten McIver’s Ordinary came to life.

The Ordinary light is on, bright pulsating white neon flickers and humms against the striped lolly-Pop Art-painted wall. Standing beside the neon at head height, the work became my speech bubble. I spoke the word and letters out loud: “Ordinary… O-R-D-I-N-A-R-Y, ordinary”… as if the letters rendered in liquid fire light are actually my speech and I am a character in the work. Like a child learning to read, I stand in the white light while my iris and eye shutter speed adjust to the mesmerising flicker and illusion stimulated by the pulsing light against the lolly-Pop Art-background. The electrical humm singing power to the neon connects me to primordial life – electrons, synapses, old brain cells and recycled DNA. The sensory processing part of my brain screams, “Advertising”.

I know this work is a pun. A word play. A game. Irony, unravelled false messages... false advertising inducing desire. I laugh to myself, “how much is this and where can I buy one?”.

Jacques Tati’s films Playtime (1967) and Mon Oncle (1958) spring to mind.
Playtime’s protagonist, M. Hulot, and a group of consumer-angst-driven American tourists attempt to navigate a futuristic Paris constructed of straight lines, modernist glass and steel high-rise buildings, and cold, artificial furnishings. An environment where only the irrepressible nonconformity of human nature breathes life into an otherwise sterile urban landscape. Technologies and consumerism, deemed essential by society, are exposed by Tati as obstructions to daily life, and as interfering with natural human interaction.

Are all our heads in the sand, oblivious to anything but the advertised carrot of consumer paradise? McIver’s work lulls me into a false sense of security - like a moth to a flame, only to be destroyed by the inherent nature of attraction. The next craze. The latest car. Our next payday. Mon Oncle deals with postwar struggle and infatuation with modern architecture, mechanical efficiency and consumerism, embracing a new wave of industrial modernization and a more rigid social structure where rampant consumption and recession have caused people to question economic and social values.

Depending on our attraction to the design, colour or even philosophy of various businesses, we can be easily convinced that ordinary items are necessities. McIver challenges this convention. We prefer to believe we are being manipulated, but it is designed for us, by us. We prefer to deny responsibility, but only we can change the sway of the campaign. We all designed the market with our ‘needs’ and we all feed it with our personal information, our preferences and how we choose to spend our time and money.

Ordinary is burnt into my retinas, under closed eyelids, as I attempt to escape the truth behind the ordinary in everyday life. Ordinary is everywhere. I snigger at society and myself, standing in the gallery laughing about the ordinary and seeing myself in McIver’s installation. I, dressed in a white Adidas hoodie, blue CK jeans and white Shell Toes Adidas – how O-R-D-I-N-A-R-Y. This work clearly confronts escalating consumerism.

The indiscreet neon glows against the candy-striped wall. Like a giant lolly-pop, perhaps a Liquorice Allsort – its colour designed, calculated to make me want, want, want! I feel like a child again. Disproportionate. The neon sign confuses the viewer – size and proportion is unclear – I feel HUGE as if dwarfing a billboard, at the same time I feel tiny in front of the massive stripes, like a fly on some retro Liquorice Allsorts wallpaper. The structural support of the work replicates a cityscape neon billboard mounted on strong supports for hefty signage with hefty budgets and driven by market research and strategy. I feel like I am in Alex Proya’s film Dark City (1998) and recall it’s promotional slogan, “They built the city to see what makes us tick. Last night one of us went off”. Or, as McIver’s work suggests, we switch ON. The billboards in Dark City advertise a better life in the paradise escape, Shell Beach. I wonder, if I lick through this lolly-Pop Art wall, will I find something MORE? The chittering humm humm humm of the neon light glow reminds me that I know better. The inviting lollypop wall encloses the city and there is no better future behind it as promised in the advertisements or selected memories. There is simply the here, and the now. I happily accept this ordinary existence.

The exposed cables made it possible for me to interact with the work. I switched off the neon sign and the gallery felt like an abandoned amusement park at night – waiting to come alive again to deliver the expected fun and experiences to the crowds. Switching Ordinary off and on a few times – I could have been in a poverty stricken New York apartment in the 1930s, in the present, or even the future – wishing I was in a better place, wishing I had more money, more something, always wanting, wanting, wanting more more more.

The font in which the word Ordinary is rendered, speaks of an old fashioned idea of ‘futuristic’. Is the font actually Neon? I make a note to find out. The stripes in the font also reflect the stripes of the brand on my Adidas hoodie. I laugh at myself again, standing there in the light of the Ordinary, clothed in an expensive sweat top made in a sweat shop (which I bought second-hand, so at least my guilt is second-hand, but I still feel like a walking billboard). McIver’s work forces me to be more conscious of the marketing process and my involvement through the choices that I make. I can never keep this white hooded top totally clean, not for more than a few hours, usually less. Can we ever balance our real needs with this white clean living dream?
Georgie Roxby Smith
Respondent: Kristin McIver
The human race has an inherent urge to control the environment in which we live, to shroud the fear that we are at the mercy of nature and death. This desire has driven humankind to build a world in which we are seemingly both creator and controller. From the industrial through to the digital revolution, we have created machines, cities, genetic hybrids and now virtual environments that seem to improve our life and create the impression that we are the masters of our own fate. But are we really in control?

Georgie Roxby Smith poses this question through her latest work Hell, installed at the VCA Postgraduate Gallery. Smith’s artificial/real life hybrid is a disturbingly dystopian vision of a post-digital world. Hell highlights the breakdown of society through our desire of and reliance on digital media. Smith explores the virtual world of Second Life, and through it uncovers the flaws of our “first life” ideals.

Hell covers a large portion of the gallery wall, and consists of 9 disused and revived computers, keyboards, monitors, mice and a tangle of cords arranged to embody the shape of a human skull. Staring back at the viewer is a mirror of humankind in the 21st century; a generation increasingly removed from the natural world and more familiar with a digitally controlled reality.

As the viewer moves closer to the imposing structure, the content trapped within the features of this hardwired humanoid begins to emerge. Each screen loops through hybrid videos which merge reality and unreality, displacing the human with the avatar, the natural world with a conceived digital utopia. A real life human action is replicated in Second Life by a virtual embodiment, or is it the other way around? At times as a viewer I cannot discern between First and Second Life. I have to double check which is real, and which is unreal. The human avatar blows a plume of smoky pixels as she exhales her cigarette. The waves lapping at the Second Life shores seem startlingly real as the virtual avatar meanders across the landscape.

The lighting in the natural world is more muted than that of the virtual world. I am seduced by this Miami lifestyle of constant weather and bright, pristine houses, jet setting in speed boats to any destination I desire, meandering through a dense forest or beach. I feel I could become this virtual avatar, and I am seduced by the simplicity of forms, the excitement of what lies around the corner, and the lack of clutter, interruptions, or insidious complications which real life throws at us.

However increasingly there is a glitch in the system, as the masked human avatar frustrated, kicks a plastic replica doll, a large mannequin (a plastic avatar somehow caught between the virtual and the real) lies in a pool of blood on the floor as if the world has collapsed...Our real life, masked avatar is seemingly trapped on screen amidst a confused network of computers, unable to escape. The artist is showing us a fantasy imploded.
The Windows system controller that on one screen flashes programmatic language seems back to front, as if I, the viewer, am looking outwards of the screen. The incessant droan of an emergency alarm seems to warn me to evacuate, get out, this world is not right. All the while the green flickering of the computer lights processing information seems to mimic the pulse of a heartbeat monitor. Am I in hell? Or am I trapped between realities, unable to exist fully in one world or the next? Smith plays on this uncertainty throughout the work’s duration.

The words “hell this way” sprayed onto the wall of this space in first life, act as a post-digital signpost proclaiming the artist’s intentions behind the work. I question whether this indicator is required, the hellish implications already strikingly evident through the work. However the method in which it is sprayed onto the wall seems to reference George Miller’s dystopian world of Mad Max, turning this external reality installation into an abandoned ideal.

This added to the existing harsh concrete floors with its pre-worn paint splatters and evidence of previous histories further highlights the flaws of this reality. This image creates a dichotomy of ideals – which environment is more utopic; the digital, flawless environment of the virtual world, or the worn, imperfect space that makes up our reality.

Smith makes us question the world in which we live, both real and virtual. But through this the artist makes us question life itself, and humankind’s incessant search for betterment. We seem not to be satisfied with life’s own reality, and search through increasingly advancing technologies, for a life that replaces what is seemingly lacking in our own world. But the life we have created in Second Life is a hollow replica of our own reality.

New York curator Jeffrey Deitch predicted in 1992 that “in the future, artists may no longer be involved in just redefining art. In the post-human future artists may also be involved in redefining life.” It seems this is beginning to occur in Smith’s work. Have we reached this state of post-humanism already, through our construction of a world better than life, less than 20 years since the internet was commercialized internationally? Smith seems to imply this through Hell, as she redefines our concept of life in the digital age.
Respondent: Tiziana Borghese

“Nobody Will Hear You Scream”, says the sign in cyberspace and the avatar continues to run in an unending, repetitive loop to infinity.

“Every so often some visionary invents a new Utopia: Plato, Sir Thomas More, H.G. Wells. And always the idea is that the heroic image shall last, as Hitler said, for a thousand years. But the heroic images always look like the crude dead ancestral faces of the statues on Easter Island…That is not the essence of the human personality, even in terms of biology. Biologically, a human being is changeable, sensitive, mutable, fitted to many environments, and not static”. J. Bronowski- ‘The Ascent of Man’

Judging by the number of people that have embraced “Second Life” in cyberspace in the last ten years, humanity needs to believe in something other than the reality in which we wake up every morning;- to find Heaven, Nirvana, Valhalla. The island of Kula is Chinese artist Cao Fei’s Utopia. I met her avatar, China Tracey at the 2007 Venice Biennale. The RMB City, which she built, on the Second Life Creative Commons, was to me a second Disneyland;- a place where if you wish upon a star your dreams can come true. You can fly though the air and see parodies of Beijing, with Tiananmen Square as a swimming pool, a giant panda hanging from a crane, and a Mao statue half-submerged under water like a ghost, then in the blink of an eye, dash off to Venice, with its canals and idiosyncratic architecture. Everyone is beautiful, no one is old, and the geographic barriers of time and space, in our world, vanish in a continuous global party that never ends.

This is not the Utopia in which Diogenes Wylder, Georgie Roxby Smith’s avatar inhabits. Diogenes plays the piano like China Tracy and her appearance is idealised, athletic and stereotypically symmetrical, but there is a sense of frustration, of angst of alienation, which distances her from her Chinese prototype. Diogenes lives in a parallel reality with her creator, who mimics her virtual moves in real time and real space in performances which are videoed and run on a continuous loop. Reality blurs into fiction, fiction into abstraction, and abstraction into the realms of the imagination. Georgie Roxby Smiths’ latest exhibition in the Postgraduate Gallery, at the Victorian College of the Arts, is a very different kind of place.

Nine screens, some active, some glowing with the blue ether of technological expectation, are arranged in a deliberate ordered pattern in the centre of the left gallery wall. Connected as they are to power boards, computers and keyboards, they give the impression of a gigantic science fiction brain, organically synthesised through vascular cables of artificial intelligence. The screens and hardware appear part of a greater organism, intimidating in scale, and threatening in its content. The threat is not necessarily of a physical nature, but a psychological one.

Utopias offer sanctuary, escape, the hope of a better future, and the possibility of finding a world where man’s inhumanity to man is replaced by universal brotherhood and love. There is no sanctuary here. Each screen offers a glimpse of an alternate reality, a dream, a desire, a lust, oral and material gratification, Eros and Lucifer. The interweaving of fact and fiction, analogue and digital, virtual and real, trick the viewer into a false complacency and the possibility of finding the illusive secret of happiness. Cyberspace offers immortality, no-one ever dies, or if they do they regenerate in a few seconds, no-one feels pain. But Utopia comes at a price. Like in H. G. Well’s “Time Machine”, things are not as they seem. The beautiful people have a dark secret. The space in which Diogenes walks is more like Orwell’s “1984”, than Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, where Soma sedates the mind and numbs the senses into an artificial euphoria. Her constructed world is lonely, isolated, detached. The landscape is reminiscent of a De Chirico, where threat is implied rather than overt. If, in this technological and scientific age, heaven is somewhere in cyberspace, then so is hell, and the sign says “Nobody Will Hear You Scream”.

Roxby Smith’s avatar wanders from screen to screen, dancing alone and detached in a club full of people in the background, having a one night stand and looking at decomposed bodies in a pool of blood. Roxby Smith’s masked video performance, reminiscent of Claude Cahun’s masked performances of the early part of the 20th century, is dehumanising giving the character the appearance of the crude dead ancestral faces of the statues on Easter Island;- as Bronowski suggests not what constitutes the essence of biological man or woman.

Her metaphoric screams of frustration cannot be heard in cyberspace, but neither are they audible in the gallery as there is no sound. They are, however, manifested into random acts of violence against her cyberspace computer and her real world Barbie doll, culminating in a violent rotation of Diogenes’ virtual head, in a flash back similar to “The Omen”. Cyberspace heaven becomes cyberspace hell. As if in a nightmare, she runs from a misty spectral landscape towards the spectator, only to find a wall with the ominous message “Nobody Will Hear You Scream”, and the loop begins again.

Loneliness, alienation, and angst seem to merge in the simulated and the organic; the disillusionment of paradise lost and fractured Utopias. Perhaps the work is a warning of the dangers of loosing our humanity, our compassion, our sense of caring for one another, our inner glow, in the footsteps of ‘Metropolis’, ‘Code 46’, ‘Brave New World’ and ‘1984’.


There is a sign scrawled on the gallery wall “Hell, this Way”, an arrow pointing in the direction of the screens. The coldness of the white walls, the austere lines of hard ware, the black and white cables attached to dirty, grey monitors and the symmetry of the power boards as spermatozoa like plugs attach themselves in a desperate act of self preservation, are ominous, apocalyptic predictions of pain and doom, of humanity at its cruellest, of the voyeuristic psychosis of a world which finds pleasure in the misfortunes of others, of chain saw massacres and psychological torture under the guise of justice and the power of the thuggish majority over the weak. “Nobody Will Hear You Scream” the sign says, and the avatar moves eternally, alone, in sterile, friendless constructed architectures of unpopulated urban landscapes, where empathy and camaraderie are blatantly absent.

Yi-Fang Lu
Respondent: Ian Bunn
Lovable lambs, handsome horsies, porky piggies, and delightful doggies are all part of the fare in Lu’s menagerie of beautiful cuddly domesticated farmyard animals.  Lu’s farmyard friends all have their very own little personalities.  Not unlike the illustrated cartoon characters of our childhood, these painted little creatures have somewhat human attributes empathetically and individually ascribed to each according to our perceived personality traits for each.  Lu’s depiction of her animals when observed through her filters of love and affection, reflect how she understands, or perhaps wishes, the world at large to be.  This view of the world does indeed become infectious the longer the viewer contemplates her work.

This pathetic fallacy is evident throughout Lu’s work, as she personifies her cuddly creatures with fluffy humanizing traits.  Leaving the viewer awaiting the animated coming to life of each with a playful dialogue, perhaps crazy like Roger Rabbit and Daffy Duck, or perhaps more in the articulate repartee of a Garfield or Mr. Ed.  Lu’s deep love and affection for these cuddly creatures is obvious, imparting onto the viewer an awareness of a sense of calmness and contemplation that must have permeated her consciousness while working on these pieces.

Our human desire to describe our co-inhabited world at large, particularly through visually representational means, dates back to the dawn of human existence.  In the flickering light within the dark dank caves of the past, long before the animals of the hostile surrounds became so cute and cuddly, Lu’s forebears had painted their admiration for the creatures of their time.  Maybe the resulting imagery was not so illustrative of the cuddlyness, but none the less they were created with as much respect.  Similarly, these cave painted creatures reflected the attributes reverent of their creators respect for the particular animals characteristics, such as swiftness and courage.  Millenniums later the wild creatures have evolved through human intervention into docile cute little beings.  Children (and even us adult pet lovers) love to cuddle and caress them, often naïve to or choosing to ignore the reality that they generally still serve a similar function in our food chain.  Millenniums later Lu is again expressing her reverence to the creatures that hold no less an important place in our daily lives.

Lu applies her chosen medium of luscious saturated oils, to her reasonably large scaled colour field grounded canvases, in an expressionistic style.  Lu works her paints with a combination of loose and heavily manipulated brush strokes, leaving no hard edges though drips and runs are evident of the gestural nature of her manner in application.  Her focus being on the development of the central character within the painting, with minimal regard to any background detail.  The background as such, is non-committal as to any interpretive setting or context, allowing the viewer to concentrate specifically on the central character, and compelling an investigation as to what lies below the surface.

In Lu’s paintings the use of the word ‘character’ to describe the animal figure is not a misnomer, as her focus is truly on expressing her love and respect for the creature.  She develops an intensely individual personality for each of her creatures, painting each in a portrait format.  All the animals are composed in a head and shoulder form, with their bodies or limbs truncated.  This method of composure, places the emphasis on the facial features of each creature, posed in either frontal or profile formats.  Lu’s choice of rich saturated non-true to life hues, aid in the imparting to her creatures their personality attributes, as the viewer is not compelled to consider the rendering as a true to life realist depiction, with the baggage that would entail.

For this exhibition, Lu has included a series of intriguing photographs depicting generally close up croppings of various breeds of dogs.  Each photograph, similar to her paintings, have emphasized on the animals facial expressions. Studies in cuddliness perhaps for her next body of work.

Respondent: Sharon Billinge
Dogs Eye View

I pad into the gallery and go straight up to the photos in the corner. They’re just the right height for me. I wonder momentarily why there is a shortage of art directed at canines at canine height but then my train of thought is interrupted. The dogs in the photographs are calling out to me. Each one seems lost in a particular emotion on a sliding scale between strung out and erratic to so laid back they are comatose. What is going through their little doggy brains? Most of them stare straight out at me. I don’t like the look of one of them and give him a bit of a growl. His eyes are far too close together and he has a kind of mean look about him even though he is predominately fluffy. One of them has been made to wear a ridiculous Santa type coat but seems more than pleased about it. The grey dog with the bad haircut however looks like he’s about to snap and completely lose it with the flaccid pink bow that’s he has around his neck. Going through an identity crisis maybe? Or maybe just caught unawares by the camera.

I turn to the paintings. Someone has had a lot of fun painting these - pushing paint about, drawing with it, layering it up and flinging bright colours around with abandon. I almost bounce off the lambs’ wool with its pale layers of curls. The lamb is staring at me too but it looks a little sad. An oily looking blue tear is escaping its left eye and light bounces off its glassy eyes. I like her even though she’s sad. She makes me want to stroke her and let her nuzzle up against me. She doesn’t seem to be anywhere in particular but then I notice a fragment of a sign behind her. I can’t make it out. Is it a butchers sign? Is that why she’s sad? I’m horrified and have to look away.

There is a dopey looking blue dog waiting for me. His red-rimmed eyes look exhausted. I recognise him from the photographs but he is more upright in the painting. He fills less of the canvas than the lamb but he still looks bigger somehow, long legs stretched out past the canvas edge. I can’t keep my eyes on him long as there is a distinctly evil looking chicken whose beady eye is unnerving. His beak looks far too sharp for my liking and he looks a bit stressed out by his psychedelic background - flapping his wings and staring out with his blankly wired expression. He looks like he has love written in paint on his side between the marks that make up his feathers. Maybe this branding made him lose the plot in the first place. I bark out a bit of a warning and back away to a safe distance.

The pig is different. She’s still too big for the canvas and is partly cropped but unlike the others she is sitting in a three dimensional space. She looks like she’s in someone’s lounge room on a patterned carpet that stretches out to infinity. I’m not sure how I feel about pigs. I think they should be cute and this one is certainly pink – very pink. But she also bulges out very realistically and her eye isn’t large and framed with overly long eyelashes it’s realistically small and piggy-like. She looks like she’s thinking and she almost has a smile on her face. She’s the Mona Lisa of pigs, sitting benignly like a god in her infinity lounge room.

The last painting looks like a unicorn but it doesn’t have a horn. I like unicorns they make me feel good. Like everything can be beautiful and perfect and graceful and white and silver all at the same time. This one doesn’t disappoint even without its face furniture. It gives me a sense of enormous wellbeing. It doesn’t stare at me it just offers itself up to be looked at. The long lines of paint running along its body end in soft drips and spits of paint. It disintegrates into the void it stands in.


Together they all look caught – staring out of their square cages. We are given free rein to stare at them and they stare back. I feel like I’m herding them. They are all squashed together so I can look at them at my leisure - like trophy heads on a wall.
Who are they all looking at? The painter? Their owner? Us? We need to look at them for them to matter. They are all pleading to be noticed, fed, patted and cared for. Unconditional love. The ambiguous privacy present in portraiture is twisted here. Are these animals’ important movers and shakers? Famous or accomplished in their particular fields. Are they beloved pets or companions or are these mementoes of a life lived. Each has been coaxed into life and made with joy and abandon. Does this mean they are being raised up to the importance of humans, anthropomorphized or used as part allegory? Or is this just another way of possessing them and retaining their unconditional love on our wall forever?

I give a last parting bark to the evil chicken and pad back out.
Ian Bell
Respondent: Georgie Roxby Smith

WHO’s AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD I?
I an
I am
I
Everything Nothing

How many additions does it take to make a negation? Ian Bell’s installation in the VCA Postgraduate Gallery cycles endlessly through presence and absence. Objects are bound, unbound, rebound and ultimately released. This is a work in progress but process is the outcome and this outcome is not a full stop but an all consuming hole. As endless as the feeling of sinking into the black. Ian’s incessant black is splintered though, by the trace of its own becoming. There are sparse moments when the black inverts itself, morphing into white holes or windows proposing further views of nothingness. An ascendance. An escape. A pause.

A moment of yellow.

Chastised desire. Negated through a gentle and considered violence of burning, tearing, recovering. A clockwork black. The viewer is hung between these moments of progress and regress. Left alone with the work’s apparitions.

Throughout, there are references to the everyday – the feminine, the masculine, the banal, the officious – all parts of one’s self, one’s ego, fragmented and isolated as if to propound the question of ‘I’ itself. The works themselves are predominantly matt – as if they are drawing us in, seeping, and sucking the ever present I out of us and into IT. This expansive barrage of black is held together by use of subtle repetitions. Something to hold on to against the feeling of push and pull, purging and reworking.

The images of action and the trace of its presence are reflected in our own marks that we leave as viewers, sullying the shiny black surfaces with our feet and observing eyes (I’s?). Is the artist’s inclusion of a dustpan an invitation to clean up after ourselves? Clean the recesses of our own souls? Clean up the marks we are leaving on this exposure of his? Lead to the installations deepest darkest corner we are eventually forced to question our presence here.


We are reflected and distorted and the work echoes on and on, framed by a dark carnivalesque mirror. We are here but in what form?


I an
I am
I

This is a deeply silent work.
As silent as meditation.
As deep as an abyss.

Into the light.

Respondent: Angie de Latour
Learning a new language requires time and commitment. Using immersion as a process, the target language becomes a teaching tool rather than mere subject material. Ian Bell’s work, in the VCA Postgraduate Gallery, has its own complex language which has evolved out of an eclectic and democratic gathering and layering of visual information. Humour coexists with solemn ritual, as do the positive/negative associations within colour, light and form. Add to that the photographed performance, loyalty to a recurring symbol, the fetishisation of objects and the celebration of surfaces.

Two performances, Coming Through #1 and Coming Through #2, are documented in a group of A4 photos hanging on the gallery wall overlooking an ex-perfomance site. Coming Through #2 was performed at 2:00 pm, 26.09.09—Grand Final day.

The photo sequence depicts the artist bursting through a black banner made from interwoven crêpe paper and falling face down on the floor. This is followed by a photo of, what appears to be, a fist punching into a black plastic bag and ends with the plastic bag shell, displaying the shape of the punch, taped to the wall.

Evidence of the second performance still hangs from the inner gallery wall. Swathes of 30cm wide, black crepe paper are taped to the white wall, the ruptured middle section creating a jagged cruciform. For decades Australian football fans have used banners to support their teams.The captain and his team would burst through the interwoven crêpe paper banner, stretched across the changing room exit, as they ran onto the field. Symbolic rituals from the history and culture of football have been personalised, encoded and re-presented by the artist, in a visual language that takes time to decipher.

I follow the periphery of the gallery. The second corner is the site of a concentration of materials, surfaces and objects that are predominently black: black on black, black on white, black and white, or white on black. Crêpe paper, painted canvases, unpainted canvases, paper, polystyrene, patterned and unpatterned fabrics, various weights of wet-looking plastic, high gloss photographic paper as well as an eclectic collection of objects—all black. Black crêpe streams out of a duct attached to the wall; a large plastic-wrapped object grows out of the fabric covering the corner floor area. The white walls of the gallery become integral to the work, providing a starkly contrasting backdrop for the works which are taped, hung, flung, draped and displayed on and around its surface. I am reminded of Robert Morris and the Viennese Actionists, Schwarzkogler and Nitsch.

A durable plastic shopping bag to the left introduces the black and white houndstooth pattern appropriated by the David Jones department store for its corporate identity. A two-toned textile design made up of small jagged checks, houndstooth, which originated in Scotland, is based on a motif that suggests the jagged back tooth of a hound. Looking back into the corner I see the houndstooth motif everywhere: scaled up, painted, punched out of paper—both black and white—and painted in rows of three-times-three, in high gloss black, onto a large unstretched matte canvas. Its form appears in the shadow of a hanging, blackened bottle sculpture, the hp symbol on a ribbed package, the geometric, white on black line drawing.

To view the work, I need to step back behind strands of red wool that dangle from ceiling to floor, in the centre of the gallery, part of an installation by the other artist sharing the space. I search for more red and find it at the nipper ends of two large black clips that grasp the top of a sheet of white polystyrene. Taped to the wall, this in turn supports a display of small black objects: a velvet pouch, earphones, a (cheek colour) application brush. A chair-leg erection casts three increasingly impressive shadows. In fact the artist uses spotlighting very effectively in this show, borrowing shadow as temporary working material. A blackened book beckons. Placed alongside two pots of paint—one black one white—on a pile of black-painted polystyrene on a black shiny card table. Most of the pages are blacked out or stuck together but I manage to find an image of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian.

In the far corner stands a tall, glossy, highly reflective object. A primitive mask looks back from the bend in the corner, while the vibration of heavy footfall upstairs sets the surface quivering. I have been caught in the undertow of this mirror and feel disorientated by its distorted reflections. I see the artist’s work shimmering under the haloed spotlights, the second cruciform moving in the fluid surface of this high gloss photographic paper. The artist has introduced us to a threshold that he understands but I am conscious of the ancient character watching from its corner and decide to step backwards into safety of the gallery.
Nicole Belle
Respondent: Veronica Aldous
Performance missed I am arriving after the act and Nicole is missing also. What I have are the objects left after the performance as an installation in the gallery, the title and a statement left in the installation. I become involved by borrowing the statement to read before writing my response.

In visiting the gallery space after the performance the history of the activity is recorded by the objects left. There are red threads hanging from the central ceiling that stimulate thoughts of love of red, blood and strangely chained slaves. There are other remnants of the red threads on the floor that echo struggles to get away. There are diagonally stacked polystyrene blocks stacked as part of a wall structure that stimulate thoughts of centuries of slaves. There are more slaves in the world now than ever. The audiovisual and projection equipment around these two main elements snap me back into the remembrance of a performance. We don’t think much about slavery but they are there hidden from sight in many countries. I reinvestigate the objects left and find a note that is half typed and half in scribbled writing. I begin to read it then realize I need to read it slowly so become involved and borrow it from the scene.

The objects have been moved around so there is an intrinsic relationship between the performance and Nicole’s own physiology. Objects are light due to her small stature and delicate back. Her body becomes part of the work and the discomfort of the work of creating the installation. Life as an endurance race is my overriding response. This response is related to work, domestic work, work for money, years of different jobs, being self employed, low income, an occasional windfall, simple pleasures, cleaning, cleaning the house for yourself to feel happier and deep feelings about freedom. There are objects yet the past activity of Nicole is present. Presenting of intent and ideas through physicality so it becomes presenting something of herself rather than just objects. There is a sense of intent to go on, despite pain in her back. There is a sense of her body, through the time of the activity, over time, so change or increasing entropy is part of the embodiment of the objects. The artwork could be seen as the objects left after the performance as with most art-making. The work of the artwork is the thought in our head. The art intent has been cast off and there is a delight at ignoring the objects but feeling the memory of the action. Memories later in the day of the missed performance revolve around forgotten objects but the person is alive and performing. The physical detail of the action was important at the time but the fine detail of action has dissolved into thoughts about the artist and her life in the objects left behind.

Nicole titled her performance What makes Sisyphus happy? Sisyphus is a Greek mythological king who was punished and cursed by the gods to endlessly, manually roll a heavy boulder up a hill, then let it run down again so he had to roll it up the hill again for all eternity. This work triggers ideas about really hard unending work that is not self-motivated. So is this performance and artwork about the futility of life due to mindless repetitious, boring or physical work? The sun rises and sets every day. There are ongoing cycles we are subject to. Our lives have ups and downs. So what does make Sisyphus happy? Would it make him happy to stop this frustrating hard work of rolling? But then what would he do? He is mythological from a past era. Perhaps continuing makes him happy? Being known as the eternally alive persona and archetype that is hard at work? Stop or go? To have a firm philosophy about anything is an arduous penance as life tends to keep changing and changing yet the sun rises and sets every day, but with changes. Is this artwork a call to wake up? Or is it to continue to try to wake up?

My third clue is the written statement I have borrowed from the installation. It is entitled The Text of the Object in relation to the Presence/Absence of the Author. It begins with a paragraph outlining ideas about the state of continuous flux that relinquishes outcome and observes process with an underlying interest in observing the ego so as to be more open and less bound by cravings, outcomes and success. There is a lot of direction in this statement but it is direction towards a sense of openness. The endless reading by endless viewers of artwork is an endless game. We all bring personal narratives and responses to the work and this is inevitable. In the absence of the author I feel the slavery in the red threads and stacks of blocks. In the presence of the author my response may change but the process of response is still mine. The data projection and other equipment give me silence yet even with their information my mind and thoughts and response run their own tracks endlessly. The handwritten section on this page are more emotive for me and appear as one possible record of the author’s responses to her own work. The process is central to the work, the outcome is not definitive but open, the objects left here bound unbound and rebound in endless interpretations. Sinking in the black that is splintered gives a serious heaviness about the continuum of activity that is endless. But the black can have space and freedom.

The work is about the philosophy behind art and but also about personal and vicarious psychology stimulated by the artwork about living difficult lives. It could also be about a new thing every day as is the experience when re-visiting artwork. I am different everyday therefore the reading changes. I really enjoy Nicole’s invitation to enjoy flux.

There is also a sense of the demystification of artwork and it somehow reminds me of Manuel Ocampo at the Gertrude Street Gallery this year. Ocampo had a sense of collision between ideologies and normalizing of high art to a more democratic process that is demanding attention and involvement. Nicole’s installation, the title and the statement together crash ideologies of past with present philosophy from slavery to an open reading, from a sense of control to a desire for a more unbounded openness.

26.06.09 - 18.07.09
Main Gallery
MANUEL OCAMPO
She has a Hot Ass: The Demystification of Art and its incorporation into the Practice of Everyday Life Could Only be Achieved Through the Deliberate Lowering of Standards

GCAS is pleased to present a new performance installation work by internationally acclaimed Philippine painter Manuel Ocampo. In this new work created especially for GCAS entitled “She has a Hot Ass: The Demystification of Art and its Incorporation Into the Practice of Everyday Life Could only be Achieved Through the Deliberate Lowering of Standards” Ocampo has invited a local tattoo artist to transform his sketches into permanent tattoos.

Typically Ocampo’s work presents a pictorial collision of socio-political positions. In his paintings devotional symbols often jostle beside commercial or corporate icons, pointedly deflating the efficacy of emblematic systems of power. Incorporating references as diverse as Jesus, Swastikas, cockroaches and even Snoopy, Ocampo’s paintings offer a crowded, cynical and heavily ironic slant oncontemporary post-colonial culture.

In this new work, Ocampo draws on what is perhaps art history’s most illustrious example of playful disruption. Marcel Duchamp’s childish defacing of a post card size reproduction of the Mona Lisa, with the L.H.O.O.Q, which phonetically makes the phrase, “she has a hot ass.” As with Duchamp’s moustache and graffittied pun, Ocampo’s sketches appear childlike, unfinished and imperfect.

In this way Ocampo draws attention to ideas of permanence in high art, and the fickleness of the artworld. This work continues Ocampos interest in the systematic devaluation of meaning and political postulations in his work, which he manages through the colliding, debasing and normalizing of his varied subject matter. In this remarkable work, visitors to the gallery during the exhibition will have the opportunity to be inscribed with one of Ocampo’s works. This pointed gesture acts to not only democratise the art object, but ultimately to test the viewers’ genuine commitment to Ocampo’s creative project.

Ocampo has been exhibiting internationally for the past 15 years. Significantly he has had solo exhibitions at Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery, Los Angeles (2007); Gray/Kapernekas, New York ( 2007); Art Contemporain Nosbaum & Reding, Luxembourg (2007); Galerie Jesco Von Puttkamer, Berlin (2006); AC (Lieu d’Art Contemporain), Sigean, France (2005); Galerie Baerbel Graesslin, Frankfurt (2004); Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris (1995 - 2002). He has also participated in major group exhibitions including: Seville Biennal, Seville (2004); Berlin Biennale II, Berlin (2001); 49° Esposizione Internazionale, Plateau of Mankind, La Biennale di Venezia (2001); 5th Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, Lyon, France (2000); ’97 Kwangju Biennial, Korea (1997) - among many others. Manuel Ocampo is represented in Australia by Uplands Gallery, Melbourne.
Respondent: Zofia Nowicka
Here it is, the long awaited performance by Nicole Belle. In the darkness of the room a solitary white figure stands motionless. The only light source is the projection on the wall just illuminating the figure and the perfectly cut white cubes scattered on the floor. A mass of crimson red strings cascading from the ceiling are tied to her hands and feet. She turns her head; a white mask disguises most of the face. A puppet or a puppet master? Are we facing the manipulator or the manipulated? A dry, rustle sound fills the space, loud and intruding, closed in a loop where there is no beginning and no ending.

The figure hasn’t moved as yet, waiting, and suddenly she makes three rapid steps forward and the spectacle begins. She reaches for two white cubes from the stack on the floor and start erecting what initially looks like a big zigzag. The red strings follow her movement with synchronized choreography. She adds more cubes and the zigzag is growing in size and starting to resemble a wall. The Master and The Manipulator have control over her creation. Yet the flickering projection and the repetitive sound escaped her control, and compete with the action on the floor and with each other.

Suddenly one unsynchronised movement and a foot gets tangled in loose strings, the harmony of movement was interrupted, steps became rigid and the hand lost its grip on the cube. The strings are getting tighter pulling the figure back; her hands cannot reach for the cube to finish her white Magnum Opus. The Master lost control, and now another force is tightening the crimson and dictates new rules.

There are two main sensorial elements in this performance: the sound and the image, both apparently compete with each other. The sounds acts as a separate identity challenging the visual content of the spectacle, and the spectacle itself loses its impact broken up in to illusionary projection on the wall and live performance in front of an audience. Here, in this scenario the sound and the collection of alienated images form an indecipherable collage for the viewer trying to connect with the performance.

The work has potential to engage, but the artist requires a rigorous examination of all the possibilities of her chosen medium.