Adam Craven, 'Moonrise, Smiths Lake', 2010, photographic print

This year sees the inaugural NSW Parliamentary Plein Air Photographic Prize. With its theme asking artists to explore New South Wales landscape in focus, the prize was established to compliment the three year old NSW Parliamentary Plein Air Painting Prize.

Chair of the Community Relations Commission, Stepan Kerkyasharian, saw the competition as an opportunity to explore not only the physical landscape of the state but also the socio-cultural environment – “The history of the modern development of rural New South Wales is the history of settlement by people of all backgrounds including the Chinese, Italians, Greeks, Germans, Lebanese and Sikhs who are all well known for their contribution to agriculture and rural life in New South Wales.”

The first, second and third prize winning photographs will be acquired by the Parliament and will form the basis of an ongoing photographic collection, depicting aspects of New South Wales life.

This year’s finalists include: William Yang, Warren Hinder, Rahul Goel, Sylvia Balog, Peter Elliston, Peter Solness, Gordon Undy, Simon Bullard, David Helsham, Louise Whelan, Andrew Quilty, Christian Fletcher, George Tsoutas, Ben Rak, Marcus Stimson, Adam Craven, Kylie Bishop, Rene Vogelzang, Russell Bray, Kajo Merker, Victoria Monk, Jan Newby, Ian Waldie, Ingrid Morley, Jeff Stockton, Jade Cantwell, Neil Duncan, Jeremy Turner, Daniel Irvine, Thomas Rayner, Gary Poulton, Nick Bowers, and Dean Sewell.

The exhibition, at New South Wales Parliament House runs until 23 September with the winners being announced at a gala event on 9 September.

Youthful Experience (detail), 2010, mixed media, dimensions variable

Come Closer (Now Go Away) is the latest solo exhibition by Jane Gillings at NG Art Gallery, Sydney. The work that forms this exhibition is the recycling of and engaging with – what some would call – hoarded waste. Gillings compulsively collects and, by her own admission, hoards before she reassembles by way of embracing and engaging with her creative impulses.

Gillings hates waste and disorder. Her studio is a refuge for perceived waste. Organised by size, colour and object, Gillings compiles objects from knitting needles, discarded board game pieces and small toys to indiscriminate incidentals from around the kitchen and second hand shops. It is at this point her art making practice launches.

Just like an abstract painter, Gillings’ sculptures are constructed, for the most part, through her response to the materials. In her own words, Gillings has “little influence on what it [the sculpture] will become until [she] start[s] to study its possibilities and limitations”.

The works in Come Closer (Now Go Away) expose the viewer to waste – is it their own? How do they conserve? What do they discard? It is the open ended questions that lure you in (‘Come closer’ and observe); But the abstract form that belies the work leaves open their interpretation – are they about the environment? Are they simply an indulgent, personal journey for Gilling to which we as viewers are privileged to view? (‘Now Go Away’ and contemplate).

The exhibition runs until 11 September at NG Art Gallery, Sydney

Piers Lembke-Hogan, Intern Manager, 2010

Photographer Daniel Shipp, who has worked with ARTIST PROFILE on shoots for Alexander Seton (Issue 11) and Deborah Kelly (Issue 12) has just launched a new project – The Fasion Week Project. In May this year, Shipp spent 5 days behind the scenes of the 15th Rosemount Australian Fashion Week photographing the faces we don’t normally see – the backstage staff and crew.

Shipp is driven by his own idea of beauty. And, as an immensely talented portrait photographer, his photographs are driven by the overwhelming desire to capture character. His deep fascination with light and the cinematic aesthetic produces bold and captivating images. This latest project further engages the concepts and fascinations that underlie his practice and present the faceless personalities of the fashion world, as Shipp explains in his artist statement:

“I am as interested in the wallflower as I am the show stopper. I have my own idea of beauty.

“Fashion Week brings to mind a string of images. With this project I wanted to look beyond those images just a little and study the people who work behind the scenes at an event like Fashion Week.

“In May 2010, during the five days of the 15th Rosemount Australian Fashion Week I worked with an assistant to hunt down and photograph around one hundred of the people working at the Overseas Passenger Terminal in Sydney. Utilising a 3×2 metre space that was overflowing with people and equipment, I photographed the faces you are looking at which belong to people such as stage hands, show producers, cleaners, hair and makeup artists, volunteers and management.”

A selection of prints from the project are currently installed and on exhibition in the window of Belinda, William Street, Paddington as part of the Sydney Fashion Festival Satellite Program, until 28 August, 2010.

Installation Shot

John R Walker, Work bench, Ian's shed, gouache on archival paper, 2010

IN HIS ARTICLE “Bad words and thoughts” in ARTIST PROFILE Issue 12, 2010, Joe Frost writes about the many paradoxical ways of using the term ’modern’. You can have a fair bit of fun with ‘modern’: ‘that Swedish moderne chair looks perfect in your very contemporary 1950s retro-look lounge room’. Most of the time we manage the conflicting usages of terms such as ‘modern’, ‘contemporary’ and ‘advanced’ pretty well. Most of us do not automatically assume that the latest model is best. We pick and choose; a bit of the latest and a bit of the classic.

If you Google “The Battle of the Books” you will find pages of essays, discussions, references and citations. “The Battle of the Books” is one of the sharpest writings on the fight between the classic canon and contemporary writing, and it was first published in 1706! The language and style of Jonathon Swift, the author, is very modern. The episode of South Park in which Mr Man introduced Paris Hilton to the ‘fundamentals of life ‘ (he shoved her up his arse) was very ‘Swiftian’.[1] The Swiftian irony about battles in learning libraries between contemporary authors and classic canon authors is just that: nothing new.

During the 1960s and 1970s, art education developed a widespread and profound confusion about usages of terms such as ‘new’ and ‘original’. A good example concerned the confusion centred upon conflicting usages of the term ‘advanced’. ‘Advanced’ is a term that can have usages that are time or spatially specific: ‘that car has advanced down the road’. It can also have meanings that are perceived qualities: ‘That car was very advanced for its day’. The confusion at that time about terms like ‘advanced art’ and ‘modern art’ had serious effects that have lasted to this day. At the time there was a widespread, innocent desire to create art that did not yet exist and ironically, this innocent desire was to a degree successful: contemporary art became a bit  hard to see. This confusion led to a general and fairly extreme rejection in education of the very idea of a ‘classic canon’ and, in particular, for artists’ education, this led to a rejection of ‘copying from the masters’.

Steven Jay Gould was an evolutionary biologist who was very sharp on the vital difference between evidence of directional changes in time: that is, history, and evidence of qualities such as improvement or progress. In both evolution and history, progress (unlike change) is not at all inevitable. Gould wrote an essay on the themes of “The Battle of the Books”, the canon and changes then happening in education. In his concluding observation, he stated that:

“I am worried that people with an inadequate knowledge of the history and literature of their culture will ultimately becomeentirely self-referential, like science fiction’s most telling symbol, the happy fool who lives in the one dimensional world of pointland, and thinks he knows everything because he forms his entire universe.”

Gould continued:

“I can’t do much with a student that doesn’t know multivariate statistics and the logic of natural selection; but I cannot make a good scientist – though I can forge an adequate technocrat – from a person who never reads beyond the professional journals of his own field”  [my italics][2]

If this is true for anybody who wants to be good at science, it is then doubly true for an artist who wants to be good at art. Contemporary education and training has become too compartmentalised, jargon ridden and too narrowly ‘professional’ in focus. A wide knowledge of what used to be called the ‘liberal arts’ is very useful to any creative enterprise.

In the visual arts, the idea of ‘copying for education’ was largely abandoned. Quoting something is not the same as ‘copying for education’ by which I mean, re-producing the act of making something.[3]

Years ago, Douglas Hofstadter rightly stated that “all originality is variations on a theme”.[4] Error prone copying combined with the survival of the fittest is the basis of all evolution. Whilst it is obvious that slavish copying ends in stasis, it is not so obvious that no copying also ends in stasis. Paradoxically without copying, that is, re-producing, there can be no ‘meta’ (change).

The concept or idea of an art without antecedents is a concept of evolution without origins. This is a sort of religious (teleological) conception that, when transposed into art education had effects that were often illogical, strangely circular and sometimes harmful.[5] An art training that cannot learn from history, creates artists that are stuck in a show called groundhog day.

John R Walker

[1] Swift’s solution to the starving Irish problem was ‘eat babies’: “I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled …”. From his essay “A modest proposal” 1729.

[2] The essay, ‘Sweetness and light’ is published in a volume of Gould’s essays entitled Dinosaur in a Haystack.

[3] Auden believed that the best way to understand a poem was to physically rewrite it, line by line.

[4] Gödel, Escher, Bach (usually called GEB) is a book by Douglas Hofstadter. It is a meditation on the strangeness that is ‘representation of representations’.

[5] The not-yet-existent future affecting the present is a ‘Terminator’ sort of idea.

Jake Walker, The Way 7, 2009

IN THEIR INTRODUCTION to the NOTFAIR catalogue, curators Ashley Crawford, Tony Lloyd and Sam Leach, tell us how NOTFAIR 2010 “began, and at heart remains, a humble affair”. What began as a small idea has grown into something that has taken even them by surprise.

Coinciding with the behemoth that is Melbourne Art Fair – where the heavy weights of Australia’s commercial art community converge to exhibit their artists to collectors, curators and publishers alike  - NOTFAIR 2010 launched as Australia’s first real satellite art fair. 36 artists on exhibition are presenting over 50 works of art. Over 600 guests were counted as attending the official opening on Thursday evening. A stella line up sponsors and supporters joined force to aid this grass roots affair for the Australian artistic community. Each of these aspects highlight the strength with which NOTFAIR emerged as an important satellite event. However its 3 awards cements, as its mission, the seriousness with which it endeavours to create opportunities for undervalued artists to further their careers.

This year an aquisitive prize sponsored by media management company Profile Talent for $5,000 was won by Chris Henshke; the Lipman Karas acquisitive prize worth$5000 was won by Andre Piguet; and the grand inaugural Arkley Award – sponsored by Howard Arkley’s mother – worth $15,000 was won by Jake Walker.

NOTFAIR will, no doubt, be back again in 2 years time bigger, stronger and as full of energy for artists, by artists and with artists and for this we are grateful!

Located just across the road from the Cherry Tree Hotel and a short walk from Church St and the Albert St gallery precinct, the new venue is 79 Stephenson Street, Richmond, Victoria.

ARTIST PROFILE is proudly participating in the NOTFAIR and is thrilled to be sitting alongside this stella line up of artists. A not to be missed event.

Exhibition: 4 August – 8 August, 2010
Thursday 11-5, Friday 12-8, Saturday 11-7, Sunday 11-5
NOTFAIR, 79 Stephenson Street, Richmond, Melbounre

Jon Cattapan, Viridian Eye

OVER THE LAST thirty years, Jon Cattapan has established a reputation as one of Australia’s most significant and prolific painters. In this new body of works at Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, Viridian Eye, the artist extends his exploration of ‘Night Visions’ drawn from his experiences as a commissioned artist for the Australian War Memorial in Timor Leste during 2008.
Whilst in Timor Leste, Cattapan visited a number of temporary bases at Gleno, Bacau, Maliana and Vekeki. Following Australian peace keeping forces on their night patrols, the artist was able to digitally record images of expeditions using night vision and infrared technology. Here, Cattapan captured the sporadic fluctuations of night vision data as it intersected with the physical landscape, to reveal pockets of human activity and interaction. In this way, the experience can be understood to have resonated strongly with Cattapan’s previous and iconic explorations of cityscapes that have often depicted the interrelationship of human activity and networks of digital exchange.

Exhibition: 24 June – 24 July, 2010
Opening: Saturday 26th June, 3-6pm
Sutton Gallery, 254 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy

Left: Mother and Daughter 2010 acrylic on paper 76 x 56cm; Right: First Date 2010 acrylic on paper 76 x 56cm

THIS EXHIBITION of paintings and works on paper by acclaimed New Zealand artist Julian Hooper, presents figures made up of incongruous elements like fish tails and fruit, reminiscent of Arcimboldo. Titled Golden Solvent, this is Julian Hooper’s second solo show at Gallery 9.
Curator Victoria Lynn writes: “Hooper has compared them with figures from fashion magazines, but the absurdity of their attire transforms them from an everyday location or identity into their own universe. These unexpected combinations recall the discordant practices of surrealism and dadaism, but Hooper’s work is not so absurdist. The artist’s oeuvre has been characterised by this process of finding links between seemingly unfamiliar territories.”

Exhibition: 23 June – 17 July
Opening: Wednesday 23 June 6 – 8 pm
Gallery 9, 9 Darley Street, Darlinghurst

Christina Hayes, "Thumbhead", 2009, oil on canvas, 58 x 58cm

Anna Pappas Gallery of Melbourne has brought seven of their artists to Sydney. Calling Danks Street’s Depot Gallery home for the next fortnight, Anna Pappas Gallery (APG) is introducing part of her stable to the Sydney art scene.

On exhibition is Christina Hayes’ paintings, through which she presents humorous and clumsy characters; following his successful exhibition in May at APG, Owen Leong continues to exhibit his shape-shifter Asian-Australian photographic portraits; Grant Nimmos’s paintings are a series of dreamy, relaxed and idealised landscapes of his imagination; while David Palliser’s (featured in issue 10) abstract works are bold and exhilarating.

Viv Ryan presents gritting photographs of dirty dishes left around by immediate family members – images consumed by the reality of everyday; and these sit along the ceramic sculptures of Vipoo Srivilasa, whose subject matter is less than real as he greets us with mermaids and animals parading as characters from The Wizard of Oz; these sculptures compliment the work of Cyrus Tang who’s fascination with transformation and dissolution of the human body is investigated through the construction of bodies and faces through clay but then, gently immersed in water, the figures disappear and dismember through this watery process.

Anna Pappas Gallery @ The Deport Gallery, SYDNEY
2 Danks Street, Waterloo

Until Saturday 26 June
Open:  Tuesday-Saturday 11am-6pm + Sunday 11am-3.30pm

Emma Lindsay, Marty, 2010

An exhibition at the Redcliffe City Art Gallery in Queensland has recently opened looking at Australian suburbia: its people, their secrets, the friendships and a whole lot more.

Curator Emma Lindsay has brought together 22 contemporary Australian artists in her quest to explore Suburbia. The works produced by each of the artists looks at the shifting cultural landscape that is the Australian suburbs. Where once suburbia was the domain of the middle class building a refuge – their castle – these neighbourhoods have shifted dramatically.

Lindsay has brought together artists of varying backgrounds – indigenous-Australians, immigrant-Australians and Australian-born citizens – and presents their different experiences of the suburbs by way of discussing and exploring the cultural shift of Australia’s Suburbia.

The stella line up of exhibiting artists include: Jenny Watson, Mostyn Bramley-Moore, Sebastian di Mauro, Bianca Beetson, Sue Beyer, Emma Lindsay, Michael Zavros, Judy Watson, Chris Bennie, Marian Drew, Laini Burton, Anika Wilkins, Paul McCann, Thom Kotis, Isabel & Alfredo, Aquilizan, Howard Arkley, Tracey Moffatt, Gordon Bennett, Sangeeta Sandrasegar and Destiny Deacon.

Redcliffe City Art Gallery
470-476 Oxley Ave, Redcliffe QLD
T +61 7 3283 0415

Until 26 June
Open:  Monday-Friday 10am-4pm