Archive for the ‘Artwrite 43 Short Snippets’ Category

‘The Shape of Things to Come’ – Benjamin Armstrong

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Iris SiYi Shen

Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Provocative, uncanny and organic are a few adjectives used to describe Benjamin Armstrong’s sculptures.  This applies to his new exhibition The Shape of Things to Come. However, none of these words can explain the ambiguity that is inherent throughout his sculptural practice, from early objects of pointy, conical shape to later rounded domes with fleshy wax material.

As reading is an important part of Armstrong’s working process, perhaps the ambiguity of his objects is a window that allows open interpretation, similar to books.  Therefore, time became a dimension that factors into the reading of the object. The longer the viewer observes, the more its meaning unfolds.

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‘Jailbreak’ – Damian Dillon

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Georgina Sandercock

Artereal gallery

The Damian Dillon Jailbreak exhibition, held at the Artereal gallery, presents a slick selection of the artist’s mixed-media photographs. Dillon digitally manipulates, graffiti’s and draws on banal photographs of the urban built environment from major cities in Ireland and Australia. Jailbreak explores the connection between place and past and the conflicting emotions of Irish-Australian migrants. Dillon cleverly depicts sites that are not easily distinguishable from another, suggesting the reality of migration is moving from one dejected situation to another. Dillon’s graffiti technique begs the question of what is blocked out and why. The photographs are engaging and raise culturally interesting questions.

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‘Pop Rocks’ – Stupidkrap

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Yasmin Haas

Chinese translation here

Urban Uprising Art Gallery

Stupidkrap provides emerging and established urban art to a strong following on line. How, in conjunction with Urban Uprising Gallery they present Pop Rocks, an inspiring and refreshing body of work. Its tasteful but humorous Lowbrow style includes graffiti and protest art, Japanese erotica and pop surrealism with taboo, unconventional, and rebellious themes and extreme doses of originality and experimentation in terms of its content. Not a disappointment, this show is a colour explosion, a visual ecstasy tablet, with a huge local following; it is an exciting glimpse of local Australian talent set in a fantastically positioned gallery space.

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Refusing Fashion? – Rei Kawakubo

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Xi Fu

Rei Kawakubo is known for remaking forms of clothes with concepts originating from education in fine arts and literature rather than formal fashion design training. She specialises in austere and deconstructed garments and sticks to using single colors. In 1981, she began to present her revolutionary concepts of ‘femininity’ in Paris where she created sensations with her androgynous and innovative works. She challenged the established notions of beauty with the avant-garde fashion concept that was initially thought of as ‘ugly’ in contrast to the classical system. Rei’s works are a constant process of renewal of thinking, although the issue is arguable.

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‘The Edge of Trees’ – Fiona Foley and Janet Laurence

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Kate Finn

Chinese translation here

Museum of Sydney

29 pillars made from wood, sandstone or steel symbolise the 29 Aboriginal clans who once inhabited the area surrounding the first Government House. With an inspiring quote from the historian Rhys Jones to guide them, describing the ‘first meeting’ as the Aboriginal people hid within the edge of trees, Foley and Laurence have created a site-specific public sculpture for all Australians. The work integrates the concerns of Sydney’s Aboriginal people, their life and culture, the people of the First Fleet and the rich and varied flora of the city, which is, juxtaposed against Sydney’s skyscrapers. The site, which once symbolised cultural destruction, is now welcoming and comfortable and was seen by many as a step towards reconciliation.

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‘Dream/Life’ – Trent Parke

Monday, October 11th, 2010

Untitled in Dream/Life

This untitled black and white photograph from Trent Parke’s first publication, Dream/Life, captures an intense loneliness and sense of futility emblematic of living in a chaotic metropolis. A flock of Japanese tourists march separately through the wide-angle frame, towards some unknown destination. Parke’s signature grainy, high contrast technique diminishes the men to anonymous ‘suits;’ they become faceless silhouettes set against menacing clouds. Sydney’s skyline is only vaguely recognisable, the Harbour Bridge reduced to an insignificant arch. The low angle and repetition of shapes create a complex tableau that is at once universal and hauntingly surreal.

Trent Parke

Untitled

1999

Gelatin silver print

24 x 36cm

Courtesy and copyright of the artist

http://www.stillsgallery.com.au/artists/parke/

Krystal Seigerman

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