June 2014

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He can’t tell you about our season... but you can find out more at thecapital.com.au

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2014

IRENE BARBERIS: Apocalypse / Revelation: Re Looking, to 15 June 121 View Street La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre Bendigo, VIC, 3550 +61 3 5441 8724 latrobe.edu.au/vacentre

DARREN WARDLE: Head Case, 18 June – 10 August BUEN CALUBAYAN: Idiot Knows No Country, 18 June – 3 August La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre 121 View Street, Bendigo, VIC, 3550 T: 03 5441 8724 121 View Street E: vac@latrobe.edu.au Bendigo, VIC, 3550 W: latrobe.edu.au/vac +61 3 5441 8724 Gallery hours: Tue – Fri 10am-5pm. Weekends 12-5pm latrobe.edu.au/vacentre La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre

Image: Darren Wardle, Head Case Study 7, (detail) 2013, 41cm x 36cm, oil and acrylic on linen. Courtesy of the artist, Fehily Contemporary and Gold Coast City Gallery.

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FEATURES

(07) COMICS FACE Ive Sorocuk (08) THE MADNESS OF ART Jim Kempner (12) GENIUS & AMBITION:

THE ALTERNATIVE ROYAL TOUR

Inga Walton

(24) SUBURBAN SPLENDOUR:

INTERVIEW WITH GRAHAM MILLER

Naima Morelli

(34) JUNE SALON Jiggy (44) ACTEASE Courtney Symes (52) MELBURNIN’ Inga Walton (62) STRALIAN STORIES:

PHOTOSHOP IS MY FRIEND

CHRIS GUEST & FLOATING HORIZON

Klare Lanson

(72) GREETINGS FROM HINDUSTAN

PART 4: WEDDING PREPARATIONS

Ben Laycock

COVER: Dean Butters, On The Wall Behind Her, Written On Brown Paper, Was A Quote From Tolstoy That Read ‘What A Strange Illusion It Is To Suppose That Beauty Is Goodness’ (detail) 2012-2013, lambda print, 80 x 120 cm. Batman & Robin, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Gorman House Arts Centre 55 Ainslie Ave Braddon (ACT), 16 May – 21 June 2014 - ccas.com.au Issue 113: JUNE 2014 trouble is an independent monthly mag for promotion of arts and culture Published by Trouble magazine Pty Ltd. ISSN 1449-3926 STAFF Vanessa Boyack, administration (admin@troublemag.com) Steve Proposch, editorial (art@troublemag.com) Listings (listings@troublemag.com) CONTRIBUTORS Ive Sorocuk, Jim Kempner, Naima Morelli, Courtney Symes, Inga Walton, Klare Lanson, Ben Laycock.

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art comedy series

season 2, episode 9: The Dru Review Welcome to the inner sanctum ... the chamber of doom! Dru’s review focuses on a messy desk and clueless interns ... either way there’s some question as to where the puck stops ... or buck ... for Jim’s main man.

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back to back

season 2, episode 10: Fried Spaghetti When Jim orders fried spaghetti it’s an emergency! Maybe he does need a specialist ‌

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Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A., Theory (detail) 1779-80, oil on canvas, 178 x 179 cm. Š Royal Academy of Arts, London.

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Genius Ambition The Alternative Royal Tour

by Inga Walton

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Four years in the planning, the latest exhibition in Bendigo Art Gallery’s continuing engagement with international institutions Genius and Ambition: The Royal Academy of Arts, London 1768-1918 (until 9 June, 2014), is soon to depart these shores for Japan. It brings together nearly 100 works from the institution, including some fiftysix paintings and thirty-three works on paper. These disparate works reflect the changing preferences in taste and style, subject matter, social mores and visual fashion over the 150 year period, spanning the Georgian, Victorian, and Edwardian eras.

The Royal Academy of Arts was established through the personal Instrument of Foundation by George III (1738-1820) on 10 December, 1768, with the purpose of promoting and nurturing the arts and design in Britain through education and exhibition. The Academy emerged as an alternative to the increasingly dysfunctional Society of Artists of Great Britain (1761-91), and was fashioned on the model of the French Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture) founded by Louis XIV in 1648. At the time, art production in Great Britain was dominated by individual patrons, be they the Royal Family, the aristocracy, or the increasingly affluent middle classes.

There was little patronage offered by church or state for either religious or grand secular works. The Academy presented a direct challenge to the unequal relationship in which artists found themselves by elevating practitioners from the status of artisan to that of an independent professional of social standing.

The Academy established three governing principals: to hold an Annual Exhibition of works by contemporary artists (modelled on the Paris Salon); to establish and maintain a free school for the professional training and instruction of students; to dispense charitable support to indigent artists and their families.

Thirty-four leading painters, sculptors and architects assembled under the Academy’s first President, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92), a position he held until his death; he would later succeed Alan Ramsay as Principal Painter in Ordinary to the King in 1784. Reynolds was adamant that the Academy would ensure the making of a distinguished ‘British School’, “It will be no small addition to the glory which this nation has already acquired for having given birth to eminent men in every part of science, if it should be enabled to produce, in consequence of this institution, a School of British Artists”, he opined in 1780.

New Academicians were elected by their peers, and were required to offer, ‘a picture, Bas-relief, or other specimen of his abilities, approved of by the then sitting Council of the Academy’. This became known as the ‘Diploma work’, retained by the Academy, and the new member received a diploma signed by the monarch. And it was definitely ‘his abilities’. Despite the fact that two of the Foundation Members of the Academy had been women, Angelica Kauffman Genius & Ambition / Inga Walton

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“It will be no small addition to the glory which this nation has already acquired for having given birth to eminent men in every part of science, if it should be enabled to produce ... a School of British Artists.”

(1741-1807) and Mary Moser (1744-1819), attempts to encourage the election of women were firmly resisted. After Moser’s death, no further women were elected as full members of the Academy until Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970) in 1936. Throughout the 1850s pressure had been placed on the Academy to admit female students, the first of whom was unwittingly accepted in 1860; she had submitted her drawings with only her initials and surname. In 1768, the number of Royal Academicians was set at forty, and the category of Associate Royal Academician, from which an artist could progress to full membership through peer election, was limited to twenty. Engravers were recognised with the establishment of a separate category in 1853, and foreign artists were recognised in 1868 with the new class of Honorary Royal Academician conferred upon esteemed candidates.

The intention was that the Academy be financially independent, through income generated by ticket and catalogue sales to the Annual Exhibition, the profits from which would underwrite the cost of the Royal Academy Schools, and the maintenance of the Library. The Academy certainly benefitted from the royal munificence; the personal support of George III led to buildings being found to house their activities, initially at Old Somerset House from 1771. While the Annual Exhibition was held at 125 Pall Mall (1769-79), shortfalls in the Academy’s finances were underwritten by the King. He intervened again in 1780 to support purpose-built accommodation for the Academy at New Somerset House. Reynolds is represented in the exhibition by the allegorical work Theory (1779-80), the only ceiling painting he ever executed, designed for the library of their new headquarters. Theory was surrounded by paintings representing Nature, History, Allegory and Fable in the cove of the ceiling. By placing Theory at the apex of these subjects, Reynolds affirmed both the intellectual basis of his own work, and the wider aspirations to ‘High Art’ of the Royal Academy.

As the reputation of the organisation grew, further revenue was raised from investments, and from gifts and bequests, which met ongoing costs and provided funds for scholarships and prizes. By the 1830s the Academy again had to find new premises, and in 1837 the state made available the East Wing of the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square. It is a testament to the influence the Royal Academy enjoyed that, until 1868, the institution was housed in free accommodation provided by the Crown and subsequently by the state. Only when the Academy moved to its current home of Burlington House in Piccadilly did it pay a modest rent, and assume responsibility for maintenance of the extensive new premises.

Genius & Ambition / Inga Walton

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John Callcott Horsley, R.A, A Pleasant Corner (detail) 1865, oil on canvas.

Photography: Prudence Cuming Associates, London. Š Royal Academy of Arts, London.

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... Fuseli’s painting depicts the episode when Thor and the giant Hymir (Eymer) go fishing far out to sea, and Thor strikes the head off Hymir’s largest ox to use as his bait ...

Tensions about reforming the membership and governance of the Academy continued to simmer, particularly after government inquiries into the institution, culminating in the Royal Commission of 1863. The rise in the number of professional artists, the diversifying arts market, and rival exhibition and training bodies would continue to challenge the Royal Academy’s status as the body of national significance, particularly in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. The cap on membership numbers, coupled with the perception that admission to the Annual Exhibition was controlled by a Selection Committee preoccupied by rigid, exclusive academic criteria, favouritism and commercial interests became the subject of critical comments and cartoons in the popular press. The gradual erosion of the Academy’s monopolistic position as the arbiter of taste on artistic matters was inevitable with the rise of increasing specialisation within the visual arts, the breakdown of the academic canon they helped to establish, and the proliferation of commercial art galleries.

The Swiss painter and draughtsman Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Füssli) (1741-1825) is best known for his evocative work The Nightmare (1781), exhibited at the Royal Academy the following year. It became the first contemporary work to form the basis of an entire sub-genre of ‘mock sublime’ in English political caricature, and from 1792 in French caricature. The work remains a great favourite of Gothic enthusiasts, and was given particular emphasis by director Ken Russell in his film Gothic (1986), where the scene was recreated with actress Natasha Richardson playing Mary Shelley.

Showing his preference for supernatural subjects, Fuseli’s Diploma work, the dramatic Thor Battering the Midgard Serpent (1790), was accepted the same year. Fuseli’s source was Paul Henry Mallet’s Introduction à l’Histoire de Dannemarc (1755), which includes a translation of the prose version of the ancient Icelandic mythic cycle the Edda. In Norse mythology, the serpent Jörmungandr is the middle child of the Jötunn (giantess) Angrboða and Loki.

Odin took Loki’s children by Angrboða, daughter Hel, and the wolf Fenrir, tossing Jörmungandr into the great ocean that encircled Midgard. The serpent grew so large that he was able to surround the earth and grasp his own tail, an Ouroboros. Fuseli’s painting depicts the episode when Thor and the giant Hymir (Eymer) go fishing far out to sea, and Thor strikes the head off Hymir’s largest ox to use as his bait. Overseen by the crouching figure of Odin in the sky, and watched by the incredulous figure of Hymir at the stern, Thor prepares to deploy his hammer against the enraged Jörmungandr.

Genius & Ambition / Inga Walton

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In tackling the subject of the heroic male nude in action, Fuseli was, “attending to the most conservative stipulations regarding academic artistic practice, which gave priority to skills in the treatment of such figures”, in the words of Dr. Martin Myrone.

Fuseli’s Thor has also been interpreted as an allegory of the revolutionary forces in contemporary events in France. Fuseli had no formal artistic training and began his career as a writer; he was always insecure about his technical limitations.

His acquaintance with Sir Joshua Reynolds dated back to at least 1768, when Reynolds advised him to concentrate on the visual arts. Despite his personal eccentricities, Fuseli went on to become a pillar of the establishment; he was appointed Professor of Painting to the Academy in 1799. Four years afterwards he was chosen as Keeper, who supervised the day-to-day life of the institution, and resigned his professorship; but he resumed it in 1810, and continued to hold both offices until his death. He oversaw the education of a generation of artists, including some unlikely figures such as Sirs David Wilkie (1785-1841) and Edwin (Henry) Landseer (1802-73), and J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851).

Four fine works by Fuseli’s pupil John Constable (1776-1837) belie the fact that he did not become a member of ‘the establishment’ until towards the end of his career, when he was finally elected to the Royal Academy in 1829.

Landscape painting had emerged as a dominant genre from the founding of the organisation, and continued to generate an intense debate about the meaning of ‘truth to nature’. Constable’s Diploma work, A Boat Passing a Lock (1826), of a vessel ascending the River Stour in Suffolk, will be of particular interest to local audiences. The National Gallery of Victoria has the earlier Study of A Boat Passing a Lock (c.1823-1826), one of the favourites of the 19th Century European Paintings Gallery. NGV also holds the small oil on paper on cardboard work Clouds (1822), Constable had commenced studies of clouds the previous year in an attempt to capture their physical characteristics, of which Cloud Study: Horizon of Trees, 27 September 1821 (1821) is an evocative example. The impact of continuing industrialisation and urbanisation encroaching on the British landscape meant that nostalgia for simpler times and works celebrating a lost rural idyll remained popular.

Other popular exhibition subject matter was derived from literature, mythology, and a romantic interpretation of the past. History painting and scenes drawn from the Bible, like The Tribute Money (1782) by the American-born painter John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), offered artists impressive subjects of widespread public appeal, and reflected the Academy’s desire to promulgate art made in the ‘Grand Manner’. Artists like Sir Edward (John) Poynter (1836-1919) with The Fortune Teller (1877), and The Way to the Temple (1882) by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) turned to the decadence of the classical world, taking their inspiration from its fanciful religious festivals and ancient rights. Edwin Landseer’s The Faithful Hound (c. 1830) even manages to combine his widely acknowledged expertise in animal painting with the history genre. A loyal dog howls piteously before the lifeless body of his armour-clad master and dead horse, who have fallen in some unspecified conflict of the sword-wielding variety.

Genius & Ambition / Inga Walton

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Sir Edwin (Henry) Landseer, R.A., The Faithful Hound (detail) c.1830, oil on canvas, 68.4 x 91.2 x 3 cm. Photographer: John Hammond. Š Royal Academy of Arts, London.

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The accession of Queen Victoria to the throne ushered in the beginning of a great age of travel and exploration, such wanderlust gave rise to the ‘ethnographic’ genre painting, which conjured up exotic worlds and strange customs in the Middle East, North Africa and India. Many artists were soon seeking out these destinations in order to more accurately depict aspects of archaeology and architecture, ethnic dress, and local customs. The intrepid Scottish painter David Roberts (1796-1864) was the first independent British artist to travel and work extensively in the Near East, undertaking tours of the region (1838-40) including Cairo, Nubia and Syria. The Gateway to the Great Temple at Baalbec (1841) in Lebanon was visited by Roberts in 1839, and was typical of his flair for bringing impressive ancient monuments and the ‘lands of the Bible’ home to an appreciative British audience. John Frederick Lewis (1804-76) specialised in Oriental and Mediterranean scenes and lived in Cairo between 1841 and 1850, adopting local dress and inhabiting a grand Ottoman house. He made numerous sketches that he turned into paintings even after his return to England in 1851, such as The Door of a Café In Cairo (1865), full of ‘authentic’ detail and typical objects from the bazaar in the foreground. Also in Egypt in 1858, and again in 1870, was Frederick Goodall (1822-1904) who travelled with Bedouin tribesmen in order to provide accurate renderings within his paintings such as The Song of the Nubian Slave (1863).

The popularity of paintings depicting ‘everyday life’, including those of a more sentimental or moralising tone, were immensely popular with the Academy’s middle-class audience. Richard Redgrave (1804-88), who worked first as a designer, produced a number of works which addressed the plight of female workers prone to exploitation, such as governesses and seamstresses. The Outcast (1851) offers the dramatic and seemingly heartless spectacle of a young woman clutching her illegitimate child in the doorway of the family home. Amidst the distress of other family members, she is expelled from the house into the snowy night by her stern father, a sum of money and an incriminating letter lie on the floor. A far more placid, and somewhat cloying view of the domestic sphere is offered by John Callcott Horsley (1817-1903) in A Pleasant Corner (1865). A genteel, well dressed, and doe-eyed young woman sits reading a book by the fire in the inglenook of the dining room. Initially influenced by the seventeenthcentury Dutch tradition, David Wilkie’s Boys Digging For Rats (1812) shows the type of carefully posed and expressive low-life, humorous subjects at which he excelled, and which was grudgingly accepted by the Academy.

In the adjacent space are assembled some thirty significant works by Australian artists such as Nicholas Chevalier (1828-1902), Tom Roberts (1856-1931), Sir John Campbell Longstaff (1861-1941), Rupert (Charles Wulsten) Bunny (18641947), Sir Arthur (Ernest) Streeton (1867-1943), Harold Parker (1873-1962), Agnes Goodsir (1864-1939), and Sir William Dobell (1899-1970). That so many Australian works were once shown at the Royal Academy demonstrates its reputation as a proving ground for aspiring talent, one which conveyed a certain social and professional recognition within an international context.

Genius & Ambition / Inga Walton

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Travelling scholarships and stipends saw Australian artists leaving for Europe to take up further study and gain both experience and the necessary polish. Those who were selected to exhibit at Burlington House conformed to the expected ‘academic style’ which, if well received, had the potential to lead to lucrative commissions and a greater profile.

The Irish painter George Frederick Folingsby (1828-91) had his work The First Lesson (1869) hung at the Royal Academy, and his reputation as a figure painter preceded him when he arrived in Melbourne in 1879. Folingsby was appointed as the first Director of the National Gallery of Victoria in 1882, and set about reorganising the painting school. George (Washington Thomas) Lambert (1873-1930) established a strong reputation as a portrait artist with works like Miss Thea Proctor (1903), his first work to be accepted for the Royal Academy exhibition. Lambert was an official Australian war artist during World War I, and spent much time in London; he was elected an Associate Member of the Academy (ARA) in 1922.

The most successful of the Australian expatriate artists was Sir (Edgar) Bertram Mackennal (1863-1931), who made numerous forays to London and Paris in pursuit of commission work from 1882 onwards, and whose international profile substantially outshone his peers. In 1893 he was awarded an honourable mention at the Old Salon in Paris for his life-size figure Circe (1893). However, when it was shown at the 1894 Royal Academy summer exhibition it caused a sensation, with its pedestal (depicting intertwined bodies) concealed for the sake of modesty. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1909, achieving full membership in 1922, the first Australian artist to have that distinction. By the time the Academy accepted Mackennal’s Diploma work, the less controversial The Dawn of a New Age (1924), he was already a highly successful and sought after sculptor. The pinnacle of his career came in 1921 when Mackennal became the first Australian artist to be knighted, by George V, for whom he had designed the Coronation Medal (1910), the profile portrait for the new coinage, the design for the King’s head on British postage stamps (1911), and military honours (1914-18).

The exhibition (minus the Australian content) then travels to four venues in Japan until mid-2015, starting at the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art, 1 – 31 August, 2014 - ishibi.pref.ishikawa.jp • Bendigo Art Gallery, 42 View Street, Bendigo (VIC) - bendigoartgallery.com.au • Royal Academy of Arts - royalacademy.org.uk

Inga Walton is a writer and arts consultant based in Melbourne who contributes to numerous Australian and international publications. She has submitted copy, of an inceasingly verbose nature, to Trouble since 2008. She is under the impression that readers are not morons with a short attention span, and would like to know lots of things.

SUBURBAN SPLENDOUR an interview with Graham Miller

by Naima Morelli

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When I alighted the train at the Fremantle station, I was greeted by a typical West Australian sunny day. I had spent only a few days in Perth, but had already decided that if I was to choose a neighbourhood to live in here, it would be creative and relaxed Fremantle.

I was early for my appointment, so took my time to stroll around the jaundiced Victorian buildings and quirky shops. I spent half an hour in a beautiful bookshop specialising in art and photography, then trotted without rush to the Moore & Moore café, where I was to meet photographer Graham Miller.

Miller’s work has been exhibited all around the world, from Sydney to Leipzig.

He was a co-founder of the much-mourned FotoFreo, a biennial international festival of photography based, of course, in Fremantle. Yet the Australia that Graham explores through his work is drastically different from this sunny, bohemian town. His photographs convey an intrinsic, almost heart-breaking beauty through filmic atmospheres, telling stories of suburban life and estrangement. Miller has declared more than once to be inspired by American novelists, and perhaps what I like most about his work is this narrative quality.

He gives voice to human hopes and desires the way ballads do, never explaining, only hinting at the games afoot.

Graham Miller was sitting in a corner of the café wearing a Bob Dylan by Milton Glaser shirt. His green trench was lying on a chair. He had a round face, green eyes and very short and super-thick black hair, almost like a brush.

We started to talk about life in Western Australia. Gradually I realized that my enthusiasm for Fremantle might have been premature. Living in Perth longterm would certainly feel very different. Outside the café window there was no one on the street.

“The sense of isolation is the main thing about living here,” said Graham.

“My influences are mostly cinema and literature, and I use these influences to photograph the context of living here in Perth. I feel a little disconnected from the rest of the world. Even with the online community, it still feels like a vacuum sometimes, in the sense that you don’t get to see all the art that you get to see if you live in Melbourne, or Sydney. That sense of isolation is a theme that runs through a lot of my photography. The series Suburban Splendour was really about disconnection and a sense of human frailty and vulnerability. At the same time, by being isolated you form a stronger friendship with the small community that you are here with. That’s quite nice.

So … I have never been able to get away, really.”

PREVIOUS SPREAD: Sam (detail) 2007. THIS SPREAD: Shelby Avenue (detail) 2007. Both from the series Suburban Splendour.

Suburban Splendour / Naima Morelli

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You were born in Hong Kong and moved to Perth at the age of ten, yes?

G.M. I went to boarding school here. My father was an airline pilot for Cathay Pacific based in Hong Kong and, as all the airline pilots did at that time, they sent their children to boarding school. They sent me here when I was ten years old, and my brother as well. That’s why, even though I lived here for a while I don’t feel like it’s home, really. You know, I’ve travelled a lot over the years. Even when I was young, I was travelling with my father, getting into planes ... I could leave Perth if someone pushed me to do so. Now I feel a stronger connection, because I have a son of my own, a ten-year-old boy. He’s got a decent, caring community here, so I feel more connected, because he’s connected.

When did you start photography?

G.M. When I finished vet studies – yes I’m a veterinarian as well. Back then I lived in London, and was mainly travelling. I wasn’t doing any photography at that stage. But when I came back to Perth I realised I didn’t want to be a vet, so I went back to Uni to study photography and film. As it ended up I chose photography over film because I quite like working by myself. Film is always so collaborative and there is a lot of waiting around for people to do stuff. I always liked to not having to rely on anyone else.

Was the school connected with the local photography scene?

G.M. Yes, one of the lecturers, Max Pam, is probably the biggest name in photography in this town. He became a very good mentor for me and helped me to promote my work amongst some people overseas. Kevin Ballantine has also been a big influence and helped me a lot. In that sense the university lectures were very important. I met Brad Rimmer when the FotoFreo Festival started. I think FotoFreo really helped to build a stronger photographic community here.

Of course, and how did it start?

G.M. Just a group of people meeting up to discuss photography to begin with.

Max Pam and I were involved, and there was Bob Hewitt, who was a businessman interested in photography. We thought that Fremantle would be a good place to hold the festival, because it’s small, people can walk around, and it would be interesting for international people to come and visit. We got hold of some photographers, and put some pictures in the cafés. We ran a slideshow in a park, you know, with a projector that had a big button that you pushed to slide the next slide; not a digital projector but slides that you put into a carousel. Unfortunately FotoFreo is finished now. I don’t know why, because Brad and I stepped away a while ago. FotoFreo was great, fantastic. The big photographers coming to Perth really helped the local photographers to make connections overseas.

Suburban Splendour / Naima Morelli

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In Suburban Splendour, each image acts like a visual short story, very self-contained.

In Waiting for the Miracle I was interested in how the images interacted with each other.

How did you convince the big names of photography to come to Perth?

G.M. We just asked them. You know, initially it was like, oh no, how we are going to do it? But then you just have to find their email address and write to them. In 2004 I wrote an email to Martin Paar and I thought, oh well, he’s not going to answer me. Why would he? He doesn’t know who I am, and the festival was tiny at that point. But he did write back: ‘yeah, this sounds quite good’. What? It made me realise that sometimes all that you have to do is ask. I mean, we would pay for their flight over, and for accommodation, plus we printed their work and talked about their work a lot. Maybe there would be workshops or lectures … something like that. So many great photographers came! It was good fun. Really good fun.

Your series Waiting for the Miracle is set in an imaginary costal frontier town. From where did you draw inspiration for creating this fictional city and its dynamics?

G.M. It all comes back to this sense of isolation we were talking about before.

Waiting for the Miracle is a Leonard Cohen song, and in that song he talks of missed opportunities. He was waiting for the perfect relationship and he didn’t see what was right in front of him. I thought that it was just like living in Perth.

You constantly look overseas, but you should actually pay attention to what is right in front of you. That was the idea. Some of these images are shot in Perth, some of them in New South Wales, and the last lot in America. For me it represented the individual escape these people are craving. The series started as a journey inside this town and a sense of longing, and finally a release to somewhere else. In Suburban Splendour, each image acts like a visual short story, very self-contained. In Waiting for the Miracle I was interested in how the images interacted with each other. I wanted the series to portray a narrative, rather than working with distinguished singular pictures.

Storytelling is a key element in your work, but you often focus on multiple characters instead of just one to tell your stories ...

G.M. Yeah, I’ve thought of following one particular character, like a kind of traditional novel, I suppose. I guess I wanted to show the kind of universal feeling of vulnerability we all carry inside, this sense of trying to connect. If I have a number of people in there it can convey something that everyone can relate to.

Suburban Splendour / Naima Morelli

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You have photographed both in Australia and America and it’s sometimes difficult to tell where exactly your photos are set …

G.M. Well, I think American lifestyle and Australian lifestyle are very similar, the landscape may vary, but within the urban setting I think we are very alike.

I think America probably has more religious influences. There is more of a puritanical underbelly to American society in general, whereas this is not the case in Australia. We have a much more secular culture, and I like to say we are pretty easygoing here. A lot of my influences are American film, and American literature, so that’s why some of my pictures look maybe slightly American.

Then of course, in the end it doesn’t really matter if it’s Australia or America.

It’s about your inner construction …

G.M. That’s right, absolutely. I think Hiroshi Sugimoto has said that photographs are just a way of exteriorizing interior concerns. It’s just an excuse to bring the stuff that’s inside your head out, in a visual way. I’m just trying to get the feeling of stuff. I’m not really interested in documentary fact. I’m more interested in some kind of poetic visualisation that gives an authentic feeling, an authentic emotion.

In fact many of your photographs are staged. Were the people in Suburban Splendour actors or friends?

G.M. Some of them are friends and some of them are people that I saw in the street and thought, wow, they look interesting. Not that many, because it’s quite difficult to go straight up to someone in the street. But sometimes they let me take photos. And other people in the photos were referred to me. In Waiting for the Miracle there were a few days that I was travelling around and I would shoot in country towns. I found that country people were much more trusting than people in the city.

I like that you don’t have a fixed approach to photography, but change all the time, involving as much staging as chance …

G.M. For me it really depends on the subject I’m working with and how comfortable they are, or how uncomfortable. Sometimes I may have a very fixed idea, like a woman reading a letter, but what is the letter saying, you don’t know! Is it bad news? Is it good news? What is going to happen afterwards?

So the whole idea of her reading the letter was the premise. Other times it’s just some face, or a location, and I just put the person in there. I don’t do too much direction. I let the person assume the pose that feels most natural to them. Other times, while driving, I might see a beautiful light on a building and I know it’s that place at that time that I should take the picture. For Suburban Splendour it has been a bit like scouting movie locations before inserting the actor in there and waiting for the light to be right.

PREVIOUS SPREAD: Santa Fe, New Mexico 2009, from the series American Photographs.

Suburban Splendour / Naima Morelli

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Are you the kind of person who photographs every day or just for a project?

G.M. No, not at all! I’m not an obsessive photographer. I like to read. Many of my ideas come from reading. More recently I’ve been looking at paintings as well, European Romantic paintings, and I am fascinated with the sense of light in these pictures. I want to create a new series of pictures shot in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales. It’s full of eucalypts there, and they give off oil, and oil reflects light, so these mountains have a bluey-purple haze when they are seen in the distance. The town is built right on the edge of a cliff, and it’s often completely covered in cloud. So I like this idea of a community perched on the edge of a cliff, in this sublime landscape.

That’s why I’m looking at Turner and David Caspar Friedrich, even Rothko, as contemporary sublime. I want to tie the idea of the sublime with the mundane of community life. I’m interested in a sense of place, as in a sense of the infinite and the particular. For me it is always the experience of living in the modern world, that’s what I’m interested in. It always comes back to who we are in the landscape and how we connect with the landscape. The film Tree of Life talks of the creation of the universe, and at the same time of this relationship between a family. I find that really fantastic, talking about the micro and the macro at the same time. That’s what I’m trying to do for my Blue Mountains project.

Miller’s Blue Mountains series has recently been exhibited at Turner Galleries in Perth, under the title All that is solid melts into air. While Graham was still working on the series, a devastating fire swept through the Blue Mountains and razed over two hundred homes. In the exhibition text Graham writes: “People continue to live in the mountains, clinging as stubborn as moss to rock. They are not dislodged. Living here means reconciling yourself to nature. The once thick boughs of eucalypts have been whittled by fire. Now they are black brush strokes on canvas. But, from their spindly black arms the once dormant buds sprout a fuzz of green.”

• Graham Miller is represented by Turner Galleries, 470 William Street, Northbridge (WA) - turnergalleries.com.au • Artist site - grahammiller.com.au

Naima Morelli is a freelance ar ts writer and journalist with a par ticular interest in contemporary ar t from Italy, the Asia Pacific region and ar t in a global context. She is also an independent curator focusing on Italian, Indonesian and Australian emerging ar tists. At the moment she is working on a book about contemporary ar t in Indonesia.

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may salon

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1. Jenna Pippett, Untitled 2014, digital Image. I could have been Canadian, FELTspace, 12 Compton Street, Adelaide (SA), 5 – 21 June - feltspace.org 2. Jim Pavlidis, Soldier 2013, lithograph. Printed by Peter Lancaster, edition of 10. Reproduced courtesy of the artist. Accounts of my dancing evenings. Season 1914 — JIM PAVLIDIS, Geelong Art Gallery, Little Malop Street, Geelong (VIC), 14 June – 24 August - geelonggallery.org.au

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3. Polixeni Papapetrou, Desert Man 2013, pigment ink print, 120 x 120 cm. Courtesy of Stills Gallery, Sydney. Polixeni Papaptrou: The Ghillies, Benalla Art Gallery, Botanical Gardens, Bridge Street, Benalla (VIC), until 15 June - benallaartgallery.com

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4. Hubert Duprat (Born 1957, Nérac, France; lives and works in southern France), Sans titre (Untitled) 2013, polyurethane foam and flints, height 39 3/8 x length 27 ½ x depth 7 1/8 in. ADAGP, Photo F. Gousset. Image courtesy of Art : Concept, Paris and MONA Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania Australia. HUBERT DUPRAT - MONA, MONA, Museum of Old and New Art, 655 Main Road, Berriedale (TAS), until 28 July 2014 - mona.net.au 5. Joanne Mott, Mycelioid #4 2013, pencil, acrylic mica board, 60 x 60cm. Courtesy the artist and MARS Gallery. Mycofloral, Manningham Art Gallery, Manningham City Square (MC²), 687 Doncaster Road, Doncaster (VIC), 18 June – 25 July - manningham.vic.gov.au/gallery

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PREVIOUS SPREAD: Julia Gorman, Growth Habits 2014, , vinyl wall drawing. Commissioned by Geelong Gallery, with the support of the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria. Reproduced courtesy of the artist. Photography: Andrius Lypsis.

Growth Habits, Geelong Art Gallery Little Malop Street Geelong (VIC), until 5 July 2015 - geelonggallery.org.au

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6. Richard Morrell, Bowl of Illusion 2010 (detail) cast glass, gold leaf, h 25cm x w 32cm x w 15cm. Regional Forces, Horsham Regional Art Gallery, 21 Roberts Ave, Horsham (VIC), until 22 June 2014 - horshamartgallery.com.au 7. TOP Jimi: All Is by My Side, Director: John Ridley, UK, Ireland, 118 mins, English, Australian Premiere. BOTTOM. Frank, Director: Lenny Abrahamson, Ireland, 95 mins, English, Australian Premiere. Sydney Film Festival, various venues (NSW), 4 – 15 June 2014 - sff.org.au

ACTease DATELINE: JUNE 2014 Courtney Symes

One of the secrets of a successful landscape artist and landscape photographer, I believe, is their ability to interpret and capture light in their works. Landscape paintings are a personal favourite of mine, and I had high hopes for Canberra Museum and Gallery’s exhibition, Elioth Gruner: the texture of light. I was not disappointed. The works selected for the exhibition showcased Gruner’s talent not only as an artist, but as an Australian landscape artist, which is no mean feat when you consider the diversity of the Australian landscape.

Australia is a country of extremes – weather, seasons, colours, and changing light levels. To effortlessly capture all of these variables is a remarkable achievement, and clearly a life-long pursuit for Gruner.

It’s hard to believe that the last significant survey of Gruner’s work was thirty years ago (at the Art Gallery of New South Wales). Although Gruner was a seven-time winner of the Wynne Prize for landscape painting, and his work is represented in numerous state and regional galleries throughout Australia, you don’t need to know anything about painting to recognise Gruner’s talent and be mesmerised by his work. Fortunately, the Canberra Museum and Gallery and Newcastle Art Gallery recognised that Gruner’s works deserved some attention and joined forces to present this spectacular collection of paintings.

The exhibition occupies two galleries and works have been curated chronologically, and by location. For me, the most impressive aspect of this exhibition is the way the collection of seventy paintings accurately reflect the exhibition title, ‘the texture of light’. Gruner’s works all possess a unique, luminous glow. Clearly he was a master at identifying and capturing different levels of light, and its relationship with the Australian landscape. It is evident that Gruner also liked to build a relationship with the regions he painted, as he created numerous works that depicted the many facets of different regions.

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As a viewer, it is rewarding to observe Gruner’s work evolve from “impressionist beachscapes and farmland views of the 1910s to the subtle and distinctive modernist landscapes of his maturity from the 1920s and 1930s”. The exhibition also has “a particular focus on Gruner’s remarkable visual explorations of the Canberra region: the Southern Highlands, the South Coast, Yass and the Murrumbidgee River valley, and the Cooma-Monaro plateau.” This exhibition really highlights how “Few artists have represented this corner of south-eastern Australia with such extraordinary clarity as Gruner, who captured the quality of light, the rolling hills and the quiet austere beauty of our region”. An extensive line-up of community programs also accompany the exhibition, such as the Lunchtime Curator Floor Talk Series on 12 June at 1-2pm and THE TEXTURES OF LIGHT: The Pastoral Visions of Australian Cinema which is run in conjunction with the National Film and Sound Archive (visit nfsa.gov.au/arc for tickets, times, and further details), as well as a tour of the landscapes around Canberra that inspired Gruner on Saturday 21 June, 10am–3pm.

• Elioth Gruner: the texture of light, Canberra Museum and Gallery until 22 June 2014 - museumsandgalleries.act.gov.au

There’s also plenty to check out at the Belconnen Arts Centre this month, including: Bowls, Baskets, Blankets and Boats, The Water Element: reflection on water, Unruly Orchestrations — University of Canberra Faculty of Arts and Design, and Fabrique.

Drawing inspiration from ancient civilizations, Jenny Manning’s latest exhibition, Bowls, Baskets, Blankets and Boats is a culmination of her existing work and the exploration of new territory. Manning explains, “This exhibition is both a departure and continuation for me. Over the past 5 years I have exhibited intricate drawings and paintings focussing on the tangled webs of microscopic fungus spoors. More recently the rope like stems and filaments have morphed into handles and edges of patterned vessels and containers”.

Each of the elements: bowls, baskets, blankets and boats, allow Manning to explore a different facet of her practice. “The concept of the container is extended to include images of boats, which with their fragile, pierced and decorated structure allude to the precarious travels of refugees. Pattern and colour have always been important elements in my work and in this exhibition I have extended the process to include textiles in the form of coiled baskets and mohair patchwork blankets,” says Manning. An Art eBook (which can be downloaded for free from iTunes) has also been created by Bobby Graham, with Jenny and David Manning to accompany the exhibition. Runs until 8 June.

ACTease / Courtney Symes

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Elioth Gruner, Weetangera Canberra (detail) 1937

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Marilyn Stretton’s latest exhibition, The Water Element: reflection on water consists of a series of paintings that “explore her visual and emotional reaction to water and the interplay between water and light, and water and life”. Water plays a huge role in our lives – not only is it essential for our health and wellbeing, it calms, inspires and energises us. This exhibition is a beautiful tribute to an often overlooked, but essential life element. Runs from 11 to 29 June. Don’t miss the opportunity to meet Stretton on Sunday 22 June at 2pm.

Staff of the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra have been given the freedom to ‘play’ in their latest group exhibition, Unruly Orchestrations — University of Canberra Faculty of Arts and Design. “Creative practice is often a messy, noisy, unorchestrated activity, one that rejects norms and rules, but (ideally) ends up as a well composed, highly arranged final work.” By encouraging this sense of play, it is hoped that this group of artists will develop their knowledge and skills within their creative practice. The exhibition opening will take place on 13 June, and there will be an opportunity to meet the artists on Sunday 22 June at 3pm. Exhibition runs 13 to 29 June 2014.

Canberra-based contemporary jeweller Maria Klingner “believes that the jewellery we wear is not just an object – it holds an intimate place on our body and when worn, becomes an individual work of art, viewable in the public realm”.

Klingner’s latest exhibition, Fabrique, showcases a collection of wearable metal art in precious and semi-precious metals that explores the relationship between vintage and contemporary fabric designs. Runs 13 to 29 June 2014. Meet Klingner on 22 June at 1pm.

• Belconnen Arts Centre - belconnenartscentre.com.au

Aldo Iacobelli is inspired by memories, literature and art in his latest exhibition, In the Shadow of Forgetting – Aldo Iacobelli at Canberra Contemporary Art Space (CCAS), Gorman House this month. Iacobelli’s works are almost like a “visual diary” that draw upon his personal experiences, as demonstrated through My Days (2011-13), which consists of 244 mixed media drawings in recycled frames.

Other stand-out works featured in the exhibition include Neapolitan Souls (2012), a series of six pencil and smoke drawings, inspired by Neapolitan writer Erri De Luca’s book, Montedidio, which “evoked a torrent of potent memories of growing up in Naples”. Shadow (2012) features handmade terracotta potatoes on a wooden table, and is a response to The Potato Eaters (1885) and “the lives of working poor, but proud, labourers”. Iacobelli challenges his “audience to concentrate on the detail of what we experience on a daily basis, to look at the world through the eyes of an artist who has spent a lifetime in the act of observation and revelation”.

Marilyn Stretton, Cross-currents I (detail) 2014, acrylic on canvas, 90 x 60cm.

ACTease / Courtney Symes

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Also at CCAS, Dean Butters’ latest exhibition, Batman & Robin “represents the heroic ideas of childhood and adolescence dashed against feelings of an unfulfilled life, one that lacks the sense of certainty we once dreamed of as children. Like Peter Pan’s choice to never grow-up, this work is about being unstuck in a world that has moved on around you”. Using pop culture as a vehicle, Butters’ portraits examine themes such as social disconnection, as well as the repeating patterns of relationships. “In essence, Robin is replaceable.

He undertakes a role for Batman that he will either outgrow or die fulfilling.

Then, following a period of mourning, Batman will inevitably replace him, filling the hole that his absence has left. At its core, it is a poignant yet bleak meditation on the cyclical effects of childhood tragedy and one’s inability to move beyond such traumas.” By exploring “moments of weakness, isolation and self-destruction, these works ultimately talk about the failure of identity” and Butters raises the question: are we “fundamentally bound up in the fictions and stories that we consume”?

Sorrellism is Graham Sorrelle’s latest exhibition at CCAS. “Sorrellism follows Graham’s personal journey and captures the essence of places he has been, and seen.” Graham Sorrelle has an interesting background – he’s an artist, poet and cameleer. Sorrelle’s association with camels appears throughout his works. In his series The Camels, for instance, Sorrelle is camouflaged and has “an affinity with creatures who experience the struggle for survival in the harshest of environments”. A monochromatic image of a toddler appears throughout Sorrelle’s landscapes. This ‘lost child’ perhaps serving as a metaphor for innocence and naivety and Sorrelle’s own “sense of vulnerability and powerlessness – the result of what he sees as an inability to overcome, the multifarious obstacles thrown on life’s path”.

• All CCAS exhibitions run until 21 June - ccas.com.au IMAGES NEXT PAGE TOP: Dean Butters, The Amazing Adventures of Batdean and Molrobin, 2013, lambda print 80 x 120cm.

BOTTOM: Dean Butters, The Physical Impossibility Of An Idea In The Mind Of Someone Who Does Not Live It, 2013-14, lambda print 80 x 120cm.

Courtney Symes is a Canberra-based writer, small business owner, and mother. When she’s not writing, you will find her enjoying a run around one of Canberra’s beautiful parks and seeking out Canberra’s best coffee and cheesecake haunts with the family. Read more at alittlepinkbook.blogspot.com.au

DATELINE: JUNE 2014

Inga Walton

Curated by Collections Coordinator Jon Buckingham, Revelations: Sculpture From the RMIT Art Collection (until 12 July, 2014) brings together thirty-nine physical works, and photographic imagery of other significant pieces off-site, that reflect a microcosm of stylistic and formal developments in the medium and generational change during the last half-century.

Reko Rennie, I Wear My Own Crown (2013), neon (ed. 1/2), 15 x 128 x 8 cm.

Purchased through the RMIT Art Fund, 2014. Photo: Inga Walton.

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RMIT was founded by Francis Ormond (1827-89) as the Working Men’s College, and opened in June 1887- it began teaching art in 1888.

Situated at the La Trobe street entrance, the memorial statue erected to Ormond by Percival Ball (1845-1900), and unveiled in 1897, was one of only five bronze public sculptures in Melbourne at that time.

Zoja Trofimiuk’s Bust of Francis Ormond (1987) was commissioned by the RMIT Graduate Association to mark the institution’s centenary. RMIT’s influence on sculpture in Melbourne has been significant; many works have been created by its staff or graduates since that formative time.

Nonetheless, many of the works in the RMIT sculpture collection have been largely unseen for decades, such as Peter Asel’s The Crown (1990). “Asel doesn’t practice any more, which is a pity as his work is receiving some very positive feedback from visitors”, says Buckingham. “The piece has been on display in a dusty corner for some years, and it’s been a real pleasure to bring it out, clean it up, and put it on display. He studied at RMIT during the late 1980s and early ‘90s, and during his practicing years made forged and welded steel sculptures ... as well as a range of abstract painted steel works”.

Interdisciplinary indigenous artist Reko Rennie often employs the traditional geometric patterning common to the Kamilaroi people of northern NSW in his work. Rennie’s 2013 exhibition King and Country was replete with the symbolism of stylised crowns to denote the position of Aboriginal people and their dominion over the land. Rennie appropriates the symbol of monarchy and flashes it around like a tag to emphasise the ‘sovereign status’ of his community. The neon work I Wear My Own Crown (2013) represents a defiant statement of self-determination, identity, ownership and belonging.

Augustine Dall’Ava’s sculptural series If Only Carl Knew (1989-2001) was named in reference to the severe, modular, earth-bound work of American minimalist sculptor Carl Andre. When Andre visited Australia in the 1970s, steel plates of 30.5 cm squared were supplied to him to cover floor surfaces during his joint exhibition with Robert Hunter at Bruce Pollard’s Pinacotheca Gallery. Many years hence, the plates were offered to Dall’Ava who decided to use them as the basis for his oppositional sculptural aesthetic. Andre’s works stressed the physicality of weighty matter, his inert floor sculptures submit meekly to gravity. Dall’Ava’s works grapple with the precarious and the irrational, chance associations of forms and materials that play on weight, balance and spatial zones. The surrealist ethos of Salvador Dalí and Giorgio de Chirico is evident in many of the compositions, which strive to unify opposing ideas of matter and spirit. If Only Carl Knew, No. 29 (1994) incorporates the geometric gridded base, a spherical cone, and the frail wooden ladders that serve as a link between the earthbound and celestial spheres.

Augustine Dall’Ava, If Only Carl Knew, No. 29 (1994), painted and natural wood, painted and natural stone, painted seed pods, granite, bronze, steel, linen thread, 100.5 x 117 x 35.5 cm.

Purchased through the RMIT Art Fund, 2010. Photo: Inga Walton.

Melburnin / Inga Walton

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Melburnin / Inga Walton

At the age of ninety-eight, the redoubtable Inge King, AM is presumably Australia’s most senior living artist whose public commissions, notably Forward Surge (1974-81) at the Arts Centre precinct, have contributed to her prominence. King’s long-overdue survey exhibition Constellation is currently on at the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia (until 31 August, 2014). The former Ingeborg Neufeld was born in Berlin and studied in London where she met visiting painter and printmaker Grahame King (1915-2008), another RMIT alumnus, at the Abbey Arts Centre. Having married the previous year, the couple arrived back in Australia in early 1951.

King studied metal-smithing at RMIT when she wanted to pursue jewellery making as a viable source of income while her children were small, and which she produced to a high standard until 1962. She was a founding member of the semi-professional Centre 5 group of seven sculptors, of whom Vincas Jomantas (1922-2001) and Lenton Parr (1924-2003) are also represented in the exhibition. Centre 5 formed in 1961, and its members exhibited together from 1963 to 1974, with the goal of fostering stronger links between abstract sculpture and architectural practice.

Two of King’s smaller works, Daruma (1978) and the later Bagatelle (1st version) (2004), are included, and show the progression of King’s aesthetic towards the monumental, and the potential of her works to enhance public spaces.

Ah Xian (born Liu Ji Xian) developed his China, China series (1998-2002) at the ancient capital of porcelain production, Jingdezhen. He used traditional porcelain designs based on Chinese scroll paintings, adapted from pattern books, and drawn from the rich symbolism and patterning found on plates and bowls from the Imperial courts of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. Many of the busts were cast from life, an arduous process involving multiple layers of plaster-soaked cloth over head, neck, and shoulders, the subject’s eyes and lips closed to protect against the plaster. The result is a passive, serene visage, particularly in China, China- Bust 78 (2002), where the soft celadon glaze is a perfect foil for the large lotus leaves and flowers adorning the surface.

Inge King, Bagatelle (1st version) (2004), welded bronze, 56 x 66 x 66 cm.

Purchased through the RMIT Art Fund, 2012. Photo: Margund Sallowsky Melburnin / Inga Walton

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Like his elder brother Ah Xian, Liu Xiao Xian became a member of the Chinese Diaspora in Australia, and sought asylum in 1990 after the Tiananmen Square uprisings of June, 1989. Liu scours antique stores and auction houses in search of inspirational objects which help him to offer insight, through his work, into the conflict between Eastern and Western cultures, and post-colonialist dialogue. His interest in some of the absurdities of Victorian-era cutlery, the multiplicity of their shapes and functions, inspired The Way We Eat (2009). Making cast porcelain forms of historic spoons, forks, knives, ladles, tongs, skewers and serving implements, Liu lines forty of them in a row on one side, as if poised for battle, contrasted with the efficiency of a single pair of chopsticks on the other.

Be sure to spend some time in the designated ‘blue room’ with the American composer and artist Bill Fontana’s trippy Kirribilli Wharf (1976), an eight channel sound installation lasting for a little under half an hour with a new lighting component designed by the gallery. This was the first multichannel ‘sound sculpture’ to be made in Australia, and was originally exhibited as an installation at the Sydney Opera House, then presented at RMIT in 1977, during Fontana’s time in Melbourne. The work represents a defining moment in Fontana’s career; the first time his conceptual analysis of a natural process resulted in a recording that was inherently musical. It marks the point at which he began to apply structural thinking to the recordable listening process.

As Fontana described it, “Kirribilli Wharf, like many other phenomena in the environment, is a natural sound sculpture in a state of automatic self-performance. An eight channel sound portrait was made of the complex sound world found within the large floating concrete and wooden wharf in Sydney Harbour. The most interesting sounds were the percussive compression waves spontaneously formed in the many small vertical blow holes made from steel pipes inserted at many points in the wharf”. The work acts as a real time ‘sonic map’ of the distinctive noises created by the wharf, using sound and space to convey form and express movement. You may leave feeling a bit dazed and trailed by seagulls ... kerplunk.

Audio visual stations provide two sources of commentary, the first from RMIT Senior Lecturer Simon Perry discussing some of his works including Public Purse (1994) in the Bourke Street Mall. The second is a documentary film by Tim Burstall entitled Sculpture Australia (1969), sourced from the National Film and Sound Archive. It features George Baldessin, Norma Redpath, Vincas Jomantas and Ron Robertson Swann, among others, and complements the exhibition with some footage of their fabricating processes.

Other artists included are Bruce Armstrong, Geoffrey Bartlett, Peter Blizzard (19472010), Robert Bridgewater, Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Jock Clutterbuck, Rosalie Gascoigne (1917-99), Don Gore, Victor Greenhalgh (1900-83), Anton Hart, Sam Jinks, Juz Kitson, Alexander Knox, Hilarie Mais, Baluka Maymuru, Galuma Maymuru, Clement Meadmore (1929-2005), Helen Mueller, Anthony Pryor (1951-91), Lisa Roet, Bruce Slatter, Jeffery Wilkinson (1921-97), David Wilson, Dan Wollmering and Klaus Zimmer (1928-2007).

• Revelations: Sculpture from the RMIT Art Collection, RMIT Gallery, 344 Swanston Street, Melbourne (VIC), until 12 July - rmit.edu.au/rmitgallery

Ah Xian, China, China- Bust 78 (2002), Porcelain with celadon glaze, 43 x 41 x 24 cm Purchased through the RMIT Art Fund, 2012. Photo: Nicole Goodwin Melburnin / Inga Walton

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There’s a bear in there ... over at the National Gallery of Victoria (International). In fact eight polar bears have been spotted roaming around the Federation Court atrium.

Italian artist Paola Pivi’s You Started it…I Finish it (until 31 August, 2014) follows on from her exhibition last year, OK, you are better than me, so what? at Galerie Perrotin, New York, of brightly coloured life-size bears covered in feathers. The NGV was keen to invite a leading Italian contemporary artist to exhibit whose work would complement the current Italian Masterpieces from Spain’s Royal Court, Museo del Prado, the eleventh installment of the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series.

Pivi’s interest in Ursus maritimus developed in 2005 while she was posing as a journalist in Alaska for the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, and decided to move there the following year. She had been toying with the idea of doing an artwork with taxidermy bears, a polar bear and a grizzly bear dancing together, but she was unable to source any carcasses. The decision to use urethane foam was a compromise measure to achieve the sculptural outcome Pivi wanted, and a Canadian taxidermist was brought in to help arrange the forms to reflect accurate postures. Other works like What Goes Round - Art Comes Round (2010), and subsequent photographic pieces like Did You Know I Am Single? (2010), I’m A Bear, So What? and All White Except One (both 2012), used some twenty-four (fake) bear pelts ranging from white to dark brown which (literally) carpeted the gallery floor and ceiling.

Certainly Pivi did not heed the injunction never to work with animals; in fact she has quite a track-record in the menagerie field. Untitled (Ostriches) (2003) saw a pair of the birds perched in a blue motor boat floating out at sea near the Sicilian island of Alicudi. Pivi was living there at the time, and did the same to a lone donkey with Untitled (Donkey) (2003). Untitled (2008) saw a Muskox standing atop a heaped island of coffee beans, while Fffffffffffffffffff (2006) covered a hapless crocodile in whipped cream. One Cup of Cappuccino, Then I Go (2007) an ‘installation’ at Kunsthalle Basel involved one live leopard, borrowed from a German animal trainer, which picked its way through 3,000 fake cups of coffee laid out on the floor. Adding to the confusion, the leopard’s ‘performance’ was not viewable by the public, and the evidence of its presence exists only in a series of photographs. For My Religion Is Kindness. Thank You, See You in the Future (2006) at Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan, Pivi filled an old warehouse with white animals, including horses, rabbits, llamas, geese and peacocks, sourced through a company that specialises in animals for cinema and advertising.

Pivi delights in using people, animals and material objects in unsettling, incongruous and unexpected situations and contexts. Her output is audacious, thought-provoking and lacking in ponderous subtext. “Like much of my art, they’re just visions that come into my head, that I then make real”, she remarks. “Visions are part of my process, and it is very simple, you know, because I think from instinct, from the very deep core of me, where it’s not even me any more ... I don’t have elaborate theories about my art, because I think it is the art that is the interesting thing, and to elaborate on it just doesn’t serve any purpose for me”.

• You Started it ... I Finish it. NGV (International), 180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne (VIC), until 31 August - ngv.vic.gov.au • Artist site - paolapivi.com

Paola Pivi, You Started it ... I Finish it (detail) 2014, 8 sculptures, urethane foam, plastic, turkey feathers, installed dimensions variable. Generously supported by the Loti & Victor Smorgon Fund. Photo: Inga Walton.

Melburnin / Inga Walton

stralian stories with with Klare Klare Lanson Lanson

Photoshop is my Friend

Chris Guest & Floating Horizon

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hen I don’t work from home I’m a commuter. I catch the train. It’s cheaper, less stressful than driving, and better for the environment. Today however, I missed the train and because I was so desperate not to be late, I drove the car.

On the way home, I felt sick with my choice ... the slow moving traffic jams, the bitumen fumes permeating my skin, the shuddering idle of the engine and the inertia of my body as I’m forced to follow the actions of the cars in front of me.

I am isolated in my heavy metal box on wheels and I’m so repelled that I find myself floating up into the traffic lights to watch the activity I see before me.

Slow moving cars as far as the eye can see, my highway horizon is anything but free. It’s this surreal detachment that is the entry point into Chris Guest’s new book Floating Horizon, a story that explores the contemporary human journey of environmental development, how we choose to live in the world and the possibility of an alternative way our landscape could be. He’s made the perfect choice to weave us a tale towards a more connected sensibility, through the enticing medium of the graphic novel.

Chris Guest worked on this book fulltime for eighteen months, over a fiveyear period; to create a nine-metre image that unfolds across 48 pages in a concertina format. It’s visually spectacular, and when it was launched last month at Castlemaine’s Lot 19 Art Space, I had the opportunity of seeing the work doubled in size and stretching around the walls of the gallery. Seeing the work on the gallery wall is interesting, my sightline is extended and its panoramic appeal allows the patterning and transitions of the overall design to take centre stage. But I love turning the pages of the book. The tactility of being a physical reader as opposed to the more voyeuristic view of art on a wall; it seems more enduring, more intimate. I connect and feel part of the journey. Either way it’s read, the design successfully encourages multiple viewing.

Stralian Stories / Klare Lanson

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Crafting a story such as this through the eyes of a trained architect boosts the experience. Chris Guest worked with the renowned Melbourne-based crew Six Degrees Architects, then created his business known as Small Architecture. He knows how to articulate space and design multi-living environments. There’s a relocation of perception at play in the book, a renovation of perspective.

It’s a fresh eye, a more accessible way of disseminating these ideas, most importantly, to our children.

Floating Horizon begins by dropping us into a fisheye lens where we see an intensely ominous cityscape, it’s a comic book style narrative thread and it’s moving back and forth. Simultaneously, we see the perspective from above and below, at a fixed moment in time. There’s also movement at play here; roads of cars twisting like a Möbius strip, shadow play and solo birds in flight, reminding us of movement in the natural world. Advertising is a pixelated wasteland. Signage is reproduced in duotone colour. Nature is fleeting. Then we begin, we fly above in aerial mode, see the urban sprawl and the rigid patterning of what we have created. It’s heavy.

Chris Guest, pic by Matt Wobbly

The illusions created using various perspectives are mind altering, clever forms of visual trickery shift our thinking, making us feel more present. The perpetual nature of the design curves like a sphere and we are placed at its centre. Whilst it commences with a sense of being disconnected from the land, it gradually moves to a point of reference where the reader actually becomes part of the landscape. Colour tells the story, as shadows move towards the evening sky. A flicker of recognition occurs, an understanding of how we’re located in the world and then just as suddenly the perspective changes, the lines blur and our position has changed.

I feel enveloped as I turn the pages, caught in the never-ending shift from day to night, circling the stars through various terrains, weather patterns and human Stralian Stories / Klare Lanson

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Floating Horizon launch at Lot 19

endeavours. There are four main landscape depictions; the city, the farmlands, the highlands and a reimagining of a place we could live. Each fold in the book becomes a departure point, the transition to another perspective and another articulation of landscape. The backgrounds for how we live our lives.

There’s no fear of technology here either, in fact it’s a healthy balance. With über sharp technical drafting pens, Chris draws by hand with Indian ink and then digitally colours using filters that replicate the Japanese woodblock print process.

I see a strange serendipity in the title too: floating horizon is the name of an algorithm, a step-by-step calculation for the visualisation of terrain, specifically the height and colour used in cartography and computer gaming. This is essentially what the author has done. The terrains are visualised, yet there is always the technological presence. Crop dusters circle high above the fractal patterning of sheep during feeding time. Then the rain comes, an amplification of weather and our constant attempts to control. It’s also worthy to note the way Chris Guest has used computer technology to firm up the colour palate and design, enhancing the hand drawn process of this visual narrative. Photoshop is his friend. It’s understated, a great balance with his choice of weapon - the mighty pen.

The simplest plot for this story is a line drawn from a city full of cars to a city with hardly any. It shows us that we’ve been engulfed by our own rapid urbanisation. At times, the destruction of our environment seems almost too unbearable to contemplate, too big to change. Yet this is the very reason why we must. We’re destroying our planet. This is a truth now. Chris Guest agrees and chooses to practice through localised action - through his lifestyle choices, his home, his business, his creative practice, crowd funding and independently publishing this project. In the last stage of the book, he holds up a mirror and draws us an inspirational vision of what our world could be.

Stralian Stories / Klare Lanson

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As the sun rises over the city, we see change. The wind farms, the community gardens, more people at play. We’re eating off the land and the birds have come back. The travel is light - hot air balloons and blimp activity. It’s a thoughtprovoking idea that Chris Guest highlights throughout the tail end of the book – our use of air travel. He’s inspired by books such as Lightness by Adriaan Beukers (who writes about reducing our energy consumption through light construction materials) and the blimp hybrids currently in development by Alan Mulally and the French aerospace firm Thales Alenia. What if air travel was the norm, what if someone in our history, some stupidly rich genius could have foreseen the true benefits of the airship development we had at the turn of the 20th Century? Floating Horizon echoes these questions and then comes full circle. It brings us back to the city and it’s a very different place. It’s both a message to the stars and a message from the stars. We shoot the moon, we look to the stars for guidance and instead what we see is Earth looking back at us.

Chris Guest shows us it’s not all doom and gloom, there is hope in changing the way we co-exist with environment and this other habitat is happening slowly; in little clusters of community, at a deep and valuable local level.

Floating Horizon has reminded me why I choose to live in Regional Australia and as the cityscape changes over time, it will become a place I will much happily commute to.

Floating Horizon is a project crowd funded through Pozible, and is available for purchase independently via Chris Guest and his website - chrisguest.net

Klare Lanson is a writer, poet, performance maker, sound artist, data consultant and currently presents Turn Left at the Baco every Saturday night on Castlemaine based community radio MAINfm. She is currently undertaking a Seedpod residency through Punctum Inc called Commute.

PART FOUR: Wedding Preparations

words & pics by Ben Laycock

After a breathless, whirlwind tour of India we are back where we started, a little bit wiser and a lot more bemused. You may recall that Versai is a little village of no more than 60,000 occupants (not counting the monkeys), on the outskirts of Mumbai, which in turn is a rather large village with a shifting population that is nigh on impossible to count due to the fact they won’t stay still long enough, and even if they did by the time you had finished counting, countless numbers would have died and many more been born.

Distant relations are arriving from all points of the compass. Some work on construction sites in Dubai, others on cruise ships in the Caribbean. A few hail from a great empty land to the south (that’s us). The ceremony is a week away but here at the bride’s house the place is a hive of activity; Gulab Jamun (Indian Donuts) are mixed in a tub the size of a toddler’s pool. A phalanx of aunties is beheading half of the village chooks. Everyone is running hither and thither in a state of agitation and anticipation.

Into this mayhem is inserted The Watermelon Seller, just setting off on his daily rounds like his father before him. His arrival sets off a series of discussions that give me the briefest glimpse into an otherwise unfathomable way of doing things here on the subcontinent.

The matriarch of the family goes out to the street and offers him a good price for his delicious watermelons. A heated family debate ensues, the jist being that the price is too high. The patriarch of the family goes out and offers him a rather low price for his delicious watermelons. Another heated debate ensues involving much righteous indignation about cheating the poor fellow. So, Number 1 Son marches out and offers him a reasonable price for his delicious watermelons.

The Watermelon Seller graciously accepts the reasonable offer, so Son Number One says, “We will buy all of them!”

“What, the whole barrow load? Oh no, you can’t do that. What will I do for the rest of the day?”

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The happy and industrious preparers scoff their watermelon slices with gusto and return to their important tasks. We are soon interrupted by an archaic wedding ritual passed down from generation to generation since time immemorial.

The groom arrives unannounced with much fanfare and hoopla and clashing of cymbals et cetera, et cetera. He is immediately set upon by all and sundry with mock slurs and slander concerning his manhood, his trustworthiness, and his lack of pecuniary liquidity, accompanied by much jocular hilarity. The groom returns to his abode with his tail between his legs.

No sooner have we dealt with that charade than the bride-to-be traipses off to his place with the entire entourage in tow. According to ancient ritual, the bride must ask the family of the groom for a jug of the purest water (a rare commodity around these parts) that she may cleanse her body of whatever sins she has accumulated in her short and innocent life.

For no good reason, this escapade is performed in the middle of the night, with much banging of drums and setting off of firecrackers and tributes to all the little shrines along the way. With all the racket I am a wee bit worried about the neighbors complaining to the E.P.A., but on the contrary, they all come out on their balconies and wave at us with grins from ear to ear. Your average Indian does love a good wedding.

The purpose of life for every Indian, (or nearly every Indian) is to raise as many children as is humanly possible, then to marry those children off to a good family, ideally one slightly higher up the caste ladder than your own, with slightly lighter skin. When your offspring begin to raise as many offspring of their own as humanly possible, then you know that your allotted task in life is complete and you can sit back and watch the cycle of life roll on; relentlessly! I do believe this is the fundamental reason why India is the most populated place on earth.

But to quote Paul McCartney; ‘the times they are a changin’. This will be a thoroughly modern, middle class wedding – no dowries, please! The young couple found each other on the Internet without any help from parents or matchmakers. She was in Melbourne and he was in Darwin, of all places, and they discovered they were both from the same village. Kismet!

OPf course, none of that has prevented the families from setting out to create the most extravagant wedding in all of India.

NEXT EPISODE: Not a Monsoon Wedding. binsblog.wordpress.com

Greetings From Hindustan / Ben Laycock

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