andy best
Given the political upheavals of the last few years – the destruction of long standing political orthodoxies, of illusions of safety, and market collapses – Lock’s black works could suggest a simple act of resistance and negation. However, Lock’s black paintings frequently include touches of glitter and other subtle, iridescent effects. The canvases made during his New York period used a unique sequinned material, which allowed viewers to wipe their hands over and leave traces on their surface. American artist Quentin Morris, working during the US Civil Rights era, had shown that simply reaffirming complexity within blackness is an inherently political act – individual biography and difference being necessarily absent from race-based world-views. In an Australian context, this idea is perhaps particularly resonant – as a country made up of over 500 different Indigenous clan groups and cultures, all often signified simply as ‘black’. In Lock’s work, black is particularly connected to the aesthetics associated with punk, metal and noise bands – all of which were influences on late twentieth-century Australian surfing fashion. Although punk rejected much of mainstream culture, its black too was never inherently nihilist, or reductive. Sharing venues with Jamaican ska and dub reggae acts in London, the culture surrounding acts like The Clash featured relatively inclusive and progressive tendencies for the period. This openness extended to issues of gender and sexuality, particularly on the US West Coast – where many prominent gay musicians were pivotal in punk’s early development.6 This eventually led to the emergence of Queercore, based around acts like The Need, The Third Sex, Go! and Los Crudos. Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins has identified Punk’s sense of diversity as central to its early development, and a sense of courage and dynamism. Homocore culture was also closely connected to the beginning of the Riot Grrrl scene, through connected zines, bands and record labels like Outpunk. Fluidity, diversity and playfulness are recurrent elements in Lock’s work, communicated with a sense of muscular strength. Glitter was the weapon of choice kicked by Michael Jackson in the classic Sega game ‘Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker’, and glitter bombing is a form of protest often used against politicians who oppose same-sex marriage. It is also used for personal transformation; in addition to external makeup, it is possible today to order glitter pills online – small capsules of plastic and brass – to make human excrement shimmer (or more efficaciously, to facilitate the tracking of animals by biologists). It has been said that Australia’s national identity is portrayed with such strident machismo that it has created an inevitable and powerful alternative narrative: the desert of Mad Max must necessarily also be home to The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Closer readings reveal that this is not merely a reactive phenomenon – that sexual, racial and gender difference have always been important influences within our countercultures. Likewise, ambiguity, fluidity and diversity have always been key aspects of Lock’s practice.
38
BROADSHEET JOURNAL 46.2
The absence of colour in Lock’s practice might also be seen as a kind of utility. Stripped of any extraneous features, black in music, fashion and art means time is available to the artist for more focused action or, in Lock’s case, continual artistic production. This always-in-motion ethos is most apparent in his fabric and steel sculptures. Both in their production and in the physical movement required to view them, the body is again present in these works (the combined bodies of several people were required to produce the sculptural pieces). These resin works allow fabric to travel throughout three-dimensional space, and we are asked to imagine the possibility of change and fluidity, even within otherwise rigid, declarative objects. Ad Reinhardt once referred to his black paintings as ‘a free, unmanipulated, unmanipulatable, useless, unmarketable, irreducible, unphotographable, unreproducible, inexplicable icons’. They stood in contrast to the colourful consumer goods that were the dominant visual experience of mid twentieth-century America.’7 Pushing against the grid, Lock’s works function more like a dream or state of becoming than the perfected raised consciousness of abstract expressionism. Our own experience of black is perhaps more complex than ever before. Anish Kapoor recently purchased the sole rights to the world’s blackest pigment – Vantablack – a colour that absorbs 99.96 per cent of light. However, BLACKFLAG showed that we should not fear that blackness might ever become fully purchased by commerce. Black’s intensity has always come from negation, from those with whom the times have caught up, and whose blackness includes the power of its associations with authentic and complex cultures. This is an expanded essay from the exhibition catalogue for Christian Lock’s BLACKFLAG at ACE Open 16 March - 22 April 2017. Endnotes 1. Ben Eltham, ‘Dissent and Dissensus: Political Art in the Time of Trump’. Broadsheet Journal, 46.1, 2017: 7-10. 2. http://theconversation.com/election-factcheck-did-the-coalition-cut-105-millionfrom-australia-council-funding-59531 3. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/may/19/the70-drop-australia- council-grants-artists-funding-cuts 4. These connections are not merely fictional. Writers have also long been drawn to surfing in real life – early surfers include Agatha Christie, Jack London and Mark Twain. Two surfboards left behind during the filming of Apocalypse Now gave birth to the Filipino surfing community. 5. Wendy Walker, catalogue essay for ‘Christian Lock’ at Greenaway Art Gallery, 2007. 6. This did not last. Later co-opted by neo-Nazis, punk for a while contained hard to differentiate oppositional left and right wing groups. So subtle were their codes that, at times, groups fought amongst themselves, suspecting other members of belonging to their hated opposition. 7. R. Magill, Sincerity: How a moral ideal born five hundred years ago inspired religious wars, modern art, hipster chic, and the curious notion that we all have something to say (no matter how dull), W.W. Norton & Company, 2012.