Arts
AN INFLUX OF TALENT FOR ST.ART THIS YEAR’S ST.ART STREET ART FESTIVAL INCORPORATES AEROSOL DEMONSTRATIONS, STENCIL ART, REVERSE GRAFFITI, GUERILLA KNITTING AND THE inFLUX EXHIBITION, SHOWCASING STREET ARTISTS AT THE TOP OF THEIR GAME. Since 2008, Clarence City Council’s ST.ART Festival has been an annual celebration of aerosol and stencil art in the local community. The festival is one of the positive outcomes of Clarence City Council’s Graffiti Reduction Program, with the aim to teach young people the differences between art and vandalism. This year the festival has been expanded to include a range of new activities including reverse graffiti, guerrilla knitting and a new competition, the Vectorizer Prize for digital artwork, with winner’s works enlarged to billboard size and displayed on the side of Eastlands. A new addition this year, the inFLUX exhibiton features demonstrations from six established and emerging street artists to create large scale works on-site in the lead-up to the festival in the Rosny Barn. Working in a variety of techniques, including paste-ups, aerosol, drawing and collage, they demonstrate the breadth of street art activities and the possibilities for this type of artistry as a professional pathway. ST.ART artists for inFLUX: Jamin is a Hobart based artist who mixes up street painting and gallery art. He is most well known for his politically-charged-
stencil-pop-pastiche, which often features the luminary figures of politics, pop, state and terror. Jamin’s street paintings depict masked faces in a festive blend of bold lines and bright colours, with the odd photorealist element thrown in, resulting in cheerfully sinister celebrations of the other side. Recently, Jamin was the recipient of the Rosamond McCulloch Studio Residency in Paris, 2011, and a finalist in the 2012 Glover Prize with his work Monalalia.www. jamin.com.au Tom O’Hern is a Hobart-based artist who blends elements drawing, sculpture, installation, animation and mural work exploring issues around masculinity and suburbia. A veteran of solo and group exhibitions, O’Hern was included in Sydney’s Primavera 2011: young Australian artists festival. http://oldtombone.blogspot.com.au Hiiragi is the mysterious plush robot army created by Tasmanian-based artist Holly Farley, who keeps busy creating ominous but adorable plush robots, laser-etched brooches, felted furnishings, sculptural installations and prints. www.hiiragi.com.au Jacob Leary is a Hobart-based artist who incorporates painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking and video. Previously a student of Architecture, his practice often makes reference to technology and knowledge,
BEAUTIFUL LINES AND MELANCHOLY BUILDINGS A SURVEY OF NEARLY A DECADE’S WORTH OF WORK FROM ONE OF THE MOST RESPECTED CONCEPTUAL ARTISTS IN AUSTRALIA? GOODNESS ME, YES!
One of Jamin's Mask paintings on a street in Maraichers, Paris, in 2011. Photo courtesy of the artist, copyright © Jamin, 2012.
progress and catastrophe and the place of humanity amongst it all. www.despardgallery.com.au/artists/leary12/1.html Aedan Howlett is a West Australian artist and curator based in Tasmania for whom paint, wood, steel, refuse, walls and more are fair game. Howlett partnered with local artist collective Alphabetrix to host freefor-all public art events Alley Way Show in a laneway behind Jimmy’s Skate and Street and Next Show in the Melville Street car park shed. www.alphabetrix.com.au/artists/ aedanhowlett Phibs is a Melbourne-based aerosol artist who has a distinct tribal totem style who has been commissioned for large-scale murals across Melbourne and Sydney, Berlin and New York, and was featured in the film RASH. Phibs returns to ST.ART as this year
Greer Honeywill comes with a track record that can only be described as daunting: exhibitions, prizes, work in significant collections in Australia and overseas – Honeywill is a practised artist well advanced in her career, in charge and smart. This very worthwhile exhibition, to begin with, is a gateway drug. If you don’t know where to start with Australian art right now, or you have a friend who doesn’t, get them or yourself to this show. It’s beautiful to look at. In fact, it’s totally stunning at points. Whilst it’s impossible to please all the folk all the time, what you have here is work that is accessible to many, crafted and pleasing to the eye from the get go. The clean lines and beauty of wood will draw anyone in, but there’s much more going on that just a nice aesthetic. While I can have problems with slick, sterile, commercial art, and these works in wood are very close to being that which I despise but the thing is – they aren’t. There’s a conceptual rigour and a very strong intellectual aesthetic that makes the way everything here commands space invigorating - there’s a real reason for the precise, polished wood look that dominates the work here. There’s the influence of architecture and the idea of form and function – as well as being beautiful it must also work – but the work here is the rigour; Honeywill is making work that relies on precision and finesse to create a story about domestic spaces, how they are lived and how they shape their inhabitants. There’s much to wonder about, but it’s pretty easy just to get caught by some very well
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exhibiting artist and workshop curator. www.phibs.com REBECCA FITZGIBBON
ST.ART 2012 happens at Rosny Barn (next to Eastlands) on Saturday August 25 from 1-5pm. The inFLUX artists will be working live from Tuesday August 21 to Friday August 24 between 11am and 4pm. The exhibition opens on Friday August 24 at 5.30pm and continues until Friday August 31. www.ccc.tas.gov.au/start
made work that use detail in the manner of a jeweller: the attention is pretty amazing. It’s hard not be impressed, and while this sort of work isn’t what I usually recommend, this is worth seeing because it’s just lovely. Everything is well lit, the craft is enchanting and the bare exposed wood and the found children’s play things exude a lovely pathos, filled with memory for anyone. Of special note is a clever sound work, Untitled (Colours of the Kitchen Cabinet) and the rather lovely Elysium, the most breathtaking work in the show. A simple work – it’s a sort of doll house, almost, the exudes light through hundreds of holes of varied size - it almost seems like a controlled explosion, as if something is about to tear the fabric of ordinary life asunder. IN-Grained is a smart show that will draw you in with it’s simple clarity and keep you interested as it unfolds. It’s beautifully presented as well, using the Carnegie space extremely well. Beautiful surprising and clever.
ANDREW HARPER
Greer Honeywill’s new exhibition IN-Grained: Works in Wood (Exposed and Disguised) 2003 – 2012 continues at Carnegie Gallery until August 13. www.greerhoneywill.com