Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
BOAT and BIRD – Craig R Cole + Alister Karl : MADE Creative Space
Boat and Bird invite
A tale of two types of gallery exhibition
The gallery, the artist, the exhibition and the audience have been around for a couple of hundred years where a common expectation is that the exhibition operates as a vehicle for the selling of art. There is a commercial reality that ‘selling’ art funds the process of art-making, on the part of the artist – and staying in business and generating income through commission, for the gallerist. There has always been an anathema or disinterest in the making of art as commodity against the creative free place that artists see themselves in a community.
In the 1960s, artists rebelled against the commercial gallery structure by making art in the landscape (land artists like Robert Smithson) or making ephemeral conceptual works (Fluxus), which were not the saleable commodity like the painting in the frame. Later, performance art and video artists created art that was often unpalatable to the art purchasing (investor) clientele by the nature of both the content and the medium itself. Artists want to just do their own thing but can art exist outside the mercantile frame? And were does fit within the contemporary artists’ community?
An exhibition by Craig R. Cole and Alister Karl in Toowoomba’s MADE creative space may serve to provide some insights. Entitled Boat and Bird the exhibition is a collaboration project by the two artists that features subject content as defined by the title – boats and birds. The two artists have a creative friendship that goes back over 14 years and for much of this time they claim the subjects of boat and birds have permeated their relationship.
The MADE space is multi-roomed, with wooden floor and black and white walls and the two artists have drawn, affixed and assembled found and collected objects. There is no catalogue, no erudite didactic panels, no pretence (or perhaps – all pretence) and no ‘in your face’ message the viewer to be burdened by. Drawings are fixed to the wall, and in some cases, they have been allowed to leap from the paper onto and into the gallery wall itself. A collection of delicate feathers appears to have settled on one part of the gallery wall where its embryonic bird shape morphs into a boat sail. In a mini installation space around 20-feathered shuttlecocks sail through the air before a framed print of the game being played.
Some collaborative boat works utilise nautical themed things rescued from junk shops and car boot sales. In the context of gallery these objects take on new meanings by the interaction of the viewer. Juxtaposed in the gallery space are boat models, a photo jig-saw, consisting of a harbour full of boats, is presented as a DIY for viewers to attempt to assemble, and a set of coded nautical message flags is presented for deciphering.
In one corner a collaborative piece consisting of things like ship models a bird covered cuckoo clock, a metre or two of fishing net, steel mesh, a pair of crutches and ancient surveyors strings and ropes. The collaged objects seemed sometimes bird-like and yet at other times maybe even boatish.
In viewing the works one may take clues and cues from the art works and then connect them with personal lived experience. Sometimes there is a moment of instant delight at discovering a hidden joke or glib message. Other times there is and enjoyment of the beauty of the simple line and outline or the whimsy of the extension of the artwork into the space.
The exhibition Boat and Bird presents art at its best – free, fresh and fun with enough take away visual memories to stir further thought and reflection. Here perhaps is the ‘other’ form of the exhibition, the hors commerce one. Perhaps this form is where the true he(art) is.
WORDS+PHOTOs: Doug
Is it a boat? or Is it a bird? A collaborative installation by Cole + Karl
Birds drawing: Cole + Karl
Feathers morphing into a sail: Cole + Karl
"Float on": Cole + Karl
Boat harbor jig-saw: Cole + Karl
Birds escape from page
- Alister Karl @ opening of Boat and Bird
Craig explains the viewing alignment of boat and painting
Craig's photo of boat and painting
Craig R Cole and the author Doug R Spowart
11 November: Jan and Mark’s exhibition opening
A wildly exciting exhibition was opened last night featuring the first art photography exhibition by AIPP members Jan Ramsay and Mark Schoeman. The show is presented on the premises of Flute Fine Foods @ 380 Cavendish Road Coorparoo in Brisbane.
Jan + Mark @ the opening of their show
In the opening address I made the following comments:
Jan and Mark, as professional photographers and AIPP members, have stumbled upon the ultimate promotional activity in the the form of the art photography exhibition. They have created a convivial environment within the Flute Gallery, they have presented their photographic interests as fine art images of high key flowers (Jan) and female nudes (Mark), they have assembled an eclectic bunch of people and lubricated the conversation with fine wines and good food. Tonight friendships will be made or re-affirmed – participants will propose, make love and feel the joy of living. They will then want their engagements to be photographed, weddings recorded, babies and kids to be documented … The cycle goes on and on.
This evening we are all part of that strategy – So look at the art, be inspired. Consider your options for the future need for a photographer – Or – even just enjoy the moment, the present company and the art works presented here that come from the creative urges of these two remarkable people!
Mark’s high key nude + Jan’s high key flower transfer
Congratulations Jan and Mark.
Words+portrait photo: Doug Spowart
July 24 Allan Bruce Floor Talk
Allan Bruce talks about his exhibition Panoramic Drawings at Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery
Invitation: Panoramic Drawings
Allan Bruce floor talk in the exhibition space
Walking into Gallery 1 at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery, one expects to see large wall works to fill this large space – Allan Bruce’s impressive black and white occidental inspired works are no exception.
In the exhibition, Panoramic Drawings, Bruce presents urban and natural landscapes and room interiors as seamlessly blended composite images where each work: “while recognizable, tends to be an evocation rather than an absolutely literal statement of place”[1]. As with oriental scrolls these works allow the viewer a multi-perspective journey through the spaces that have captured Bruce’s attention and inspiration.
Bruce utilizes ‘in situ’ documentation (photos, video and sketches) and memory to reconfigure the essentials of being in each place. The viewer of this work maybe drawn to the detail and textures of the subject captured within the brushwork of the shadows but the absence of detail in the highlights energizes the work and provides a space for the imagination.
1. From the room sheet for the exhibition
Words: Victoria Cooper
Panoramic Drawings is on at Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery from June 30 to August 7.
Portrait of Allan Bruce with work by Victoria Cooper
For more info on Allan Bruce see:
July 16, 2011 QCP Opening
We attended the opening of the latest QCP show featuring major works by Carolyn Lewens, Peter Charuk, Peter Annand, Vivian McLatchie and the Voicing Concerns group. It’s a diverse show with some remarkable works.
SEE the YouTube Video review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYwXDoYj3Ho
Carolyn Lewens' cyanotype images and objects
Peter Charuk's 'glacies lux'
June 24 – Visiting the 2011 OLIVE COTTON
Tamara Dean's First Prize Image "Damien Skipper"
The Tweed River Art Gallery @ Murwillumbah is once again hosting the Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture – The exhibition will be on show until July 31, 2011.
This year the Judge was Naomi Cass from CCP in Melbourne and as usual the selected works present a comprehensive review of contemporary Australian photo portraiture from the best photographers in the country as well as the latest crop of emerging image-makers. The portrait remains one of the most fascinating genres of photography – there is something about the face that connects with the viewer.
Some observations
In this year’s Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture there was something for everyone. This exhibition always provides a broad overview of contemporary photographic practice as 2D wall presented images.
The process and media by which the works were made were described by didactic panels placed around the gallery —everything from cyanotypes to gliclee printing and from Type C to inkjet. Those looking for historical processes found large format (whole plate?) ambrotypes paying tribute to the soft romantic feel of 19th century photography. Sizes of the works ranged from the larger than life images of the famous and infamous to the small personal and the everyday through which we can all find some empathy and connection.
In this mix there seemed to be a trend towards the selection of the reinvented holiday or family album snapshot—mostly in black and white. Some of these images showed the poser/s as acting out or ‘hamming up’ personal moments which when placed on the gallery walls transformed these images into arcane representations of everyday life. Others, whether staged or seen images, were illustrations of current political and cultural issues reframed by utilizing the informality and familiarity of the snap shot and then presented as austere gallery-crafted images for the consideration of thoughtful viewers.
For me, the most successful portraits are the ones that draw upon a deep understanding of photographic quality (tone, colour, detail, time etc.) and aesthetics. Alongside this there needs to be a flexible and experimental approach to style embedded in the psyche of the photographer that is combined with an empathy and curiosity for the subject. For me the portrait is developed through time spent by the photographer in collaboration with the subject and created in a moment of synergy and intensity that distils the portrait concept. The strength, depth and intensity of this collaboration, if handled skilfully, can visually transfer an afterimage onto the viewer’s imagination and memory that transcends the gallery experience. For me all of these decisive factors came together in not only the winning image of Tamara Dean, Damien Skipper, but they were also very strong in Russell Shakespeare’s, Michael Zavros and Samantha Everton’s, Illusion.
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Victoria Cooper 25 June 2011
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TO ACCESS a list of the finalists and the winners visit:
http://www.tweed.nsw.gov.au/ArtGallery/ArtGalleryOliveCotton2011Exhibition.aspx
DOWNLOAD a copy of the catalogue for the 2011 Award here
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