July/August 08
An Ever Expanding Universe (WA) > WA
Because of its title, my initial reaction to this exhibition was one of curiosity. Read More
Art Deco 1910 - 1939 (VIC) > VIC
With its Bakelite radio, Tamara De Lempicka painting and luxurious dressing table complete with intricate ivory inlays, the opening room of the National Gallery of Victoria’s Art Deco show says it all. Read More
Melbourne Art Fair (VIC) > VIC
With 80 commercial galleries, 10 project spaces, two specially commissioned installations and anticipated sales at the $10.5 million mark, the Melbourne Art Fair isn’t the sort of place to play things down. Read More
Puberty Blues
To stay sane in this world it is sometimes necessary to step back and laugh at the sheer nonsense that follows in the wake of a moral scandal. Read More
Robert Jenyns (NSW) > NSW
Pop psychologists and armchair analysts are masters of the succinct and the obvious. Read More
The enchanted forest: new gothic storytellers (VIC) > VIC
Curiouser and curiouser... a new approach to gothic. Read More
Turn, Turn, Turn: the past talks to the present (NSW) > NSW
Nick Waterlow is the only person to have curated more than one Biennale of Sydney. Read More
VIVID National Photographic Festival (ACT) > ACT
Australian photography festivals are seemingly multiplying at a rapid pace, with VIVID being the latest member to join the growing team. Read More
Primavera 07
By Tracey Clement
Every year, as winter draws to an official end, the Museum of Contemporary Art celebrates with the exhibition Primavera, made possible by the generous bequest of Ted and Cynthia Jackson in memory of their daughter Belinda.
Primavera of course means spring, and as a celebration of emerging talent, artistic growth and youthful potential, it is aptly named. Primavera 07 showcases the work of nine Australian artists who are 35 years old, or younger, but this year's curator Christine Morrow is keen to point out that just because the artists and artworks in the exhibition are fresh, it doesn't mean they are frivolous.
Morrow firmly believes that, "young doesn't have to mean shallow or facile engagement with immature themes." As a guiding principle for the show, she deliberately sought out works, "with mature themes that belie the youth of the artists." Ironically, Morrow found that many of the works she identified actually dealt with childhood, but, "not in a puerile or juvenile way. these are really layered and sophisticated works."
Martin Smith, After finishing High School, Lambda Print, 110 x 110 cm. Courtesy and (c) of the artist. Photo: Martin Smith
Martin Smith's work (above) deals most clearly with being young, or more specifically with those fraught coming of age years. Smith slices personal stories or song lyrics into found photographs of banal scenes, letting the letters fall out and pile up on the floor. His jumbled piles of mixed up words conjure up the confusion and angst of those tricky teen years when the chorus of a stranger's song seems written just for you.
Several of the other Primavera 07 artists deal with childhood memories more tangentially though deliberately teasing out a sense of nostalgia for the past.
Ceramicist Honor Freeman pays tribute to 1970s domesticity with her perfect porcelain replicas of Tupperware containers in pretty pastel shades or decorated with kitsch floral decals.
Sculptor Katie Moore also channels seventies interior chic in her ambiguous forms covered in wood grain contact paper. According to Morrow, Moore views her material of choice not as fake wood, but as real contact; she celebrates the beauty of the faux in its own terms. Nevertheless, there is something provisional about her work.
Moore's use of a DIY aesthetic, everyday materials and crafty hand-made techniques reverberates throughout the exhibition.
Patrick Doherty, Good Dad (Don't Leave) 2007 [detail, work in progress], oil, spray paint and acrylic on canvas, 320 x 210 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Goddard de Fiddes Gallery, Perth. Photo: Tony Nathan(c) the artist
Morrow is keen to point out that Primavera is not an overtly political show, "These artists are not dealing with universal themes; their works are very personal, they are contingent, they are about the here and now, the domestic and so on." However, she is willing to admit that the fact that these young artists have chosen to avoid the universal in favour of a focus on highly personal stories, nostalgia and memory does in its own way reflect contemporary Australian society and our reaction to current affairs.
As she says, "Global politics is certainly saying that things we thought were universal (like knowing instinctively that torture in not OK) are all open to re-negotiation. Maybe the universal is not convincing to people; it's hard to attach to timeless values when ethical and moral values are shown to be quite shifting." For Morrow, this feeling of uncertainty, of slippery, unclear boundaries is another subconscious theme of the show.
For her, "Primavera 07 engages with ideasof amorphousness, collapse, rupture and spillage." Morrow didn't go looking for works with this theme in mind, but she was drawn to ones that have ambiguity and depth. As she explains, many of the works she selected, "didn't reveal all their meanings straight away."
In fact Morrow acknowledges that some of the works in Primavera can be challenging and, "quite challenging artworks really hover between aesthetic pleasure and being quite difficult to look at." As an example, Morrow cites Justine Khamara's collages (below) in which mask like faces are assembled from multiple photographic images with too much detail; skin and hair textures are patched together in a kind of 3D jigsaw.
Khamara's constructions resemble Frankenstein style monsters, literally cut and pasted. Morrow describes viewing them as a mixed experience, "When you see them from a distance they look like seamless book illustrations. When you get up close they almost fall apart in front of you.
They are actually hard to look at." For Christine Morrow, it was important that, "the exhibition doesn't privilege the physical over the intellectual. What you see in front of you are lumps of matter.they are emerging ideas, but ideas that take material form."
And while not all of the artworks in Primavera 07 are hard work, they will exercise your mind if you are up for the challenge.
Justine Khamara, double V 2005 (detail), photographic prints, adhesive, 30cm x 15cm. Courtesy and � the artist. Photo: Justine Khamara
