Welcome to March newsletter, whether it is global warming tectonic plates shifting or just a quirk of climate, it has been one hell of a hot March down under. The art has also provided fair doses of hot air to the environment this month including the annual parade of the over-blown and over-inflated otherwise known as Archibald & co. "Luckily" Sydney Review Panel is developing as a very effective art critical air conditioning device to keep our temperature at a liveable 36.6 degrees despite the occasional flared temper and controversy. Those of you who attended the March panel, can confirm that art criticism is alive and well in Sydney and that contemporary art can thrive without greed, celebrity chasing and intellectual navel gazing and this is why we are here. For those of you who were not, you can join us on 27 April at Gallery4a and for prefer the comfort of their computer facing viewing platform, you can read on, so without further ado...
Collector’s Footnotes On being born yesterday or knowing the message in the medium… more below
Hunters & Collectors choice morsels and feasts …more below
Marketplace
International
The international auctions and fairs' results continue to support the return to confidence in the art market. The highlights were provided by the Sotheby's record making sale in the Netherlands of the British American Tobacco collection. The sale of 161 lots made 13.6 million euros ($18.5 million) doubling presale upper estimate. The top price was 1.1 million euros paid for Martin Kippenberger's 1996 canvas "Dinosaurierei".
Later in the month, Art Dubaialso reached new highs in sales drawing 18,000 visitors and exhibitors from more than 30 countries. With the emerging art from the non-European regions dominating (Middle East, India, South-East Asia, Africa) and attracting a lot of support – an interesting phenomenon to observe.
The strength of that section of the market was confirmed by the results of the Asia Week art auctions in New York, which achieved records for works ranging from contemporary emerging art from India to classical Chinese painting like 1692 painting by Bada Shanren Two Mynas on a Rock sold for $US2.994 million at Sotheby's on an estimate of $600,000. Sotheby's totalled $9.6 million in the first morning session of its two-day Asian art sale, exceeding by nearly two million dollars the pre-sale high estimates.
Christie's also achieved excellent results in the session with modern and contemporary south Asian art and classical Indian, South-East Asian and Chinese works. The first day made 15 million dollars, compared to 9.7 million dollars in last September's modern and classical south Asian sales. Highlights included a million dollars for the geometric-patterned "Gestation," a large acrylic painting from 1989 by Indian artist Syed Haider Raza that had been estimated to sell for 600,000-800,000 dollars.
Domestic
In Australia the auction year got off to a newsworthy start with the record-breaking sale of one of Sidney Nolan's Ned Kelly series paintings First-Class Marksman at the Menzie's Australian & International Fine Art Auction in Sydney on the 24th of March. The 1946 painting sold for $5.4 million, beating the previous record held by Brett Whiteley's The Olgas for Ernest Giles, which in 2007 sold for $3.48 million.
Other offerings in the 217 lots sale, included John Brack's Adagio, John Perceval's Scudding Swans and Brett Whiteley's View from the Sitting Room Window, Lavender Bay.
Two steps forwards one step back continues to plague the progress of Deutscher and Hackett in the market. It's March auction of Important Aboriginal and Oceanic Art in Melbourne Deutscher delivered a rather patchy 59% clearance rate with sale of 164 out of 276 Aboriginal artworks for sale and delivering a total of $1.57 million c.f. the anticipated $2.175 million to $3.102 million by the house.
While Paddy Bedford continues to be the undeniable blue chip element in any Aboriginal art sale, his Joowarringayin - Devil Dreaming, sold for $156,000 above high estimate of $100,000, so of the successes for D&H came from the contemporary and lower-price ticket items such as All the Jila by David Walbidi, which sold at $16,000 - $4000 more than its high estimate and enabled buyers to jump the queue on the wait for the popular artists work at his dealer, Short Street Gallery in Broome.
Showtime
Out & About
Sydney
Public Affairs:
AGNSW delivered a more than unusual measure of disappointments in March. Wilderness currently playing at the upstairs at the Rudy Komon gallery promises to brings together 14 of Australia's best contemporary painters to show how nature and landscape continue to preoccupy the imagination of contemporary painters. What it does deliver is predictable fare from Australia's more fashionable and commercial artists (to wit Del Kathryn Barton, Daniel Boyd, Tony Clark, Louise Hearman, Mary Scott, Julie Fragar, Fiona Lowry and Michael Zavros) rather than the "best" and shows their relationship with nature to be somewhere south of amorphous, conservative, banal and uninspired. Admitted, with a title like "Wilderness" we had a mild and irrational expectation of seeing a measure of passionate lack of restraint and flights of fancy not only in the work but also in the curatorial approach. What we found was a pedestrian and didactic approach, subservient to an almost 19th century model of illustrative landscapery. None of the works in the show were new or fresh – part of existing and well exposed bodies of works by the artists in the show, none of which were saying new individually or concert through curatorial vision.
The gallery scene was not a garden of earthly delights in March either and made us lament the fact that the organisers of the Art Month picked this March in Sydney to shine the light on contemporary art.
We will probably become personae non grata on account of the following but we only saw two shows (count them 1, 2) which deserved any attention at all. They were Justene Williams fabulous Aeroplane Humping Machine at Peloton and the fifth anniversary group show at Sydney Non Objective. William's show are always as surprise to the senses – one is captured instantly by the relentless energy of the experience which is uniquely communicated by these performances captured by video and delivered uniquely in and for that format. And it is this enthusiastic engagement, which deftly and just when you least expect it, delivers the multiplicity of William's messages, concepts and ideas which spin from the personal, to absurdities of contemporary living, which in a manner of speaking reflect on the state of mind of each and everyone of us.
SNO ideology is equally passionate even if expressed in forms completely dedicated to control and discipline that is espoused by the group. And yet this show, which celebrates a tremendous anniversary for the group, is full of joy and dare we say it, fun, with works of John Adair, Pam Aitken, Syd Ball, Bily Gruner, Ruark Lewis, Sarah Kieghery, Melanie E.Khava, Andrew Leslie, John Nixon, Adrian McDonald, Giles Ryder, Kyle Jenkins, Brian Mahoney and Lynne Eastaways. The catalogue produced for this show and the anniversary features a very warm and engaging essay from Carolyn Barnes, which communicates the SNO ideals engagingly and with an understanding of the journey taken by the group and its achievements in surviving in an art environment which has more often than not been a challenge rather than an ally to their cause.
As we said, the rest of Sydney did not perform this month. At Roslyn Oxley9, Imants Tillers latest offering was nothing more than an embarrassment of shallowness of an artist who has by now run out of ideas and claims on our attention.
At Gallery 9, Michelle Hanlin's pseudo-surrealist offering Built In Wardrobes, was as almost as attractive as chewing gum and equally as attractive as chewing gum is to someone hungry for real food.
Marita Fraser's show at James Dorahy showed no demonstrable progress from her earlier work and an over-simplification of works to the detriment of meaning, leaving us to remark that sometimes less really is less. Minimalism is serious business!
Conversely at Flinders Street Alex Lawler's misleadingly titled Six Months of Bliss was an overcrowded parade comprised of vapidly unmemorable photography, paintings of cigarette packets and occasional bursts of carpeting masquerading as modernist geometric collage. "Luckily" commercial galleries often believe that they are exempt from managing or delivering a curatorial concept. What impresses in Lawler is that he manages to pick up interesting ideas for his works and fails entirely to understand or explore their potential for critique, discourse or even aesthetic engagement, such as his paintings of large cigarette boxes from Eastern Europe. The only work that was out of place by virtue of being interesting, resolved, subtle and aesthetically engaging was Art & Love.
In Sudden Double, Gemma Smith at Sarah Cottierpresented a series of rather slight acrylic on board pieces reaching for liberation from the constraints of her customary geometric confinement in sculpture as well as painting. While evolution and desire to expand the ambit of practice are laudable, this particular leap lacked evolutionary logic and also presented paintings that were generated without a sense of discipline or the respect for the medium, which would have saved these works from presenting as mere sketches of potential yearnings rather than finished works.
Melbourne
Public Affairs:
ACCA New010 sounds so exciting in the press release, one wants to really believe that bringing together in a single pot seven artists, four curators as well as a horticulturalist, a physicist, and an eco-friendly builder, would delivers something exciting and inspirational aiming for influential. Despite these acrobatics a fresh of breath air it was not. Among the works that were somewhat satisfying if not particularly "new" like joyful or youthful idiocies subsidised by Balnaves Foundation, symptomatic of the lack of discernment on the powers holding the purse strings there.
Private Practice: Melbourne had more bright spots this month, mainly around the CBD. The stand out show of the months was definitely Sonic Network No. S 4-7, John Aslanidis' generous offering at Block Projects. We are almost invariably impressed how well, Block enables artists to flex their muscle in terms of scaling up their work and Aslanidis new large canvases are certainly a case in point. Aslanidis has adopted a deceptively simple visual medium in his practice – the interplay of overlapping co-centric circles on canvases, which progress musically through tones and shades of colour. Their appeal lies in their subtlety and a meditative repose that they provide at each and every encounter. They don't scream for attention they make one's attention and thought an inevitability.
At Murray While Room Sangeeta Sandrasegar show was also a pleasing encounter with works of an artist, who is able to understand, contextualise and develop traditional practices of Islamic art and the art of miniature in a concertedly contemporary and relevant way and extend their communication beyond parochial concerns.
By a geographic coincidence around the corner at Anna Schwartz, Lida Abdul's stage managed video installations, were subtly but inevitably disappointing and unsuccessful appropriation of ethic and cultural themes of her native Afghanistan. Could she really achieve the monumental inventive pathos she was striving for with "actors" who are ordinary people asked to perform actions that were clearly artificial if not comical in the context of their ordinary lives. The ironies of political correctness and academic underpinnings were as evident as the white newly store-bought ropes that she asked her freshly laundered black clad "actors" to use in pretending to pull down historical buildings in Afghanistan. Inevitably and unironically the only successful work in the show was the unstaged/"accidental" film of a young boy spinning amid the ruins in freedom and abandon and all the unpremeditated pathos, so missing elsewhere.
Not far from the madding crowd, at Neon Parc Sean Bailey delivered his unique blend of painting, collage, abstracted figuration, conceptual expressionism in a rather extensive series of small, appealing and affordable paintings, most of which had found a good home outside the gallery by the time we arrived to see the show.
At Tolarno Tim Johnson, continued to amuse himself with yet another procession of canvases filled with Buddhas, one less distinguishable from another than the next. Is there really a demand for that?
Away from the CBD in Albert Street at Karen Woodbury Simon Obarzanek presented yet another contrived and series of photographic pseudo-dramas, which sound really good in black and white on paper alas not photographically. At Sophie Gannon Mark Hislop's Drawings continues a series he has commenced by drawing portrait's of his son and his friends from the back of the head view. Hislop has now progressed to his own friends and colleagues and while the concept seems almost too simple on paper, the building up of this series into a body of work is itself acquiring a poetic resonance and a depth, which has both complexity and sincerity.
Finally Galerie Helen Gory, Oliver Watts delivered a series of largely landscape-based canvases. Watt's painting has been moving away from figure-based work to landscape for a while. While Watt's concerns are perennially historical and philosophical, the truth is that his paintings operate far more in the lyrical domain than perhaps he would care to admit. This series is dominated by interplay of green and yellow hues tones and tends compositionally towards a measure of impressionistic abstraction, where it is the most effective. We would have been interested in seeing some of Watt's very interesting recent collage works, as a complement and counterpoint to the painting works in the show, but we'll have to wait for the next time.
There is something worthy and admirable and often discounted in the flashy glib picture of art life that our PR and money driven colleagues are intent on displaying for the general public. It is the notion of paying your dues, doing it right, not taking short cuts, living the life of commitment to your work and vocation and keeping your chin up regardless of how your fortunes in the art world fluctuate. Justene Williams is an artist who unambiguously deserves this kind of admiration, which also informs our admiration of her work, which demonstrates that same level of commitment, focus, insight and integrity.
We first encountered Williams around 1999, while buying a new season's black "art uniform" requirement on Oxford Street in Sydney. The items in question were an instant hit with us and caused the young sales girl exploding with enthusiasm and strawberry blonde curly almost-fro to exclaim, "The customer has bonded with the garment!" Somewhere in the course of conversation it transpired that our sales attendant was none other but the recent recipient of the then most prestigious Moet & Chandon art prize. I remember Justene explaining that it is almost impossible to explain to her co-workers in the clothing industry, that she is in fact an internationally recognised artist.
The
ironies of the fate of many artists are exemplified in this anecdote,
as is the need for resilience and good humour in the face of
absurdities and vagaries of life.
Sydney born (1970) and
bred, Williams' career is intrinsic to the evolution of Sydney's
independent contemporary art scene starting from being the founding
member of the highly influential CBD gallery in 1993. Working on
projects and exhibitions with almost all the important avant-garde and
independent galleries in Australia for the past 20 years (which is a
surprise because Williams does not look a day over 25!) and she has
been the recipient and part of almost every notable emerging artist
prize and exhibitions in Australia and beyond from Moet & Chandon to Helen Lempriere, to Basel Art Fair.
Her career is also a clear example of an evolution of an artists' oeuvre, developing gradually from still photography to incorporate and integrate performance and video into a unique and remarkable practice. In a world of contemporary art often suffering from excessive, earnest and obtuse intellectualisation, Williams' work shouts with joy and absurdity of contemporary world, life and culture delivering an experience of art that is complex, intelligent, entirely accessible, personal, universal and deeply felt.
While her chosen medium appears best suited for institutional installations, such as her exhibition last year with the Art Gallery of NSW – BIGHEAD GARBAGEFACE GUARDS GHOST DERR SONATA. They speak just as eloquently on the small scale and a small scale, which broadest range of collectors can work with and appreciate. Video/time based art remains a difficult medium for collectors to embrace, especially in the antipodean paradise of the reactionary (please send the lynch mobs...). There is good reason for reluctance, not every artist who picks up a video camera becomes a good video artist. Video is a medium in and of itself and not a substitute for cinema, storytelling or documentation of another genre such as performance (even if it can be used as such). What Williams achieves is creating an artwork and an art experience, which can only exist in the form that she delivers it and is unique and sufficient as such. Moreover her work is instantly compelling and has an impact regardless of the amount of time that one spends with it. Never an endurance challenge. Justene Williams' upcoming next major exhibition will be with the Penrith Regional Gallery, Emu Plains.
Collector’s Footnotes
On being born yesterday or knowing the message in the medium...
We pride ourselves on ability to account for our views and relish impromptu opportunities, which challenge us to do so. Recently, at an art opening carpeting came up in conversation. And we mean that literally in the sense that an artist had utilised off-cuts of office style commercial or domestic carpeting in rather tawdry standard colours as his medium to create, geometric collage. We were speaking to someone who knew the artist and said that he in fact liked the "carpet works". We said that we thought they were awful and proceeded to elucidate demonstrate that our reaction was not purely visceral (although bad taste even in contemporary art is often sufficient for a work to be denigrated).
We have noted before the phenomenon artists using medium as a substitute for message. We have also discussed the need to have more message in the medium. This however is an occasion to discuss the middle ground – the message in the medium. Regardless of the medium and artist uses and by medium we mean the materials and the methods employed
On this occasion the artist was using wall-to-wall carpeting. Now any person looking at this work and recognising the material, in the contemporary Western society (and that is the target audience), carpeting will have certain associations, personal historical and cultural – whether those of growing up in suburban housing of the 1980's or being stuck in partitioned cubicle in an office job, whatever – there will be an impact dictated by the material itself. At this point our conversation companion at the art opening piped in – "Oh, well I know he did not intend any of those meanings." "Well that is the whole point – those cultural and emotional associations are there loaded into the material he is using and if he does not used or is unaware of the or is unable to understand their effect that means that this is a failed artwork."
Clearly carpeting is not a unique example. Equally an artist cannot paint as though no one has used oil paint or particular painting technique before. We have previously remarked to young art graduate painters, who were very proud to having taught themselves to painted having finished a highly theoretically oriented art school, that they did not in fact invent chiaroscuro and that they might be shocked and surprised if they looked up Carravagio and El Greco. While the artist has a responsibility to educate him or herself about the medium equally they have a responsibility of being honest with their audiences. Ignorance of history is not an excuse! To treat your audience as though they have never seen any works of that kind and who would perceive them as entirely novel and original, it is cynical and dishonest – even if contemporary art audiences are often poorly educated in art history. Too often we find the line between being influenced by history, appropriation and outright brainless theft in expectation that your audiences are too dumb to notice or find out is not only blurred but totally obliterated by mediocre talents and mediocre minds. You can only get away with that kind of trompe d'oeilfor so long and certainly only in a particular place and certainly not on our watch.
From this place 2010 nylon organza, cotton thread, glass beads 150 x 100 cm (approx) $6,600 incl. GST
Ghost gum 2010 nylon organza, cotton thread, glass beads, sequins 150 x 100 cm (approx) $6,600 incl. GST
So here's to the onset of the antipodean fall, new adventures in criticism and aspirations to seeing the world become a better art place and art become a better part of the world.
(0 vote)