Jemima Fort

Yiwarra Kuju: the Canning Stock Route

Yiwarra Kuju: the Canning Stock Route, currently on display at the National Museum of Australia, is a vibrant collection of Indigenous art expressing the intrinsic cultural significance of land and country. The exhibition arranges contemporary Indigenous art geographically, focussing on the Canning Stock Route and the regions that surround it. It’s a fitting context, given that it expresses a culture intrinsically interwoven with the land itself. 

Yiwarra Kuju comprises (almost exclusively) of a collection of work developed as part of the Perth-based cultural organisation FORM’s Canning Stock Route Project, acquired by the NMA in 2008. Instigated in 2006, the project combines the art of over 80 Indigenous artists, represented by 9 cultural centres, located in the regions covered by the Canning Stock Route. There is a range of media: from the ‘traditional’ and familiar acrylic paintings of country and Dreaming to costume, weaving, new-media art, and video recordings of ceremonial activities. 

The Canning Stock Route was first surveyed in 1906 by a government team, led by Alfred Canning.  Intended as a means of moving cattle across this part of the country, it runs nearly 2000 kilometres down the West of Australia. Not surprisingly, this course intersects with the homelands of several Indigenous groups. Canning’s attitude towards these groups - approving of abuse, enslavement and dispossession - was a cruel reflection of his time. 

Nonetheless, Yiwarra Kuju displays a vibrant culture, the strength of which overshadows the ghost of its challenging past. It makes no attempt to revise the history of the land, rather to reclaim the land for the future. As John Carty, one of the exhibition’s curators, describes: “Yiwarra Kuju is not about art.  It’s about what that art is about. These paintings, photos and films are not about ‘history’; they’re concerned with the Aboriginal story of Country in Australia – the country that history happened in.”

This is the most successful exhibition to date at the National Museum of Australia, its strength being in its attention to the needs and interests of its audience. Spot-lit paintings, set back into the walls, allow for direct, personal encounter; while text panels and documentary videos describe the history, cultural meaning and significance that put this in context. The innovative ‘One Road’ multimedia installation provides a fun, interactive experience through which visitors may explore an exciting archive of text, video and imagery. These diverse elements combine to create an engaging environment in which visitors familiarise themselves with Indigenous art, not simply as a genre, but as an integral element of culture. 

Yiwarra Kuju: the Canning Stock Route is on display at the National Museum of Australia until January 26, after which it will tour select venues across the country. 

Exhibitionist In Review: Space Invaders National Gallery of Australia

I love street art. I know it’s a very broad statement - assuming street art is a cohesive culture groups together an impossibly wide range of ideas and styles. Nonetheless, there is an insistence in the art world to label “street art” as a single idea - possibly because doing so makes it something that can be talked about. NGA Curator Jaklyn Babington has developed an exhibition that does just this, looking back over the last ten years to establish, and perhaps define, contemporary gallery-based street art as a genre. 

I won’t pretend that walking through Space Invaders is much like walking down colourful laneways. To the contrary, the exhibition is clean and ordered. The works are mostly framed, and offset against standard white walls. Decorative touches, like crate display cases, make the show fun and exciting, but don’t lend authenticity. Artist’s stickers, affixed casually to the walls of the exhibition space, add to overall atmosphere, but also serve to highlight the unnatural setting.

Nonetheless, Space Invaders is quirky, colourful, probing and reflective. It combines a motley variety of styles with motives that alternate between determined and restrained. All the while, and importantly, it is essentially approachable - digestible to a mainstream audience. Essentially this is Pop Art: accessible to a wide audience and therefore inherently commercial. It is this incarnation of street art that was satirised and criticised in UK street artist Banksy’s recent film Exit Through The Gift Shop, yet happily the NGA manages to exhibit this genre with far more dignity and discretion.

The highlight of the exhibition is certainly the zine display, where visitors are encouraged to handle and read an enormous range of artwork. In this way the NGA has cunningly quieted anyone who might suggest that placing such items in a gallery context reinvents them as holy relics to be seen and not held.  Instead, by allowing visitors to interact with them as they would in real life, the NGA excitingly reinvents the very idea of a gallery space. 

As an overall exhibition, Space Invaders is vibrant and engaging, embracing the myriad of styles, genres and mediums inherent to street art culture.

On show at the National Gallery of Australia until February 27 2011

Space Invaders

Street art is as dynamic and diverse as the streets that inspire it and the artists who create it. Space Invaders (which opens at the National Gallery of Australia on October 30) is a major exhibition that traces the story of street art in Australia. This week, I’ve been trading emails with curator of the exhibition, Jaklyn Babington. She describes the exhibition as a celebration of the art form, held “at a unique point in time, where street art is transitioning from the ephemeral to the collectable, and from the street to the gallery”.  

Comprising of 150 artworks by over 80 artists, Space Invaders will be the largest ever exhibition of Australian street art. It combines various display methods to incorporate the diverse range of media, from stencils and paste-ups to installation pieces and zines.

 “I would love for visitors to be bowled over by the sheer diversity and complexity of the Australian street art scene”, says Babington of the exhibition’s breadth. “I’d like for visitors to gain insight into these alternative forms of creative expression and to gain an understanding of the enormous amount of skill, do-it-yourself attitude and creative optimism that exists in Australia and is progressively shaping our visual culture.”

So, let’s get elementary. What “is” street art? As Babington sees it, “one of the most fantastic things about this area of creativity is that it really defies categorisation and definition”.  Rather than a genre, street art is a culture of expression - an idea linked to location (ie. the street), but not necessarily determined by a shared belief or style.

Today’s relatively cohesive street art culture has developed from a variety of experimental movements dating back to the 1970s. Space Invaders will survey this development, and in doing so explore the transition from its early manifestations to a genre of art that transcends both the streets from which it got its name, and the galleries in which it is now exhibited. Having said that, street art is intrinsically forward-looking, so Space Invaders will also feature a number of contemporary artists “who are constantly pushing the boundaries and experimenting with new forms”.

While staging an exhibition such as this at the National Gallery of Australia lends the prestige of a major institution to the development of an independent style, it is really an exhibition that is long overdue.  Most galleries across Australia, and the world, already consider street art an important area of collection. “The exhibition is really only just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the talent and diversity that is out there and hopefully, it is only the first in a long line of future exhibitions that can focus on other aspects of Australian street art.”

The NGA was the first major institution in the country to start collecting what Babington describes as having been “more or less uncollectible”, acquiring street stencils and posters from the moment it was viable to have done so (c.2003-4).  Babington describes these early holdings as a “time capsule of what was happening on Australian streets at a particular moment of collective creativity”.

The strength and cohesiveness of the NGA collection means Space Invaders is an exhibition of unprecedented potential. It can provide both a comprehensive history of the genre’s development, as well as highlight the works of important contemporary artists. In this way, the exhibition promises to be a unique and insightful introduction to what is fast becoming the most popular of all contemporary art cultures.  “The scene has radically changed over the past 10 years,” explains Babington, “becoming more commercially viable for artists and galleries, essentially making a transition from the sub-cultural to the pop-cultural.”

Obviously, relocating any culture that has been defined by its setting has a dramatic impact upon it, and Babington makes it clear that “it is no longer ‘street art’ but multiple forms of ‘street-inspired creativity’”. Although hybridization, the move to gallery spaces and a transition to the status of “fine art” blur the definition of what street art is, it’s not as if the definition was ever particularly clear in the first place.

By putting street art in the context of its own history, Space Invaders can analytically examine transitions in style, techniques and ideas. According to Babington, contemporary “post-graffiti” artists are working in an increasingly hybrid form, as they interact both with the street and with gallery spaces. This means that street artists are in the newfound position of being influenced by gallery traditions, while other contemporary artists are now influenced by street culture. “I doubt there is a contemporary artist who hasn’t been influenced by some kind of street based creativity—even in just so much as the attitude of the street: a chaotic and largely uncontrollable public space, despite the authorities attempts to control it.” 

To launch the exhibition, the Gallery is preparing itself to be overrun by street artists who will demonstrate their techniques and distinctive styles in a range of free activities. This Is A Stick Up, on Saturday October 30, features a day-long program of related events, including:

Capital Letters: the National Gallery of Australia Zine Fair Presented by Melbourne's Sticky Institute in the Gandel Hall.

Everfresh installation The infamous Everfresh crew create a graffiti, stencil and paste-up installation on the bridge.

Book launch and signing With Ghostpatrol, Miso, Nails, Twoone and the Everfresh crew in the Gallery Shop.

Curator and artists talk Jaklyn Babington, curator of the exhibition, is joined in the Project Gallery by artists Vexta and Nails, who discuss thier work in the exhibition.

Space Invaders: Australian Street|Stencils|Posters|Paste-ups|Zines|Stickers is on show at the National Gallery of Australia from Saturday October 30 2010 – Sunday February 27 2011.

National Gallery of Australia Materiality

Materiality n.

1.       the quality of being composed of matter, the physical aspect or character

2.       the quality of being relevant or important

Materiality is the title and over-arching theme of the seventh Australian Print Symposium at the National Gallery of Australia this October. Initiated in 1989 by Roger Butler, the conferences are an exciting collaboration between the institution and a range of artists and art spaces. Materiality promises to be both educational and entertaining and is an opportunity for the general public to get involved with the ideas and discourse of the professional art world.

Butler is the Senior Curator of Australian Prints and Drawings at the NGA and has been responsible for the department since it was established in 1981. Over nearly thirty years, he has developed the NGA’s holdings into the strongest and most significant collection of Australian prints in the world.  His enthusiasm for Australian printmaking is evidenced by his encouragement of wider appreciation of the print medium, and his dedication to the development of accessible education resources. To this end, and with the support of the NGA, he established the Australian Print Symposiums.

The Symposiums are hosted by the Gallery and held roughly every three years. Canberra is an ideal venue: there is a strong interest in and appreciation of prints in the Nation’s Capital – and it’s getting ever stronger. Over 23 years, the Symposiums have enriched public understanding of prints as art, and encouraged thoughtful academic study of the medium. At a time where contemporary printmaking is being influenced by a digital revolution, this year’s exploration of ‘materiality’ promises an interesting discussion.

Over three days Materiality will provide a forum for a range of arts professionals to explore notions that are simultaneously realistic and abstract. Past Symposiums have coincided with and complimented major NGA exhibitions, such as The Story of Australian Printmaking: 1801-2005 (2007), Islands in the Sun: prints by Indigenous artists of the Australasian region (2001) and The Europeans: Émigré artists in Australia 1930-1960 (1997). This year, the conference relates to a loose theme that explores ideas of Corporeality, Reality, Palpability, Perceptibility, Physicality and Experience.

When applied to art, the term ‘materiality’ relates to the physical and formal attributes of a work, but also to philosophical ideas of its reality and existence. Prints are replications of an original design, so by definition raise questions regarding artistic significance, physical state, uniqueness and authenticity. In this way, they encourage consideration of physicality with more abstract ideas of existence. Such are the sorts of conversations promised during the course of Materiality.

The earliest Print Symposium included a talk given by Ron Radford, who has since been appointed Director of the NGA, and the most recent symposium, held in 2007, saw local artist eX de Medici take the role of keynote speaker. This year’s keynote is the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art’s Glenn Barkley. As a curator at the MCA, Barkley is used to working with and speaking about cutting-edge local and international artworks. Ever since his early days at the Wollongong Museum of Art, his exhibitions and publications have demonstrated an ongoing interest in Australian art and the medium of print. Over the years, his work has particularly focused on artists’ books, zines and the use of text in art, and recently Barkley participated in the Sydney Writers Festival and the MCA’s Zine Fair. This wealth of experience makes him an ideal guest for a symposium that explores the conceptual qualities of prints in Australia’s contemporary art world. 

Barkley will be joined by an amazing line up of guest speakers: Angela Cavalieri, Richard Tipping, Emily Floyd, Del Kathryn Barton, Adam Cullen, Euan Macleod, Billy Missi, Jon Cattapan, Julia Silvester, Paul Uhlmann, Caren Florance (Ampersand Duck), Luke Sinclair (from the Sticky Institute in Melbourne), Domenico de Clario, Lesley Duxbury, Marian Crawford, Tim Maguire, Robert Jacks, Mini Graff, Rae O’Connell (Djumbunji Press), Angus Cameron (Nomad Art Production) and Lucas Ihlein (Big Fag Press). Between them, these presenters have worked with an incredible variety of printmaking techniques, from linoprint to lithograph to photography and digital mediums. They include influential prizewinners, founders of art centres and central figures of art culture across Australia.  They are teachers and curators, representatives from galleries and members of collectives, with cumulative experience and insight that is certain to stimulate dynamic and fascinating conversation.

As one of the few events in the capital to draw contemporary arts professionals based in the larger cities, the Print Symposiums are a rare and infrequent privilege for Canberra audiences. Further, the NGA conference is complimented by concurrent events and exhibitions staged across a variety of smaller galleries in the territory, including Nomad Art Gallery, the Australian War Memorial and Megalo Print Studio. Even if you don’t get a chance to attend the main Symposium events, there will be a lot of print love going on around the city this October. 

Having said that, this year’s symposium is particularly accessible, with students able to purchase tickets for only $80 (rather than full $250). So what are you waiting for? It’s time to get your print on.

The Symposium takes place on the October 15, 16 and 17, with lunch and refreshments included in the ticket price.

To register for the symposium, visit the NGA website www.nga.gov.au/printsymp2010/ Ticket prices: Full: $250, Members $190, Students: $80

For more information about past symposiums, visit www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au/Symposiums.aspx.

Perspectives: Jon Cattapan and eX de Medici

At a time when Australia is focussing on its borders and regional stability, it is appropriate to consider our relationship with other Pacific nations.  Perspectives: Jon Cattapan and eX de Medici, on display at the Australian War Memorial (AWM), is a timely artistic exploration of the reality of peacekeeping and Australia’s engagement with countries in this region. 

The exhibition features the work of two contemporary Australian artists, each working at the fore of their discipline: Canberran eX de Medici and Melbourne artist Jon Cattapan. Both artists were engaged by the AWM as Official War Artists – part of an ongoing tradition that dates back to the First World War.  Perspectives is the culmination of these commissions, produced after being stationed with peacekeeping operations in the Pacific: eX de Medici in Solomon Islands, and Cattapan in Timor-Leste. 

The story of Timor-Leste is a struggle for independence from colonial rulers and aggressors. Colonised by Portugal in the 16^th century, it became a centre for Portuguese trade in the East. In 1975 it was decolonised and declared independent—an event that was met by swift and brutal invasion and occupation by Indonesia.

In 1999, with the aid of the United Nations and with Indonesia’s official acceptance, Timor-Leste was again declared independent.  Once more this was met with violence, as organised pro-Indonesia militia invaded, killing and displacing hundreds of thousands of people. Australia was engaged to enter the country to quell the violence and restore order. In 2002, Timor-Leste was finally declared a sovereign state, and Australian peacekeepers remain to preserve stability while the people rebuild their country. 

Jon Cattapan’s work is typically progressive and questioning. Heavily influenced by the dynamic Punk culture of Melbourne in the 1970s Cattapan provides commentary on political processes and the way people react to and interact with politics. His hazy, sketchy style seems to naturally capture the tension and uncertainty of conflict. Working in paint from photographs, he plays with traditional ideas of photo-realism and documentary, creating images from both life and the imagination.

Cattapan’s work in Perspectives is essentially voyeuristic: they give a sense of watching and being watched and so elicit tension and tentativeness. While the canvas is dominated by coloured space and vague geographical markings, the works focus on the human presence of peacekeepers. People are presented uniting against history and adversity to build a future, encouraging positive engagement in the issues that still plague Timor-Leste today. 

Solomon Islands, where eX de Medici was stationed, are comprised of about 1000 islands linked by culture, trade and a sometimes-tenuous desire for unity. 

Australia’s earliest interaction with the state was the ‘blackbirding’ of islanders to work on sugar plantations in Queensland. The practice saw tens of thousands of people essentially kidnapped and relocated to live in Australia as ‘indentured servants’. In 1893 the United Kingdom incorporated Solomon Islands into the Commonwealth as a Protectorate.  Since then, it has been heavily influenced by European missionaries and staged several Second World War camps and battles—notably the Battle of Guadalcanal between 7 August 1942 and 9 February 1943.

The country began self-government in 1942 and was declared an independent member of the Commonwealth in 1978. The rule of this government has undergone short periods of stability, but is marked by intense and intermittent civil conflicts. In 2003, after numerous requests for international aid, Australia finally led a multi-national peacekeeping mission into Solomon Islands, where it remains an active presence to this day. 

In Perspectives, eX explores her positive experiences of peacekeeping in Solomon Islands, over an evolving history of civil unrest, physical abuse and cultural exploitation. She asks why Australian peacekeepers are in the country, and what led to the weakened civil unity which now compromises its struggle for independence. 

eX works primarily in watercolour. Her delicate works belie dark symbolism; infused by troubling realities which are ever-present, but not immediately discernable.

She often juxtaposes natural beauty with representations of violence, particularly guns.  The more her work is examined however, the more we are drawn into its seductive folds, the more we understand these violent aspects are not juxtaposition, but an everyday reality. In this, eX has floored an idea for contemplation: she does not condemn violence, but encourages her audience to consider their own feelings, to consider what is happening and to encourage thought, regardless of what conclusions are drawn.

As exhibition curator Laura Webster describes, the works included in Perspectives address a ‘savvy audience who don’t take what they’ve been spoon-fed’. 

The artists’ work is not only sympathetic or documentary, but politically and socially thoughtful. They voice ideas and concerns about peacekeeping and the events that have led to its necessity, encouraging viewers to consider what is happening in the world around them. 

Together, Jon Cattapan and eX de Medici present a refreshingly contemporary view of Australia’s involvement in foreign conflict. They respect and sympathise with Australian peacekeepers and do not critically assess their role. They do, however, acknowledge the history that has necessitated current peacekeeping operations and they ask us to consider this. Perspectives documents these operations from the viewpoint of two artists who do not encourage their audience to have a particular opinion, but do encourage them to have an opinion.

Perspectives - Jon Cattapan & eX de Medici opens September 2^nd and contines until March 2^nd 2011 at the Australian War Memorial. Entry is free.

Annual National Youth Self Portrait Prize 2010

When wandering through the National Youth Portrait Prize 2010 finalist exhibition, currently on display at the National Portrait Gallery, you could be forgiven for forgetting where you are.  These are not the insecure works-in-development of young students, but a collection of professional, stylistically mature, striking and very self-aware self portraits.

Portraiture allows an artist to visually represent identity.  Any artwork can contain likeness, but a portrait is actually about the person it represents.  In the conservative tradition, portraits have sought to recreate sitters exactly, that they might be recognised by their families and their peers.  Works might incorporate motifs to reflect characteristics that the artist wishes to highlight: a framed image of the family man’s children; the carelessly strewn maps of the adventurer.  This adds depth to how the viewer understands the subject and so, to their experience of the portrait.  That said, even if a work is figuratively abstracted, the very knowledge that it represents a person gives viewers a means to understand it (or begin to).  In this way, portraiture is inherently ‘approachable’.  From our earliest moments on earth we learn to interpret and understand the people around us.  One doesn’t need to be a historian or an aesthete to care about what makes people who they are.

The National Youth Self Portrait Prize is the third annual competition for artists aged between 18 and 25.  Sponsorship from the Tallis Foundation and the Association of the Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Societies (ADFAS) provides talented young artists the opportunity to compete for $10,000.  The Prize for 2010 went to NSW artist Bridget Mac, for her portrait masculine/feminine.  This work is currently on display at the NPG, alongside those of the other fourteen finalists: Robbie Karmel, Joel Arthur and ‘Reges Lobud’ (ACT); Erwin Strobel, Daniel Kim, Todd Fuller, Ashleigh Garwood, Alyssa Chow and Emilio Cresciani (NSW); Jessie Victoria Bonson (NT); Tom Cramond (WA); James Barnett and Sarah Catherine Firth (VIC); and Kim Buck (SA).

Mac’s winning self-portrait, masculine/feminine, is a digitally-edited photographic image of two faces.  Each face is a symmetrical image, created by mirroring one side of the artist’s face (thus, one head is made up of the left side of her face, the other of her right).  The philosophers of Ancient Greece saw facial symmetry as a requisite of perfect beauty.  There is a story that tells of an artist who sought to capture the image of a perfect woman.  For decades, he sketched the face of every beautiful girl he saw, imagined and dreamed; but they fell short of his ideal.  When he found the answer it was really only half an answer: he drew one half of a woman’s face.  Like Pythagoras, he decided that symmetry was so crucial to perfect beauty that, physically, it could not be simulated in art.  Of course, everything is digital nowadays.

Mac’s work is not an attempt to envision perfection.  On the contrary, it is raw and honest – this is what makes it beautiful.  However, it does explore the manner in which we interpret the face and how we use visual stimulus, like symmetry, to ascribe beauty, sexuality and personality.  While it is easy to suggest that one face is more masculine, is it possible to describe why?  Or even which is which?  The title leads viewers to make an assumption about the image, but rationalising that decision is not easy.  The work is a complicated integration of public and private: it explores Mac’s personal presence and identity, while also sharing ideas about representation, interpretation, sexuality and technology. 

For many artists, a self-portrait is as much an expression of their art as it is a representation of self.  How we act and what we say does not always fit with how we define ourselves and this merging of personal identity and public expression can be tense, dynamic and exciting.  Despite this, the popularity of large, relatively unadventurous exhibitions of portraiture seem to encourage the expectation that it is conservative as a genre.  The NPG has made great efforts to overcome this stereotype by displaying portraits in an array of style and, particularly, of media.  This contemporary, forward-looking spirit is embodied in the 2010 National Youth Portrait Prize. 

Some portraits are intimate windows into the person they feature, something that can be confronting for both their subject and viewers.  Alyssa Chow, a design student from NSW, entered a photograph that explores her experience with depression.  She had been “scared of owning herself” and found the act of creating a self-portrait was cathartic.  For her, the competition was “an opportunity to take a risk and put it out there” – to publically acknowledge this aspect of her life. 

The exhibition is an energetic, experimental and engaging collection of work by young, contemporary artists.  It is a playful combination of works that, while predominantly photography and new media, speak of a variety of influence and ideas.  Some artists use their portraits to explore ideas that are incredibly personal; others deal with concerns that are more universal; some, it seems, have even tried to distance themselves from their likeness.  In this way, the exhibition explores the question of what constitutes a self-portrait.  The works question conformity and explore a myriad of ideas and approaches to form and media.  Perhaps, in seeking to define themselves visually, these artists also redefine the nature of portraiture.

The 3^rd Annual National Youth Self Portrait Prize 2010 continues at the National Portrait Gallery until 12 September. Entry is free.

In Review A Container of Memories

Australian National University School of Art Gallery
Continuing until Saturday July 31

Art exhibitions are too-frequently characterised by the paint smell from hastily-completed display spaces.  Infused with the scent of fresh woods and sealing oils, A Container of Memories is refreshingly different.  The show was been put together by Rodney Hayward, the head of the Australian National University School of Art’s Furniture Design and Wood workshop, along with a large number of dedicated young artists. 

It comprises students and alumni from across the art school.  Most of the artists are from Hayward’s workshop, but their wood pieces are complimented by works of various other media.  The fact that this integration is so seamless only goes to show that it is not really ‘integration’: it’s just art.  It is an exhibition which showcases both emerging artists and the strength of the school, particularly Hayward’s Furniture Design and Wood workshop.  It is a large show of varied work.  It is calm, confusing, funny, passionate, dire and comforting.  One work questions our confidence in memory, the next exalts in it.  It presents the ephemeral impossibility and the physical reality of our memories.  ...or that’s what I remember. 

The exhibition’s theme asks a series of complex questions that probe our responses to and ideas about life.  After all, the notion of memory itself is inherently personal.  Artist Elliot Bastianon, whose work ‘Alzheimer’s’ (2010) is on display in the exhibition, says that “for many of the current students, this exhibition was a chance to exhibit pieces that were highly individual, stemming from a very personal place – an emotional response to a brief, as opposed to following a set of guidelines.” 

This personal, emotional thesis makes for a refreshingly original and captivating exploration of art.  Some artists have responded to the theme literally, with the creation of cabinets and secretive lockboxes.  Others, like Elliot, have responded more conceptually or metaphorically: his work is a box of sorts, a juxtaposition of organic and machined wood, in which is hidden a tangle of cassette tape.  It is an emotional response to the reality of a debilitating illness.

It is the curse for artists who work with wood, or who simply create works that are functional, to be considered somehow less artistic than their painterly peers.  Hayward’s workshop combines what has been mistaken for a simple, physical discipline with a very strong philosophical base.  He encourages his students to question, to seek and to explore and this is the strength of A Container of Memories.

Present Tense

The present tense is the micro.  Reality.  Right now.  This is what the National Portrait Gallery captures in Present Tense: an imagined grammar of portraiture in the digital age.

Present Tense is not an exhibition of new media portraits but a dynamic exploration of portraiture at a time where visual culture is saturated by digital technology.  The exhibition comprises a wide range of new media, interlaced with traditional contemporary artworks.  It focuses on the interaction between digital and non-digital artistic methods and features a mix of installation work, film, posters, sculpture, painting and photography.

The advent, accessibility and increasing affordability of digital technology has had a great impact upon visual culture.  As Curator Michael Desmond explains, “digital media changes everything” - but this change is a merger, rather than a takeover.  His exhibition demonstrates how, despite infiltrating the art world, digital technology has not sought to eclipse traditional media.  It embraces new artistic methods, but retains what Desmond calls a “fetish” for traditional, hands-on processes.  Video portraits are displayed alongside now archaic daguerreotypes and static digital images hang opposite paintings on canvas.  Despite distinct technical variation, the works complement each other naturally.  If the exhibition is a comprehensive window into contemporary art, it shows that contemporary artistic style is not dictated by a single, exclusive aesthetic, but an open blend of technique, experience and individual ideas.

Khaled Sabsabi’s Australians (2000) is a metal rack of CRT televisions that flicker precariously, each displaying an element of a face.  It experiments with identity and reproduction, but also immediacy and tense: it is permanent as a complete, solid installation, but temporary as it is made of pieces that are easily uninstalled and it relies on a supply of electricity.  This is also the case with James Dodd’s Posters from Occupied Territory (2003): a collection of screen printed posters that the artist has pasted directly onto a wall of the exhibition space.  The posters themselves are permanently affixed to the gallery space, but their existence is temporary because their inevitable removal will destroy them.  The notion of ‘temporary permanence’ is evident throughout the entire exhibition.  The very notion of capturing the present tense in an exhibition is an attempt to make it permanent and tangible.  However, it is necessarily temporary: it is fleeting and it cannot be the present forever.

Present Tense is an exhibition of which there is more to see than to say.  It is complex and delicate, but its immediacy is a window into a fleeting reality that is inherently approachable because it is happening right now.  Its exploration of time and art and expression is, at once, dynamic and static.  And that cannot be translated into words.

Present Tense: an imagined grammar of portraiture in the digital age is at the National Portrait Gallery until 22 August

Husbands & Wives

Walking through the small exhibition space of the National Portrait Gallery’s Husbands & Wives is like walking across the colourful scrapbook page of an anachronistic socialite settled inAustralia in the 1800s.  The exhibition’s design compliments and frames the works within it.  They are set off against patterned mahogany inspired by the original velvet casing of the daguerreotypes: it extends through the velveteen lining of the display cases to the very walls of the space.  This enforces synchronicity and sameness, grouping together what is a great and interesting variety of work to tell a story about the time in which it was created.

Husbands & Wives is an exhibition of nineteenth century family portraiture which explores depictions of spouses.  The exhibition is made up of a variety of media drawn from Australian collections.  It combines painting and drawing, but focuses on photography and its emergence as a popular format for personal portraiture. 

Despite focusing on images of married couples, Husbands & Wives does not seek to explore the reality of marriage at the time, nor does it examine this genre as an artistic theme.  Rather, it provides an opportunity for visitors to examine rare photographic portraits that are not often displayed.  These are presented in historical context, amidst an industry of contemporary personal portraiture.  The exhibition examines the emergence of photography and its effect on portraiture in nineteenth century Australia.  This effect was liberalising: bringing portraiture to a wider range of people.  Photography presented another choice to a society whose only options had been arduously long and restrictively expensive painted portraits or a variety of less-influential smaller media (like miniatures, silhouettes and sketches).  Photographs were small, but comparatively quick and portable.  A photograph could capture what was considered a far truer likeness of its sitter than any other form of portraiture.  On top of this, photographs were so affordable that classes of society who had never considered portraiture now embraced it. 

The format of Husbands & Wives is interesting because much of the thesis behind it is not explained within the exhibition.  The minimal text within the show is restricted to simple descriptions of artistic technique and biographical information about the artists and their sitters.  The visitor is left to wander the space and contemplate the relationship between the works for themselves—they are given the choice to consider deeper meaning, or to simply appreciate the works aesthetically.  That said, the wealth of research behind the exhibition is available in a variety of supporting ephemera with which visitors may choose to inform their viewing.

Husbands & Wives is an enchanting window into a time when, as curator Joanna Gilmore describes, ‘photography was a more permanent process’.  It presents portraiture at a time when capturing a person’s image was a special and delicate process.

Husbands & Wives is on at the National Portrait Gallery until July 11.

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