Exhibition dates: 22nd October – 21st November 2009

.

“Time and again my work returns to children, and their ambiguous relationships with the (only just) imaginary animals that I create. Children embody a number of the key issues in my work. Obviously they directly express the idea of genetics – both natural and artificial – but beyond that they also imply the responsibilities that a creator has to their creations. The innocence and vulnerability of children is powerfully emotive and evokes empathy – their presence softens the hardness of some of the more difficult ideas, but it can also elevate the anxiety level.”

Patricia Piccinini quoted on the Kaldor Public Art Projects website

.

“I am interested in the way that contemporary biotechnology and even philosophy erode the traditional boundaries between the artificial and the natural, as well as between species and even the basic distinctions between animal and human.”

Patricia Piccinini quoted on the Artlink website

.

.

.

Patricia Piccinini
‘The Strength of one Hand (With Canadian Mountain Goat)’
Silicone, fibreglass, human hair, clothing, Canadian Mountain Goat
2009

.

.

Patricia Piccinini
‘The Bottom Feeder’
Silicone, fibreglass, steel, fox fur
2009

.

.

Patricia Piccinini
‘The Bottom Feeder’ (detail)
2009

.

.

We are the clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! – yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost forever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest. – A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise. – One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond foe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same! – For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

.

Mutability by Percy Bysshe Shelley

.

.

When human imagination takes flight, as it does in this exhibition, the results are superlative. Piccinini is at the height of her powers as an artist, in full control of the conceptual ideas, their presentation and the effect that they have on the viewer. Witty, funny, thought-provoking and at times a little scary Piccinini’s exhibition (paradoxically entitled ‘Unforced Intimacies’) is an act of revelatio: the pulling aside of the genetic curtain to see what lies beneath.

Featuring hyperrealist genetically modified creatures and human child figures Piccinini’s sculptures, drawings and video seem passionately alive in their verisimilitude (unlike Ricky Swallow’s resplendently dead relics at the NGV). In ‘The Strength of one Hand (With Canadian Mountain Goat)’, the title perhaps a play on the traditional Zen koan ‘The Sound of One Hand Clapping’, a meditation on the nature of inner compassion, a walrus-child balances on one hand on the back of a Canadian Mountain Goat. The walrus-child has extended eyes, a voluminous lower lip with whiskers under the nose; the hyperreality of the hand on the back of the goat makes it seem like the hand will come alive! A mane of hair flows down the walrus-child’s back to feet that are conjoined – like an articulated merman – ending not in flippers but in toes complete with dirty, cracked and broken nails. Here the natural athleticism of the mountain goat, now dead and stuffed, is surmounted by the mutated walrus-child’s natural athleticism, poignantly suspended like an exclamation mark above the in-animate pommel horse.

In ‘Balasana’ (‘The Child’s Pose’) a child reposes in the yoga position on a tribal rug. Balanced on top of the child is a stuffed Red-necked Wallaby that perfectly inverts the concave of the child’s back, it’s front feet curled over while it’s rear feet are splayed. The luminosity of the skin of the child is incredible – such a technical feat to achieve this realism – that you are drawn to intimately examine the child’s face and hands. The purpose of ‘The Child’s Pose’ in yoga is that it literally reminds us of our time as an infant and revives in us rather vivid memories of lying in this position. It also reminds us to cultivate our inner innocence so that we in turn may see the world without judgement or criticism. The paradoxes of the ‘unforced’ intimacy between the child and the wallaby can be read with this conceptualisation ‘in mind’.

With ‘The Bottom Feeder’ (2009) Piccinini’s imagination soars to new heights. With the shoulders of a human, the legs and forearms of what seems like a marsupial, the lowered head of a newt with intense staring blue eye (see photograph above), luminescent freckled skin covered in hair and a rear end that consists of both male and female genitalia that forms a ‘face’, the hermaphroditic bottom feeder is a frighteningly surreal visage. Inevitably the viewer is drawn to the exposed rump through a seemingly unforced interactivity, examining the folds and flaps of the labia and the hanging scrotum of this succulent feeder. Here Piccinini draws on psychoanalysis and Lacan’s theory of the mirror stage in a child’s development – where the child wants to merge with the mother to erase the self/other split by fulfilling the mother’s desire by having sex with her – thus erasing the mother’s lack, the idea of lack represented by the lack of a penis.1

As Jean Baudrillard notes of the mass of bodies on Brazil’s Copacabana beach, “Thousands of bodies everywhere. In fact, just one body, a single immense ramified mass of flesh, all sexes merged. A single, shameless expanded human polyp, a single organism, in which all collude like the sperm in seminal fluid … The sexual act is permanent, but not in the sense of Nordic eroticism: it is the epidermal promiscuity, the confusion of bodies, lips, buttocks, hips – a single fractal entity disseminated beneath the membrane of the sun.”2

An so it is here, all sexes merged within the anthropomorphised body of ‘The Bottom Feeder’, a body that challenges and subverts human perceptions of the form and sexuality of animals (including ourselves) that inhabit the world.

In ‘Doubting Thomas’ (2008), my favourite piece in the exhibition, a skeptical child with pale and luminous skin is about to put his hand inside the mouth of a genetically modified mole like creature that has reared it’s hairy snout to reveal a luscious, fluid-filled mouth replete with suckers and teeth. You want to shout ‘No, don’t go there!’ as the child’s absent mother has probably already warned him – to no avail. Children only learn through experience, I suspect in this case a nasty one.

.

The terrains the Piccinini interrogates (nature and artifice, biogenetics, cloning, stem cell research, consumer culture) are a rematerialisation of the actual world through morphological ‘mapping’ onto the genomes of the future. Morphogenetic fields3 seem to surround the work with an intense aura; surrounded by this aura the animals and children become more spiritual in their silence. Experiencing this new world promotes an evolution in the way in which we conceive the future possibilities of life on this earth, this brave but mutably surreal new world.

This is truly one of the best exhibitions of the year in Melbourne.

.

Marcus Bunyan for the Art Blart blog

.

.

Patricia Piccinini
‘Doubting Thomas’ (detail)
2008

.

.

Patricia Piccinini
‘Doubting Thomas’ (detail)
2008

.

.

Patricia Piccinini
‘Doubting Thomas’
Silicone, fibreglass, human hair, clothing, chair
2008

.

.

Patricia Piccinini
‘Balasana’
Silicone, fibreglass, human hair, clothing, Red-necked Wallaby, rug
2009

.

.

1. Klages, M. Jacques Lacan. Boulder: University of Colorado, 2001
http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/lacan.html [Online] Cited 09/10/2009.

2. Baudrillard, Jean. Fragments: Cool Memories III, 1990 – 1995. London: Verso, 1997, p.74.

3. “A morphogenetic field is a group of cells able to respond to discrete, localized biochemical signals leading to the development of specific morphological structures or organs.”

Morphogenetic field definition on Wikipedia [Online] Cited 09/10/2009.

.

Tolarno Galleries
Level 4, 104 Exhibition Street,
Melbourne, Vic, 3000

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Friday 10am – 5pm
Saturday 1 – 5pm

Tolarno Galleries website

Exhibition dates: 18th September – 17th January 2010

.

All photographs in the posting appear in the exhibition. Thankx to the Neue Nationalgalerie for allowing me to publish ‘Tavern IV’ (2006), ‘Bathroom’ (1997), ‘Haltestelle’ (2009) and ‘Office’ (1995).

A review of the catalogue that accompanied the exhibition can be found on the 5B4: Photographs and Books blog.

.

.

.

Thomas Demand
‘Diving-Board’
1994

.

.

Thomas Demand

Klause IV / Tavern IV
2006

C-Print / Diasec, 103 x 68 cm
© Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

.

.

Thomas Demand
Badezimmer / Bathroom
1997
C-Print / Diasec, 160 x 122 cm
© Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

.

.

“The Nationalgalerie presents Thomas Demand’s show National Gallery Berlin. From September 18, 2009, the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin devotes a comprehensive solo show to one of the internationally most influential artists of our time: Thomas Demand. It is so far the largest presentation of his work in this country. However, the exhibition National Gallery is not designed as an overall retrospective but it is firmly dedicated to only one subject, which is perhaps the most important in Demand’s multi-facetted oeuvre: Germany.

Living in Berlin since 1996 Thomas Demand is an artist known for his large-format photographs, which explore the blank domain between reality and the ways it is being represented. He is undoubtedly regarded as one of the most renowned artists of his generation. Using paper and cardboard he builds three-dimensional, usually life-size models of places which often make references to pictures found in the mass media. By taking photographs of the scenery created in this way, he produces artefacts of a kind of their own which play with the beholder’s ideas of fiction and reality.

Until January, 17, 2010, about 40 works by the artist will be on display in the glass hall of the Neue Nationalgalerie built by Mies van der Rohe. There is hardly a location which is more suitable to convey to the beholder the panorama of a nation’s history than the large glass hall of the Neue Nationalgalerie, which is not only regarded as an incunabulum of post-war architecture but also as a symbol for the self-image of the Federal Republic of Germany at the former border between East and West. The exceptional exhibition architecture of the firm, Caruso St. John, London, forms an ideal link between Demand’s works and Mies van der Rohe’s bright hall.

Each picture shown in the exhibition is accompanied by a specific caption written by Botho Strauß which does not so much explain or define Demand’s work but rather creates a space between the pictures and the texts to allow new versions of interpretation.

Text from the Thomas Demand at the New National Gallery website

.

.

Thomas Demand
‘Copyshop’
1999

.

.

Thomas Demand
‘Drafting Room’
1996

.

.

Thomas Demand
‘Laboratory (77-E-217)’
2000

.

.

Thomas Demand
‘Haltestelle’
2009
C-Print / Diasec, 240 x 330 cm
© Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

.

.

List of works that appear in the exhibition:

Archiv / Archive , 1995, C-Print/ Diasec, 183,5 x 233 cm
Attempt, 2005, C-Print/ Diasec, 166 x 190 cm
Badezimmer / Bathroom, 1997, C-Print/ Diasec, 160 x 122 cm
Balkone / Balconies, 1997, C-Print/ Diasec, 150 x 128 cm
Brennerautobahn, 1994, C-Print/ Diasec, 150 x 118 cm
Büro / Office, 1995, C-Print/ Diasec, 183,5 x 240 cm
Campingtisch / Camping Table, 1999, C-Print/ Diasec, 85 x 58 cm
Copyshop, 1999, C-Print/ Diasec, 183,5 x 300 cm
Drei Garagen / Three Garages, 1995, C-Print/ Diasec, 108 x 223 cm
Fabrik (ohne Namen), 1994, C-Print/ Diasec, 120 x 185 cm
Fassade / Facade, 2004, C-Print/ Diasec, 178 x 250 cm
Fenster / Window, 1998, C-Print/ Diasec, 183,5 x 286 cm
Fotoecke, 2009, C-Print/ Diasec, 180 x 198 cm
Gangway, 2001, C-Print/ Diasec, 225 x 180 cm
Grube / Pit, 1999, C-Print/ Diasec, 229 x 167 cm
Haltestelle, 2009, C-Print/Diasec, 240 x 330 cm
Heldenorgel, 2009, C-Print/Diasec, 240 x 380 cm
Hinterhaus, 2005, C-Print/ framed, 26,9 x 21,5 cm
Kabine, 2002, C-Print/ Diasec, 180 x 254 cm
Kinderzimmer /Nursery, 2009, C-Print/Diasec, 140 x 230 cm
Klause 1 / Tavern, 2006, C-Print/ Diasec, 275 x 170 cm
Klause 2 / Tavern, 2006, C-Print/ Diasec, 178 x 244 cm
Klause 3 / Tavern, 2006, C-Print/ Diasec, 199 x 258 cm
Klause 4 / Tavern, 2006, C-Print/ Diasec, 103 x 68 cm
Klause 5 / Tavern, 2006, C-Print/ Diasec, 197 x 137 cm
Labor (77-E-217), 2000, C-Print/ Diasec, 180 x 268 cm
Lichtung / Clearing, 2003, C-Print/ Diasec, 192 x 495 cm
Modell / Model, 2000, C-Print/ Diasec, 164,5 x 210 cm
Paneel / Peg Board, 1996, C-Print/ Diasec, 160 x 121 cm
Parlament / Parliament, 2009, C-Print/ Diasec, 180 x 223 cm
Raum / Room, 1994, C-Print/ Diasec, 183,5 x 270 cm
Sprungturm / Diving Board, 1994, C-Print/ Diasec, 150 x 118 cm
Spüle / Sink, 1997, C-Print/ Diasec, 52 x 56,5 cm
Studio, 1997, C-Print/ Diasec, 183,5 x 349,5 cm
Rasen / Lawn, 1998, C-Print/ Diasec, 122 x 170 cm
Terrasse / Terrace, 1998, C-Print/ Diasec, 183,5 x 268 cm
Treppenhaus / Staircase, 1995, C-Print/ Diasec, 150 x 118 cm
Wand /Mural, 1999, C-Print/ Diasec, 183,5 x 270 cm
Zeichensaal / Drafting Room, 1996, C-Print/ Diasec, 183,5 x 285 cm

.

.

Thomas Demand
‘Sink’
1997

.

.

Thomas Demand
‘Tavern 3′
2006

.

.

Thomas Demand
‘Archive’
1995

.

.

Thomas Demand
‘Lawn’
1998

.

.

Thomas Demand
Büro / Office
1995
C-Print / Diasec, 183,5 x 240 cm
© Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009

.

.

Neue Nationalgalerie
Potsdamer Straße 50
10785
Berlin
Kulturforum-Potsdamer Platz

Opening Hours:
Tues – Wed 10 – 6pm
Thurs 10 – 10pm
Fri – Sat 10 – 8pm
Sun 10 – 6pm
Monday closed

Thomas Demand in Berlin website

Exhibition dates: 25th September – 3rd January 2010

.

I gently massaged more photographs of work in the exhibition from the Whitney press office after initially only being able to download one press image! Many thankx to the Whitney for supplying three more images.

As the press release mentions them by name, presumably there will be some of the Robert Frank contact sheets which you can see at the posting  ‘Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans’ and the water towers of Bernd and Hilla Becher two photographs of which can be seen at the posting ‘Notes on a conversation with Mari Funaki’. In case you don’t know the work of artist David Wojnarowicz he was a gay man who died of HIV/AIDS aged 37 in 1992: I believe he was one of the most talented and subversive artists of his generation and his powerful images of identity, sexuality, power and death remain seared in my memory. Unfortunately there are not many good images to be found online but there is an excellent Aperture book, Aperture 137 Fall 1994 (‘David Wojnarowicz: Brush Fires in the Social Landscape’) available from Amazon.

.

.

.

David Wojnarowicz
‘Untitled’
1988
Synthetic polymer on two chromogenic prints , 11 x 13 1/4 in. (27.9 x 33.7 cm)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
purchase with funds from the Photography Committee, 95.88
Courtesy of The Estate of David Wojnarowicz and P.P.O.W. Gallery, New York, NY

.

.

Rachel Harrison
‘Contact Sheet (should home windows…)’
1996
Chromogenic print on fiberboard , 20 x 16 in
Collection of the artist 
courtesy Greene Naftali, New York

© 2009 Rachel Harrison

.

.

“In this selection of works drawn principally from the Whitney’s permanent collection, the repetitive image of the proof sheet is the leitmotif in a variety of works spanning the range of the museum’s photography collection, including the works of Paul McCarthy, Robert Frank, Ed Ruscha, and Andy Warhol. The exhibition is co-curated by Elisabeth Sussman, Whitney Curator and Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography, and Tina Kukielski, Senior Curatorial Assistant. ‘A Few Frames’ opens on September 25, 2009 in the Sondra Gilman Gallery and runs through January 3, 2010.

Decisions about which photograph to exhibit or print are frequently the end result of an editing process in which the artist views all of the exposures he or she has made on a contact sheet – a photographic proof showing strips or series of film negatives – and then selects individual frames to print or enlarge. Repetition, seriality, and sequencing – inherited from the contact sheet – are evident in all of the works on view. As co-curator Tina Kukielski notes, “this presentation includes a variety of photographs that build on the formal, thematic, and technical logic of the editing process.”

The exhibition includes photo-based works from sixteen featured artists in the Whitney’s collection. The work of David Wojnarowicz and Paul McCarthy present the contact sheet as a work of art, while those of artists such as Andy Warhol, Harold Edgerton, and Robert Frank play with its repeating forms. Other works call to mind the format of the contact sheet, such as Bernd and Hilla Becher’s typological study of industrial water towers and Silvia Kolbowski’s grid of appropriated images of female fashion models.

Works by contemporary artists such as Rachel Harrison and Collier Schorr in their continued interest in the contact sheet, despite perhaps growing trends toward digital photography, reveal the residual and sustained effects of this process.”

Press release from the Whitney Museum of American Art website

.

.

Collier Schorr
‘Day Dream (Sky)’
2007
Collage , 48 x 43 in. (121.9 x 109.2 cm)
Courtesy 303 Gallery, New York

.

.

Andy Warhol
‘Untitled (Cyclist)’
c. 1976
Four gelatin silver prints stitched with thread , 27 3/8 x 21 5/8 in. (69.5 x 54.9 cm). overall.
Unique Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and purchase with funds from the Photography Committee , 94.125
© 2009 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. /Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

.

.

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street
New York, NY 10021
General Information: (212) 570-3600

Opening Hours:
Wednesday – Thursday: 11 am – 6 pm
Friday 1 – 9 pm (6 – 9 pm pay-what-you-wish admission)
Saturday – Sunday: 11 am – 6 pm
Monday & Tuesday Closed

Whitney Museum of American Art website

Exhibition dates: 20th October – 14th November 2009

.

“I am interested in this border between the real and the imagined, the constructed and the natural.”

Vera Moller quoted in The Age newspaper

.

.

.

Vera Moller
‘Rabinova’
2009

.

.

Vera Moller
‘Veronium’
2007

.

.

Vera Moller
‘Martinette’
2009

.

.

Vera Moller
‘Shapinette’
2009

.

.

There is a lot of mutability floating around current exhibitions in Melbourne at the moment. At the National Gallery of Victoria we have the deathly, eloquent freeze frame mutability of Ricky Swallow; at Tolarno Galleries we have the genetic hyper-realist mutability of Patricia Piccinini; and at Sophie Gannon Gallery we have the surreal, spatial mutability of Vera Möller.

In this exhibition the real meets the imagined and the constructed encounters the natural in delicate sculptures and beautiful paintings. Coral snake and mutated striped hydras float above Phillip Huntersque backgrounds, looking oh so innocent until one remembers that hydras are predatory animals: the stripes, like the strips of a prisoners uniform not so innocent after all.

These ‘portraits’ (for that is what they strike me as) emerge from the recesses of the subconscious, rising up like some absurd alien fish from the deep. The sculptural forests of mutated specimens waft on the breeze of the ocean current. This detritus of biotechnology, living in the dark and the shadow, emerges into the light and space of the gallery – genetic recombinations in which a strands of genetic material are broken and then joined to another DNA molecule. In Möller’s work this chromosomal crossover has led to offspring (called ‘recombinants’) that dance to a surrealist tune: genetic algorithms that use mutation to maintain genetic diversity from one generation of chromosomes to the next.1

Spatially there is a lightness of touch and a beauty to their representation that brings the work alive within the gallery space. However, Möller’s recombinants are as deadly as they are beautiful. I really liked these creatures narcoleptic shadow dances.

.

.

Vera Moller
‘Telenium’
2009

.

.

Vera Moller
‘Rubella’
2008-09

.

.

Vera Moller
‘Bureniana’
2008

.

.

.

Installation photographs of ‘Nocturnalians and Shadow Eaters’ by Vera Moller at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

.

.

Vera Moller
‘Benthinium’
2008-09

.

.

1. Definition of mutation (genetic algorithm) in Wikipedia.

.

Sophie Gannon Gallery

2, Albert Street, Richmond, Melbourne
Opening hours: Tues – Saturday 11 – 5pm

Sophie Gannon Gallery website

Exhibition dates: 24th September – 13th December 2009

.

.

.

Hao Junchen
‘Hugging a portrait of his wife deceased wife, an elderly man fulfils their dream of visiting Beiijing’
2003

.

.

Feng Jianxin
‘A soldier bids farewell to his wife and child who have just visited him and are now returning home’
Weichang, Hebei
Winter 1987

.

.

Hu Wugong
‘Migrant wheat farmer in the field in Guanzhong’
1998

.

.

Wei Dezhong
‘At the Red Flag Canal construction project, suspended laborers cut a channel’
1960

.

.

Liu Jun
‘A Parent-Official Like This’
1985

.

.

“A new exhibition of documentary photography, ‘Humanism in China: A Contemporary Record of Photography’, will be on view at China Institute Gallery from September 24 through December 13, 2009, revealing a glimpse of China never before seen in the U.S. The photographs, dating from 1951 though 2003, offer intimate portraits of rural and urban daily life in China, beyond the glossy veneer of the economic boom. A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition.

Much in the way that The Family of Man, the 1955 landmark photography exhibition curated by Edward Steichen at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, explored the universality of the human experience, Humanism in China: A Contemporary Record of Photography offers rare insight into ordinary and extraordinary human experiences – in this case, taking place in China over the last 50 years.

‘Humanism in China: A Contemporary Record of Photography’ was organized by the Guangdong Museum of Art and represents the first large-scale collection of photography acquired permanently by any museum in China. Opening at the Guangdong Museum in 2003, the exhibition has since traveled to seven venues in China, Germany and Scotland. The curators, Wang Huangsheng, An Ge and Hu Wugong, visited photographers’ homes and studios in more than 20 provinces and viewed an estimated 100,000 photographs before selecting 600 images by 248 photographers. The exhibition at China Institute Gallery will offer a more tightly focused selection – 100 photographs by more than 80 photographers – chosen by Dr. Jerome Silbergeld, Professor of Chinese Art History at Princeton University.

Together the images present an unvarnished, starkly realistic view of the hardships and rewards of social modernization. “These photographs are not just about society and history but are equally about photography itself and the history of documentary photography in China,” Silbergeld writes in the catalogue essay.

Willow Hai Chang, the Director of China Institute Gallery, notes “The medium and language of photography provide an exceptional opportunity to foster a dialogue, enhancing communication and understanding about everyday life in China. Growing up in China and returning there often, I have witnessed the transforming relationship the Chinese have experienced with photography – from the fear that the camera could steal one’s soul that still exists in some remote regions to the urban proliferation of cell-phone cameras and social-networking sites filled with portraits. Photography also provides a most compelling method of recording history, and ‘Humanism in China: A Contemporary Record of Photography’ creates a contextual framework for both the traditional and modern elements of life in China.”

.

The emerging themes from the exhibition span an enormous range of human emotions. Tragedy can be seen in the eyes of a man holding a portrait of his deceased wife, while fear is evident as victims flee rising floodwaters. There is also a graceful patience on view as a couple awaits their country wedding, and utter joy is clearly evident as a man displays his wads of cash after winning the lottery.

One of the most striking images in the exhibition is ‘Iron Rice Bowl’ (see below), Hei Ming’s 2000 portrait of a Muslim chef squatting in front of a crude construction workers’ restaurant, his skullcap mimicking the customers’ rice bowls hanging on the restaurant’s facade. Another notable image, Geng Yensheng’s painterly photograph ‘Miners at Wumeng Mountain’ (see below), 2003, depicts the harsh working conditions in the mountainous district where Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou provinces come together. As Silbergeld writes, the photograph of the young bathing miners “brings social bitterness and formal beauty into a perfectly fused relationship.”

One of the images, ‘A Parent-Official Like This’ (see above), became well known in China. In May 1985, Liu Jun had his camera ready when he witnessed a rural deputy chief from the Baishui region in Shaanxi province forcefully push a 60-year-old villager to the ground in a dispute over migration. The resulting photograph captures the horrific arrogance of the authority figure as he towers over the powerless villager whose mouth is contorted in pain. The award-winning image is considered the foremost work of photographic social criticism since the 1949 revolution.”

Press release from the China Institute in America website

.

.

Wu Jialin
‘Having a Chat, Cheng Du’
1999

.

.

Hei-Ming
‘Iron Rice Bowl’
2000

.

.

Li Dan
‘Tourists at the Wenshu Temple in Chengdu taking a souvenir photograph’
1983

.

.

Geng Yensheng
‘Miners at Wumeng Mountain’
2003

.

.

China Institute in America
125 East 65th St, between Lexington and Park Avenues
New York

Gallery Hours:
Monday – Sunday 10am – 5pm
Tuesday and Thursday 10am – 8pm
FREE admission from 6pm-8pm

China Institute in America website

Exhibition dates: 28th August – 21st February 2010

.

.

Max Pam
born Australia 1949, lived in Brunei 1980–83
Road from Bamiyan 1971
gelatin silver photograph
20.1 x 20.1 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1979

.

.

Max Pam
born Australia 1949, lived in Brunei 1980–83
My donkey, our valley, Sarchu 1977
gelatin silver photograph
20.1 x 20.1 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1979
© Max Pam

.

.

Max Pam
born Australia 1949, lived in Brunei 1980–83
Sisters 1977
gelatin silver photograph
20.1 x 20.1 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1979
© Max Pam

.

.

Max Pam
born Australia 1949, lived in Brunei 1980–83
Tibetan nomads 1977
gelatin silver photograph
20.1 x 20.2 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1979
© Max Pam

.

.

‘Long Distance Vision’ is a disappointingly wane exploration of travel photography at NGV Australia. With the exception of the work of Max Pam the exhibition lacks insight into the phenomena that the curators want the work to philosophically investigate: namely how photographs shape our expectations of a place (even before we arrive) and how photographs also serve to confirm our experience – the picture as powerful mnemonic tool.

Firstly a quick story: when travelling in America to study at the Kinsey Institute I boarded a train from Chicago to what I thought was Bloomington, Indiana only to arrive many hours later at Bloomington, Illinois. Unbeknownst to me this Bloomington also had a motel of the same name as I was staying at in Indiana! After much confusion I ended up at the local airport trying to catch a single seater aircraft to Bloomington, Indiana with no luck – at the end of my tether, fearful in a foreign country, in tears because I just had to be at this appointment the next morning. Riding to my rescue was a nineteen year old kid with no shoes, driving an ex-cop car, who drove me across the Mid-West states stopping at petrol stops in the dead of night. It was a surreal experience, one that I will never forget for the rest of my life … fear, apprehension, alienation, happiness, joy and the sublime all rolled into one.

I tell this story to illustrate a point about travel – that you never know what is going to happen, what experiences you will have, even your final destination. To me photographs of these adventures not only document this dislocation but step beyond pure representation to become art that re-presents the nature of our existence.

.

Matthew Sleeth’s street photographs could be taken almost anywhere in the world (if it were not for a building with German writing on it). His snapshot aesthetic of caught moments, blinded people and dissected bodies in the observed landscape are evinced (to show in a clear manner; to prove beyond any reasonable doubt; to manifest; to make evident; to bring to light; to evidence – yes to bring to light, to evidence as photography does!) in mundane, dull, almost lifeless prints – ‘heavy’ photographs with a lack of shadow detail combined with a shallow depth of field. His remains, the people walking down the street and their shadow, are odd but as as The Age art critic Robert Nelson succinctly notes in his review of this exhibition, “To become art, the odd cannot remain merely quaint but has to signify an existential anomaly by implication.”1

If we look at the seminal photographs from the book ‘The Americans’ by Robert Frank we see in their dislocated view of America a foreigners view of the country the artist was travelling across – a subjective view of America that reveals as much about the state of mind of the artist as the country he was exposing. No such exposition happens in the works of Matthew Sleeth.

Christine Godden’s photographs of family and friends have little to do with travel photography and I struggle to understand their inclusion in this exhibition. Though they are reasonable enough photographs in their own right – small black and white photographs of small intimacies (at the beach, in the garden, at the kitchen table, on the phone, on the porch, on the float, etc…) Godden’s anthropomorphist bodies have nothing to do with a vision of a new land as she had been living in San Francisco, New York and Rochester for six years over the period that these photographs were taken. Enough said.

The highlight of the exhibition is the work of Max Pam. I remember going the National Gallery of Victoria in the late 1980s to view this series of work in the collection – and what a revelation they were then and remain so today. The square formatted, dark sepia toned silver gelatin prints of the people and landscapes of Tibet are both monumental and personal at one and the same time. You are drawn into their intimacies: the punctum of a boys feet; the gathering of families; camels running before a windstorm; human beings as specks in a vast landscape.

“If the world is unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest it is not surprising things should be thus. We are the playthings of the forces that laid out the oceans and chiselled the mountains. Sublime places acknowledge limitations that we might otherwise encounter with anxiety or anger in the ordinary flow of events. It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming, but it is the vast spaces of nature that perhaps provide us with the finest, the most respectful reminder of all that exceeds us. If we spend time with them, they may help us to accept more graciously the great unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.”2

The meditation on place and space that the artist has undertaken gives true insight into the connection of man and earth, coming closest to Alain de Botton’s understanding of the significance of sublime places. Through a vision of a distant land the photographs transport us in an emotional journey that furthers our understanding of the fragility of life both of the planet and of ourselves.

.

While the National Gallery of Victoria holds some excellent photography exhibitions (such as Andreas Gursky and Rennie Ellis for example) this was a missed opportunity. The interesting concept of the exhibition required a more rigorous investigation instead of such a cursory analysis (which can be evidenced by the catalogue ‘essay’: one page the size of a quarter of an A4 piece of paper that glosses over the whole history of travel photography in a few blithe sentences).

Inspiration could have easily been found in Alain de Botton’s excellent book ‘The Art of Travel’. Here we find chapters titled ‘On Anticipation’, ‘On Travelling Places’, ‘On the Exotic’, ‘On Curiosity’, ‘On the Country and the City’ and ‘On the Sublime’ to name but a few, with places and art work to illustrate the journey: what more is needed to excite the mind!
Take Charles Baudelaire for example. He travelled outside his native France only once and never ventured abroad again. Baudelaire still dreamt of going to Lisbon, or Java or to the Netherlands but “the destination was not really the point. The true desire was to get away, to go, as he concluded, ‘Anywhere! Anywhere! So long as it is out of the world!’”3
Heavens, we don’t even have to leave home to create travel photography that is out of the world! Our far-sighted vision (like that of photographer Gregory Crewdson) can create psychological narratives of imaginative journeys played out for the camera.

Perhaps what was needed was a longer gestation period, further research into the theoretical nuances of travel photography (one a little death, a remembrance; both a dislocation in the non-linearity of time and space), a gathering of photographs from collections around Australia to better evidence the conceptual basis for the exhibition and a greater understanding of the irregular possibilities of travel photography – so that the work and words could truly reflect the title of the exhibition ‘Long Distance Vision.’

Marcus Bunyan for the Art Blart blog

.

.

Christine Godden
born Australia 1947
Bobbie and Amitabha at the beach (c. 1972)
gelatin silver photograph
13.2 x 20.1 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased from Admission Funds, 1991
© Christine Godden

.

.

Christine Godden
born Australia 1947
Elliot holding a ring 1973
gelatin silver photograph
15.0 x 22.8 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased from Admission Funds, 1991
© Christine Godden

.

.

Christine Godden
born Australia 1947
Joanie at the kitchen table 1973, printed 1986
gelatin silver photograph
20.1 x 30.6 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased from Admission Funds, 1991
© Christine Godden

.

.

Christine Godden
born Australia 1947
With Leigh on the porch 1972, printed 1986
gelatin silver photograph
20.2 x 30.5 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased from Admission Funds, 1991
© Christine Godden

.

.

“The National Gallery of Victoria will celebrate the work of Christine Godden, Max Pam and Matthew Sleeth in a new exhibition, Long Distance Vision: Three Australian Photographers opening 28 August.

Long Distance Vision will include over 60 photographs from the NGV Collection exploring the concept of the ‘tourist gaze’ and its relationship with the three artists.

Susan van Wyk, Curator Photography, NGV said the exhibition provides a fascinating insight into the unusual perspective brought by the three photographers to their varied world travel destinations.

“There’s a sense in the works in the exhibition that the photographers are not from the places they choose to photograph, and that each is a visitor delighting in the scenes they encounter.

“What is notable about the photographs in Long Distance Vision is that rather than focussing on the well known scenes that each artist encountered, they have turned their attention to the ‘little things’, the details of the everyday,” said Ms van Wyk.

From the nineteenth century, photography has been a means by which people could discover the world, initially through personal collection and albums, and later via postcards, magazines, books and the internet.

Dr Gerard Vaughan, Director, NGV said that both contemporary photographers and tourists use the camera as a means to explore and capture the world.

“Through their photographs, the three artists featured in ‘Long Distance Vision’ show us highly individual ways of seeing the world. This exhibition will surprise and delight visitors as our attention is drawn to not only what is different but what remains the same as we travel the world,” said Dr Vaughan.

.

Born in Melbourne in 1949, Max Pam began his career in various commercial photography studios in the 1960s. After responding to a university notice for assistance to drive a Volkswagen from Calcutta to London in 1969, Pam got his first taste of being a traveller. The body of Pam’s work in this exhibition is from the series The Himalayas, which was photographed over a number of early visits to India.

Christine Godden also travelled the popular overland route between Europe and India in the early 1970s, returning to Sydney in 1978. In 1972, after a period of travelling, Godden found her home in the US where she remained for six years. Godden’s photographs in this exhibition were taken between 1972 and 1974 during her stay in the US.

Born in Melbourne in 1972, Matthew Sleeth is another seasoned traveller. During the late 1990s, Sleeth settled in Opfikon, an outer suburb of Zurich, Switzerland. The series of photographs in Long Distance Vision were taken during this time, showing Sleeth’s interest not only in street photography, but also in the narrative possibilities in everyday scenes. Dotted with garishly coloured playhouses, naive sculptures and whimsical arrangements of garden gnomes Sleeth’s photographs go beyond the ‘picture-perfect’ scenes of typical tourist photography.

Long Distance Vision: Three Australian Photographers is on display at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Federation Square from 28 August 2009 to 21 February 2010.”

Text from the National Gallery of Victoria press release

.

.

.

.

.

Matthew Sleeth
Born Australia 1972
Photographs from the series Opfikon 1997, printed 2004
Type C photograph
43.2 x 43.0 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented through the NGV Foundation by Patrick Corrigan, Governor, 2005
© Matthew Sleeth courtesy of Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

.

.

1. Nelson, Robert. “In blurred focus: le freak c’est chic,” in The Age newspaper. Friday, October 23rd 2009, p.18.

2. de Botton, Alain. The Art of Travel. London: Penguin, 2002, p.178 – 179.

3. Ibid., p.34.

.

The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia Federation Square
Corner of Russell and 
Flinders Streets, Melbourne.

National Gallery of Victoria website

Exhibition dates: 12th September – 8th November 2009

.

“Widely recognized as a pioneer in the field of color photography, William Christenberry has used this expressive medium to explore the American South for forty years. While pursuing this artistic quest he has drawn inspiration from Walker Evans, and influenced a generation of emerging photographers. William Christenberry: Photographs, 1961 – 2005 surveys his poetic documentation of southern vernacular architecture, signage, and landscape using a wide range of cameras, from his earliest Brownie photographs of the early 1960s to his later work with a large-format camera. Combining never-before-seen photographs, both old and new, with images that are now iconic, this exhibition comprises fifty vintage photographic works and one sculpture. Together, they convey the breadth of his singular photographic vision. Discuss the artistic objectives of his long-term interpretation of the Southern landscape with Michelle Norris of National Public Radio, Christenberry explained: “What I really feel very strongly about, and I hope reflects in all aspects of my work, is the human touch, the humanness of things, the positive and sometimes the negative and sometimes the sad.”

Text from the Morris Musem of Art website

.

.

.

William Christenberry
‘Green Warehouse, Newbern, Alabama’
1997

.

.

William Christenberry
‘House and Car, near Akron, Alabama’
1981

.

.

William Christenberry
‘T.B. Hick’s Store, Newbern, Alabama’
1976

.

.

William Christenberry
‘Kudzu with Storm Cloud, near Akron, Alabama’
1981

.

.

“William Christenberry Photographs, 1961 – 2005, a phenomenal retrospective exhibition of Christenberry’s Photographs, opens to the public at the Morris Museum of Art on September 16, 2009. The Morris Museum is the only Georgia venue hosting this exhibition.

“William Christenberry Photographs, 1961 – 2005 is an overview of the career of one of the South’s most important living artists,” said Kevin Grogan, director of the Morris Museum of Art. “Organized by the Aperture Foundation, this exhibition brings to Augusta a body of work like no other. No one has so scrupulously and attentively captured a sense of place and time in quite the way that Bill Christenberry has. He is a remarkable artist, as is proven by this extraordinary body of work. He is America’s Proust.”

Since the early 1960s, William Christenberry has plumbed the regional identity of the American South, focusing his attention primarily on his childhood home, Hale County, Alabama. Widely recognized as a pioneer in the field of color photography, Christenberry draws inspiration from the work of Walker Evans, while paralleling the work of such international practitioners as Bernd and Hilla Becher. Ranging from his earliest Brownie photographs to his later work with a large-format camera, William Christenberry Photographs, 1961 – 2005 is a survey of the artist’s poetic documentation of the Southern landscape and vernacular architecture that surrounded him as he grew up. The exhibition, coupling never-before-seen photographs with images that are now iconic, reveals how the history, the very story of place, is at the heart of Christenberry’s ongoing project. While the focus of his work is the American South, it touches on universal themes related to family, culture, nature, spirituality, memory, and aging. Christenberry photographs real things in the real world – ramshackle buildings, weathered commercial signs, lonely back roads, rusted-out cars, whitewashed churches, decorated graves. Dutifully returning to photograph the same locations annually – the green barn, the palmist building, the Bar-B-Q Inn, among others – he has fulfilled a personal ritual and documented the physical changes wrought by every single year. Straddling past and present, Christenberry’s art suggests the gravity and power of the passage of time.

The exhibition is accompanied by a stunning monograph entitled William Christenberry, published by Aperture in cooperation with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The book, a comprehensive survey, presents all aspects of the artist’s oeuvre as he intended it to be viewed and considered. More than half the work reproduced has not been previously published.”

Text from the press release on the Morris Musem of Art website

.

.

William Christenberry
‘Farmhouse, Hale County, Alabama’
1977

.

.

William Christenberry
‘Sprott Church in Alabama’
1971

.

.

William Christenberry
‘Palmist Building, Havanna, Alabama’
1980

.

.

William Christenberry
‘House and Car, near Akron, Alabama’
1978

.

.

William Christenberry
‘Rabbit Pen, near Moundville, Alabama’
1998

.

.

William Christenberry
‘Old House, near Akron, Alabama’
1964

.

.

Morris Museum of Art
1 Tenth Street
Augusta, Georgia 30901
Phone: 706-724-7501
Fax: 706-724-7612

Opening Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday: 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Sunday: Noon–5:00 p.m.
Closed Mondays and major holidays

Exhibition dates: October 6th – October 31st 2009

.

Jewellery as art; is art

Brooches, objects

Robust/delicate

Holistic body of work

Affirmation of line and form

Simplicity/complexity of shapes

Span ______  (meta)physical

[Interior] exterior!

elemental | articulation

Volume ((( ))) form

&

arch-itecture

SPACE

√

beauty

……………………….

.

.

.

Carlier Makigawa
‘Brooch’
2009

.

.

Carlier Makigawa
‘Brooch’
2009

.

.

Carlier Makigawa
‘Brooch’
2009

.

.

Carlier Makigawa
‘Brooch’
2009

.

.

“A spiritual and private space. Ritual object, jewellery. Linear structures appear fragile and monumental to cradle the internal spirit. They appear to float in space, hovering, penetrating, a temporary existence. Nature is the reference, and the geometry of nature and architecture inform this world.”

Carlier Makigawa

.

Carlier Makigawa explores the parameters of small spaces in her new exhibition October 2009. Her spare, exacting constructions in silver wire have a monumentality that defies their scale and delicacy. Her new work consists of brooches and objects which move beyond the botanical inspiration of her earlier work to engage with more abstract notions of movement, compression and spatial manipulation.

Text from the Gallery Funaki website

.

.

Carlier Makigawa
‘Object’
2009

.

.

Carlier Makigawa
‘Object’
2009

.

.

Carlier Makigawa
‘Brooch’
2009

.

.

Carlier Makigawa
‘Neckpiece’
2009

.

.

Gallery Funaki
4 Crossley St.,
Melbourne 3000
03 9662 9446

Opening hours: Tues – Friday, 11 – 5pm, Sat 11 – 4pm

Gallery Funaki website

Exhibition dates: 24th September – 14th November 2009

Exhibition artists: Peter Bialobrzeski, Stephane Couturier, DoDo Jin Ming, Toshio Shibata

.

.

.

DoDo Jin Ming
‘Behind My Eyes 2nd Movement, Plate I’
2002

.

.

DoDo Jin Ming
‘Behind My Eyes 2nd Movement, Plate VIII’
2003

.

.

DoDo Jin Ming
‘Free Element, Plate XXX’
2002

.

.

Stephane Couturier
‘Olympic Parkway No. 1′
2001

.

.

Stephane Couturier
‘Proctor Valley No. 1′
2004

.

.

“Laurence Miller is pleased to present, as its opening show for the fall, The Abstracted Landscape, featuring the work of four midcareer international artists: Peter Bialobrzeski, from Hamburg; Stephane Couturier, from Paris; DoDo Jin Ming from Beijing and New York; and Toshio Shibata, from Tokyo.

These four photographers each translate the landscape into a poetic and abstract vision, utilizing techniques and processes unique to photography to create scenes that remain sufficiently recognizable yet unobtainable through the naked eye. Peter Bialobrzeski, in his series Lost in Transition, photographs rapid urbanization and industrialization by taking very long exposures, which create other-worldly colours and lighting not visible to the naked eye. Stephane Couturier embraces the camera’s monocularity in his series from Havana to flatten our normal reading of space and render totally ambiguous the walls of a decaying interior. DoDo Jin Ming, in her series Behind My Eyes, applies the technique of negative printing to render mysterious and foreboding fields of sunflowers. And Toshio Shibata wields his large view camera, with multiple tilts and swings, to look straight down the side of a dam, creating a vertigo-inducing viewpoint we would be unable (and perhaps unwilling) to see directly with our own eyes.

Abstraction in the landscape has a rich tradition within the history of photography. Felix Teynard’s Egyptian views from the mid-1850’s are wonderfully abstract, as are those of J.B. Greene and August Salzmann. Timothy O’Sullivan, Carlton Watkins and William Henry Jackson each made views of the American west from the 1806’s through the 1880’s, that were equally rich in detail and minimal in composition. In the 20th century there are many examples, from George Seeley to Paul Strand, through Moholy Nagy and the Bauhaus to Edward Weston’s glorious sand dunes.”

Text from the Laurence Millery Gallery website

.

.

Toshio Shibata
‘Kashima Town, Fukushima Prefecture’
1990

.

.

Toshio Shibata
‘Grand Coulee Dam, Douglas County, WA’
1996

.

.

Peter Bialobzeski
‘Transition #33′ from the series ‘Lost in Transition’
2005

.

.

Peter Bialobrzeski
‘Transition #20′ from the series ‘Lost in Transition’
2005

.

.

Peter Bialobrzeski
‘Transition #23′ from the series ‘Lost in Tansition’
2005

.

.

Laurence Miller Gallery
20 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019
Tel: 212.397.3930
Fax: 212.397.3932

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Friday 10-5:30, Sat 11 – 5:30

Laurence Millery Gallery website

Exhibition dates: 16th October – 28th February 2009

.

Hot off the press straight to you here at Art Blart!

Photographs of the exhibition ‘Ricky Swallow: The Bricoleur’ at the National Gallery of Victoria Australia, Federation Square. The photographs are in the chronological order that I took them, walking through the three spaces of the exhibition. A spare, visually minimalist aesthetic to the show, where every vanitas, every mark (in)forms the work as transcendent momenti mori. Review to follow.

Many thankx to Sue, Alison, Jemma and the team for the usual excellent job and for allowing me to document the exhibition.

.

“I’ve always been interested in how an object can be remembered and how that memory can be sustained and directed sculpturally, pulling things in and out of time, passing objects through the studio as a kind of filter returning them as new forms.”

Ricky Swallow

.

.

.

Media crowd at the Ricky Swallow exhibition ‘The Bricoleur’ at NGV Australia with Alex Baker, Senior Curator, Contemporary Art, NGV fourth from left with clasped hands.

.

.

Ricky Swallow
‘The Bricoleur’
2006

.

.

.

Ricky Swallow
‘One Nation Underground’
2007

.

.

Ricky Swallow
‘One Nation Underground’ (detail)
2007

.

.

Ricky Swallow
‘Tusk’
patinated bronze, brass
2007

.

.

Ricky Swallow
‘Tusk’ (detail)
patinated bronze, brass
2007

.

.

.

.

.

Ricky Swallow
‘Bowman’s record’ (detail)
bronze
2008

.

.

Ricky Swallow
‘Bowman’s record’ (detail)
bronze
2008

.

.

.

Installation views of ‘Ricky Swallow: The Bricoleur’ second space at NGV Australia

.

.

.

Ricky Swallow
‘Caravan’ (detail)
bronze
2008

.

.

Ricky Swallow
‘Salad days’
c.2005

.

.

Ricky Swallow
‘Killing time’
2003 – 04

.

.

Ricky Swallow
‘Killing time’ (detail)
2003 – 04

.

.

Ricky Swallow
‘Killing time’
2003 – 04

.

.

Ricky Swallow
‘Killing time’ (detail)
2003 – 04

.

.

.

.

Ricky Swallow facing the media behind his work ‘Killing time’ (2003 – 04)

.

.

“A new exhibition featuring the work of internationally renowned Australian artist Ricky Swallow will open at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia on 16 October 2009.

Ricky Swallow: The Bricoleur is the artist’s first major exhibition in Australia since 2006. This exhibition will feature several of the artist’s well‐known intricately detailed, carved wooden sculptures as well as a range of new sculptural works in wood, bronze and plaster. The exhibition will also showcase two large groups of watercolours, an aspect of Swallow’s practice that is not as well known as his trademark works.

Salad days (2005) and Killing time (2003-04), which were featured in the 2005 Venice Biennale and are considered Swallow icons, will strike a familiar chord with Melbourne audiences.

Sculptures completed over the past year include bronze balloons on which bronze barnacles seamlessly cling (Caravan, 2008); a series of cast bronze archery targets (Bowman’s Record, 2008) that look like desecrated minimalist paintings; and carved wooden sculpture of a human skull inside what looks like a paper bag (Fig 1, 2008).

A highlight of the show will be Swallow’s watercolour, One Nation Underground (2007), recently acquired by the NGV. The work presents a collection of images based on 1960s musicians including Tim Buckley, Denny Doherty, Brian Jones and John Phillips.

Alex Baker, Senior Curator, Contemporary Art, NGV said the works in this exhibition explore the themes of life and death, time and its passing, mortality and immortality.

“Swallow’s art investigates how memory is distilled within the objects of daily life. His work addresses the fundamental issues that lie at the core of who we are, reminding us of our deep symbiotic relationship to the stuff of everyday life.”

“The exhibition’s title The Bricoleur refers to the kind of activities performed by a handyman or tinkerer, someone who makes creative use of whatever might be at hand. The Bricoleur is also the title of one of the sculptures in the exhibition, which depicts a forlorn houseplant with a sneaker wedged between its branches,” said Mr Baker.

Gerard Vaughan, Director, NGV, said this exhibition reinforces the NGV’s commitment to exhibiting and collecting world‐class contemporary art.

“The NGV has enjoyed a long and successful relationship with Ricky Swallow, exhibiting and acquiring a number of his works over the years. His detailed and exquisitely crafted replicas of commonplace objects never fail to inspire visitors to the Gallery.”

Ricky Swallow was born in Victoria in 1974 and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. His career has enjoyed a meteoric rise since winning the NGV’s prestigious Contempora5 art prize in 1999. Since then, Swallow has exhibited in the UK, Europe and the United States, and represented Australia at the 2005 Venice Biennale.”

Press release from the NGV website

.

The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia Federation Square
Corner of Russell and 
Flinders Streets, Melbourne.

National Gallery of Victoria website