Painting is a zone photography will never occupy. The Lovis Corinth exhibition at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris neatly demonstrates what the defenders of the Bill Henson case can never evoke. The eminent art historian Roger Benjamin’s defensive invocation of the term “gestualism” will never meaningfully transfer from the material inventiveness of painting (the substantive reality of which – in, say, a painting such as Corinth’s Innocentia above – will always be an object as much as it is an image) to the pictorialist effects of a Henson. A painting is always a (material) construction of reality, even if the subject matter of the painterly images is not always representational. By contrast with a photograph, paintings and sculptures are always artefacts of the manipulation of matter, artefacts of the imagination, before they are images or representations. Hence the specific aesthetic pleasures of the Corinth exhibition.

Benjamin’s attribution of qualities of painterliness in photography do not shift the essential optical objectivity of the photographic engagement with the subject – the reality of the subject/camera/photographer/image/audience nexus will be present no matter what effects of print, scale, or framing context may be orchestrated by the photographer/artist. The photographer’s subject carries her identity with her when she leaves the studio in a way the painter’s subject never does. And Benjamin’s “whiff of the sublime” – surely an agency of a heavenly order – invokes an authority we thought photography was instrumental in eliminating, way back when.

(see the following link to The Australian news story that the NSW DPP will not recommend proceeding with charges against Henson)

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Pencils ready? If you’re in Melbourne the inspirational Slim Barrie is currently to be seen in the context of international outsider art at Monash University Museum of Art until 21 June. Curated by Glenn Barkley and Peter Fay, the panoptical exhibition Without Borders: Outsider Art in an Antipodean Context puts Slim in the context of fifteen other international and Australian artists. If you’re in Sydney, be patient and you’ll see the show at Campbelltown Arts Centre from 29th August. But if you’re in Canberra you’ll see Slim Barrie’s two- and three-dimensional illuminated drawings at ArtWranglers from 8th August.

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Rachel Jessie-Rae O’Connor has been busy on two fronts: see this invitation to a group show, plus her review of Bernard Smith’s new book The Formalesque, in the latest Art Monthly Australia, which you should buy to read the rest of her review…

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is a great show of some of the Canberra to Melbourne painting expats. See the invite below, and these snaps of the installation process. Images in the order above. Opens Thursday 3rd at M16 (phone 6295 9438). Sorry, don’t yet have the titles etc.

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If you don’t think Prince Harry has done much to change the world recently, five years ago he did provide The Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones with an opportunity to reflect on the appropriation of contemporary Aboriginal art. In his article of August 20, 2003, “Aborigines are wrong about Harry” Jones reflects on the “modernist sublime”, and its relation to previous critiques of primitivist appropriation, observing “The case against Harry is not simply that his pictures are a pastiche, in their banally decorative way, of Aboriginal art, but that he has appropriated symbols with specific cultural meanings. Intellectual property is an unusually powerful concept in Aboriginal culture.” Given the developments in this field in the past five years, it’s worth a read, and caused us to reflect on the specificity of this work, currently the entrance decor for the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art’s They are Meditating: paintings from the MCA’s Arnott’s Collection, curated by Djon Mundine.

What’s the connection? Is it possible that the situation Jones describes, ludicrously exploited by the younger and more naive Prince Harry, and many other much more serious artists, has now been inverted? This is not to imply the meaning of The Inversion of Tradition elaborated by Nicholas Thomas in 1992, in which he identifies inversion as a conscious process of cultural opposition, but rather an inversion of meaning seemingly imposed by the interventionist motivations of the institutions of the art world.

This work, by Richard Birrinbirrin, is the latest in a series of commissioned murals Mundine has introduced as the entry experience to exhibitions he has curated, both at the MCA, and subsequently in Europe. Djon has often expressed the observation that aspects of contemporary Aboriginal art look just like early minimalism (Daniel Buren meets Sol LeWitt, etc.), and he has exercised his various roles and influence to promote this idea. In his view “Aboriginal art has continually struggled in not being seen as contemporary…” and now we see the latest outcome of this motivation. Regrettably, Aboriginal art as architectural decor has since caught on, most notoriously when John Marwurndjal’s (and others’) “sacred” designs were applied to the columns and ceiling of the bookshop at the Musee du quai Branly in Paris. So what’s the relevance of “inversion” to this discussion, apart from the clumsily obvious, the depiction of sacred sites, painted on the ground, turned upside down and reproduced on the ceiling of a Paris shop? At vast expense, and to much brouhaha. When art becomes decor, content is evacuated, and the secular and sacrilege coincide…

As promotion for the MCA show, back in Sydney, Richard Birrinbirrin (who is clan leader of the Mannharngu, the eldest son of the late David Daymirringu Malangi) is shown painting the classical palette of his family’s tradition: red and yellow ochre, white pipeclay and carbon black, in this instance in vertical acrylic stripes. In a previous MCA exhibition curated by Mundine in 2000, the entrance was also painted, with horizontal stripes, red ochre, white, yellow ochre, and white, recognisable as the representation of Djirrididi (kingfisher) body design, made famous by the art of the late Micky Durrng (Liyagawumirr’).

In this case, Birrinbirrin’s wall painting is also titled “Djirrididi (kingfisher)”, but in this instance both the colours and orientation of the stripes are different. It’s understood that the colour black was given to the mainland clans by the Djan’kawu Sisters. In the art of Arnhem Land, such micro-details of non-figurative art are usually rich with coded meanings, which are owned, inherited, licensed by particular clans, triggering references to particular ancestral narratives. These designs retain their traditional referents, whether seen on bodies, hollow logs, barks, baskets, or now in printmedia, on canvas, or applied to architectural settings.

At the entrance to the exhibition visitors will find this video monitor (set amongst the striped doors, lift surrounds etc.) which shows Richard Birrinbirrin and his djungayi (manager) David Dharrapuy roller-painting the striped entrance hall, plus Birrinbirrin’s introductory talk, plus a short interview with Djon Mundine. Inter alia, Birrinbirrin describes the stripes as body painting for ceremony (although which ceremony is not identified), as the kingfisher story, and as “the colour of the sunset”. It’s explained that these colours derive from (or reference) the passage of the ancestral Djang’kawu Sisters through central Arnhem Land who, it is said, as they travel west the black colour is added to the white, yellow and red. There’s no mention of the verticality of the stripes, although when Birrinbirrin talks about body painting, he gestures horizontally across his chest. So the origin of the verticality of this stripe installation remains to be confirmed. Dharrapuy speaks briefly in Yolngu matha to explain that this is his mother’s story, and Birrinbirrin explains that he’s using it with permission “if not, we’re stealing [from] each other”. The sisters of the late Micky Durrng, Helen Ganalmirriwuy and Ruth Ngalmakarra, who paint the kingfisher story in white yellow and red, also attended the opening, but did not appear in the video. Here’s another more lighthearted viewpoint.

Here’s how Birrinbirrin (we believe) painted the wall of Bula’bula Arts in Ramingining. More geometric, like a logo…

Closer to home, women from both Balmbi (Birrinbirrin’s mother’s side) and Djambarrpuyningu clans paint their baskets similarly, sometimes referencing the kingfisher design, sometimes without any narrative attribution. See, for example, this basket by Judy Baypungula, who is Ngakarrana (and Birrinbirrin’s classificatory mother), also painted in acrylic. The different sequences of the four colours may (or may not) be significant, especially if you compare with the second basket, by Margaret Gindjimirr’ (Balmbi), or the third, by Judith Djelirr…

As with these and other baskets, previous examples of the Djirrididi design (including, for example, the relevant poles in the Aboriginal Memorial at the NGA) conventionally have the stripes running horizontally, referencing the marks left on mangrove trees by tidal waters. With the Liyagawumirr’ version, applied as body painting, elements of the design sometimes run vertically, on the thigh, or on the torso.

When asked what his new “site-specific wall painting” is about, Richard Birrinbirrin says, “body painting”. When asked which story, he is not forthcoming. So, we ask ourselves, where’s the precedent, where does this striking design of vertical stripes come from? How does the artist conceive of a monumental installation derived from a sideways-tipped design? Is this an anything goes approach to form and colour? Maybe it is possible to see this as an instance of the inversion of the expectation that non-figurative Aboriginal art makes specific coded references to ancestral designs, invoking ancestral narratives. In the current discourse, this is usually seen as the crucial legitimization of their difference and distinctive otherness, and as a guarantee against the values of look-alike late modernisms. But if painting no longer has the need of a inherent narrative, or precedent, then geometric forms and the palette of just four colours may in themselves be a self-sufficient motivation for an abstract work of art.

So, is this a kind of inversion? This is not to deny the place of invention within tradition, along the lines suggested by Marshall Sahlins, whereby innovation is recognised as the distinctive way by which tradition proceeds. But when Aboriginal artists (or their agents) appropriate the look of the art of another culture, or when the art is no longer grounded in the prior motivation of a coded narrative, a disconnection between tradition, representation and abstraction has occurred. Neither is this likely to be an indigenous postmodernity, as for example in the work of Gordon Bennett, where non-figuration makes no claim to a mnemonic relation to inside knowledge, but asserts its critical relation to modernism’s claim to sublimity, which is a position much closer to Thomas’ original conception.

If we don’t think this what is happening here, what we’re left with is a kind of institutional agency, where the abstract effect of the decor and the ubiquitous shopping experience frames the experience of the art… This is risky business indeed, when secular and sacrilegious motives combine.

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Or maybe not. Clearly stylistic breadth is his strong suit… This is one of four paintings (this one, Hi God People, is 60×90, acrylic on canvas) that Tim Price is bringing up for a group exhibition The Painting Depot at M16 studios, to open on Thursday April 3rd. The others in the show are Dionysia Salas Hammer, Fiona Little, and Julia Castiglioni Bradshaw.

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Last weekend ArtWranglers visited Bermagui to see what a non-juried, art-in-the-public-domain exhibition on the edge of the continent (literally, the Bermagui headland) and as far away as you can get from the cosmopolis – those big-city environments in which sculpture has been flourishing. This is public art on a shoestring, run by local enthusiast Jan Ireland and her team of volunteers, plus in-kind support from a raft of willing local businesses. And in this context “Sculpture on the Edge” is a bravely provocative title – click over to the Kelly Gang to read about some of the previous years’ controversies – and see below how artists like Phil Spellman and Hanna Hoyne responded to the challenge…

Why “brave”, why “provocative”? Art in the public domain (see our ongoing thread about Public Artefacts) raises challenging questions about art, (when is an object a work of art, when is it simply public decor?) as well as the questions about the ownership of public space, governments’ commitments to public arts policies, how they are promoted (and defended), who gets to decide what it is we bump into, and on what basis those decisions are being made. In this case, it’s brave because country town politics can be raw and interpersonal, and provocative because, basically, anything goes in a non-juried exhibition like this. It has some of the edginess of the Mildura Sculpture Prize of the 60s and 70s, without a Tim Burns’ minefield having to be steam-rollered by the local Council (which was probably the artist’s intent), and owes a lot to the Sydney “Sculpture by the Sea” which has done so much to elevate the profile of contemporary sculpture in Australia over the last decade. But yes, there has been censorship in the past (Richard Moffat’s abstract steel Knot was ordered removed last year because a member of the public thought it was a turd, and therefore a commentary on a controversial sewerage system) so it is brave of the organisers to continue to test the boundaries of public taste.

Where events like this (and Canberra’s Domain project) become really significant – in terms of the ways in which public are may be entertained, accepted, or rejected by both the public and government agencies – is the sense in which we encounter art which is relatively naked of the institutional frameworks which, effectively, tell us that it’s “art” we’re up against. What we like about these kinds of events is that they’re short-term, ephemeral, open, and that they invite the kind of social interaction which is so constrained in a museum context. If museum art is a secular religion, then events like “Sculpture on the Edge” is an entirely healthy form of social atheism.

But finding the edge, the boundary between art and non-art, is a century-old issue which still drives contemporary art’s evolutionary momentum. Take away the edginess, and we’re in the sleepy-time doldrums. So what was actually sitting on the edge in this event – what made it more than a country fair arts-and-crafts display?

ArtWranglers liked it best when the artists responded to the drama of the grassy headland topography. Hannah Hoyne’s Soulsearchanaut about to be Born an angelic astronaut in a bubble threatening to fly out over the bay, Amanda Stuart’s pack of wild dogs (Bush Pack) which terrorized the escarpment beyond the lawn, causing fright to local puppies and their owners, and Rachel Bowak who terrorized the grey nomads in the caravan park next door with Container, an installation in a container which suggests a last glimpse of earthly paradise before the euthenic or cryogenic solution to our mortal, rather than aesthetic, dilemmas.

But John Ramsey’s set of five giant Fishing Floats signals a neat response to the priorities of a fishing village like Bermagui. And everyone shares the drama of one of the floats escaping its tether out in the bay, and another being battered to pieces by the high tide. Art is made accessible through works like this and enables and encourages people to begin to make art, to become an artist, to get into the act. You can see Clayton’s Titanic Deck Chair half a kilometer away on Horseshoe Bay beach, where its scale confuses the viewer’s eye (but not the participatory intentions of a younger audience).

More than half the artists in this exhibition are artists by inclination, not by training or career trajectory. That’s its social value, and that’s why it’s worth supporting, and defending against philistine anxieties. Some of the artists who have started from scratch, like local sculptor Richard Moffat, now enjoy a booming practice, and participate in exhibitions and residencies all over the country.

Some participants even deny their assumed status as an artist! Ecowarrior Mark Frith well and truly put the boundaries of art to the test when he took his mobile sculpture Climate Change Express in Saturday’s Main Street parade and nearly lost it on the downhill stretch. Unusual in the artworld, Mark is happy to deny his artistic ego, seeing Sculpture on the Edge more as an opportunity for creative activism. But don’t dismiss his artistic modesty – the jury is still out on the peoples’ choice award!

Whether insider or outsider, amateur or professional, most of the sculptures, it must be said, treated the grassy headland as you would any garden setting, and therefore made more modest claims on their aesthetic impact. Some participants, like Beatle Collins, was busy building his latest (actually his second) work of art 30 minutes down the road in Marr Grounds’ bush sculpture park, and so his first work of art (click here for a look) was only represented in photographic form. How fast can eco-art adopt the look of conceptual art? At the other end of the spectrum, Ulan Murray is also thinking about the trees, in his work Eucalypt, in a way that neatly resolves the dilemma of the plinth in this outdoor gallery setting.

Who is an artist, or not, what is art, or not, what is a sculpture, or not, are not just issues which surface in a country town – they resonate wherever art escapes private or institutional spaces. More than any other art form, sculpture has the capacity to make people plain angry, when it’s in your face, in your way, when it disrupts your everyday life, when it seems too expensive, wasteful of materials, or disagreeable for any of a number of reasons…

So there’s a challenge for us to make the discourse around sculpture more accessible, and to draw out its special and distinctive potential – both its aesthetic potential, feeding back and influencing the course of art – and its social potential, in its interventions, animations, and its capacity to excite our social spaces. Governments and their agencies need to be on their toes, searching out the best advice and expertise, and having the nerve to let decisions be made that will resonate down the years.

So, what are the future prospects of Sculpture on the Edge? The region is full of artists, collectors and enthusiasts who see the event and one of the high points of their Easter Season – vide the continuing success of the Four Winds music festival. Organiser Jan Ireland mobilises significant in-kind support. Artists submit works from far and wide. But for the event to attract national attention, several more things need to happen: funding needs to increase to back the expertise of the organising network on a properly professional, (not charitable) basis; time and energy needs to be funded early each year to build a national profile, to attract and subsidise artists’ participation from beyond the region; and the potential for exhibition spaces could be expanded to integrate the urban environment with the park-like setting of the headland. But this requires expertise, time, energy, and professional support… To achieve significant sponsorship and patronage requires a base commitment to support expertise and or organisational skills – which is not at present forthcoming. Given these incentives, the quality of the event – and the quality of the art – could really take off.

Luckily, here in Canberra, the ghosts of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahoney walk the streets, muttering incantations, ready to haunt those who dare to undermine the sacred purity of their design, and challenging their successors to rise above the mundane! But public spaces are never sacrosanct (see the Alexander Downer Nude for the nadir of public art in Canberra) and much more needs to be done to lift the standards of public debate.

Now click across to glasscentralcanberra and transit lane for more images and commentary…

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when ANU School of Art Honours Painting students came visiting Tim Price’s exhibition at ArtWranglers. ArtWranglers is open Saturday and Sunday this weekend from 11.00 to 5.00. See Tim’s Gallery in the sidebar for snaps of the works…

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If you were born in 1983, by the time you were literate your mum or dad might have bought their first baby Macintosh, by the time you were ten the internet had happened and Pac-men were old hat, when you were 15 you were using Google to do your homework, and when you were at Uni your lecturers were worrying about online plagiarism at the same time they were teaching you about postmodernity. With the web, google, facebook, youtube, flickr, and the wireless library your access to images had doubled every few years of your life. Printmedia echo’d the image explosion. And by some anachronistic twist of fate you discovered you wanted to be a painter…

The story of painting became four dimensional in a new way. Images came to you in sequences, sometimes with an historical thread, sometimes structured by their medium, mostly as a matrix with a high degree of random association. Mainly of photographic origin, overwhelmingly mediated, usually modified, images came flooding at you whether you wanted it or not – and rarely via art’s history. In its simplest sense, this is a four dimensional experience, as you experience your senses being battered by the mediated character of the 21st century image-world. But for a painter – as the producer of even more images – the four dimensions of experience have another potentiality, building on the lines and patches of paint as they are made to interact to create graphic and colouristic illusions of form and space.

The unique thing about the painted image is that it carries its own material history, its intrinsic depth, and in every micro-narrative of its surface can be read the substance of its application. The reworking of source imagery involves the arrest of the passage of time, and the creation of the new time-frame of the painterly image, all alluding to the experience of time in a quite different directions.

Tim Price’s paintings pull images from everywhere, and he crunches them together, both side-by-side and layered on top of one another. In this process he interrupts their original temporal flow, and the historical logic of their origins, while at the same time making new conjunctions of image to image, and image to matter, the material of their being painted. Sometimes the paint itself takes over, and the representation of form and illusion are arrested, left incomplete. The substance of the painting itself – paint – becomes its subject matter. This has strangely disruptive affects: harsh and grotesque images and events are interrupted by the artist’s own processes and meditations and the effects these collected subjects have on his day to day life and identity. In their simplest sense, a collection of his paintings is like a non-linear diary – but in another sense, they draw the viewer into a complex set of shared experiences.

Come and see, or take a look in the side-bar galleries…

(The paintings above are: 07 family, 2 panels, 402 x 300, and Interplanetary ruin, 2 panels, 400 x 300)

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…this Friday, Saturday, Sunday and all next week by appointment (02 6257 0949)

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