Brisbane gallery crawl

Heiser Gallery:

9 February - 6 March
Geoffrey de Groen

Institute of Modern Art:

27 November — 26 February:
Luke Roberts: AlphaStation/Alphaville
Performance artist Luke Roberts has been a key figure in the Brisbane art scene for over three decades. He has developed an intricate personal mythology that collapses personal and political, local and cosmological, and past and future to offer a unique spin on themes of religion, sexuality, and human history.

Ian Haig: Chronicles of the New Human Organism
Imagine putting a video camera into the hands of a Death Valley outsider artist convinced that the mother ship is about to land, and that when it does a new phase of human evolution will begin. Melbourne artist Ian Haig's Chronicles of the New Human Organism is such a film.

 Queensland Art Gallery:

19 November 2010 – 13 March 2011

Scott Redford: Introducing Reinhardt Damn

Scott Redford is a leading Australian artist who has firmly placed his home town, Queensland's Gold Coast, on the contemporary art map. His intelligent and passionate investigation of vernacular visual culture has enlivened Australian art. This major solo exhibition showcases his development of the fictitious character Reinhardt Dammn in dialogue with key works from the last decade.

 16 October 2010 - 13 February 2011

Vida Lahey: Colour and Modernism

Vida Lahey (1882–1968) is one of Queensland's best loved artists, recognised as much for her work in promoting art and art education in Queensland as for her own paintings.

18 December 2010 – 26 April 2011 

21st Century: Art in the First Decade

This ambitious and ground-breaking exhibition will occupy the entire Gallery of Modern Art and focus exclusively on works created between 2000 and 2010. It will showcase more than 200 works and feature over 140 artists and artist collaborative groups – senior, mid-career and emerging – from more than 40 countries.

5 March – 13 June 2011 

Lloyd Rees: Life and Light

Brisbane-born painter and draftsman Lloyd Rees (1895– 1988) is one of Australia’s most recognised and awarded landscape painters. He twice received the Wynne Prize (in 1950 and 1982) for his work, which often focused on the effects of light in its varying forms. ‘Lloyd Rees: Life and Light’ will explore the Gallery’s holdings of this significant artist’s work.

QUT Art Museum:

3 December 2010 - 30 January 2011
Across Country: Ken Hinds Cultural Collection

The Ken Hinds Cultural Collection is one of Australia's most unique and extensive collections of art and objects from around the world. Across Country focuses on a selection of Aboriginal art from the Central Desert, Kimberley, Tiwi Islands, Arnhem Land and Torres Strait. It includes significant works by leading artists including Albert Namatjira, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, Lena Yarinkura, Lily Karedada, Minnie Pwerle and Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula.

UQ Art Museum:

25 November 2010 - 16 January 2011

Multiplicities: Self portraits from the Collection

Over the past forty years self portraiture has evolved to encompass more variety than ever before. Multiplicities: Self portraits from the Collection celebrates this diversity through works that challenge and surprise.Whether through repetition, in series, or as part of ongoing self-portrait projects, the artists in Multiplicities have invigorated and expanded the form.

miso + ghostpatrol ABC documentary

PART 1/3


PART 2/3


PART 3/3

Takashi Murakami: the world of the Superflat

Takeshi Murakami’s paintings and sculptures are colourful, lovable and accessible in their references to popular culture. Murakami not only challenges the line between high art and popular culture, in both a similar and dissimilar vein to Andy Warhol, but also questions the lines drawn between East and West, past and present.

To confine oneself to appreciating the easily accessible aspects of his works such as the cute and lovable appearance of Panda would be to skim the surface of a complex ocean of meaning.

So let’s dive into the deep end and explore Murakami’s theory of the Superflat and how it is applied to his art.

In the context of art, the Superflat conjures up thoughts of Andy Warhol and his famous line ‘If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface…There’s nothing behind it.’

In contrast to this Warholian idea of ‘flatness,’ Murakami has explained at great length the theory and practice of the Superflat.

The practice of the Superflat encompasses a variety of meanings used in different combinations by Murakami.

In broad terms it refers to the way graphic design, pop culture and fine arts are flattened in Japan. It also refers to the two-dimensional nature of Japanese graphic art and animation, and the shallowness of consumer culture.

To be more specific, the Superflat refers to any of the following: traditional Japanese painting’s anticipation of the flatness inherent in Western modernism; art historian Nobu Tsuji’s book The Lineage of Eccentricity; the horizontally organised nature of Japanese culture; the flat-screen world of digital imaging; and the flattening of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the nuclear strikes of 1945.
The Superflat identifies those aspects of Japanese art that are different from Western art. What is inherently Japanese, according to Murakami, is the feeling of flatness.

The influence of traditional Japanese art on modern artists has been evident since the very beginning. French Impressionist Claude Monet developed a strong interest in Japanese prints, the influence of which is apparent in his works.

Perhaps one of the most explicit examples of this influence can be seen in Monet’s Terrace at St. Adresse.

The qualities of Japanese prints which lend themselves to modernist art and are evident in Terrace at St. Adresse, include lack of perspective and shadows, the reduction of form and the use of flat, broad areas of colour.

The simplistic, wavy lines used in Japanese prints to depict the ocean have also been adopted by Monet in Terrace at St. Adresse to capture the impression of water’s movement.

The feeling of flatness inherent in Japanese art is also reflected in the organisation of their culture in general, for example in the horizontality of Japanese architectural designs.

Another aspect of the Superflat which needs some explanation is Nobu Tsuji’s 1970 book The Lineage of Eccentricity. Tsuji is the first to point out the “eccentric” streak of playful, fantastic and decorative qualities shared by some of Japan’s most famous historical painters, including Sansetsu Kano, Ito Jakuchu and Kuniyoshi Utagawa.

Tsuji also made a link between these artists and manga. By noticing both Manga’s and the “eccentric” artists’ creation of surface images that make the viewer aware of the planarity of the image, Murakami grasped Tsuji’s point and incorporated it into his theory of the Superflat.

In Time Bokan Pink (Mushroom Bomb Pink) the influence of Japanese anime on
Murakami is clear. The image of the skull-shaped mushroom cloud is from the popular
series Time Bokan.

Each episode of Time Bokan ended with the demise of a villain, often symbolised by a
skull-shaped mushroom cloud.

This imagery in combination with Murakami’s happy, bright, trademark flowers reflects Japanese post-war culture and the way it often light heartedly references horrific moments of its history in forms such as anime.

The theory of the Superflat reflects Murakami’s art in quite a profound way. From the name ‘Superflat’ we would expect a simplistic meaning wouldn’t we? Yet the term refers to a multiplicity of meanings combined in a variety of ways.

The same effect is at work in Murakami’s paintings and sculptures. On the surface many of his works seem like characters from an anime series or a figurine to be collected, it is true this is one aspect of what they are, but underneath the exterior lies a web of meanings.

In these works lay Murakami’s world of the Superflat.


To read more about Takashi Murakami see:

© Murakami (Museum of Contemporary Art publication)

http://english.kaikaikiki.co.jp/artists/list/C4/
http://www.moca.org/murakami/
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fa20071025a2.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1573943,00.html
http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/drohojowska-philp/drohojowska-philp1-18-01.asp

Takashi Murakami

Watch Art Safari - Takashi Murakami - Toying with Art in Educational  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Watch SUPERFLAT MONOGRAM FOR LOUIS VUITTON(TAKASHI MURAKAMI MAMORU HOSODA 2003) in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
Keep your eyes peeled, I will write a piece on Murakami this week ^_^

Dadang Christanto

Imants Tillers: a labyrinth of meaning

A famously enigmatic artist, Imants Tillers creates art that is like a rubiks cube demanding to be solved. The conundrum at the heart of his art is the presence and absence of self.

Concerns about origins and originality, and the interactions of self and other are concepts that send a pulse through his works and power his long-term strategy of appropriating and re-working images.

Though Tillers draws on images which are not his own, there are definitive personal aspects residing in the works that cause instant recognition of the artist, for example, the specificity of his visual, intellectual and intuitive choices, his canvasboard system and layered surfaces.

Furthermore, through his appropriation Tillers’ creates unexpected juxtapositions which form new realities and echo his own experience.

The sense of Tillers’ presence being erased by his use of images derived from other sources, coupled with his evident presence in his artistic process, reflects his concern with the presence and absence of self, whilst revealing a complex interweaving of subjectivity and objectivity.

Though large in scale, his works are developed through a rather intimate process of working on small individual panels which are subsequently put together to make up the larger work.

This idea of ‘one and many’ relates to Tillers’ view of the artist’s life as solitary, but the world inhabited within his work as an archive full of vast ideas and imagery.

The process of applying one panel after another to make up the entirety of his work on the wall reveals interactions between intimacy and expanse, movement and stillness, permanence and impermanence. These ideas can be traced back to environmental and earth art, performance art, minimalism, and conceptual art of the 1970s.

In the 1980s Tillers’ developed a response to Terry Smith’s comment, in ‘The provincialism problem,’ that the most an Australian artist can aspire to in an international context is to be considered second-rate.

In works such as The Nine Shots, 1982, Tillers fuses the emerging style of Aboriginal art with neo-expressionist art. It could be said that in this work we are looking neither at the original nor the copy, but the distance between them. In this respect Tillers identifies that it is in the difference between Europe and Australia that the originality of Australian art lay.

Imants Tillers has earned a place as one of Australia’s most esteemed, thought-provoking and engaging contemporary artists.

‘Imants Tillers and Dadang Christanto Dual Worlds: Views of the Landscape’ is at Jan Manton Art gallery 4 November-23 December.

Gallery Crawl: Current Exhibitions

Queensland Art Gallery:Vida Lahey: Colour and Modernism
16 October 2010 - 13 February 2011 QAG
Vida Lahey (1882-1968) is one of Queensland’s best loved artists of the first half of the twentieth century and is recognized as much for her work in promoting of art in Queensland and art education as for her own paintings.

Premier of Queensland’s National New Media Art Award 2010
28 August – 7 November 2010 | GoMA
This exhibition features the work of leading new media artists invited to participate in the Premier of Queensland’s National New Media Art Award for 2010.

Valentino, Retrospective: Past/Present/Future
7 August – 14 November 2010 | GoMA
Exclusive to Brisbane, ‘Valentino, Retrospective: Past/Present/Future’ is a major exhibition developed by the renowned institution, Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris. It explores the work of the celebrated Italian fashion house Valentino, known around the world for its sophisticated, timeless design and glamorous clientele.



Heiser Gallery:Celeste Chandler
love is homesickness
October - 13 November 2010
Chandler’s work has been curated in a number of group exhibitions including Work by 1999 Residents, Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris (1999), The Portia Geach Memorial Award, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney (2001), Synergy, CSIRO Marine Building, Hobart (2002), and Scratching the Surface, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, (and touring 2003/04).





Jan Manton art:Imants Tillers& Dadang Christanto
Dual Worlds : Views of the Landscape
4 November - 23 December
For the past 30 years Dadang Christanto has produced controversial work rooted deeply in the human experience. Originally from Tegal in Central Java, Indonesia, Christanto now lives in Brisbane where he continues to produce art with an unrelenting message of human suffering and the need for compassion regardless of differing faiths and political systems.
Imants Tillers is one of Australia’s most revered artists. Tillers has represented Australia at important international exhibitions such as the Sao Paulo Bienal (1975), Documenta 7 (1982), and the 42nd Venice Biennale (1986).



Philip Bacon Galleries:Ralph Wilson
19 October - 13 November
"Subject is important to me. Rather than choosing it to convey some existing emotion or meaning, the subject is usually the reason for the painting. The challenge is to make the paint become the place or object and for the painter to disappear."
-Ralph Wilson





Jugglers Art Space:Gimiks Born
Bitter Winds
5 - 26 November 2010
Brisbane based artist Gimiks Born will create an unpredicted storm when the doors of the Bitter Winds exhibition blow open at Brisbane based gallery, Jugglers Art Space on November 5th 2010.
His novelist approach to art will not only sooth the visual senses, it will entice art enthusiasts to enter his unique realm of fantasy, a place where strange and wonderful creatures flourish in a mystical world riddled with chaos.

Jugglers Showcase for BARI Fest 2010. 1-29 October 2010
The BARI Festival is an initiative founded by the crew at Jugglers Art Space in 2008, aimed at celebrating and acknowledging the creative and cultural contribution that is often harbored by ARIs within a city.


Institute of Modern Art:Pieter Hugo
Nollywood
25 September — 20 November
The ghost of the Emperor Haile Selassie meets Idi Amin, Charlie's Angels do Rambo Foxy-Brown-style, David Lynch's Lost Highway snakes through Lagos, Ghostface Killah mutates into Fela's 'Zombie', and Dracula gives way for Blacula. Voodoo, hoodoo, and mambo are mashed up with Igbo rituals. Ahhwooooo . . . Werewolves of Lagos.
—Stacy Hardy


Brook Andrew
The Cell
25 September — 20 November
Brook Andrew is of Wiradjuri and Scottish descent. Although he is concerned not to be pigeonholed as an Aboriginal artist, his work nevertheless centres on Aboriginal politics. Conflating contraries, it confounds clear political readings.

Christian Marclay
Looking for Love
25 September — 20 November
Christian Marclay has long criss-crossed the art and experimental-music scenes. Back in the 1970s, the Swiss artist pioneered the use of turntables and records as musical instruments, operating independently of but parallel to hip hop. He also developed a career in art, making works that play on music's materials, supplements, and representations.

Welcome

Hi there,
Welcome to my blog! The Art Room is in its development stage so please forgive me for the abysmal amount of content on the page, it will get better I promise you.

I will be writing reviews of exhibitions and artists as well as articles on a broad range of art topics and I mean BROAD. I encourage you to send suggestions for an art topic that interests you and I will be more than happy to write about it :)

Art news and material from other sites will also be posted in The Art Room to help satisfy your art cravings.

Enjoy!

Ruth

Hinterland: The Rainforest Works of William Robinson

Take a break from the busy traffic and appointments of Brisbane’s central business district and venture into the rainforest for a much deserved break. No, I do not mean a stroll through the Botanical Gardens. Go further south to the rainforests of the Hinterland without even setting foot outside Brisbane. Tucked away in Old Government House is the exhibition Hinterland: The Rainforest Works of William Robinson, where one can enter into the vertiginous rainforest and escape, not into another world, but into another place.

As the title suggests, the exhibition focuses on works made by the artist while he maintained a studio at Springbrook in Queensland’s Gold Coast Hinterland and lived at Beechmont. The selection of 41 works range across 21 groundbreaking years of the artist’s career, from 1984 -2005. Visitors to the Gallery will be met with an array of works, including paintings, drawings, ceramics and lithographs, as well as several sketchbooks and the artist’s palette. Located in the private quarters of Government house, a visit to the exhibition proves to be an intimate experience, rather fitting for the nature of Robinson’s works.

Curated by the Gallery director Stephen Rainbird, the show is the 2nd to be held in the Gallery since its opening in August last year. The First, Realms of Vision: The Art of William Robinson, spanned across the dominant genres in the artists mature output including interiors, farmyard, landscape, seascape and portraiture. The current exhibition allows visitors to contemplate the landscape genre, in particular the Beechmont landscape which significantly became an inspirational focus for his subsequent works.

Robinson, 74, had various art teaching jobs from the 1950s to the time he began working as a full-time artist in the late 1980s. He has been exhibiting since the 1960s, and with his sublime landscapes, which are included in the current exhibition, he has secured himself a unique place within Australia’s landscape painting tradition. His innovative reworking of the Australian landscape has earned him a place alongside prominent figures Fred Williams, Sidney Nolan and Russell Drysdale.

The first and most obvious difference between Robinson’s works and those of Williams, Nolan and Drysdale is that rather than the outback they are set in a rainforest landscape. The second significant difference will be noted on entry to the Gallery where visitors standing before such grandiose works as Twin Falls and Gorge 2000 will feel like they are part of the landscape, rather than feeling alienated, often a theme in the work of Nolan or Drysdale. This is because Robinson was part of the landscape he was painting.

Living within the landscape has been central to Robinson’s work. In preparation for these paintings he walked through the rainforest making brief sketches to record as many sensations as he could. When looking at works such as William by lamplight 1990, the observer gains insight into Williams experiences with this landscape. Robinson includes the viewer in the work as a traveller by using multiple viewpoints and creating a void in the centre of the work. Sketchy, Van Gogh-like brushstrokes are also used which give a sense of the tactility of the environment.

The exhibition is organised in such a way that the visitor can follow the developments which lead to Robinson’s works of the 1990s. In the Governor’s bedroom, works from the 1980s show the beginnings of multi-viewpoint which would come to dominate Robinson’s later works. In Puddle Landscape l 1984 the viewpoint is looking up, down and forward simultaneously. The foreground and background trees suggest the viewer is looking across the landscape from an aerial perspective. In contrast to this, the puddles are seen from a perspective of looking down from directly above, and the viewer is able to see the sky in the reflection.



Sense of time, another element which became significant in Robinson’s later works, is evident in Sunset with riders 1986 which depicts a sunset in the centre of the canvas and night sky to the left. In his Rainforest works Robinson uses multiple viewpoints to create a sense of the combined feelings experienced in the landscape and united moments in time.

Further development of these elements is seen in the next bedroom, where works from the latter part of the 1980s show a transition from earlier figure-landscape works to a new phase primarily focused on the landscape itself. Watercolours and lithographs such as Late Sunlight and Afternoon cloud, Beechmont 1993 reveal explorations into the effects of light at different times of day and in different weather conditions. A superb colourist with the utmost attention to dense and carefully considered detail, Robinson captures the various rainforest conditions––from mist and rain to sunlight; and from morning light to evening shadows––in his phenomenal landscapes.

Standing before the awe-inspiring rainforest works of the 1990s onwards, one can’t escape feeling physically affected by the swirling subject matter. If you visit the exhibition you are bound to see, as I did, a spectator standing before a painting such as The ant tree landscape 1992 turning their body this way and that trying to find a single view point. Take note that if you try to achieve this you will inevitably fail. These paintings are not made to be seen, but to be experienced, and as Robinson himself said ‘such pictures cannot be understood if they are not felt physically.’

Robinson was no stranger to vertigo. He discovered this feeling on his first encounters with the steep landscape and cliffs of Springbrook. These responses were particularly severe during his early residence in the rainforest, but subsided as he got to know the land better. At first glance, the feeling of being physically pulled into the swirling work is strong enough to create a sense of vertigo. As you continue to look at the painting you develop a more exploratory nature and the vertiginous feeling subsides. In this sense we experience the feelings of the artist as he explored his landscape.

In the presence of these works one feels what it would be like for the figure in Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog 1818, as he stands before the powerful, untamed forces of nature. Hinterland: The Rainforest Works of William Robinson will not only take you on a journey through the wonders of the Hinterland Rainforest, but will also guide you on an intimate journey through the remarkable career of William Robinson during his time at Beechmont.

Hinterland: The Rainforest Works of William Robinson is at The William Robinson Gallery until 3 April 2011.