Damien Minton Gallery

Sydney's Original Art House?

2012-01-24T20:43:00.000-08:00

Damien Minton Gallery has made arguably the first example of an art film in Sydney and even Australia available for viewing online. David Perry's Walking (circa 1955) depicts a young flâneur wandering Sydney, giving attention to the the abstract shapes and the movements of the city, and the moments and poses of contemplation.

Walking from Damien Minton Gallery on Vimeo.

Perry's Walking will be featured in the group exhibition 'Five Bells - A Visual Ode to Sydney' that runs from 1-18 February, 2012. See previous post for more information on the 'Five Bells' exhibition. Below, Perry describes how he came to make Walking.

My career since the early 1950’s encompassed all the visual arts, painting, drawing, photography and video and film making. [Once ] someone gave me an 8 mm camera, I began randomly recording events and images in all these media and have never stopped.

In the early sixties I encountered Albie Thoms and together with him, John Clark and Aggie Reid we founded Ubu films. I was on camera and also directed my own experimental films and videos as well as doing a large number of graphics for posters and flyers advertising not only our films but also the light shows/dances which we organised and which were so popular at the time.

WALKING

During the early years I used to frequent the Roundhouse at the then East Sydney Technical College, Sydney’s only Art school at the time. A man called Kaplan used to regularly show 1920’s and ‘30’s European art films. I was deeply moved and entranced by these films, especially by the camera techniques used. From then on my approach to filmmaking was strongly influenced by what I saw, and all my work comes from this artist’s perspective, rather than from the popular, narrative form of cinema.

Walking was the very first film I ever made on standard 8 mm film (there was no other way to make low budget films at the time). I tried to capture the feel of the industrial landscape of Sydney of the ‘50’s particularly around the old Pyrmont Bridge, to express the working class grittiness of Sydney, the aspects of it that I knew and loved, and the art film techniques and sensibility were the best way I could see to do this.

The original footage has been lost but when it was still available I made a copy on videotape. That copy imported to my modern computer and edited to remove clunky transitions. It remains the only record of Walking.

While Walking was my first exploration of these art film camera techniques, I continued to make films and subsequently videos, using these techniques and experimenting with them. A number of my videos and films have been and continue to be shown at various exhibition s and festivals throughout the world.

David Perry

6/1/2012

Five Bells - A Visual Ode to Sydney

2012-01-24T19:07:00.000-08:00

WE ARE EXCITED TO OPEN 2012 WITH THE GROUP EXHIBITION:
Five Bells - A Visual Ode to Sydney.
Exhibition dates: 1-18 February.
To be opened Saturday afternoon, 4th February, 2-4pm
by poet and friend of the late Kenneth Slessor
Geoffrey Lehmann.

Elaine Campaner, Breakfast in Sydney, digital print, 553 x 830 mm, 2009

I looked out my window in the dark
At waves with diamond quills and combs of light
That arched their mackerel-backs and smacked the sand
In the moon's drench, that straight enormous glaze,
And ships far off asleep, and Harbour-buoys
Tossing their fireballs wearily each to each,
And tried to hear your voice, but all I heard
Was a boat's whistle, and the scraping squeal
Of seabirds' voices far away, and bells,
Five bells. Five bells coldly ringing out. Five bells.

This passage from the poem Five Bells by Australian poet Kenneth Slessor appears in the very first section of the book ‘Sydney’, by Delia Falconer. Falconer's re-reading of the city of Sydney through the lens of this haunting and seminal poem has inspired the Damien Minton Gallery to invite 40 artists to contribute artwork about Sydney. We received a phenomenal response and are pleased to announce the final list of contributing artists:

Gallery artists:
Michael Callaghan • Elaine Campaner • Chris Capper
Tom Carment • Lottie Consalvo • James Drinkwater
Di Holdsworth • Cecilia Heffer • Hobart Hughes
Pia Larsen • Ross Laurie • Marie McMahon
Eric Niebuhr • Louise Tuckwell • Tony Twigg

We are delighted to host the following:
CLARRICE COLLIEN (Roomies Artspace) ELISABETH CUMMINGS (courtesy King Street Gallery on William)
ANNE FERGUSON
BECKY GIBSON (winner Brett Whiteley Scholarship 2011) JOHN GILLIES
MYFWANY GULLIFER (courtesy King Street Gallery on William)
ADAM HILL
ALEX JACKSON WYATT
PETER KINGSTON (courtesy Australian Galleries)
BRUCE LATIMER (courtesy Australian Galleries)
FRANK LITTLER (courtesy Watters Gallery)
EUAN MACLEOD (courtesy Watters Gallery)
DAVID PERRY (featuring one of Sydney’s first art films, “Walking”, 1957)
AMBROSE REISCH (courtesy Stella Downer Fine Art)
LIANE ROSSLER
KEN SEARLE (courtesy Watters Gallery)
PAUL SELWOOD (courtesy Watters Gallery)
MARTIN SHARP
ANDREW SIMPSON
STEVE SMITH
MARC STANDING (courtesy Brenda May Gallery)
BRETT STONE
TONI WARBURTON (courtesy of Mori Gallery)

PLUS A PROGRAM OF TALKS, READINGS AND PERFORMANCE AT THE GALLERY:

SATURDAY, 11TH FEBRUARY, 3-5 PM
Geordie Williamson (chief literary critic of the Australian)
in conversation with Gail Jones (author of the book 'Five Bells')

SATURDAY, 18TH FEBRUARY 3-5 PM
Fiona McGregor (author of 'Indelible Ink')
Martin Edmond (Author of 'Dark Night, Walking with McCahon)

SATURDAY, 18TH FEBRUARY 5-6 PM
Laurie Scott Baker and Ruark Lewis
performing Five Bells Remix.

Peter Gardiner selected as a finalist in the Dobell Prize for Drawing

2011-12-13T21:53:00.000-08:00

Peter Gardiner features as a finalist in the 2011 Dobell Prize for drawing, which can be viewed at the Art Gallery of NSW until the 5th February.

Peter Gardiner in front of 'Hexham (swamp)'

"Peter Gardiner's Hexham (swamp) [...] is an unusual venture for Gardiner, who often favours the more dramatic scenes. The swamp is almost featureless but possessed of a strange, crackling vitality. The artist has filled the sheet with small staccato dabs of charcoal that extract a glimmer of individuality from the uniformity of the landscape"
Says John MacDonald in a review of the show for the Sydney Morning Herald's Spectrum (10/12/2011).

We also congratulate James Drinkwater for being selected as a finalist in the Dobell 2011.

James Drinkwater's selected work 'Trails Beginnings', part of a suite of works on paper featured in the March 2011 exhibition at our gallery

In other Peter Gardiner news, we are proud to announce that the Damien Minton Gallery had been accepted into the 2012 Hong Kong Art Fair. We will be exhibiting in the ASIAONE section with a development of Gardiner's Ravensworth Series.

Trinkwasser's Art Attack

2011-10-26T19:22:00.000-07:00

We thought we might share some news from Berlin as it trickles in from Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship recipient James Drinkwater. With Berlin arguably the street art capital of the world, and considering Drinkwater's existing practice of working with and transforming found materials, his 'trash can assemblage' actions appear as both a logical and astute exploration. Ragtag refuse becomes part of a whole, subsumed by James' signature style. Signing them off as "Trinkwasser" we only hope he's not becoming German for good.

See images below of Drinkwater's 'Boss' project in Amsterdam.

Godfather of street art, Blek le Rat

tags a Drinkwater

Jon Frum Art Foundation's '2020'

2011-10-04T21:41:00.000-07:00

Damien Minton Gallery is proud to host the momentous '2020' project at our Annex Space. Statement from organisers Jon Frum Art Foundation below.

Alex Jackson Wyatt, 'Enough to store in a storage unit', Friday 14th October

Who: Jon Frum Art Foundation and Robert Lake
Where: Damien Minton Annex Space, 583 Elizabeth St, Redfern
When: 6-25th October 2011

Time: 6-8 pm (nightly)
What: 20 consecutive days, 20 local and international artists and art groups will stage 20 one-night exhibitions.

In the words of the organisers:
Jon Frum Art Foundation & Robert Lake are proud to present a new model of art exhibition practice, “2020” (twenty art shows in twenty consecutive days).

The 2020 platform which is a hybrid of a number of art exhibiting models, aims to support experimental and progressive artwork, by creating a system that is part performance, part artist-run and part commercial thus enriching existing models of exhibition practice. Each morning the previous show will be dismantled and a new show will be erected for the 6-8pm opening. We are expecting to attract a new and different audience nightly increasing the cultural awareness of arts in Sydney.

In 2020, Australian and International emerging artists will be exhibiting along-side established artists, encouraging a supportive and nurturing exhibiting environment for our art contenders. The participating artists will be encouraged to liaise with one another for future exhibition opportunities, as our aim is to provide an International bond between artists, galleries and curators through the social aspect that the show will provide.

The space, courtesy of Damien Minton, provides a progressive change in the way we view and exhibit art in Sydney by blurring the boundaries between commercial galleries and artist run spaces; it is free for artists to exhibit, we encourage sales, and encourage commercial gallerists to view and pick artists from our 2020 selection. Each of the twenty shows will run for two hours and will be streamed live across the internet, encouraging the projects potential for world wide recognition.

With web presence, blogs and social networking tools in place we anticipate generous media coverage for the 20 days and whilst the two hour duration of each show may seem short, the exhibition will continue indefinitely in cyber space in the form of live streamed video documentation. Australian audiences are encouraged to view a new exhibition every day for twenty days, either in person or live on the web at www.2020art2011.com.

The future and long-term goal for 2020 is to exhibit annually, further bridging the gap between artists globally forming an alliance of contemporaries. As a progressive and experimental exhibition format the future of 2020 is very exciting.

Full program:

For more information head to the Jon Frum Foundation website.

Philjames: 'A Moth in a Chandelier' in the Annex space

2011-09-13T23:23:00.000-07:00

Philjames, Number 27, Oil on found vintage print, 400 x 300 mm

Next pop-up show in the Damien Minton Annex (583 Elizabeth St, Redfern) is Philjames, 'A Moth in a Chandelier'. Opening 23rd September 6-8 and running until the 24th September only. Read what Archibald Prize winner Guy Maestri says about Philjames' work below:

Philjames's art can be on one hand playful, even childish, and on the other, arresting, disarming, and shocking. In this body of work Philjames has juxtaposed icons of popular culture into sublime and kitsch landscape paintings sourced from opp shops and skip bins. The results range from comical to apocalyptic. But he is not engaging in an act of destruction, more like a thoughtful readjustment. An offering of a new vision, or version, of the future. Many of the protagonists in Philjames's paintings include people dressed in super hero suits, dumped in these alien worlds. A seemingly bizarre and incongruous act, these people in a second skin, unnatural in nature. Yet strangely poignant. Philjames is well aware of the world we live in. This is man vs nature in all our clumsy, unnatural glory.

Philjames often bolts these works to public walls, literally offering his art to the people, to be considered by those who may not generally consider art, and to encourage response and interaction. They get tagged, smashed, scarred and often stolen, but these are artworks which weren't Philjames's to begin with. He puts his hand to them, and releases them back into the wild. Some of them survive and are included in this exhibition, as works of anonymous collaboration.

I travelled through China with Philjames. All along the way he would pull out his pen and make "thoughtful adjustments" to signs, posters, graffiti etc. Or just leave small offerings for the hell of it. For example, on a riverboat on the Yangtze river he planted a small pink penis on a print of a manicured, english garden hanging on the wall of our cabin. I like to think it would still be there. Largely unnoticed, offering occasional amusement or bewilderment the unsuspecting traveller. Art for the people!

- Guy Maestri

View a selection of the works on our website

Bilums, bilums, bilums

2011-09-09T01:17:00.000-07:00

PAIGATASA BILUMS

A fundraising exhibition for the mother and child health clinic of the Paiga community, Eastern Highlands PNG.

TUESDAY 27 SEPT 2011 6-8PM
In the Project Room

Exhibition 27 SEPT – 15 OCT

Statement from organiser, community worker Paul van Reyk:

Take a flight from Port Moresby to the Eastern Highlands Province capital town, Goroka. Get on a PMV (mini-van, truck, ute) and bump head to Okapa on a road, which depending on the rains and how recently anyone's had money or energy to fix it will either be a reasonable gravel road or a series of potholes, wash-aways, and bogs, till you get to Ke Efu (ask the driver or any of the passengers cause it won't be signposted). Then trek for several hours, depending on your fitness and the state of the track, up and up and up then along the ridges through forest and hamlets, spectacular views to both sides of you, to Paigatasa, an area of scattered market gardens and bush material round huts housing 6000 people 2000 metres above sea level.

Like much of remote PNG, this area remains shamefully underserviced in health. Women and children still regularly die during childbirth for lack of access to midwives and hospital beds. Six years ago the community decided to do something about it. They asked Paul van Reyk, an Australian community worker, one of the first ‘white men’ to travel into the area since PNG independence, to help them build a clinic to deliver community mother and child health programs.

Since then, the women have been making bilums for sale to raise funds for the clinic and to supplement the meagre income they get from small coffee plantings. Contact with Western culture, materials and markets, have changed these gathering and market bags from brown bush material open styles to vibrantly coloured synthetic yarn close weave styles that play with the products and signage of their contact and development experiences. From bank logos to religious texts, football colours to mobile phone advertisements, anything and everything is used in these exuberant, individual creations without any hint of irony or embarrassment.

Money raised through sales at the exhibition will go directly 50% to the maker of the billum, and 50% to the mother and child clinic.

More information on Paiga and the project: www.paiga.com.au
See images of the bilums on our facebook page

'Art and the Animal' talk at Damien Minton Gallery

2011-08-10T19:05:00.000-07:00

Art and the Animal

Talk at the Damien Minton Gallery July 9, 2011

Elizabeth Grosz

In truth, there are only inhumanities, humans are made exclusively of inhumanities, but very different ones, of very different natures and speeds.

Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 1987: 190.

Today I want to talk not really about Aboriginal art and about the magnificent works that have come to mark world art over the last forty years or more – the art of Papunya and Utupia artists and the work of others from the Western Desert. I have no particular expertise to do so. What I would like to talk about are the living connections between plants, animals and the earth that makes human art possible. I think that contemporary Aboriginal art states something about art that all the arts share but never explicitly address. So I want here to look at the peculiar relations between the earth, animals and art that have been largely unrepresented in most Western forms of art. Why does it make sense to ask about animal lineages, genealogies and connections – even bestiaries – when talking about art and architecture? What is at stake in our conception of the human when we place the human, not outside the category of the animal as has occurred since at least the C17th century, but within it? How are our conceptions of human accomplishments – whether in art, architecture, science, philosophy or in governance and in social and political relations – transformed when we place the human within the animal? How and why does the animal imperil human uniqueness and dignity? What do we gain in restoring the human to the animal from which it has come?

1. Art

Eight theses about art and the animal:

1. All of the arts, from architecture to music, poetry, and dance are the indirect products or effects of what Darwin calls ‘sexual selection’, the attraction to potential sexual partners, for the purposes of some kind of sexual encounter possibly leading to procreation. Sexual selection is not reducible to natural selection, the capacity to survive in given and changing environments, but is a potentially antagonistic principle which may at times imperil life for the sake of pleasure or desire. The separation of natural from sexual selection is regularly ignored in contemporary Darwinism, when, for example, sociobiologists suggest that sexual attraction and procreation are in fact indirect forms of maximizing the survival potential of one’s genes, that is, they are really forms of natural selection. For Darwin, sexual and natural selection are two irreducible and potentially antagonistic principles. If natural selection can help explain the remarkable variety and adaptations of life then only sexual selection can explain the extravagant, useless, sometimes imperiling qualities that have no survival value but nevertheless proliferate in abundance;

2. Sexual selection can be more explicitly linked to the arts than natural selection, to the extent that it functions to highlight, focus on, intensify, the bodies of beings exciting and beings excited by various forms of bodily display – in the courtship songs and dancing of competing birds, the dazzling displays of colors in sticklebacks and other erotically attuned fish, the loud and colorful encounters of various mammals in competition with members of the same sex over sexual partners. Sexual selection unhinges, deranges and complicates survival for the sake of intensification, providing a principle separate from that of mere survival;

3. Art, like science or technology, links living bodies to the earth, not wholesale but through the connections it makes between specific qualities –the shiny objects that appeal to bower birds, the balls that attract dogs – and specific organs. But unlike technology which aim to extract useful principles – regularity, predictability, order and organization – the arts redirect these forces through intensification to produce something no longer regular, ordered or manipulable but a force which actively alters the forces of the body itself, something appealing, irregular, unpredictable;

4. This emphasis on sexual selection rather entails that wherever art is in play, wherever qualities, features, forms have the capacity to brace and intensify the body, we must recognize that sexual selection is the underside of sexual difference. Sexual selection, the sexual appeal and attraction of members of the same species, is always at least two-fold, resulting in the development of at least two different kinds of morphology or bodily type, male and female, (but also commonly three types of morphology in the insect world), two different kinds of criteria for attractiveness, and two different types of morality;

5. Architecture is the first art, the art that is the condition for the emergence of all the other arts, for without some cordoning off of earth into territory, no qualities or properties can be extracted, resonate and transform bodies. It is only to the extent that both the body and the earth are partially tamed through the creation of the frame provided by a provisional territory that protects the living creature, and creates a temporary ‘home’ that art as such can emerge. Art is, for Deleuze, the extension of the architectural imperative to organize the space of the earth;

6. Art is the sexualization of survival; or equally sexuality is the rendering artistic of nature, the making of nature into more than it is, the making of a leaf into a sexual adornment rather than just a part of a tree.[i] Art is that ability to make qualities resonate bodies to the extent that this quality takes bodies away from their real immersion in a particular habitat and orients them to a virtual world of attraction and seduction. This is why the first art is architecture – for qualities to be extractable, a territory, that is a framed and delimited space, must first exist, a space of safety, competition, courtship and flight; only within such a provisional space, a space always threatened with deterritorialization, can there be the pure joy of qualities, the immersion of the living in intensities. Architecture is the bridge between life and art, the condition under which life complicates itself and finds transportable, transformable qualities for this complication.[ii]

7. If art is rooted in the ways in which sexual selection deviates from natural selection, making properties, qualities, organs and muscles function, not usefully but intensively, art is the capacity of materiality to function otherwise than what is given: art is the exploration of qualities and properties not for their use or exchange value, but only insofar as these qualities and properties do something, have some effect, on living beings. Art is the means by which nature, materiality, deviates itself from givenness, comes to function in other terms than the useful or the manageable: art is thus the space in which the natural and the material is the most attenuated, rendered the most visible and tangible for living beings; and

8. These qualities and properties, attractive to various forms of life, become art only to the extent that they can be moved, transferred beyond where they are found, sent on a deterritorializing trajectory, able to function elsewhere than where they originate or are found. Thus, while the raw materials for art are located within territory, as part of the earth, they become art, architecture, dance only to the extent they become transportable elsewhere to intensify bodies that circulate, move, change.

I want to use these broad claims to frame a more specific discussion of animal worlds through the work of the Estonian biologist, Jakob von Uexküll, a figure of immense interest to Deleuze, Agamben and others working on understanding the human in different terms than those that mark the Enlightenment. Uexküll is interested in understanding the worlds in which animals live from the perspective of those living beings themselves; he may be the first animal phenomenologist.[iii] For him, the most basic problem of biology is a problem of design, the bodily design of organisms, insofar as they find themselves within a particular context where their bodily forms, their organs and capacities must find a way of enabling them to utilize what they need from this context to survive and thrive. The problem of life is the problem of design; or put another way, life is artistic in the biological forms it induces, in the variations in patterns of living it generates, and above all, in the forces of sexual intensification it proliferates.

2. Umwelt

Darwin deflects art through the animal. Deleuze too links art to the relation between an animal and its territory. Uexküll develops an account of the centrality of the notion of milieu in understanding the ways in which particular species experience and co-evolve with their life-worlds. Uexküll discusses what he understand as the ‘musical laws of nature’ [Weltgesetz] (2001b: 118) that bind together in a complex duet the evolution of the spider and the fly, the tick and the mammal, the wasp and the orchid, the leaves of an oak tree and drops of rain, each serving as a motif or counterpoint for the other. Nature is musical, composed of living notes which each play their own melody, a melody complicated, syncopated and transformed through the melodies of the other living and non-living things with which it engages. For Uexküll, music is not just a useful metaphor for understanding relations between living elements within given milieus, it is a profound model by which nature can be understood as dynamic polyphony, always playing at least two tunes which produce resonance and dissonance such that forms, dynamic, interacting forms, result.

Uexküll claims that an animal engages only with certain features in a milieu which are significant to it, which it can discern and act upon, those which are in counterpoint with its own organs. Each organism is surrounded by its Umwelt, a ‘soap-bubble’ in which each living being is housed. The lived world of the organism is precisely as complex as its organs. Each creature, animal and human, Western and non-Western lives a particular angle on the world, which highlights for it what its organs can perceive and act upon but leaves everything else undiscerned.[iv]

Organisms are sense-bubbles, isolated worlds, monads composed of fragments of milieus and organs, musical counterpoints creating a melody. The Umwelt is the sensory world of space, time, and objects that form perceptual signs for living creatures, the world that enables them to effect actions, to exercise their organs, to act. Uexküll calls it a ‘circular island’, a ‘wall of the senses’ (2001a: 107), a bubble-world, much like a creature enclosed in an invisible snow-cone, positioning the subject within the centre of a movable horizon. Each living thing lives in precisely the world which accords with its bodily organs. The lived reality of each living thing already includes, mirrored inside the organism, the forces that impinges on it from the outside.[v] Uexküll argues that we can understand this apparently perfect adaptation of bodily form in terms of the ‘musical’ or harmonic ‘laws of life’.[vi] This music of living things is composed, not of vocal or instrumental notes, but various tones, frequencies, forms of organic resonance. Each living creature is a series of tonal responses to various ‘melodies’ played by its Umwelt, various performances it undertakes – the world is composed not so much of objects but of tunes with which it can resonate, through its own ego-tone [Ich-Ton], its own specific neurological reactions and muscular contractions, its own characteristic behavior.

3. Home

What defines territory, if territory is the most irreducible spatial terrain for many animals? Many insects do not have territory. We are familiar with flies and mosquitoes. They fly back and forth: but they have no home, which is the necessary condition for territory (1957: 54-5).[vii] While the fly has no territory and thus no boundary as to where it may roam, the spider is firmly located in territory, the immediate vicinity surrounding its web.

In building a home, the spider defines both a home and the space surrounding it as territory.[viii] The web is the space of the home, and the surrounding region – the trees or branches between which its strands are threaded – are the spider’s territory. And yet the spider and the fly are still commonly bound together in a kind of musical duet in which the operations of each harmonize with the other without the slightest conscious planning or coordination. Uexküll discusses the production of the spider’s web as a kind of spatial counterpoint to the movements of the fly. The threads of the web must be both strong enough to capture the spider’s prey, yet invisible enough for the prey to be unable to see them. There are, for example, two kinds of thread in every web: smooth radial threads that the spider is able to stand on and spin from, and sticky threads that function to catch flies. The size of the net, its holes and gridding are a quite exact measure of the size of the fly or specific forms of prey for the spider. The fly is contrapuntal to the web: or equally, the fly, the web and the spider form a unique coupling. The fly is already mapped,[ix] its place accommodated in the spider’s bodily behavior before any particular spider has encountered any particular fly.[x] The goanna and its prey, the plants and their environment are all in a relation of harmonic resonance.

Each living thing is a melodic line in a symphony composed of the larger and more complex movements provided by its world. Both the organism and its Umwelt taken together are the units of survival. Each organism is a musician completely taken over by its tune, an instrument, ironically, of a larger performance in which it is only one role, one voice or melody.[xi]

Uexküll claims that if we could explore any tract of land carefully we would discover distinct territories that, like the ever-shifting map of nations, and of struggling groups within nations, represent a political division of the activities undertaken within them. Territories are divided and mapped by dogs through scent, by birds through the songs and dances that emanate from their nests, by spiders with their webs, and wasps, bees and ants in movements in and around their hives or nests.[xii]

The architecture of the home defines the space of territory which is the condition for the eruption of qualities, rhythms, sounds, colors, all capable of being extracted from objects to be able to be deterritorialized, transported elsewhere. Whether the ingenious elaboration in stucco of the neatly organized oval nests of termites, the beautiful ordered regularity of the honeycomb the architecture of the home is the condition under which art is unleashed on the world.

Without the bees’ attraction to the perfume of flowers and plants, there would be no art of smell for humans, without the bird’s capacity to make melodious tones to charm and amuse us or to strut about fluffing up its most dazzling and colorful feathers in acts of courtship we would be blunted to the allure of sounds, melodies, or color, texture and shape. These animal arts are the conditions under which the resources of nature are plucked or dragged away from their given context to become the raw materials of the human arts.

Art is the human capitalization of these inhuman, animal qualities, the submission of these materials to other requirements than the instinctive. Art is the human transportation of these qualities, through framing, to any place whatever. The human arts are thus as inhuman as the human itself is: both are the transformation, the reworking, the overcoming of our animal prehistory and the beginning of our inhuman trajectory beyond the human. Art is that which most directly returns us to the animal lineage to the extent that art’s qualities are not purely bound up with the contents, the concepts, meanings, values art represents but primarily reside in its capacity to affect and transform life, that is, in what it does more than what it means. The animal reminds us of of this movement in which we are bound up, this movement beyond ourselves that our art best represents. The animal is that from which qualities emanate, territories proliferate, and life is framed, framed by more than need. The animal is that from which the ‘all-too-human’ comes and that through which the human moves beyond itself into a new kind of artistic animal. Contemporary Aboriginal art, perhaps more than any other, makes explicit the intimate and necessary connection of the human with the animal, plant and territorial environments that condition art and make all its qualities possible. It is perhaps the art most alive to the nuanced interconnections between all things.

Bibliography

Darwin, Charles, (1981), The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

---------------------, (1996). The Origin of Species. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari, (1987) A Thousand Plateaus, trans Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Grosz, Elizabeth (2005) Time Travels. Feminism, Nature, Power Durham NC: Duke University Press.

Grosz, Elizabeth (2008) Chaos, Territory, Art. Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth, New York: Columbia University Press.

Jakob von Uexküll, (1926), Theoretical Biology, trans D.L. MacKinnon, London, Kegan Paul, Tench, Trubner and Co. Ltd

------------------, (1957), “A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animals and Men. A Picture Book of Invisible Worlds” in Instinctive Behavior: The Development of a Modern Concept, ed Claire Schiller, International Universities Press, New York, 5-80.

------------------, (2001a), “An Introduction to Umwelt” Semiotica 134-1/4, 107-110.

------------------, (2001b), ” The New Concept of Umwelt: A Link Between Science and the Humanities” Semiotica 134,1/4., 111-123.

[i] Of course the leaf itself is the result of its own processes of formation and the impingement of various forces to which its own form responds. Leaves are not simply random shapes but those random shapes which, through the eliminations of equally random but less useful shapes provided by natural selection, can provide the tree with maximal life, maximal utilization of competing and potentially scarce resources. We will rely in considerable detail on the writings of Jakob von Uexküll, whose works are also relevant to considering plant existence. The leaves of trees are in part the counterpoint of both the tree itself its various photosynthesizing requirements; but equally the leaf reflects and counterposes the forces of water and of rain, elemental forces which the tree must both withstand and utilize if it is to survive and proliferate:

One of the meaning factors relevant to oak leaves is rain. Upon striking a leaf, falling raindrops follow the physical laws governing the behavior of liquids. In this case, according to Uexküll, the leaf is the ‘receiver of meaning’, which is coupled with the meaning factor ‘rain’ by a ‘meaning rule’. The form of leaves is such that it accommodates the physical laws governing the behavior of liquids. The leaves work together by forming cascades in all directions to distribute rain water on the ground in optimal reach of the roots…

Wherever there is a point, its corresponding counterpart can be found. The physical behavior of raindrops is the counterpoint corresponding to the point of the leaf’s form… (Krampen: 420)

[ii] “The territory is first of all the critical distance between two beings of the same species: Mark your distance. What is mine is first of all my distance: I possess only distances. Don’t anybody touch me, I growl if anyone enters my territory.” (A Thousand Plateaus 319-320)

[iii] His work fits into the lineage of vitalist or biocentric works that runs from Schelling to Dreisch, Berg, Spemann, and D’Arcy Wentworth Thomson to Kurt Goldstein, Georges Canguilhem, and Oliver Sacks.

[iv] ‘Everything that falls under the spell of an Umwelt is altered and reshaped until it has become a useful meaning-carrier; otherwise it is totally neglected.' (Uexküll 1982, p. 31).

[v] No one, who has the least experience of the Umwelten of animals will ever

harbour the idea that objects have an autonomous existence that makes them independent of the subjects. The variability of objects is the norm here. Every object becomes something completely different on entering a different Umwelt. A flower stem that in our Umwelt is a support for the flower, becomes a pipe full of liquid to build its foamy nest.

The same flower stem becomes an upward path for the ant, connecting its nest with its hunting ground in the flower. For the grazing cow the flower stem becomes part of a tasty morsel of food for her to chew in her big mouth. (2001 Introd, 108)

[vi] “It is thus musical and not mechanical laws that we need to study if we want to find out about the laws of Life.” (2001b: 117).

[vii] The fly is itself a much underestimated creature whose morphology has enabled it to survive and thrive in a wide range of terrains and geographies. It has itself a quite rich world, marked by a number of I-tones, a flying tone (never direct or in a straight line but in a zigzagged line, an eating-tone, a walking tone: flies are by no means driven by instinct alone. Rather, their behavior is linked to the transformations of activity undertaken through the acquisition or transformation of meanings: a fly will continue to hit a glass window over and over until it switches from a flying-tone to a walking-tone:

…the fly, which comes to the window-pane, hits it with its head several times, and then no longer treats it as though it were air, but walks about on it as if on the ground…through the coming in of an indication, a rearrangement of the action is undertaken. (1926: 328)

[viii] Uexküll likens the spider to the mole: the network of underground caves and tunnels the mole has excavated for itself is, for him ‘spread out underground like a cobweb…In captivity it plots its tunnels so that they resemble a cobweb.’ (1957: 55)

[ix] It does matter whether the codes instructing the spider are genetic or environmental or a mixture of both. There is much to suggest that even if the design of the web is genetically structured, it seems unlikely that the location of the web is genetically structured:

…individual spiders repeatedly make webs in their environments, generation after generation, because they repeatedly inherit genes instructing them to do so. Subsequently, the consistent presence of a web in the spider's environment may, over many generations, feed back to become the source of a new selection pressure for a further phenotypic change in the spiders, such as the building by Cyclops of dummy spiders in their webs to divert the attention of avian predators… In this case, although the bird predator may not be a direct part of the spider's Umwelt, this Umwelt has, nevertheless, accommodated itself so as to fit (though faking) into the bird's Umwelt. (Hoffmeyer, 2001: 390)

[x] “In the case of the spider's web it is easy to point out the properties that

are contrapuntal to the fly. Here we have the strength of the threads that have to withstand the collision of the fly, and the thinness of the threads to make them invisible to the fly. The threads are of two kinds: smooth radial ones that the spider uses as steps and sticky ones that are for catching flies. The mesh of the net is also matched to the size of the fly's body. In the same way as with the spider's net one can analyze the counterpoints in the nests of birds and the labyrinths of moles. “ (1957: 121)

[xi] The idea of the organism as a melodic counterpoint to its milieu, the milieu that comes to compose its territory is elaborated by many examples in Uexküll’s writings. For example:

The dependence of the cellular musicians on the tune was already evident from the sea urchin experiments by Driesch. Cutting the embryo of the sea urchin in half reduced the number of cells to half but did not change the building tune. This was continued by the other half. This applies to all orchestras. When half the musicians leave, the other half of the orchestra goes on playing the same tune.

Spemann reports an astonishing experiment. Inserting frog cells, that normally evolve into frog brain, in the mouth area of a triton larva, the insert obeys the mouth building tune of the triton larva, however, it does not become a triton mouth but the mouth of a tadpole, true to its origin.

One could do a similar experiment with a strong orchestra. When replacing the violins with horns in a certain movement, the orchestra can go on playing the same tune but with a very different tonal quality. (2001: 121)

[xii] The body of an animal is an inverted map of its world; and equally, its world, the bubble-world it extracts from a larger blurring indeterminacy in which to live, is a projection of its bodily capacities. Similarly, the objects made, produced, by animals – nests, hives, webs, but also love objects, small toys, balls and objects of play – have their counterpart somewhere in the body of these animals. These animal-objects, objects constructed and invested with animal desire, are both the contrapuntal impression of materiality, of material forms – trees, branches, sticks, stones – used in animal construction and contrapuntal responses to the specificity of the animal body. Birds nests attest both to the form of treeness from which they are composed; but also each nest is a measure of both the form of the body of the bird whose nest it is, and particularly of the eggs the birds lays in the nest. In taking over the activities of other insects should they succumb to some illness or death, they reveal a kind of hidden design, a plan, in nature that is not designed by any planner but nevertheless adds up to a mosaic of impulses, orders, designs: “In this way we get the impression of a comprehensive harmonic totality, because the properties of lifeless things also intervene contrapuntally in the design of living things.” (2001b: 121)

Connie Anthes selected as finalist in the 2011 City of Hobart Art Prize

2011-07-12T23:19:00.000-07:00

Connie Anthes, Makeshift #4, 2011. Installation with painted black wooden rods & stainless steel bolts, dimensions variable.

The Damien Minton Gallery would like to congratulate Connie Anthes for being selected as a finalist in the 2011 City of Hobart Art Prize. The categories for this year's prize are 'paper' and 'wood'. Connie is one of 13 finalists selected nationally in the wood category.

The City of Hobart Art Prize is open to artists, designers and craftspeople nationwide. It brings together contemporary visual arts, craft and design practice in a single exhibition.

Prizes are: two $15,000 acquisitive City of Hobart Art Prize (one in each category), a $7,500 non-acquisitive MONA Prize and a $1,000 People's Choice Award. The prize is to be judged by Peter Hughes, Senior Curator (Decorative Arts), Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Rachel Kent, Senior Curator Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and Linda Michael, Deputy Director and Senior Curator, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Victoria.

This work (pictured above) is part of Connie's Makeshift series; a series of site specific responses that challenge expectations of given materials. The Makeshifts, conceived as "drawings-in-space" blur the boundaries that have traditionally separated drawing, collage, painting, sculpture and installation, and are intended to be reckoned with, and made sense of by, the audiences' movement in relation to them.

We look forward to presenting a solo exhibition from Connie Anthes at the Damien Minton Gallery in 2012 and wish her all the best in this prize.

The City of Hobart art prize exhibition runs from 23 July - 18 September 2011, at the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery (TMAG) in Hobart.

James Drinkwater wins the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship for painting

2011-06-09T00:17:00.000-07:00

James Drinkwater, ‘Talking with Poppy’, 2011, 1600 x 1500mm

James Drinkwater is back on our news page for winning this prestigious scholarship award. Here's what the judges had to say about James:

"The judges unanimously chose James Drinkwater as the recipient of the 2011 Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship for Painting. The judges believe that James Drinkwater is a young painter who shows great potential and commitment to the language of painting. The judges noted James’ consistent and thoughtful approach and the ongoing development of his work. Above all, the judging panel was impressed with his sensitive handling of the medium."

Congratulations!

Catherine and Jennifer Strutt win the 2011 Muswellbrook Open Art Prize

2011-06-09T00:11:00.000-07:00

Catherine and Jennifer Strutt, 'Home', 2010, mixed media, 1035mm x 1035mm

Congratulations to Catherine and Jennifer Strutt for winning Section A (a two dimensional painting of any subject in any medium) for their work 'Home'. The Muswellbrook Open Art prize is hosted by the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre and is running for the 41st time this year. Congratualtion to Peter Gardiner also for receiving a Highly Commended in the prize.

William Rose essay

2011-05-26T18:47:00.000-07:00

William Rose, Blue, oil on marine plywood, 1960

The following essay was written by Tristan Sharp, Assistant Director of the Newcastle Region Art Gallery in the catalogue 'William Rose - Composing Space, 19 March to 29 May 2011'

"The works by William Rose (1929-1997) in the collection of the Newcastle Region Art Gallery bring insight into the artist’s practice and career. Including two paintings, five works on paper and one rare lithograph, they represent each decade of the artist’s career from the 1950s to the 1990s and are the basis for the exhibition William Rose Composing space.

The exhibition has been enhanced by some twenty works selected from the estate of the artist, many of which have not been seen since they were first exhibited or never publicly displayed. They bring context to those in the Gallery’s collection and together present a focussed survey of the development of Rose’s oeuvre. Rose’s name today does not instantly command attention, despite the national and international recognition he achieved and maintained during his forty-year career.

Bringing together this range of work is an underexplored exercise that affords unexpected rewards. Rather than being overwhelmed by repetition, one can attune to their subtle nuances; marks and notations, palette, spatial variations and rhythms, all corralled, at times barely contained, within the space on which they are laid down.

The artist and art critic James Gleeson advised when viewing Rose’s work, “Only close attention will reveal the fact that every painting is a wholly new raid upon the intangible, always aimed in the same direction yet always uncovering a new variation, a subtly different nuance of form or motion.” ¹

Throughout his career, Rose did not wander from his signature style or drastically change its form. Repetition with variation was his mantra. He was proud of his consistency. Indeed Gertrude Stein’s quote ‘a rose is a rose is a rose’ was parroted by his detractors while defiantly embraced by the artist himself - because a Rose was going to be a Rose forever. ²

Born in 1929 and raised in the Newcastle suburb of Carrington, Rose left school at seventeen and worked the variety of industrial jobs expected of a young man growing up in the city. He developed an interest in art, first attending night classes at Newcastle Technical College before moving to Sydney in 1950 to pursue it more seriously at East Sydney Tech and the National Art School. He lasted no more than three weeks at either institution, which he, “…found unacceptable in my revolt against the academic short comings of Anglo-Australian art teaching”³ preferring what he called “the University of the Street.”⁴

His short tenure at art school did pay some life changing dividends though. He met fellow Novocastrian John Olsen and through him Robert Klippel who were connected with the local Sydney bohemian art scene and studio space in ‘the loo’ (Woolloomooloo). Both artists remained life long friends, sparring partners and supporters. He was also introduced to Early Modernism by tutor, then friend John Passmore, and he met fellow art student and future wife Sharn.

Rose was self-taught. He absorbed and synthesised everything he could to develop his vision as an artist. The pioneers of early Modernism and their assault on the academic traditions of representation and subject matter, these were the ideas that resonated tremendously with Rose and his anti-establishment sensibilities. Cezanne, Picasso, Mondrian and Kandinsky, are all embedded within the DNA of a Rose composition.

Rose first exhibited publicly in 1954 with the Contemporary Art Society, Sydney and in 1956, along with Olsen, organised the seminal 1956 exhibition Direction 1 at Macquarie Galleries, Sydney. It lasted one week in December of that year and was a sensation. It thrust the then 27 year old artist to national prominence along with Olsen, Eric Smith, John Passmore and Robert Klippel. Both Untitled 1954 and September1956 have been included in the exhibition representing these two defining moments for Rose.

Three years later Rose and Olsen instigated the 9 Sydney exhibition at David Jones’ Art Gallery, Sydney with Peter Upward, Carl Plate, Stanislau Rapotec, Clement Meadmore and art critic Robert Hughes amongst others. It was a direct response to art historian Bernard Smith’s Antipodean Manifesto and the importance it placed on figurative traditions over the ‘fashion’ that was abstraction.

Following Direction 1, Rose’s career developed quickly. He was selected for important international exhibitions of Australian art including the Pacific Loan Exhibition in 1956 which toured Auckland, Honolulu, Vancouver and San Francisco on board the Orient Line’s S.S Orcades. This was followed in the 1960’s by Paintings from the Pacific, New Zealand; Recent Australian Paintings, Australian painting Today (Untitled 1963 is included in the exhibition) and Antipodean Vision, United Kingdom; Paris Biennale, France and Young Australian Painters, Japan. Rose held over 20 solo exhibitions throughout his career with most of the major Sydney commercial galleries as well as a major solo exhibition at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York in 1982, from which three paintings are included.

Of the eight works by Rose held in the Gallery’s collection, the most significant are the two paintings Rhapsody in Blue 1959 and February painting 1975. Purchased by the Gallery from Von Bertouch Gallery, Newcastle and Gallery A, Sydney respectively, both works are excellent examples of Rose’s signature style. The shift from an open to closed structure and use of positive and negative space within the composition is apparent when comparing the two. Both are an ongoing attempt to delineate an unseen but sensed ‘fourth dimension’, but the former is open, ongoing and pulsing beyond the frame. The latter very obviously and deliberately contained and constrained, almost vibrating due to its confinement. The influence of music, especially jazz and classical, is clear in Rose’s titles and a consistent subtext of any of his compositions. He would listen to it loud when working in the studio. Names of the months in which works were painted were also regularly used, not only denoting a time of creation but a sense of mood and tone related to a season.

Rose realised early that canvas would not do. Painting on masonite board, and later marine ply was essential. Both were strong enough to withstand the thin slashes of oil paint applied or rather etched in, with a sharpened kitchen knife. The size of the paintings is due to the stock size of masonite rather than any particular desire of the artist but it increased exponentially once the lighter marine ply was available. This was the nature of Rose’s studio practice - happenstance, experimentation, and the use of what ever was available at the time. The absolute aim being not to slow down any opportunity to activate intuition, improvisation and spontaneity at any time.

Rose’s physical ailments equally influenced his practice. In 1967 he won the Transfield Prize, the prize money enabling a second ear operation to rectify his declining hearing, a life long problem. “Since my last operation which gave me back my full hearing, my paintings have become explosive. Where once I painted sombre, bluey-grey colours, now I am using yellow and red – bright awareness colours that live,” Rose declared.⁵ Rhapsody in blue 1959 and February painting 1975 bridge this time and transformation in the use of colour. Curiously Rose also noted he was a more likeable fellow when he was deaf. Once he could hear everything, he argued with everyone.⁶ Something many people would note as both endearing, frustrating and quintessentially William Rose.

Drawing is the foundation of Rose’s practice, in its own right, as a way of limbering up for painting, and within his painting technique itself. Most usually scratched out in ink with a stylus, early works from the 1950s were skeletal linear experiments. With later works from the 1960s on, like those in the Gallery’s collection, Rose would build form around the dashing point and line structure with watercolour or pastel, solidifying the composition together. The affect being more organic, and more akin to agitated bio-morphic organisms found in rain forests, under a microscope or on newly discovered planets. Such was the continuous micro to macro view that Rose was attempting to tap into with every mark.

William Rose has made a significant contribution to Australian art and yet his work is still not very well understood. This is because he has created his own private language, an imagery which is his way of investigating and describing the universe. ⁷ People find all sorts of physical suggestions– skyscrapers, dockyards, scaffolding, battleships under construction, space stations in orbit or industrial landscapes – and in a way they are right. It would be strange if his visual surroundings either from Throsby Creek in Newcastle or the skyline of Sydney years later were not embedded in there somewhere. ⁸ Rose would always discount this though, he lived in his ‘own place’ where machine, nature and self met and became indistinguishable. Rose was always trying to get to the truths underlying experience, with little more than paint and a sense of something greater than himself.

In Rose’s own words: “The essence of my work from my very first showing in 1954 is to prove that the easel painting as such is not an anachronism. That it can still work beyond the artificial subject representation and is still a worthy vehicle for artistic search.” ⁹

William Rose always claimed that his artistic philosophy and style were moulded in Newcastle. It is fitting that this survey of his unique body of work, is presented back here in his home town."

Tristan Sharp

Assistant Director
Newcastle Region Art Gallery

1 James Gleeson, Australian Painting Studio Series, Modern Australian Painters, 1970, pp 110.

2 John Olsen, Indelible impression of a Rose in full bloom, Sydney Morning Herald, 24.December 1997.

3 Jill Sykes, Rose aims to make the heart sing, Sydney Morning Herald, 15 April 1982.

4 Christine Franz, Exhibitions catalogue New Directions 1952 – 1962, The Lewers Bequest and Penrith Regional Art Gallery, 1991

5 Gloria Newton, An artist also sees with his ears: operation which restored hearing has given painter new world, The Australian Women’s Weekly May 22 1968.

6 Ibid

7 Laurie Thomas, A new sort of alphabet, The Australian, 24 June 1967.

8 Ibid

9 William Rose, Artist statement, in Exhibition catalogue The Paintings of William Rose: Metaphysical Australian Structure, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York, 1982

BILLY MAYNARD - TRANS/TENDER

2011-05-17T20:27:00.000-07:00

Billy Maynard, Untitled 10, silver gelatin print, 2010/2011, editions of 10.

Billy Maynard's upcoming debut exhibition 'trans/tender' is already generating a buzz, receiving a full page feature in the Australian over the weekend. Billy Maynard presents 17 images from the series 'trans/tender' for six days only at the Damien Minton Annex Space - 583 Elizabeth St, Redfern.

The suite is also available in a box set which includes this statement by Billy Maynard:

Peppe changed it all for me. She personified on the edge, wrapped up in a sexual ambiguity that is so full on and great. She made the straightest men in uniform turn into salivating animals; it was beyond and above to watch.

The pictures in Trans / Tender are vignettes from lives lived in darkness, outside society, in the world’s newest nation. You see rooms prepared for sex, cars, beds and candles. They pay homage to shadows at night and a river running deep, flowing with the dark feeling that Peppe and I share.

It was there and only at night I would see the light so delicate and unfamiliar. I started to see their rooms lit like nativity scenes - like the manger, waiting for the lambs. The Spirito Santos was everywhere. I started to think about faith, and how the Church ostracises her mob. The picture of the burning cemetery is the saddest picture for me. I think about God a lot now.

Wanting to explore the other side, I find solace in places some people are running from. These images come from trust and respect. Not the respect of manners and eye contact they taught me at school, but respect as an acceptance of the faults, the sweat, the shit, the corruption, the stench, the sex, and the panic. Through all of the mud and anxiety and internal struggles, they gave me all their tenderness, their friendship.

I was aware the clock of my boyhood had been wound down and stopped, and that nothing would be as it was again. I had seen things that I wanted to keep seeing, that would separate me from most of my friends. It’s been lonely back here, but getting alright.

I drive to my apartment before light, after an unkind night through deserted streets past hungry boys and dogs. Blue, lost and falling asleep at the wheel, this lovely classical music starts in my brain. It’s the only music I remember from Timor. So I have pictures instead.

Peppe loved me, and turned me into an artist.

ELAINE CAMPANER - CITIZENSHIP

2011-05-17T19:53:00.000-07:00

Elaine Campaner, Those who Swam, digital print, dimensions variable

As expected, Elaine Campaner's show has garnered critical acclaim. Peter Fay's review says the show is "Not to be missed". Also check out the features on sixtoeight and a review from Bronwyn Coleman.
Elaine talks about her exhibition below:

Like many people I find it very disturbing that we still celebrate Australia Day on the day of the landing of the first fleet, a day that represents the invasion, colonisation and genocide of one people by another.

Where I live, the celebration of Australia Day and Anzac Day seems to become more crass and lurid every year. Cars appropriating the Southern Cross, Eureka Stockade flag, or displaying “Australia love it or leave it” stickers joined with cars festooned with Australian flags in a mindless celebration. This display represents a need to belong and a need for community, but at the cost of denying the suffering and/or contributions of others with a different story and reality. I believe that we could collectively imagine a more complex and inclusive sense of nationhood and belonging on any other day.

Some of these works are a limited response to the ‘history wars’ of the 1990’s that continue still. I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said before, yet we still have many politicians who inflame fear and racial prejudice for political ends.

Partly this work is a response to the so called ‘history wars’ and partly it is a response to a certain kind of growing patriotism that is fed by politicians and populist broadcasters who regularly inflame fear and racial prejudice for political ends. Lastly, this work is also a response to reading the stories of the survivors of the SEIVX and similar.

In some of these images I have used souvenirs, which represent the consumption of an idealized experience. What is the bigger picture that these objects are part of? Can they be redeemed in any way? What are our containing or fracturing cultural mythologies? How can we experience these objects as part of a different story?

“Solidarity is not discovered by reflection, but created. It is created by increasing our sensitivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation of other, unfamiliar sorts of people. Such increased sensitivity makes it more difficult to marginalise people different from ourselves by thinking, 'They do not feel as WE would,' or 'There must always be suffering, so why not let THEM suffer?'”
- Richard Rorty, American Philosopher.

Elaine Campaner.

Citizenship' is in the gallery until the 28th May.

Peter Gardiner wins the 2011 Calleen Art Award

2011-04-19T01:22:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Peter Gardiner for winning the 2011 Calleen Art Award at Cowra Regional Gallery. This acquisitive prize is in its 34th year, and this year was judged by Deborah Ely, CEO of the Bundanon Trust. She had these comments about the winning work:

"Peter Gardiner's Landscape 2010 Number VIII dips its hat to the Spanish masters Valezquez and Goya and to the traditions of landscape painting, but takes them to another place. The viewer becomes involved in a dark narrative that hints at an evolving, indecipherable, drama. It is both frightening and contemplative. There is a strong sense of the present in its possible references to catastrophic weather and natural disasters. It is a sensational painting and will be a wonderful acquisition for the Cowra Regional Art Gallery Collection."

Peter Gardiner, Landscape VIII, oil on canvas, 210 x 180 cm

The Calleen Art Award is on at Cowra Regional Gallery until 29th May.

James Drinkwater selected for the Salon des Refuses

2011-04-13T20:45:00.000-07:00

A portrait by currently exhibiting gallery artist James Drinkwater has been selected for exhibition in the S.H. Ervin Gallery's Salon des Refuses. The portrait depicts artist Charles Blackman, and here James recounts the experience of their first meeting:
I was barely eighteen when my dear friend Fred O’Brien introduced me to Charles.

I had known Charlie for all of three minutes when he lent over the table and said to me:

“Listen here boy! Drawing is wrapping a line around something you could never dream of!”

This set a quirky, somewhat gruff and honest tone for what would be many meetings over the next ten years.

Charlie is one of the country’s great painters and draughtsman and I have been fortunate enough to sit on many occasions with over dinner or a cup of tea and listen to him wax lyrical about art and history. When excited Charlie becomes animated and almost jumps out of his seat. His eyes are enchanting, mischievous and often distant and his smile can go from warm to wicked in a moment.

I have often made drawings of Charles but it’s only in the last year that have I felt ready to paint him and I am glad that I waited.

"Drawing is wrapping a line around something you could never dream of" (Portrait of Charles Blackman)

James Drinkwater

James' exhibition at the Damien Minton Gallery continues to Saturday 16th April. The 2011Salon des Refuses is open from Saturday 16th April at S.H. Ervin Gallery.

JAMES DRINKWATER - NOSTALGIA FOR NOTHING

2011-03-15T20:19:00.000-07:00

Damien Minton Gallery is excited to present a new body of work by young Australian artist James Drinkwater.

"He died from being an artist", oil on canvas, 1300mm x 1200mm, 2011.

Here he describes the process by which he develops his paintings and sculptures:

I start with long walks where I make photographs, drawings and I fill my trolley with found objects. I turn the photographs and drawings upside down or on their side or I leave them as they are depending on how I find the image most interesting. I focus on the negative shapes and points of tension. I then begin to work on at least 15 paintings and a few found object ensembles ranging from small to quite large, splashing thin paint around and placing different objects next to one another I start to process my research and begin to make sense new ideas. Each painting receives many hits and with each hit the surface quality improves and my intentions become clearer. There is a lot of painting out and as the painting comes of age my moves and marks become more deliberate…full of intent like old men playing chess in a park. These final decisions made are arduous and quite often painful.

I have often described my paintings as incoherent mind maps. I am deeply connected and involved with the stunning details of life. I am an optimist, a naturalist, I am not an academic, my approach is raw, primal, however deliberate and emotional. For me its about those long and important hours painting, that is where I form a relationship with the work, that is where I form the dialogue. Like keys on a map I have this visual alphabet and visual words. The better works are lyrical however, more like a poem than a song. They all finish more or less at the same time like a dream or a film.

James Drinkwater

Nostalgia for Nothing

22 March - 16 April 2011

LOTTIE CONSALVO in the Annex Space

2011-03-09T19:10:00.000-08:00

Across shoulders the shadows of trees are cast, as the hills roll through ghosted faces, beasts are revealed inside of men and all around is desert.

Standing in a room with the works of Lottie Consalvo, the viewer is led to contemplate the relationship between vast landscapes and the unending potential of human emotion. Standing where they stand, where they struggle, her figures break and strain, rise and fade in their interaction with the land that they are set against, and themselves.

There is an authenticity of emotion in Lottie's paintings and sculptures that is not easily summarised. Born of experience and artistic exploration, her strength lies in a simple portrayal of the complex relationship between the human form and its cerebral counterparts. The protagonists often appear engaged in a struggle between primitive instinct and rational clarity, blurring the line between man and his inner forms. These expressive figures cast questions to a quintessentially Australian landscape creating a mood that is at once dark, quiet and thought provoking.

Lottie Consalvo, originally from Melbourne, now spends her time between Berlin, Germany and Newcastle, Australia. She has exhibited in Berlin, Sydney and Melbourne and her work is held in private collections in both Australia and abroad. Following this exhibition Lottie will return to her studio in Berlin, later traveling to Germany's other major art centre, Leipzig, where she has secured a three month residency with the Leipzig International Art Program.

- Kim Fasher, curator

Lottie talks about her experience working and living in Berlin in the Sydney Morning Herald today. She will be participating in The National Art School Art Forum with other young Australian artists on March 23rd.

Lottie Consalvo, 'and all around is desert', 8-19 March 2011.

Damien Minton Gallery Annex Space,

583 Elizabeth St Redfern, 9699 7551

Dean Manning, Templo San Lazaro

2011-03-09T18:18:00.000-08:00

Dean Manning is currently exhibiting a suite of paintings, sculpture and video animation in the main space, each of which suggests a compelling narrative. "Midgets and Giants" offers evocative images full of whimsy and humour.
Here Dean tells the story of one of these works, Templo San Lazaro.

Templo San Lazaro, oil on wood, 680mm x 760mm, 2011.

I rented a warehouse in Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY for a few months. The neighbourhood is Hispanic & Mexican, On one of my daily walks I came across an old shop front cluttered with religious icons, amulets, potions, candles and white doves in cages.

Three men sat in the room watching an old movie on a small black & white t.v. That’s where I met Mr Carlos. He didn’t speak much English so his friend Rudy translated for us.

Mr Carlos came from Costa Rica 40 years ago. He is a healer and church leader and St Lazarus is his patron saint. He had a church in midtown Manhattan for 30 years with hundreds of followers but rising costs brought him to Bushwick. Mr Carlos led me to the back of the store to his church. It was a long skinny room with chairs lining the walls leading down to an altar with a life size statue of St Lazarus. From the ceiling hung a blue & cream satin banner that read ‘Paz Y Justicia Fe Esperanza Caridad’ (Peace & Justice, Hope, Faith & Charity). Mr Carlos’ church drew influences from all religions. Christianity, Buddhism, Voodooism, Native American. On the shelves packed with figurines, Jesus, Mary and an array of saints mixed it with Buddhas & cigarette smoking African effigies, Santa Clauses and Wild West Indians. Mr Carlos invited me to Sunday service that weekend. I was asked to bring a gift as it was a special day, St Lazarus’ birthday.

I coerced a couple of friends to join me and after a breakfast of huevos rancheros we set off. There were a dozen people there already and we took a seat. Everyone was chatting, laughing. We could have been on a bus heading for a holiday. A lady opposite spoke English and offered to explain the proceedings to us. Down at the altar, St Lazarus wore a happy birthday party hat. Around his neck hung a dozen strands of beads and garlands of flowers. I placed my gift, a quart of rum, in a basket overflowing with flowers, fruit, cigars, candles, copious other bottles and cash. Mr Carlos’ daughter, a young dark haired beauty in a tight black t-shirt sequinned ‘Chanel’ walked around the room giving each of us a strand of blue & yellow beads to wear.

When the room was nearly full the first stage of the service began. We formed an informal queue. Mr Carlos sat on a purple velvet throne next to the altar. Each person knelt before him. He threw a yellow shawl over us and murmured (or sung). This was said to cleanse us and clear the air. For the last throw of shawl, we were motioned to stand. Mr Carlos stood too, though somewhat painfully. (I learnt later he had a wooden leg). He then theatrically whipped away the shawl for the last time. Some people at this point flew into an ecstatic dance, eyes rolling. Assistants stood by to catch you if you fell which happened a few times.

We returned to our seats. I could hear the doves cooing in their cages as Mr Carlos’ wife walked around offering beer, shots of rum & soft drinks.

For the next part of the service we again filed before Mr Carlos who slowly moved a candle over each of us to ‘see’ inside and identify any aliments. These were relayed to us by his assistants. My friend Sarah was told she had a bad spirit lurking and needed to come back next week for further cleansing. I got a clean bill of health.

On the altar, wrapped in clear cellophane was a plaster sculpture of a native American scene of Indians and horses. This was this weeks’ prize in the raffle. They sold lottery tickets at 3 for a dollar.

In the final part of the ceremony we all selected a coconut from the sack ($2). One by one, Mr Carlos rubbed our coconut over us, back & front. The coconut was said to absorb all the bad energy. On our way home, we were instructed to find a ‘crossroad’ (an intersection in the city would do). It had to be a crossroad we wouldn’t be using that week. There we had to smash our coconut making an affirmation.

It was snowing outside. People lingered with their coconuts. The music was turned up and people began to dance. More drinks were served and a feast was laid out.

Dean Manning, "Midgets and Giants", 3 - 19 March 2011.

As part of Art Month Sydney.
Read their post on the Art Month blog.

Read Ian Shadwell's review of the exhibition on The Art Life.

HAPPY YEAR OF THE RABBIT

2011-01-24T20:17:00.000-08:00

Gallery artists Peter Gardiner and China de la Vega exhibit new work based on their experience in China, 2010. We also welcome onboard for this exhibition fellow artists Guy Maestri (courtesy Tim Olsen Gallery), Phil James, Frances Belle Parker and photography by the coordinator, Catherine Croll.

Hard Sleeper, 7+/-1 Australian Artists in China was a wonderfully eclectic exhibition produced as the culmination of a two-month immersion into Chinese art and culture undertaken by 7 Australian Indigenous and Emerging artists as apart of Imagine Australia – the Year of Australian Culture in China.

Led by “China Facilitator” Catherine Croll, the group including: Fiona Foley, Guy Maestri, Frances Belle Parker, Peter Gardiner, Phil James, China De la Vega and Zhou Xiaoping began their adventure by travelling via local transport (hard sleeper) to some of China’s most interesting provincial cities and historic sites including: Pingyao, Xian, Hua Shan, Chengdu, Chongqing, Dazu Grottoes, the Yangtze River, Wuhan and Shanghai (read more at www.CatherineCroll.com).

During their tour they met with local contemporary artists, participated in forums, engaged in public and private debates, toured artist’s studios and arts districts, conducted classes for hundreds of primary school children in earthquake ravaged Sichuan and served as VIP guests at the Australian Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo.

This was followed by a month of frenzied activity during their Red Gate Gallery studio
residency where the artists produced an extraordinary range of artwork.

'Hard Sleeper' will be at the Damien Minton Gallery from Tuesday 15 February to Saturday 26 February, 2011.

DALLAS BRAY WINS THE KILGOUR ART PRIZE

2010-11-25T22:16:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Dallas Bray for winning the 2010 Kilgour Art Prize for the 2nd time in as many years.

The biennale acquisitive painting prize is financed by the JN Kilgour bequest. The Prize encourages innovative figurative painting by Australian artists and awards $50,000 for the most outstanding work of art, as judged by a selection panel.

The judges this year were Ron Ramsay, director of the Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Ann Lewis AO, art patron and Daniel McOwen, director of the Hamilton Art Gallery, Victoria.

The painting will be on display at the Newcastle Region Art Gallery until 16 January, 2011.

Dallas Bray, Going to Town, 2010

ROSS LAURIE WINS THE KING'S SCHOOL 2010 ART PRIZE

2010-08-26T22:08:00.000-07:00

We are delighted to announce Ross Laurie was awarded the $15,000 Acquisitive King's School Art Prize, which was judged by Glenn Barkley, Curator at the MCA, Sydney.

Some of the other invited finalists included Idris Murphy, John R. Walker, Brett McMahon and indigenous artists Eileen Napaltjarri and Gladdy Kenmarre.

The art prize was established in 1994, and previous winners include Aida Tomescu, John Olsen, Nicholas Harding, Ben Quilty and Gloria Petyarre.

When announcing the award last night, Glenn Barkley quoted from the late great Nick Waterlow OAM:

'There is something magical at the core of Ross Laurie’s art. That his work relates intimately to the landscape around Walcha, indeed is inspired by it, we know. Yet it is the language he has developed to express a special place that elicits a unique understanding of this natural order in all its guises.

'His art hovers between the visible world and the unseen rhythms of a land that only deep acquaintance and affection can capture. The strength and vibrancy of his use and choice of colour, and his creation of the contours and complex interweaving of undulating terrain, with the presence of tree, shrub and other forms, punctuate the picture plane to produce dynamic, earthily constructed and felicitously choreographed images that I believe are of lasting significance.'

Ross will be exhibiting a new series of work at the Damien Minton Gallery, commencing Wednesday 20th October, 2010.

Ram's Gully - Butt Up
Oil on canvas
1370mm x 1520mm

TOM CARMENT WINS ALAN GAMBLE AWARD

2010-08-12T00:53:00.000-07:00

We congratulate Tom Carment on yet again being amongst the prizewinners of the Mosman Art Prize.

This is what Kon Gouriotis, Director, Visual Arts, Australia Council for the Arts, said about the painting
'Container Wharf, Port Botany':

"The Allan Gamble Memorial Prize is awarded annually to a painting focussing on the built environment. This year, it goes to Tom Carment for his work Container Wharf, Port Botany. This work is imbued with an acute sense of observation. The artist’s keen examination of the port, expressed by its slight movements, is a process I wanted to celebrate by selecting Carment’s work. The three different moments (recorded in presence at the site and at a distance) have a deep consideration of a particular focal point, and the work is beautifully crafted."

The painting is part of the latest of Tom's plein air series, which we featured in this year's Melbourne Art Fair.

This is what Tom has to say about his journies to Port Botany:

"The container terminal at Botany Bay feels like the busiest place in Sydney, the working heart of the city and I have been painting there since late last year. Queues of waiting semi-trailers peel out its gates. It’s noisy too: engine sounds, warning beeps and sirens, the nearby planes taking off and landing.
Being a plein air painter I look for the best places to sit and paint which aren’t in anyone’s way. I began working from the edges of the Eastern Suburbs Cemetery from where I could see all the cranes against the light. Then, after scouting out possible sites on my bicycle (I cycle to Botany Bay every Saturday morning), I started painting the wharf from the north, sitting in the bushes at the edge of busy Foreshore Drive. From here I could see the brightly coloured structures in full light, almost like science-fiction fighting machines, striding the bay. I worked on horizontal panels, about thirty of which I’d cut and primed from old timber collected at the Bower in Marrickville. In the studio I arranged them into groups that sat well together. Foreshore Drive is a ‘no stopping’ zone so I’d leave my car in Joseph Banks Park and lug my gear half a mile round the edge of the golf course to get there, past what looked like aboriginal middens under the windblown trees. The Port is a ‘still life’ in flux, the elements remain the same but move about; not only do the skies and tides change, but also the giant red and yellow cranes, which shunt up and down their tracks into different positions each day and rearrange the stacked walls of containers. The deckhouses and smokestacks of visiting ships move on every couple of days. This changing of the ‘still life’ meant I had to complete each picture in one sitting of about two hours. Added to this sense of urgency was the fact that the area where I sat had been newly landscaped with woodchips and fresh plantings, interlaced with a black-piped watering system and week by week the greenery grew higher, eventually blocking the view. The industrial strength sprinklers would go off at random times, soaking me, so I carried a plastic bag and gaffer tape and would rush to smother them when they went off, allowing me to continue my work. I found a lot of stray golf balls on the walks in and out of my painting place and one day presented them to a somewhat shocked golfer preparing to tee off.
One night I heard on the news that a maritime worker had been killed at Port Botany, crushed by a container. I’d been sitting there that day worrying about getting my colours in the right place, unaware of the tragic event that was taking place across the water."

Damien Minton Gallery at Melbourne Art Fair

2010-07-29T23:30:00.000-07:00

Damien Minton Gallery is exhibiting at Melbourne Art Fair 2010. We invite you to come visit us at Stand A50 Upstairs, where we are pleased to present new work by Ross Laurie, Peter Gardiner and Tom Carment.

We will also be showing selected sculptural works by artists Michael Callaghan, Myfanwy Gullifer, China De La Vega, Martin Sharp, Luke Temby (CUPCO) and Tony Twigg.

Melbourne Art Fair

Royal Exhibition Building

5-8 August 2010

Image: Ross Laurie, Tree and Shadow - Ram's Gully, 2010. Oil on canvas, 2200mm x 4000mm (diptych).

NICK WATERLOW ON CARL PLATE

2010-07-08T00:13:00.000-07:00

From "Curating the COFA Collection", 2009

Carl Plate (1909-1977) was born in Perth, to a German father and English born mother, moving to Sydney in 1913. He studied under Raynor Hoff and Fred Leist at East Sydney Technical College, and his sister Margo Lewers was also an artist to achieve prominence. In 1935 he travelled to Europe via Cuba, Mexico and USA. In London he mixed with many influential artists and writers including Henry Moore, TS Eliot and Herbert Read. Whilst in France in 1940 he was detained as a suspected German spy; on release he reached England from where he returned to Sydney. There he set up the Notanda Gallery in Rowe Street and exhibited many of the foremost European and Australian artists of the time, as well as promoting the literature of modernism, until the Gallery's close in 1974. Plate, an active member of the Contemporary Art Society, lived in the hills behind the Woronora River outside Sydney.

In London he saw the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition which changed his view of the world. "Life itself is surreal. Its essential quality has always appealed. Not as a style but an attitude"(1). It is primarily in his collages , shown at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery in 2009, that this is revealed. His better known painting practice, from the 1930s to the 1970s, was largely forged in abstraction with at times vestiges of cubism and abstract expressionism. "Each picture is a fresh exploration of form, not of a repetitious formula," wrote Daniel Thomas in 1963 (2). And much later, in 2009, ADS Donaldson expressed his admiration: "Carl Plate was one of Australia's most distinguished and accomplished mid-century artists. The galleries he showed in, the exhibitions he was part of, and the artists he he was hung beside were the bright lights of their day"(3).

'Dark forms light segments', 1964, is a substantial and imposing painting, a generous gift of the late James Agapitos and Ray Wilson, that exemplifies Plate's oeuvre. Fissured shapes abound, amidst the disarming presence of imagined and shifting tectonic plates, as if seen from above. The landscape and its myriad appearances certainly inform this vision but the unique abstract language he developed combined a European awareness and sensibility with an acute understandingof the psyche of the place he lived. His work was quite unlike any other artist in Australia of his generation, as difficult as that of Clyfford Still and similar in its relationship to the art prevailing. The recent revelation of his collages and their pioneering of the vertical slice foreshadowed Daniel Crooks' videos, maintaining Plate's relevance today.

1. Carl Plate, interview with Richard Haese, 29 June 1974, State Library of Victoria.
2. Daniel Thomas, Sunday Telegraph, Sydney,17.11.63, unpaginated.
3. ADS Donaldson, Carl Plate, Collage 1938-1976, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, 2009, p63.

Reproduced with the permission of the USW College of Fine Arts.
'Curating the COFA Collection' at Ivan Dougherty Gallery, 2009, by Nick Waterlow.

Sea Snow/PMC No. 35, 1975
Magazine paper collage on paper
215mm x 263mm

View more of the artworks on our Facebook page by clicking HERE.

MICHAEL CALLAGHAN

2010-05-28T00:56:00.000-07:00

Opening remarks by Associate Professor Anthony Burke at the ANU School of Art Gallery, 7 May 2010.

It is an honour to be asked to open this exhibition. I recall as a young human rights activist in Sydney seeing some of Michael’s posters – especially the very striking one he did for Amnesty International’s 25th anniversary – and so its interesting to see the longer survey of his work, especially how its book-ended by the early anti-militarist concrete poems and the recent work on Iraq. As someone who has travelled a strange route, from being a human rights activist to teaching at a military academy - where I have a strange role as a kind of embedded critical theorist – seeing Michael’s new work on Iraq and the war on terror is fascinating.

I thought of it this week when I bought a copy of the March Foreign Policy magazine, which is a kind of American version of TIME for international policy wonks. To illustrate a major section on the future of war, its cover it had an iPhone in camouflage print, with a series of icons onscreen named ‘surge’, ‘shock and awe’, ‘dronewar’, ‘hearts and minds’, ‘blackops’, ‘sitroom’ and more. Beneath it ran the title, “Killer Apps”.

I could see how the designer was striving for the irony and humour of pop or conceptual art, but the result was flippant and shallow. The effect was not helped by some of the content, which was narrowly concerned with the effectiveness of US power and included a piece by the strategist Edward Luttwak, who argued that while the US military’s new counterinsurgency focus on the protection of populations, good governance, minimum use of force, etc. was all very nice, we need to rediscover the virtues of strategic bombing. While Michael’s work is part of a global movement of dissent that has had an appreciable impact on the US military – not the least because some influential officers had the same concerns we did - Luttwak’s intervention suggests that even if the US Army and Marine Corps have moved on from ‘Shock and Awe’ in admirable ways, there are still enough dangerous and influential thinkers about to make this kind of artwork a very important form of public critique and memory.

Like the “Killer Apps” cover, Michael’s work is clearly working the space between advertising aesthetics and conceptual art, but in a far more profound and critical way. There is a depth there that provokes thought and moral reflection, that can’t be reduced to a simple set of meanings.

Depth is evoked in the way that the work is constructed – using layers in Photoshop and Illustrator – and in the way the pieces layer widely separated historical experiences into a common reality, whether its medieval poems evoking contemporary Arab revolt and anger, the resurgence of medieval torture techniques in the Bush administrations practices of rendition and water boarding, and the ghostly reappearance of a medieval image of the all powerful sovereign who can make war and dispose of the lives of his subjects at whim. This was the darker edge to Bush’s ‘forward strategy of freedom’ in the Middle-East, which was never able to shake off the sense that it was a kind of medieval crusade in another form.

In other ways the work plays with surface and depth, combining the rich historical associations of Arabic script with game icons, weapons schematics and flags. Yet even here the icons are subtly subverted – the flags indicate distress – and while the cartoonish quality of the work evokes the cartoonish contrasts of too much international policy – where Bush and Saddam are latter day versions of the Roadrunner and the Wile E. Coyote – the work shows us the layers of history, suffering, and violence that would quickly disturb the policymakers’ grand plans and produce such tragedy.

The new work also think of the claims of Jean Baudrillard and Fredric Jameson in the 1980s that contemporary culture would become all surface and simulacrum, and cultural productions would be little more than a depthless form of pastiche. In its play of surface and depth, Michael’s work reflects these claims but stands a gentle and serious form of rebuke to both the Bush neocons and the prophets of postmodernism.

The Bush Neocons did in part play this out the simulacral future, with their confidence that they could conduct ‘perception management’ and ‘create a new reality’; however, as Michael’s great “Shock and Awe” piece suggests, they would quickly find that in today’s post-modern conflicts, the real lives and real suffering of real people will always complicate and resist our grand and violent abstractions. Consider the first lines of text on one of remarkable new Iraq pieces: ‘Regime change. Meeting friends.’

We can all congratulate Michael on a great career achievement and some brilliant new works. I hope they meet with the attention and success they deserve.

Anthony Burke is Associate Professor of International Politics in the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy. He is the author of Fear of Security: Australia’s Invasion Anxiety (Cambridge UP, 2008) and Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence: War Against the Other (Routledge, 2007), and is currently writing a book entitled Postmodern Conflict: Global Security and Asymmetric War.

Antara, 2009-10
Digital print, Canson Photographique Archival
310 gsm, 111cm x 200 cm
Edition of 30

TONY TWIGG AND CHRIS CAPPER- 28 APRIL TO 22 MAY, 2010- OPENING REMARKS

2010-05-12T19:28:00.000-07:00

It is an honour to be presenting two mature mid career artists tonight and delighted in the knowledge that both these bodies of work sit comfortably in the two rooms and will sustain a viewer’s attention for the next month in the gallery.

CHRIS CAPPER, in the Project Room, presents 11 new works that he started working on in 2007.

I recently became aware of a group called Slow Art where, (inspired by the slow food movement), guests are invited to sit in front of one masterpiece in a museum and whilst having a meal look and discuss only that one painting for a number of hours.

The slow peeling back of references, techniques, possibilities is something worth doing with any of Chris’ work.

When you stop and really look at Chris Capper paintings it becomes obvious they are not pictures depicting bunches of flowers, nor are they really about the refined balancing of figurative and abstract elements. They are all of those things and more.

So how do you then define the ‘more’?

I really enjoy my conversations with Chris and this afternoon we were both recalling how much we enjoyed the Simon Schama’s TV documentary on Mark Rothko last Sunday.

Schama was talking about one of the words Rothko most often used about his art; he was always concerned whether it was ‘poignant’, the inevitable passing of things.

All good artists spend a lifetime determined to trap their fugitive visions.

I wish I had Schama’s beautiful turn of phrase, but I will quote from him about Rothko as it will allow us to understand some of the reasoning behind Chris Capper’s art:

“It is impossible not to be touched by that poignancy: of our comings and goings, entrances and exits, womb, tomb and everything in between.”

Now we come to the main exhibition tonight, TONY TWIGG.

I realised only tonight that Tony exhibited at the Gary Anderson Gallery in 1985, so we are somewhat honoured to be passed on the baton of showing Tony’s art as Anderson is fondly remembered by many gathered here tonight as a seminal and influential aesthete.

This is Tony’s first exhibition in Sydney since 2004.

During that time he has embarked on a journey into Asia, where he has now become better known and respected in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Manila than here in his home town, Sydney.

It is not that surprising as Tony has found an audience which culturally accepts abstraction for what it is….it just is. Here with the inheritance of a western aesthetic we still searching for a narrative or conceptual springboard to deconstruct or construct the ‘real’ meaning.

When you view Tony’s work tonight, think of that journey.

Whilst walking on a journey you become aware of your breathing.

Air going into your body, air going out.

This is something intrinsic when viewing the series of work known as discs and accordions.

Some of the ‘shards’ and vertical sharp contract shoulder to shoulder into a tight visual space, breathing in.

Then others, offering the same design, breathe out, with the expanse of negative space allowing them to stretch out along the wall.

Breathe in and out.

When viewing Tony Twigg’s work you sense design within interiors, the architecture of built objects shaping environments and living spaces.

Breathe in and each work has a sense of collage, a collection of juxtaposed objects, lines, shapes.

Breathe out and each work has a feel of being a painting. The surfaces are treat with subtle variable tones soaking into the wooden plane.

Breathe in and each work becomes a drawing, the line of nature drifting and then pushing.

Breathe out and each work contains a history of the artist looking and observing for many, many years.

Look at the main sculpture Five Sticks, and your senses immediately trigger into non specific indigenous references, Tiwi pukamani poles, Javanese carvings and then our modern western tradition of Brancusi and Arp.

Twigg has spent a lifetime of inquiry and observation. This is evoked in the book we launch tonight, ‘Encountering the Object’ edited by Gina Fairley. Flicking through it alongside the substantial essays are images of Tony’s work sitting next to urban or rural photographs that echo the source and intent of the work.

Tonight we also congratulate and celebrate the contribution Gina Fairly, has made to Tony’s art practice. Since being in relationship with Gina there has been a shift in Twigg’s work, a calmness and repose echo in the lines and shapes.

When talking about Twigg’s journey we must also articulate his almost forensic research into the life and time of the artist Ian Fairweather in Asia.

From finding apartments he once stayed in; to landing on the beach where Fairweather’s raft was washed up, Twigg continues to make a valuable contribution to our knowledge of this great artist.

In return, Fairweather’s journey has allowed Tony to embark on his own quest as an Australian artist engaging in Asia.

As the exhibition title, Ricochet, suggests, you can see and feel this artist’s journey…..Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Singapore and now for the first time in many years, Sydney.

Tony Twigg

5 Sticks in any order (standing), 2004/10

Enamel on timber construction in 5 parts

265cm x 140cm x 130cm

THREE SELECTED FOR THE PLEIN ART

2010-04-29T00:19:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to the finalists of the Plein Air Art Prize, 2010.

Three exhibiting artists, Tom Carment, Gabrielle Collins and Isabel Gomez, have been selected as finalists for the Plein Air Art Prize, this year judged by Anita Taylor, director of the National Art School.

The artworks are available for viewing at the NSW Parliament, Macquarie St, Sydney from 3 May - 3 June, 2010.

Tom Carment
Port Botany, March 2010
70cm x 118cm
oil on wooden panels

Gabrielle Collins
Harbour I
30cm x 21cm
oil on board

Isabel Gomez
From Under the Bridge
47cm x 37cm
oil on canvas

Isabel Gomez
Newcastle Ports
64.5cm x 32.5cm
oil on canvas

PAUL MCGILLICK ON TONY TWIGG

2010-04-21T18:39:00.000-07:00

AN EXCERPT FROM AN ESSAY IN THE BOOK
'TONY TWIGG, ENCOUNTERING THE OBJECT'

For Tony Twigg the journey (of his work) has been crucial in the way his work demonstrates an integrity of purpose over a long time, and in a very literal sense, namely his ceaseless travelling through Southeast Asia. But more interesting are the encounters along the way which have acted like lightning rods, moments of explosive concentrations of artistic insight, precipitating major shifts in the work. For Twigg, this movement has exposed him to culturally embedded visual experiences which helped him to make sense of what he had been trying to do before he began his travels.

With the timber constructions Twigg was aiming to create a single image that would stand for the entire story. 'I was looking,' he says, 'for a history that corresponded to an emotion... perhaps I didn't find it, but I found a city that did- Manila.' Living, working and exhibiting in Manila, the Australian narrative content was clearly no longer relevant, so Twigg abandoned the figurative element in his work and began working with abstraction. If this decision was triggered by a realisation that his earlier Australian narratives would not make sense to a Filipino audience, it was equally the result of his encounter with Filipino culture and beyond.

Twigg collects images as he moves through Asia, especially of the layering of materials such as bamboo on timber; that kind of arm wrestle between the organic and the urge to achieve some order. There is a tenuousness and provisionality about this built environment. Walls and fences are made up of loosely connected elements that seem to be permanently at the point of falling apart. The form, in other words, is a product of the materials at hand. In a similar way, Twigg's ovoid forms combine found eucalypt branches with off-cuts of milled timber in reductive compositions, which summarise his collected images.

Although Twigg abandoned figuration, the narrative and figurative hover fugitive and furtive in the background. The verticals have a 'portrait format' and we reads in heads, arms and legs. The are totemic in feel and conjure up visual memories of Cycladic art, Alberto Giacometti and David Smith. The ovoids, on the other hand, remind me of those transitional landscapes of Piet Mondrian, except that in Twigg's constructions the ovoid perimeters counteract the figurative.

Excerpt from Paul McGillick, "Material Encounter: The art of of Tony Twigg" published in
Tony Twigg: Encountering the Object, 2009.
Paul McGillick is Editor of Indesign and Habitus (Australia).

To view work from the exhibition TONY TWIGG: RICOCHET 28 APRIL TO 22 MAY 2010, CLICK HERE

Tony Twigg: The Accordian (small), 2010
oil paint on timber construction, 300 x 315 x 25mm

AN ODE TO MALCOLM MCLAREN 1946 – 2010

2010-04-12T19:57:00.000-07:00

“DUCHAMP CHOSE A URINAL. I CHOSE JOHNNY ROTTEN”

A text message comes surging through from the Oxford Art Factory, Malcolm McLaren is dead.

Searching online over the last few days for stories on McLaren’s life a few things become really clear to me. If you want to make a difference in rock’n’roll go to art school.

Like so many others I have been entertained and influenced by McLaren’s antics, attitude and actions since 1977 when he was the manager of The Sex Pistols.

I recall attending his press conference at the Art Gallery of NSW when he was an invited ‘artist’ at the Sydney Biennale. Nothing much really happened, yet all who crashed the event absorbed the electricity generated by his physical presence.

It was his Svengali like weaving between art history and popular culture that will always captivate me.

“I didn’t create it (punk) alone or out of nothing. Duchamp chose a urinal. I chose Johnny Rotten”, is a quote I read in The Times newspaper obituary.

He understood that the notion of challenging and unsettling the dominant idea of common sense, proper behaviour and logic was best achieved by having an appreciation of the past.

“I learnt all my politics and understanding of the world through the history of art. Plagiarism is what the world’s about. If you didn’t start seeing things and stealing because you were so inspired by them, you’d be stupid.”

When you read about McLaren’s history in the brilliant book, ‘England’s Dreaming, Sex Pistols and Punk Rock' by Jon Savage you get an idea of where McLaren got the notion to propel the Sex Pistols into more than just being a snotty arrogant rock’n’roll act.

McLaren has always been linked with the art movement in the sixties, the Situationist International.

Although formed in 1957, it was the galvanising times of the Paris uprising in 1968 that made these artists come into their own.

It was one of those crossroad events where political gesture and aesthetics became one.

The Situationists were interested in breaking down the divisions between individual art forms, to create situations; to construct encounters and stage lived moments in urban settings.

The art was disseminated through magazines, manifestos, broadsheets, montages, slogans and happenings.

“Demand the Impossible”

“Imagination is Seizing Power”

“Never work”

The playful techniques of challenging what is perceived to be ‘proper and right’ where taken up by McLaren in the punk days.

Having been to St Martin’s, Harrow and Goldsmith’s art schools McLaren was an activist on campus and part of an Situationist type group called King Mob who did things like dress up as Santa’s Claus, go into a department stores and start handing out toys for free to passing children.

Frivolous, stupid and harmless maybe, but the poignancy of the act is there, politics is in the everyday.

It is the sort of strategies and pranks I remember from the days of the Pistols, and beyond. He was at his best challenging assumptions and status, always manoeuvring himself into a position of causing trouble.

He once ran for Mayor in London on a manifesto that included selling alcohol in libraries.

A maverick that shall be missed, I think.

I’ll end with a McLaren quote I sourced online. He was talking about the author William Burroughs (but was really talking about himself!)

“I think all great artists are separated from ordinary artists by one thing. They are magicians. They are people who really change the culture. They have an alchemy that few of us possess and Burroughs was one of these.”

No quite, but I reckon Malcolm goes pretty close!

STUART SPENCE- 'WHAT GIVES' OPENING REMARKS

2010-04-08T22:23:00.000-07:00

DAMIEN MINTON AT THE OPENING OF THE STUART SPENCE EXHIBITION, ‘WHAT GIVES’ ON THE 6TH APRIL 2010

Welcome to the gallery this evening and we appreciate your support of the second solo exhibition at the gallery by artist Stuart Spence.

The first thing you will notice for those who came along last year is there is no Tim Freedman or Peter O’Doherty performing tonight, nor are there any MP3 players accompanying the images with a soundtrack.

It is purely and simply the artwork of Stuart Spence. The images stand proud and tall all by themselves, ready to judged on their own merit, which in my opinion consolidates Stuart as an artist rather than a photographer.

When you read or listen to Stuart talk about his work there are many analogies to music. Like Stuart, the explosion of music that occurred around 1977 to 1982/84 informed me. It was a time of enormous energy coming from the street and with it came an independent ‘do it yourself’ attitude.

What was important was the attitude, the passion. What was swept aside was the obsession with technical perfection, the overproduced, over embellished self-congratulatory rock genre that dominated the musical landscape at the time.

I think Stuart has reinvigorated for himself that ‘do it yourself’ stance with this show.

Every image has that Ramones ‘1,2,3,4’ feel to it. It is a desire to capture the moment, to consolidate a mood or potential narrative in a single frame. It isn’t forced or pushed; there is a sombre reflective nature to them. They are fleeting and could be gone with a single gush of wind.

One of our guests earlier tonight remarked in good humour that the photos are all out of focus. Quick off the mark his son fired back, ‘you’re so 20th century”.

Indeed, the art of making a photograph has changed dramatically in the last decade. Digital technology has dropped one industry of image making and replaced it with another that is based on manipulation and speed.

What I like about Stuart’s work is he messes with all of that.

The breaking up of the pixilation is deliberate and an attempt to merge form, shape, colour. It suggests a painter’s eye capturing the essence rather than a professional photographer’s desire for crisp detail.

He often describes his approach to his work as strumming on a guitar and ‘jamming’, mucking around. Sitting around and searching for riffs and melodies through the process of doing it. From the doing, something happens.

It shows the maturity of Stuart as an artist to be able to let go of all his maturity and depth of photographic knowledge.

He doesn’t force the issue but he is always ready to record that glance just out of reach.

It is about being wise enough to let the serendipitous moment occur.

The ease in which he constructs and frames the shot comes from years of practice and the subsequent cropping or colour shifts enhance rather than butcher the initial click.

It is refreshing to see a series of photographic images talk about serendipity rather than forced conceptual simulacra. We are constantly fed in the visual arts yet another wave of self referenced ‘cultural studied’ digital imagery which yet again falls flat back into its own two dimensional plane.

This exhibition, ‘What Gives’, is different to that. It is a series of images produced by a maturing artist who has the history and skill to let the images breath…and sing! So Stuart, congratulations from all of us on the exhibition.

In Waves, 2005, 532mm x 856mm
Edition 1 of 8, Kodak Supra Endura archival paper

RECENT GALLERY NEWS

2010-03-29T22:20:00.001-07:00

STUART SPENCE- 'WHAT GIVES'
You are invited to the opening of Stuart Spence 'What Gives', a new series of photographs.

TUESDAY NIGHT 6th APRIL 2010, 6 to 8 PM
Exhibition runs until 24th April, 2010.

This is Stuart's second exhibition at the Damien Minton Gallery and a move forward from the 2009 audio visual series 'As Yet Unclear', which featured well known musicians interpreting his images.

The art works in 'What Gives' are moody and 'speak low and slowly of crucial movements'.

Stuart Spence, Pestilence, I Cast Thee Out, 2009
Kodak Supra Endura archival paper, 745mm x 602mm
Edition 1 of 8

SHONAH TRESCOTT
Now resident in Berlin, Shonah Trescott's career is set for an an amazing ride with a number of key solo exhibitions in Germany.

She is staging a solo show of new works at eigen+art, Leipzig, on Sunday 18 April to coincide with the massive survey exhibition of Neo Rauch at the Leipzig Contemporary Art Museum.

Then it is off to the Cologne Art Fair on the 20th of April to exhibit another body of work at the eigen+art stand.

In September it is a solo exhibition at the prestigious Ando Gallery in Tokyo.

Yet even whilst a resident in Berlin, Shonah Trescott still manages to create interest here in Sydney.

She is part of an exhibition featured in the Daily Telegraph on Monday 30th April called 'On This Island, Meeting and Parting'. The show is on at the Hazelhurst Regional Gallery at Gymea until May 9.

Other artists include Euan Macleod, Ann Tompson, Jan Senbergs, Lucy Culliton, Idris Murphy, David Keeling, Steve Lopes, Julie Harris, Peter Simpson and Judith Van Heeren. It is a great show with all the artists really committing to the work produced in their studios after their group visit to New Zealand.

Shonah, the youngest in the group, produced a body of work for the exhibition and other fine examples are now at the gallery in the stock room for viewing.

Shonah Trescott, 2009,
oil on paper board, 180 x 260mm

DEAN MANNING
If you are heading down to view the Archibald over Easter look out for the Dean Manning multi panelled work called, 'The Ballad of Frank 'The Darkie' Gardiner' in the Sulman Prize.We have Dean's 'rejected' Wynne Prize entry here in the stockroom for viewing, 'February 6, 1788'.

Dean Manning, The Ballad of Frank 'The Darkie' Gardiner, 2010
oil and shellac on wood, 1250 x 1000mm

CHINA DE LA VEGA
Before heading off for another stint as an indigenous community arts officer in the Northern Territory China dropped off her Wynne Prize, 2010 entry...which wasn't selected..but she and we think it is one of her best yet! 'My Mother's Garden' is available for viewing in our stockroom.

China de la Vega, My Mother's Garden, 2010
mixed media assemblage, 900 x 300 x 330mm

ART MONTH COMES TO REDFERN

2010-03-18T23:34:00.000-07:00

LATE NIGHT THURSDAY

You are invited to the 'Late Night Thursday' at the Damien Minton Gallery on Thursday 25th March. The gallery will be open until 8pm. Get your Art Month Card stamped for entry to the Art Bar, this week at White Rabbit Collection.
Click here for more information about the Art Bar.

ARTIST TALK WITH DANIEL WALLACE

On Saturday 27th March, from 4 -5pm Damien Minton Gallery presents:

Daniel Wallace in conversation with John von Sturmer

The artist Daniel Wallace will be talking about his show 'Inquire Within'.

John Von Sturmer has had a long and distinguished career in Aboriginal studies, including being the principal author of the Wik Native Title Claim. He has had a lasting involvement in Aboriginal art and performance, as well as being a writer/critic/research consultant. John is also a practicing artist including an installation performance at 'Tin Sheds Gallery' in 2009.

This will be a lively and entertaining discussion which threatens to turn into a performance.

You can view Daniel Wallace's work on the DMG website here.

ART MONTH SYDNEY PRINT PORTFOLIO

We have available only one set left of the Art Month Sydney/Fairfax Print Portfolio for viewing at the gallery.

It includes images by Elisabeth Cummings, Euan Macleod and Leo Robba. View all the images here.

We recommend you get in quick to view the portfolio.