One for the Poolroom

Defining ‘the Australian identity’ has long been a point of contention within our great country. There have been many solid attempts throughout the short history of Australian visual culture – though none have come as close as certain gems of the Australian film industry that we all know and love; The Castle and Muriel’s Wedding. It’s no surprise then that collaborative art duo Clark Beaumont have chosen these films as the point around which their current video-centric exhibition, She’ll Be Right, is focussed. Currently installed at Boxcopy (an artist-run initiative with just one room to their name), She’ll Be Right presents a refreshing – and amusing – foray into the politics of identity formation and production.

Buzz words they may be, but the notion of identity formation and production is extremely relevant within contemporary Australian society. As inhabitants of a relatively young country, still grappling to find their place in a world embroiled with years of culture and history, we Australians can become heavily concerned with labelling, organising and, in some cases, manufacturing an identity that is truly unique. Films like The Castle and Muriel’s Wedding take the banality of suburban society and re-imagine it into themes which suggest endearment and pride. Clark Beaumont have embraced this phenomenon, selecting audio snippets of each movie and re-creating the scenes within a modern context. Using their own bodies, they assume the role of lead characters – juxtaposing the original footage with their comically mismatched reproductions, expertly represented through the artists’ nuanced movements and facial expressions. Four video works are displayed within the exhibition space, working symbiotically to create a narrative of interpersonal and quasi-national relations. 

There is an irony in Clark Beaumont’s work – evident through their choice of audio excerpts. When dealing with films as well-known and quotable as The Castle and Muriel’s Wedding, it can be difficult to separate oneself from phrases such as “straight to the pool room” or “you’re terrible Muriel”, which are now heavily embedded in Australian meme-culture. Nevertheless, Clark Beaumont subvert common perceptions through the depiction of scenes containing few or no recognisable quotes. It is interesting to note, despite this, the still-apparent familiarity within the tones and mannerisms each video pieces displays – drawing attention to the roundedness of these particular identity constructions and revealing an inherent truth valuable to any true Australian. Through the repetition of not-so-quotable quotes (“over my head?”/”you have lost faith!”), Clark Beaumont explore this tension between the known and unknown – thus illuminating the condition of identity construction through visual culture. These phrases are assigned importance through their inclusion within the works and yet, through continual reiteration are stripped of all poignancy – returned to the banality from which they originated. 

She’ll Be Right serves as a delightful reminder that identity constructs need not be feared, but rather embraced. Clark Beaumont have produced an outlet through which the general public may re-examine their view on the Australian identity in order to work towards a future of nationwide understanding concerning the issue. 

She’ll Be Right will remain at Boxcopy until October 20. No excuses – go see it today. You won’t be disappointed.

This is certainly one for the poolroom.

Blink and you'll miss it

Brisbane's BARI Festival is testament to the fact that there is a thriving network of artist-run initiatives in our city. Art spaces come in all shapes and sizes and offer the opportunity for emerging artists to gain the exposure they need to establish themselves and their careers. But besides offering Brisbane's emerging talent an opportunity to cut their creative teeth, what else do ARI's have to offer?

Due to the general nature of the ARI, being run by volunteers, supervised by committees and funded sporadically by government art grants and the occasional public donation, it can be difficult to secure a space at all. Boxcopy is an example of an ARI whose persistence has paid off with an enviable permanent location in the heart of Brisbane. That said, the space itself isn't much to look at.

If you don't know it's there, you're likely to walk straight past it. The only clue to the potential culture hidden there is the indie-looking coffee shop downstairs. Where there's coffee, there's culture (isn't there?). There is a sign on the building, but it's hardly a flashing neon. Blink, and you'll miss it. If you are keen-eyed enough to notice it, or are already aware of its existence and finally discover it after several minutes of standing on the street and looking around perplexed, you are likely to find yourself even more confused by the uninviting climb to the first floor. Tucked between a staircase to a yoga studio, and a solicitor's office, is a disused office space. Boxcopy were lucky to nab it – apparently none of the potential office tenants were too impressed, and it's not hard to see why.

boxcopy is right
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Once inside, it becomes evident that Boxcopy is just that – a box. A single room, with walls interrupted by waist-high panelling and a disused back door, don't entirely appear conducive to the curation of art. Although, the gallery supervisor-of-the-moment upon our visit did assure us that it was still a very versatile space, despite these setbacks. Judging by the evidence, I wasn't so sure.

The exhibition showing at the time of our visit featured the room darkened for a video-art display. 5 TV screens, all playing the same set of clips on and off, on a loop. Stand alone, the set of clips might have presented a strong conceptual narrative of the representation of iconic Australian characters and an analysis of the gender roles they fill and exclude. On five separate screens, all at once, the message was lost. As hard as I tried to listen to the gallery supervisor, I found the looping screens just became a messy distraction.

She'll Be Right Clark Beaumont 2012
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It's hard to comprehend how Boxcopy might set out to achieve its goal of offering exposure to young artists when the gallery itself is playing hide-and-seek. A less scathing review might have labelled it a 'hidden gem in the heart of Brisbane' but I'm honestly not so sure. It seems to contradict itself. You can't claim to be both a hidden gem and seeking to expose hidden talent. It's problematic. To truly fulfil such a mission statement, Boxcopy would need to expose itself more. A flashing neon sign would be a step in the right direction.

Having your cake and eating it too

To live the artist's ultimate dream – to make money, and to live off the works that you love to create – is not an opportunity you often come by. Commercial galleries play a vital role in the art world. They stimulate the artistic economy, and provide a serious platform from which established artists can regularly display and sell their works. But commercial galleries are subject to a lot of criticism, usually surrounding issues of the artists they support 'selling out' to them; their works becoming progressively more vapid.

The commodification of art has always been fraught with scepticism from artists and art critics alike. Works guided by the whispers of a commercial curator surely could never carry the artist's pure message or intentions. How can a work generated purely for commercial purposes have anything valuable to contribute to the local artistic discourse? Upon a recent visit to Brisbane's Milani Gallery to view Jemima Wyman's latest collection, I went to find out.

The general atmosphere of commercial galleries is one of the biggest factors in determining how much the exhibiting – nay, selling – artist has 'sold out'. You often hear of commercial galleries where the staff shush loud viewers indignantly or of spaces that dominate the works they contain. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Milani space at Wooloongabba was quite understated. Versatile, too. It looked just like your regular institutional space, with a little office off to the side. There was plenty of breathing room for any set of works that might have found its way into the space. On this occasion, Wyman's latest collection Piecing Together Core Concerns was that set of works. Due to the sheer scale and high level of visual stimulation in Wyman's vivid drip-on painting style, the size of the space provided adequate breathing room, without leaving any single piece castrated from the exhibition.

As seen by Dicky Chapelle, US special forces and their interpreter drink tea and discuss politics with a South Vietnamese Buddhist monk, near Khanh Hung, South Vietnam, 1962
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The second encouraging factor of the afternoon was the assurance that Josh Milani, the gallery owner-director is passionate about the health of the Brisbane art scene. Wyman is one of many artists Milani hand-picked as art students to support throughout the development of their career. Having monitored her progression from art student through to fully-established artist, there was a sense of pride in his voice as he spoke of her. I suppose in art, the commercial really does have a personal side.

But at what cost? Wyman's works are stimulating to look at, sure. At a glance, they appear to be highly politically charged, referencing the military and images of war and hostility. But it isn't immediately clear what the conceptual motivation behind the works might be. Besides the obvious – to make money. Commercial art is subjected to a level of scepticism not seen in institutional collections or artist-run initiatives. The questions everybody wants to know the answer to are: is it really as politically- or conceptually-charged as it appears? Or is it merely appearing so as part of a well-developed sales pitch? Does the entire body of work for a commercial artist change due to the motivation to keep selling their art? Does it limit how much they can experiment and innovate? What are their works really able to contribute to the wider artistic discourse?

Visual Resistance (Guy Fawkes Mask, V for Vendetta, Anonymous, Occupy Movement…) 2012 

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Running a commercial gallery seems a risky operation in our modern age too. As proud as he was of the works on the walls, Milani did admit that apart from occasional one-off buyers, his solid customer base is only four or five collectors strong. In a volatile economic environment like the one we live in today, that is a precarious fiscal leg to stand on. What if a collector or two moved interstate, or out of the country altogether? The gallery would no longer be able to support itself, or its artists. That it still manages to do so in our day and age is something of a miracle.

No one wants to be accused of selling out. At the same time though, it isn't surprising that artists see the opportunity to sell commercially as a crucial one. Generating works that don't really say much at all, but look very appealing gets them by and allows them to spend your days doing what you love instead of getting by in a day-job. The cost is that they run the risk of generating a lifetime of work that never adds to the rich cultural discourse of the local art scene. I suppose not even artists can have their cake and eat it too.

Imagine Me Complexly

One of the realities we face as human beings is that life is complex. We are constantly striving and seeking to understand the world around us and our place in it. A complex,multi-layered narrative that progresses through the spaces of the QUT Art Museum, Tales Within Historical Spaces marks a quest for identity for Polish-Australian artist Beata Batorowicz's solo exhibition. The Tale practically reads like a book.

The Tale opens with the title piece, featuring a quaint illustration of a girl dressed as a fox, painted on a background of a stark white Poland, suitably setting the scene for the show. These trees are hung across the dark grey walls of the first room, casting an initially cold, sombre mood. Appropriately, Batorowicz starts to bridge the gap between her present and past by reaching out geographically. Her first impression of the Poland she left behind was of the bare winter trees covered in winter's frost.

The motif of the Cunning Fox was in fact derived from the traditional Polish faerie tales that she grew up hearing as bedtime stories. An enchanting series of storybook illustrations like the fox-girl line the wall. In most western tales, the Fox was the sly, cunning figure whose wily ways were always trumped by characters of virtue. Poland's tales don't offer such a security blanket of hope. They are honest about life's harsh realities and who could be surprised, when they were written from inside Auschwitz? As such, the fox's cunning nature frequently serves him well. Batorowicz places herself in the guise of the fox; the polish hero, in an effort to understand a vital piece of her cultural identity through the language of her childhood.

Tales Within Historical Spaces Beata Batorowicz 2011
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This playfulness echoes about the exhibition, with a series of animal masks, fox tails (punny, right?) and costumes, all thoughtfully placed and lit for effect though a careful collaboration with the curators at QUT. This is my first experience seeing such care taken in the presentation of artworks, and I have to say, they really did the work justice. From creating a narrative flow throughout the exhibition, right down to the tiniest details of where each light should cast its shadow on the Animal Heads On a stick series, QUT's efforts, combined with Batorowicz vision was flawless.

Animals on a stick from the Little Art series - Beata Batorowicz 2008-10
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The plot thickens with the introduction of some sombre-looking prints. Auschwitz documents, blown up to double their original size, identification papers, and a beautiful photograph of the artist's grandmother, the gritty side of the story, grounded in a harsh reality, surfaces. Referencing such raw historic events might seem clumsy or naïve. If the creator had been an unaffected party, clumsiness might have been an appropriate word to use. However, Batorowicz approaches this particular historic event that saw her family eventually leave their Polish home with the honest, earnest curiosity of her five-year-old self. This is a quest for her identity, and it is clear that the event that so drastically affected the lives of her grandparents has shaped a part of her too.

The final room of the exhibition holds a single, monumental work; a tribute to the late Joseph Beuys, a german artist Batorowicz refers to as her 'surrogate father'. A giant pair of suspenders, worn and fraying, dominate the last dark space. The darkened walls signal the last chapter, the back cover of the book has been reached. The story ends on this epiloguous tribute to the artist that inspired her journey.

It has been argued that Batarowicz' body of work might be a little too complex. I would argue that it isn't. If art exhibitions were novels, Tales Within Historical Spaces would be praised as the breath of fresh air amidst an ocean of visual fluff. QUT sets the bar high for honest, faithful curatorship, and Batorowicz's work shines as a result. Her work is comprehensive, challenging, and sometimes more complex than the average gallery-goer is prepared for. But at the end of the day, it's up to the viewer to do her work justice by imagining her complexly.

White/Black

     In the top of the Metro Arts building on Edward St in Brisbane city is Dale Harding's exhibition Colour by Number. I stepped into the space and was met obliquely by a black wall amongst the white walls, and painted on it, in white, was the title of the exhibition. Curated by Tony Albert, an indigenous Australian artist who is gaining in prominence and popularity, the exhibition “looks at ideas of history and storytelling”ⁱ, the title of which “refers both to the childhood art game and also to the government of Australia's practice of attaching numbers to Aboriginal children according to a skin tone gradient.”ⁱⁱ. Now, forgive my ignorance, but I was unaware of this fact until now.

     I went into the exhibition and was greeted by a white mantel-piece linked to a brown ball with a thread and needle. The small blurb on the wall outlined the complicit knowledge that the Australian government had in 'sentencing' Aboriginal children to the service of white Australians. But the artwork, (as it often tends to be with these creative responses to highly emotive subjects) was not immediately intelligible. Dale explained that the white mantel represented the white phallus fallen, or the white man's edifice fallen, and the brown ball was aged iron representing the oppression and hand-work of the indigenous peoples. Not without a certain conceptual and minimalist strength, but perplexing all the same, and it left me wondering (as this type of thing has done before) what the significance of such artwork is if the viewer must be mystified for a period before being initiated into the true meaning of the artwork.

     On the opposite wall was five white surveyer's stakes, four of them burned down to the sharp stumps, leaving one complete. Dale assured me that Tony Albert had left one untouched in order to create tension within the work, that it was “an entry point”. Well, to me it was a rather cliché throwback to the one blue dot on a canvas of red dots. It was also the white man still standing. And while I'm on the topic of the white-black dialogue that seemed to be being pushed by this exhibition, I found it interesting to note that the title wall was black with white writing, and that the exhibition walls were white, and the first artwork I saw involved a fallen “white” phallic synbol. Almost as if the curator was attempting to highlight the black/white contrast for sensationalist purposes, deepening a divide.

     Deeper in the exhibition was a series of very interesting handstitched pink images that used the forms of flamingos and other Australiana to produce repeating patterns. There was also cross-stitched parodies of Australian home themes, such as “I'm a happy little sodomite” written on one, all loveingly stitched to resemble affirmations that might be found in white Australian homes in the fifities. Another wooden phallic object, (a needle? A sword?) lay on a picnic rug stitched with flowers and kangaroos. There was also some other white-on-white stitched work, and a metal neck piece stamped with W38, aged and with a broken wire necklace, the work was very strong, like a relic of a turbulent time which had aged the neck piece irrevocably by a maelstrom.

     The exhibition was strong, illuminating in its motivation and history, but I found it to be at times cliché and lacking hope, it seemed only to be perpetuating types. So rather than creating a space for progressive dialogue, it felt more like a well deserved bitter recrimination of the historical injustices of the past, without offering direction forward.


Ari Fuller

ihttp://www.brisbanefestival.com.au/events/view/colour-by-number

iihttp://www.brisbanefestival.com.au/events/view/colour-by-number

Copybox Boxcopy

     Situated upstairs at 129 Margaret Street in the middle of Brisbane city, is the discrete home of Boxcopy, another hole-in-the wall artist-run-initiative (ARI). Its partially hidden doorway opened into a darkened room with a desk in it and some video screens on the wall that illuminated the interior. Another set of doors led out of the room, but they were closed, and I wondered what was in the other part of the gallery... until I found out that this small room was all there was.

     The video art was titled She'll be Right, and was a work by an artistic duo called Clark Beaumont. It involved a reworking of aspects of the Australian films, Muriel's Wedding and The Castle. Both of these films represented Australian identity by exploring the ironies and hardships that the Aussie “battler” confronts in modern everyday life. Thus the soundtrack was familiar to me, “Heslop, Heslop, Heslop!” was a cry I had uttered myself in high school drama class whilst preforming the scene of the troubled brother playing football with himself in the backyard in Muriel's Wedding. So I stood in the Boxcopy's room, peering at the videos through the gloom, showing the two female artists parodying this scene in order to “return to the site of identity production”ⁱ. It certainly returned me to the site of identity production, because I and my peers had all quoted both movies at some length, for the films engaged directly with the Australian psyche.

     The videos all showed the same looped series of clips that the artists have re-performed, albeit at differently timed intervals. This was a little confusing to me, because it was simply the same video on different screens, with the screens set at different levels around the darkened room, giving me the sense that the artists or curators were simply padding the exhibition out. And as much as the videos were a nostalgic sojourn into the formation of individual and national identity, they lacked any applicable creative significance for me. I could have got the same impressions from simply watching the original films again, and having the artists re-performing them simply reinforced the power of those films as formative identity markers for the Australian character, and failed to engage me with the works on an artistic level. Thus I would disagree with Emily Lush when she writes that She'll be Right offers “a new framework for the way we approach our projected selves and engage with our mirrors.”ⁱⁱ It simply offers an old way to engage with our appropriated identities and feel warm and cosy as those familiar and non-threatening identities are relived.

     I was unable to spend much time in Boxcopy, because it felt like a closet, and after viewing the looped videos for several minutes, I determined their nature and grew bored and found nothing else to engage my attention in the darkened room. The lonely assistant sat at her desk, face illuminated by her laptop, (absorbing and projecting an identity within the internet most likely).

     It is great to have ARI's that support the roles of emerging artists in Brisbane, itself an emerging Art-city. It is also great for artists to be given the opportunity to freely express their ideas creatively and have a platform to show them from. She'll be Right is a strong reminder of the contours of the Australian identity, yet it failed to excite or inspire me.

iLush, E. 2012, I'll be Your Mirror, Clark Beaumont She'll be Right, exhibition overview, Boxcopy, Brisbane.

iiLush, E. 2012, I'll be Your Mirror, Clark Beaumont She'll be Right, exhibition overview, Boxcopy, Brisbane.

Perplexing Tails

      Beata Batorowicz's exhibition, Tales within historical spaces, at the Queensland University of Technology's art gallery, welcomes the viewer into a world of myth and folklore; stories to escape into from the tortured world and memories of World War Two.

     The exhibition is bound together by several threads. The first is Beata's fascination and identification with the fairy-tale fox character, appearing in its skin/clothing throughout the show. The other two threads are Beata's family stories handed down to her about World War Two, and also other fairy tales that were created in Auschwitz by the prisoners there. The highly emotive topic of World War Two and the stories that emerged from it permeate the whole exhibition, yet I found that the artist did not intereact very significantly with the subject matter that was presented, and I felt that she sinply appropriated the importance of the events and clung tenaciously onto her indirect connection with it all in order to construct a greater sensation in the exhibition.

      At the end of the exhibition I discovered a work titled Daddy's WWII Braces, a giant set of breeches that the artist has knitted herself. When I walked into this room I thought immediately that the breeches are those of the big bad wolf, and the big bad wolf is the Nazi entity, Hitler. It was very powerful in my mind, and I got a chill as I looked upon these giant breeches, thinking what a great work it was, all torn and menacing as they were. Alas, I discovered that the breeches were simply an artwork based on the influence of the German artist Joseph Beuys. This seemed to be a departure from what I considered to be the main threads of the exhibition, that is, Fairy Tales and Folklore relating to World War Two, and the Artist's interaction with those tales. Because now there was the influence and interaction with this German Fluxus artist, it was a tangent and gave me the impression that the exhibition was less than cohesive, and parts of it might be considered as 'padding', or at the very least, ideas that were not completely matured.

      The exhibition includes delicate folklorish illustrations of the artist in red fox fur and other animal 'totems'. There are well-crafted masks, animal-head staffs such as Owl on a Stick, and Fox on a Stick, and other animal forms made from various materials including leather and fur, like the rug-like Flying Fur Mat.

Installation view of Beata Batorowicz: Tales within historical spaces

     It also contains photos of her grandmother, and also a male relative whose murder was covered up by his Nazi killers. These are powerful motivations with which to produce work, but the exhibition, despite the individual quality of the work, fails to make a significant point based on the deep and highly emotive launching points.

     The work Trickster's Tales, is three fox tails, skillfully made, yet perplexing. They certainly have been influenced by German folklore in that they are foxy tails, but what is their significance apart from being a childish pun on “tales”? The same can be said for the fur rug leashed to the wall, what is their significance? Tales from historical spaces suggests that the artist is simply appropriating her influences from several sources and putting them all under the umbrella of “historical spaces” in order for them to seem less disparate.

     The exhibition seems at first sight to be quite refined and polished, using the poignant and dramatic WWII episode as its basis. Yet on closer scrutiny there seems to be too many threads that are only loosely brought together by an artist who is struggling to process a familial, social, political and individual history that has mostly been experienced at arm's length - Ari Fuller