The beginning of a beautiful friendship

It is so vital in this day and age that Art keeps its finger on the 'pulse' of society. As society moves towards consistently more advanced technological innovation, and as we grow to depend on it more and more in daily life, the necessity to explore technology from an artistic perspective grows increasingly more prominent. This year the included works trended towards technology to do with the body, although cultural exploration, kinetic light colour mixing and artificial intelligence all feature too.

George Poonkhin Khut, Australia b. 1969 | Distillery: Waveforming (Portrait of Rob) 2012 | Still from video portraits of sitters interacting with heart rate controlled composition software for iPad | Photograph: Julia Pendrill Charles | Stylist: Troy Brennan | © Courtesy: The artist 
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First up was George Poonkhin-Khut's winning contribution, 'Distillery'. This heart- and breathing-monitoring program was designed for iDevices to encourage paediatric patients to control their physical responses to the stresses of treatment through compelling visual stimulation. How wonderful to see such a significant medical tool within this art context. By using a familiar device, rather than a purpose-built medical gadget, it also emphasises that tech devices don't, and shouldn't be limited to the frivolous means dictated by their marketing. iDevices can save lives, too.

Karen Casey, Australia b. 1956 | Dream zone 2012 | Technical collaborator & software interface designer: Harry Sokol | 3 channel projection exhibited from computer, audio-visual data rendered in real-time (production still, detail) | © Courtesy: The artist
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'Dream Zone' by Karen Casey is perhaps the most personal work of the exhibition. A series of Casey's own dream-phase brain-wave recordings are projected onto walls in a gentle, kaleidoscopic hypnosis. It's hard to stop watching, and after only a minute or two, the work starts to induce the viewer into a dream-like trance. 'Dream Zone' comes full circle, from Casey's own dreaming, to the viewer's subsequent trance. It gives a beautifully poetic voice to media frequently regarded as sterile and unexpressive.

Ian Haig, Australia b. 1964 | Some Thing 2011 | Concept, development, direction and original model: Ian Haig; Production and fabrication: Fiona Edwards; Robotics and electronics: Martin James; Sound: PH2 (Philip Brophy and Philip Samartzis) | An animatronic, kinetic, electronic sculpture | Funded with the assistance of the Australia Council, Inter-Arts Office, 2011 | © Courtesy: The artist
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Rather than using technology to complement human function, Ian Haig's work, 'Some Thing', uses technology to simulate the body. Mechanisms and mixed media were rendered to appear humanly physical, like a human body turned inside out. I was simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by this visceral milieu of bone, flesh and tissue. Haig challenges the viewer to consider their dependance on such visually unsettling organs. 'Some Thing' also draws a parallel to a future of medicine that might see us able to replace failing vital organs not with those from donors, but with mechanised substitutes. It asks questions about humanhood, and whether such advancements make us less human. Repulsive, poignant and beautiful.

Leah Heiss, Australia b. 1973 | Polarity (detail) 2012 | Installation, magnetic liquid, propylene glycol, ethanol, glass vessels, motors, rare earth magnets, table | © Courtesy: The artist
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Leah Heiss' 'Polarity' juxtaposes some nano-engineered magnetic solution into small-scale, delicately-blown glass balls filled with water. Large hidden magnets moving beneath the table cause the solution to form spikes, and flex back and forth in an enchanting rhythm. The fluid, derived from medical nano-technology, exists purely to address health issues in the human body. To see it in a form where it adopts a humanistic nature is poignant and poetic.

Robin Fox, Australia b. 1973 | CRT: homage to Léon Theremin 2012 | Interactive installation, cathode ray tube televisions, multi–channel sound, motion tracking system | © Courtesy: The artist
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CRT: h’ommage to Léon Theremin by Robin Fox is a bright, loud work, driven by audience participation. The tallest roller-coaster in this theme park, this work turns its observers into participants. Jumping up and down, moving closer, or farther away, interaction with the work brings the stacks of CRT screens to vibrant life, while the theremins react in corresponding pitch. It feels nonsensical, yet increasingly sensible. Without the interaction, this work would lose all meaning. But then, the same could be said for all new media.

Petra Gemeinboeck, Austria b. 1971 | Rob Saunders, United Kingdom b. 1971 | Zwischenräume (detail) 2010–12 | Robotic installation: electronics, custom artificial intelligence software, aluminium, steel, wood, plasterboard | © Courtesy: The artists
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Perhaps one of the most significant achievements in this year's Awards was the work 'Zwischenräume' by Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders. Its three small robots, contained within a wall, are armed with cameras and sticks as learning tools, to scope out their environment. As the exhibition progresses, the wall that conceals them is punctured and they use their cameras to view the outside world, and the observers looking in. It contains such a wonderful metaphor for the growing interaction and interdependence between society and the ever-more intelligent technology that supports and supplements it.

If the point of the NNMAA is to show us why technology has become such an important medium in our age; why we are continually fascinated by it; and why we are coming to depend on its influence in our lives, then I would rule this year's batch a raging success. An absolute delight to the senses, this year's collection remind us that as human beings rely evermore on technology, technology has always been reliant on human beings for a continued, purposeful existence. This exhibition serves as an acknowledgement that we and technology are moving towards a symbiosis, and it looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

The Curatorial Trainwreck

I was sceptical at best when I discovered that the University of Queensland had an Art Museum. What exactly might an educational institution with little else to do with the visual arts, have to say for itself in an artistic capacity? Not much at all, it would seem.

My already doubtful suspicions were confirmed right off the bat. After searching for a full ten minutes to find any trace of the gallery on the university directory, I was greeted with an incoherent hodgepodge of works that had very little to do with each other at all. The curator, Michele Helmrich, assured us that she selected only works that adhered strictly to a number of selection criteria. You wouldn't think so, looking at them. The works neither engaged in dialogue with each other; nor spoke very much for themselves.

The show claimed to be an expose of sorts, to do with the mass exodus of artists during the conservative premiership reign of Joh Bjelke-Peterson. With such a politically charged curatorial premise, I expected to see works that spoke volumes on the issues that pushed their artists away. Instead, I was greeted with Rosemary Laing's glitter and rainbows in 'appearance' and 'blow-out'; works that weren't helped in the least by the gallery's limitations. The works on the opposite wall by Robin Stacey provided some reprieve, through thoughtful compositions with a hint of narrative. A valiant effort, however not enough to save my impression of the first room. And certainly not a good start.

As I moved through the segments of the exhibition, it felt like moving through a series of separate, unrelated exhibitions. Works that might have engaged enigmatically with others were muted by white dividing walls. And once I'd seen everything, I was disappointed at Helmrich's selective juxtaposition. The Rosemary Laing works in the first space might have resonated well with 'Untitled No's 1-10' by Jeff Gibson in the last space, but at opposite ends of the gallery, the former is long forgotten before you've even reached the latter. Major failure on the curation front.

With my expectations already low, I entered the second space. The theme seemed to lean towards postcolonial issues, but had little at all to do with Bjelke-Peterson's time in office. To my surprise, I found Fiona McDonald's woven juxtapositions compelling to begin with. Although, it became immediately apparent that there was little substance behind what might otherwise have been a deep, well-rounded set of works. Tracey Moffat's triptych sadly leant the same way. One might argue heartily about the virtues of these works, but they lack a certain panache.

Barbara Campbell's 'Conradiana' took up a vast occupation of the third space. It was certainly a monumental work, having typed out the novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad six times on a typewriter. I barely gave a thought to the prints on the surrounding walls, as I was stuck on Campbell's work. Why is there a TV screen in front of the work, running a poorly-shot video of a Disneyland ride? And what did any of this have to do with Bjelke-Peterson? Why were none of these works engaging in a dialogue with the original premise of this gathering?

The theme and the mood changed again as I proceeded to the fourth space, this time to movies and theatricality. Jeff Gibson's series on top of a garish wallpaper was the first to pull my attention, but Laing's spear-on-the-wall changed that very quickly. Theatrical was the right word for this room; the works were all show, no substance. Again. In fact, theatrical might just be the word for this entire exhibition. A bunch of expensive, awkward pieces of glitz and glamour that dazzle for a second, before fading into meaninglessness.

There are curatorial lessons galore from this exemplar of what-not-to-do. Have a proper conviction behind your premise for a show, instead of a wishy-washy not-too-defined idea. Make sure your works relate to said premise, and converse meaningfully and coherently with each other. Use this potential for discussion as the driving force behind the layout, and not as an afterthought. Above all, don't pick works on the basis of how wealthy they make your institution look. What an absolute waste of time, effort and resources. 

Expats show their colours (or the ones that got away)

Clouds and colours glow like a vision from heaven, illuminated from behind by a giant light box. 

An enormous image of a woman’s face stares out into the distance - pensive, melodramatic, and emotionally heightened by the crisp Perspex upon which it is printed.  

A spectrum of hue dances across the wall like a glittering stage, whereupon the owner of the aforementioned face could have appeared – as a model, an actress or singing superstar.

First impressions suggest this could easily be the precursor to a dazzling show of consumerism, design, and pop and media culture – but no. The above alludes to the University of Queensland Art Museum’s latest exhibition Return to Sender.

A project headed by curator Michele Helmrich, Return to Sender sees eleven artists who, in the late 1970s and early 80s, left Queensland “largely in reaction to the political and cultural milieu of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era” (Return to Sender 2012, para 1). Specific guidelines had to be met for inclusion within the show – the artists were required to be of a suitable age during Bjelke-Petersen’s reign in order for the events to have impacted their art practice in subtle ways, and the works had to employ some form of photomedia. 

The artworks detailed above, appearance and blow out by Rosemary Laing, and Ice by Robyn Stacey, are reflections of this criteria. Large scale and luminescent, they demand attention and dazzle the viewer into submission. I was easily fooled, having no prior knowledge of the exhibition’s curatorial premise, into believing I was in for a showy display of works celebrating the entertainment industry. The revelation of a focus upon the veritable exodus of the artists featured was surprising, however I was not to be deterred. First room and refresher of the turmoil felt by radical protesters during the Bjelke-Peterson years aside, I ventured on with a mind full of new expectations.

Sadly, not all of them were met.

The next room offered a range of works in vast contrast to those in the first. There were no showy media references here, rather a more solemn reflection on race issues with particular focus on indigenous Australians. The segments of Universally Respected, a series of strikingly intricate works by Fiona Macdonald, were gathered from galleries across Australia and reunited within the context of the exhibition. The works act as a poignant portrait of Macdonald’s hometown of Rockhampton, exposing notions of interpersonal relations between different races and social hierarchy. Archival photographs, sourced from collections within the Rockhampton area, depicting persons considered ‘universally respected’, the founders of the once grand and prestigious Rockhampton Club, are juxtaposed with portraits of non-members such as indigenous Australians, women and Chinese. The images have been dissected and spliced together in a woven pattern – creating an illusory hybrid that plays with space and depth. The beautiful frames the pieces are displayed in are artworks in themselves, their natural wood and organic shape conjuring images of people of the land – earthen and with hands that speak volumes of their lives.

Providing an interesting parallel to Macdonald’s Universally Respected series are works by Tracey Moffat – her Beauties (in mulberry), Beauties (in cream) and Beauties (in wine), which depict coloured reproductions, in true pop art fashion, of a traditional photographic portrait of a young aboriginal man, are displayed as a triptych. Tangential to these pieces is a work from Moffat’s Something More series – and refreshingly not one the most well-known of the series, but rather the very final. Moffat’s photo-narrative series highlights a young aboriginal woman’s struggle to find ‘something more’ in a country dominated by white patriarchal society. Something More #9 is perhaps the most wretched of the nine photographs, as it depicts the young woman’s death during her journey to discover liberation and freedom. 

As thought provoking as Macdonald’s and Moffat’s works were, however, I found myself a little disillusioned by the so far apparent lack of relevance to the exhibition’s focus. Other than having been produced in the appropriate time period and by the appropriate artists, the artworks from the first two rooms seemed to have little else in common – at least regarding the theme. I could have more easily believed my first impression. In a curatorial discussion, Helmrich claimed, in order for an artist’s work to be included in Return to Sender, their practice had to have been subtly impacted by the creative repression of Bejlke-Petersen’s government. Evidence of this impact within the show thus far, must have been so subtle it became non-existent.

The explosion of colour returned in such works as Lindy Lee’s Philosophy of the Parvenu, leading in to the final room of the exhibition – the visual of which felt like a slap to face. It was if I had stepped into an alleyway lined with political posters and propaganda. Jeff Gibson’s work Trigger Happy has been transformed into a wallpaper that forms the background for his series of vibrant screen prints Untitled 1-10, which lead into his Kruger-esque dis POSTER series. Gibson’s collection of works stimulate images of suppression, radical protestation and rioting – the first real allusion to the exhibition’s premise thus far. And yet, this was followed by a further claim on Helmrich’s part that Return to Sender is not a protest exhibition, nor is it social history exhibition. 

Really? Then what is it? I’m not entirely sure Return to Sender knows what it’s about. Individually, the works have merit, however the essential glue which holds a group show together progressively fell apart the more of it I saw. Furthermore, certain curatorial choices, influenced by the facilities of the museum building itself let the exhibition down. Two absolute standout artworks, video piece Techno/Dumb/Show by John Gillies (with the Sydney Front) and Barbara Campbell’s Conradiana are greatly inhibited by their installation.

Techno/Dumb/Show, arguably the strongest piece of the entire show, is an exhilarating depiction of the human condition. Through epic and often alien sound, strobe and layering effects, Gillies, in conjunction with his team of mime artists, represent profound emotion and trauma through little more than the expression on the actors’ faces and clever video editing. Unfortunately, Gillies brilliant work, due to the requirement that it be projected in a dark room – is excluded from the main exhibition. Hidden away down two flights of stairs from the body of the show, it is likely missed by many visitors. Conradiana on the other hand, boasts a central position in the gallery space. Occupying an entire wall, Campbell’s installation includes countless scrolls, upon which Campbell manually typed out Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness six times over, flowing in ethereal beauty from the ceiling to the floor. 

The scrolls evoke a sense of the sublime through the notion of endurance, and yet their otherworldly quality is compromised by the stark, awkward placement of a widescreen monitor – protruding from a pole in the ground – smack bang in the middle of the work. In its original format, the accompanying video for Conradiana was displayed on a CRT television, suspended from the ceiling. Floating in the air, and with a sculptural quality in its own right, the television enhanced Campbell’s typed scrolls. Within the context of Return to Sender, the video in Conradiana was unable to be suspended from the ceiling due to technical reasons – however, the decision to display the video work on a widescreen monitor, when the original film was created in 4:3 format – truly stunted the impact this artwork had on me as a viewer. It was clumsy, unprofessional and cold.

Return to Sender tried to tick all the right boxes, and in many ways I was entertained by my visit. However, there was a connection lacking between the artworks, a certain interdependence in relation to each other and the curatorial premise which is essential to the success of any group retrospective show.

Return to Sender closes the 26^th August. If you’re in the area, get on down there and decide for yourself – a curatorial triumph, or an empty excuse to showcase the work of renowned Queensland expats, hopefully drawing a crowd on names alone?

Lauren Ryan

Return to Sender (2012), media releases, viewed 2/09/12 <http://www.artmuseum.uq.edu.au/return-to-sender>

Dangerous Liaisons

The University of Queensland Art Gallery's exhibition, Return to Sender, is a glittering and sober trip down memory lane in which curatorial flair and a spacious exhibition space enable an intimate experience of a politically volatile and sometimes dangerous era in Australian Art.

The two-fold curatorial focus of the exhibition concentrates on a small group of artists who left, or escaped, Brisbane in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The reasons for their exile were largely politically motivated, for the Joh Bjelke-Petersen government had created an environment that was stifling for both artistic creativity and free speechⁱ. The second focus of the exhibition focuses on narrowing the mediums that are presented, curating only works that “incorporate aspects of photography and photomedia”ⁱⁱ, following the influential blooming Sydney art scene to which those Brisbane artists fled.

With such a narrow set of guidelines dictating the form of the exhibition, I was somewhat suspicious of the type and quality of the work that I might find as I entered the upper levels of the UQ Art Gallery. Robyn Stacey's two photo montages on perspex greeted me as I entered and I immediately found myself thrown back into a 1970s film narrative of my my own devising. Both contain images of women I believe to be the heroines, movie-styled and gazing beyond the setting and the viewer. I was in a streetlight lit carpark outside a small-town pub or motel, and I was in a high-rise with the burgeoning city pulsing below as the emotional drama unfolded, reflected in the thick glass. The rise of feminism and the empowerment of women in the turbulent 1970's speak strongly through these works and I found myself drawn to the heroines and their challenges in the city and the small town, and their determination to achieve in the darkness of oppression, reflected in the artist's inspiration:

Stacey made these works four years after the ABC-TV aired in 1985 Chris Masters's investigative report 'The Moonlight state', which highlighted corruption, and coincided

with the release of the Fitzgerald Inquiry report.ⁱⁱⁱ

I was impressed, and was not disappointed as I discovered the photo-weaving of Fiona MacDonald in her glowing series entitled Universally Respected. The juxtapositions enabled by MacDonald's skillfully produced works are not just the weaving of two images, but also the interweaving of multiple histories through the conflagration of a colonial portrait of men from the Rockhampton Club, and a portrait of the 'other', indigenous or poor immigrant. This could perhaps be derided as an ideological vision, but MacDonald's voice is a protest against “whitewashing”, literally, the history of Rockhampton, and championing the rightful place of the non-white population through an “interrogation of local history”^iv.

Jeff Gibson's wall-papered wall of Trigger Happy posters refer more directly to the dark political undertones of the exhibition, and “signals the rule of the gun”^v, perhaps a direct reference to Bjelke-Petersen's 'police state'. His Dis- posters are more refined and less likely to arouse contention, even though they attempt dissonance, they end up being glossy dialectical compositional portraits of famous films and their stars.

The film component of the exhibition has great depth, though its outdated methods and technologies could be termed humorous. As an historical perspective on 1980s and 90s video art, the films, such as Gary Warner's Resistance Today and Mark Titmarsh's Viva, provide a genuine insight into the turbulence and experimental attitudes of the “new media” artists of the period. Biting anti-film chaos seems to be the favoured form of video expression in the exhibition, and succeeds in transporting the viewer into a vortex-like world of new sounds, sudden changes and general disquiet, perhaps also succeeding in capturing the paranoia and fear experienced by some of the artists within society at the time.

Along the other walls lay diverse pieces by the ever-consistent Tracey Moffatt glamourising her ancestry, a strange balustrade-spear piercing some photos in perspex by Rosemary Laing, and some intriguingly produced prints by Lindy Lee who repeatedly photocopied images in order to blacken them into nothingness.

The narrow curatorial selection criteria of Return to Sender had very little impact on the exhibition's ability to show a wide and varied range of experimental and new-era art that was being produced in the 1980s and 90s by this small group. The overarching theme of exile from the northern 'police state' of Joh Bjelke-Petersen only adds to the depth of the audience's interaction with the artwork, and strengthens them through placing the works in a wider socio-political framework that still retains the individual trajectories of each artist.

iReturn to Sender, Introduction, (Exhibition Catalogue), 2012, University of Queensland Press, Australia.

iiReturn to Sender, Introduction, (Exhibition Catalogue), 2012, University of Queensland Press, Australia.

iiiRedline Series, [didactic], Return to Sender Exhibition, Queensland University Art Gallery, Queensland University.

ivUniversally Respected, [didactic], Return to Sender Exhibition, Queensland University Art Gallery, Queensland University.

vTrigger Happy, [didactic], Return to Sender Exhibition, Queensland University Art Gallery, Queensland University. 

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"What do you want from me?"

This was the question facing me as I entered GUAG, to view the exhibition of the 2012 finalists of the Churchie Award. Literally.

Courtney Coombs' mixed media installation titled Speak Up, a bright pink and orange banner hung over the entrance, shouts this question to every visitor. Though her didactic alludes to an emotional break-up, Coombs' work translates to the new context with ease.

Passing beneath the banner, my attention was drawn to the winning piece entitled “Your Door”, by Heath Franco . The video work uses unrefined green-screening and low-quality footage. I've seen youtube videos by hobbyists frequently attain a higher standard of technical skill than seen here. It hardly matters though, as Franco makes up for it in nonsensical absurdity, and in loud, repetitious phrases. It demands to be experienced. It's a piece that demands to win.

Though I enjoyed Franco's work while I was consuming it, I found the way it permeated the entire space grating on the senses. It was difficult to devote my full attention to the other works with the absurd sounds following me. Always there, in the background. It won't let you forget about it.

As I wandered through the exhibition of 40+ pieces, it became clear to me that demand is the key to competitive advantage. Every piece on display engaged in fierce competition for my attention. The viewing of each work is peppered with the residual 'sounds' – both aural and visual – of the surrounding works. That the works were packed in so tightly next to each other is highly conducive to the competitive atmosphere of the exhibition. It may not have been a conscious curatorial decision, but had it been, I'd've deemed it an appropriate one.

Having said that, this approach clearly has its downsides. I wasn't even aware of the several works around the gallery entrance that I'd missed on the way in between Coombs and Franco. A false family album embroidered with bright floss, small-scale geometric paintings, a video-work, an intricate linocut and a tiny sculpture among other things filled the entrance. Their voices might have been quieter than the nonsensical Franco, but this particular juxtaposition did them a great disservice. Though strong in their own right, in the fight for attention these works never stood a chance.

Of the individual works, there were a few that caught my attention. I was drawn to Your Own Imaginary Death by Dord Burrough. Her play with the use of innocent pastels in the portrayal of the morbid was a compelling juxtaposition. From a glance at a distance, the work resembles a vase of flowers. Then you see it. The sunken eyes and deep purple bags, the furrowed brow and downturned lips. It's hard to tell if the man is still actively experiencing the torment of his life, or if the life has faded from him altogether. Rendered in lively impasto-style brushwork, this painting is full of contradictions.

Survey 2011 by collective Catherine Or Kate and Headliners 2011 by Agatha Gothe-Snape were both ingenious concepts, with engaging visual accompaniment. C-Or-K base their entire collaboration around the concept of competition. In this work, they reveal the absurdity of competitive practice which inevitably creates both a winner and at least one loser. That in itself critiques the very competition in which the work is presented here. Very tongue-in-cheek. Very clever.

Gothe-Snape's Headliners serve as a critique of the drama instilled in journalism. Her series of headlines are based on voluntary interactions with people through Sydney's Weekly Advertiser. While the content describes the uneventful, they are presented with the urgency and drama of typical newspaper headlines. It draws direct attention to headlines of today that make mountains out of molehills on a daily basis, and how easily we allow ourselves to be 'sucked in' by their fabricated drama.

Neither work was fully contained by the gallery. The works take place outside the gallery walls, with only evidence present in the gallery. It's good to see institutional critique is still alive and well.

It's not all fantastically progressive work, though. Some of the works were irksome and unspectacular. It's a shame that one of the major selection criteria was shock factor. Using shock factor as a curatorial premise is risky. In an effort to provoke the viewer, you run the risk of diminishing whatever else the works might have to say. I couldn't understand what a video of a man in the process of inebriating himself, or a scan of a gherkin slice stuck to the wall had to say for themselves. Well, other than, “I bet you weren't expecting this”.

by Lucy Tyler

Broken but not broke

So the first time I walked onto the second level at Queensland's Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) I was met by Kirsty Boyle's Tree Ceremony, a small Japanese doll and a bonsai tree that, unfortunately, was not working at the time.

So much for technology.

I was assured that the doll, when working, carries out it's habitual tea-carrying in mimicry of an age-old custom in Japan of having a clockwork/mechanical doll carry tea across the room to guests. Apparently this is a high-level art form in Japan, and Kirsty studied for ten years before making the doll that graces the balcony above the foyer at GoMAⁱ. She didn't make most of the components for the doll, (obviously she's not a microchip engineer), and it is a recurring and inescapable fact that work in new media means the artist's hands become ever more distant from the object that they create. I never did see the doll working, even on my second visit, but it looked nice next to the wise old bonsai tree, both unmoving, reminding the viewer of the Japanese propensity for zen-like expressiveness.

I passed George Poonkhin Khut's somewhat hypnotic winning entry Distillery: Waveforming, in the foyer of the exhibition, impressed by the glossy images that showed meditative participants engaged in lowering their heart beats in order to gain a more rewarding visual display of the heart beat's rhythm, the lower the better. This technology was used in hospitals to calm children, and now it's being used to win art competitions, only a great artist could be so flexible, ... or only a great technician could be so artistic, one of the two. It was difficult to ascertain from the work what role the artist actually had in making the art, whether he was only the concept creator, or designer, or constructor. But what is apparent is that the new media artist is becoming more and more like a curator, able to detect opportunities where mere scientists or programmers do not, and able to package an experience that is at once interactive, contemporary and can be slotted into a greater cultural narrative suggestive of more than its primary function.

Within the exhibition space itself I was confronted with a highly realistic huge fleshy bone with a heart beat, with one patron summing it up very well when he said “gross!” and kept walking.

Unsettling? Yes.

Significant? Only for the unsettling few moments before one moves onto the pretty lights further in the exhibition.

There was a wall full of ragged holes made from within by a group of robots programmed to learn and gradually open their experience through the panel that obscured them from the public. Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders created this work in order to “highlight society's evolving relationship with increasingly intelligent machinery”ⁱⁱ, and how robots are becoming part of society itself. It also seemed to me to be a clever parallel of the life of a human, as the world is revealed to them in small amounts until they are fully exposed to existence and their integration is complete. The idea is compelling, just as the emergence and interaction with robots is compelling for all alike, but on my second visit the robots had stopped putting holes in the walls, and the guard told me that the machinery had partially broken, and that the robots weren't able to open the wall as yet and participate with the viewers as planned. This is also, however ironically, part of society's interaction with technology... its propensity to fail, as evidenced by the tea-ceremony doll and now the furby-robots in the wall.

I was then drawn into a room where I was hypnotised for some unknown amount of time by Karen Casey's Dream Zone, a fractal-like ”kaleidoscopic celebration of symmetry” based on a visual program of the artists brain wavesⁱⁱⁱ. After experiencing the infinity of Dream Zone I began to feel giddy and a little lost, so I wandered briefly into Robin Fox's room full of staticky televisions that reacted to movement, catching viewers unawares and acting semi-conscious in its limited audio and visual output. Annoying, but precocious in its presence.

Leah Heiss's Polarity reminded me of sea anenomes with their waving iron tentacles in liquid. And Ross Manning's coloured fluorescent tubes rounded out the exhibition, twirled by cooling fans, projecting artful Modern abstract forms onto a dark wall through three 'pin-holes', a veritable child's mobile of light and colour.

I emerged from the exhibition and gathered my bearings that had been lost within. The technology had mesmerised my vision and bemused my consciousness with it's variations and forms, I had been perplexed and intrigued by some of the works, disappointed at the inoperative pieces, and a little scornful at the Artistic significance of some works despite their complexity, such as the winning entry. But questions had been raised and thoughts had been stirred, and although these new media works lose most of the warm aura of the hand made, they gain a wide and deep playground of emerging techno-gear and software that is blurring purposes and freeing the objects, and the viewers, from mundane functions.

iContemporary Studio Practice Class (Interviewer), & Slack-Smith, A. (Interviewee). (2012, August 10), Floor talk, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia

ii Zwischenräume, [Didactic] National new Media Art Prize 2012, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia

iiiDream Zone, [Didactic] National new Media Art Prize 2012, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia

...mining for ounces of significance...

Upon entering the Churchie Emerging Art prize exhibition I was immediately confronted with an arcing series of photographs that one-by-one revealed a naked bottom. Joseph Breiker's “Phases of the Moon” is a great way to greet visitors if you were trying to convince them that the exhibition that they were about to enter was going to be full of empty puns and witticisms, palatable like dry toast. The puns were going to have to get a lot cheekier than that if I was going to raise more than an eyebrow to the simple humour masquerading as high Art.

Unfortunately, next to the bottoms, was a jumbled array of bad ink drawings executed in what can only be described as a 'nonchalant technique', with the words “be fearful of mediocrity” scrawled across one of them.

Don't worry, I said to the drawings, I'm fearful! Even the didactic admitted that such a variety of unrelated images made it “difficult to gauge intention”ⁱ.

Ok... maybe they were sneakily and cleverly thumbing their knowing noses at convention and putting the bad stuff in the entry... a magnificent ploy to coax the hesitant visitor into the bowels of the chimera.

Alas, after I walked under the pink sign that said “what do you want from me?” (to which I replied, “not that”), I continued passed a small area of art that I ignored because it looked boring, and walked straight up to a screen that was quite bewildering. Heath Franco's “Your Door” confronted me like a feverish dream, repetitive, illusory and hypnotic.

What was it?...

...A video of profound silliness that held me stricken in its headlights. “You wanna play?” the man in the mask and the blue underwear holding a toy saxophone repeated at me, before dissolving into another man repeating “come in, I'll get you a cuppa!”. The undulating variations in the way these phrases were repeated to me fell like a hammer blow to my sensibility, and I reeled away to be met by Nathan Corum's cast iron red curtain.

Were we still expressing the red communist flood of ideas that simmered all those years ago behind the iron curtain?

Apparently not, just an ode to cinema, which, after my initial thought, seemed droll.

From there I meandered passed the ice-cream cones that resembled a castle from a fairy tale, passed the Brown Council's video of the head of a woman saying something noiselessly in black and white, and on to Ray Harris's video of a woman making love to a pile of dough with her clothes on. The didactic spent a long time describing what was already apparent to me in the video, and then pivoted on the sentence that said the work was “a psychological space of unsatisfied symbiosis”ⁱⁱ. Was it a reflection of the human existential condition within a modern society so pluralised and material that even sensory contact becomes a lifeless embrace with plasticity? Probably not, but Ray Harris might have been gleefully charmed by such an erudite passage likening his confusing and awkward work to what we might lightly deride as people's traumatic personal post-post-modern derangements, of which this work may actually be the product of.

I toured the rest of the exhibition holding out hope that the significant work that I was looking for was going to emerge from amongst the crowded and chaotic display and nestle lovingly into my conscious understanding and speak eloquently and skillfully of the zeitgeist into which form the artist had slipped, however momentarily. But all I found was a revolving mass off globulated colour reflected convexly, a strange bondage contraption without application, and several other works that failed to stir my inner wish. I stopped briefly at the printed wordplay, “Rare bird lifts town high with mighty arm” it said on one of themⁱⁱⁱ. That's mildly interesting for five seconds because it is an absurd word puzzle, but what is its significance?

Is absurdity significant?

Does society require absurdity to be reflected in its art, unable to experience it elsewhere?

I found myself wondering, is this exhibition striving for significance, or just to show new types of art?

On my way out I stopped by Dominic Reidy's work “Plan for a Neon Victory” in which a stick holds up a picture of a big V with a masculine man in it. Reidy addresses what he sees “as a disconnection between concept and medium”^iv and I'm not sure if I'm getting it right, but I think that he managed to express that disconnection perfectly in his work.

Lost in thought I exited the exhibition, passing once again the pink sign “what do you want from me?” and the eclectic ink drawings that the didactic said were “mining for ounces of significance”^v.

Ounces?

And the bottoms mooned me as I left.

iMediocrity Clampdown, [Didactic] Churchie Emerging Art Prize, 2012 , Griffith University, QCA campus.

iiLet Me Go, [Didactic] Churchie Emerging Art Prize, 2012 , Griffith University, QCA campus.

iiiHeadliners, Gothe-Snape, Agatha, 2012 [Artwork] Churchie Emerging Art Prize, 2012 , Griffith University, QCA campus.

ivPlan for a Neon Vistory, [Didactic] Churchie Emerging Art Prize, 2012 , Griffith University, QCA campus.

vMediocrity Clampdown, [Didactic] Churchie Emerging Art Prize, 2012 , Griffith University, QCA campus.