LOWBROW
•
LOWBROW •
Though Bec has covered it before, and I live less than a kilometre away, I had never been to George Paton Gallery before this week. The UMSU Gallery was a trove of artistic potential, but perhaps none more so than As Long As You Love Me, the video installation work by Alanna Baxter, Lara Oluklu and Naimo Omar. I couldn’t tell you how long the loop is, as I was so engrossed, walking back and forth between the three screens so as to not miss anything, that I didn’t think to note the timing. Simple on a surface level – three screens, a dark curtain, white text on black cutting between film snippets – Baxter, Oluklu, and Omar have made something totally their own out of an entirely borrowed script.
Before this Wednesday, I’d never been to HAIR before – strange, given its proximity to my beloved Queen Vic Market. Across the street from the iconic facade, HAIR neighbours Sticky Institute, and this exhibition spoke directly to its location, and The Last Chance (Rock & Roll Bar), just a few hundred metres away. Millennial Kennels by Jordan Halsall and Steven J Hutton features four kennels made of plywood, printed with images of jeans. The jeans are definitively punk, variously featuring rips, paint, buttons, patches, mending, and distress.
The turn from sunny to thunderstorm on the day I went to Double Feature at Artemisia kept me lingering longer, taking it all in, mulling over my thoughts as I parsed through the over 100 works on show at the High Street gallery. The name of the show points to the theming of: “Diptychs, duos, partners & pairs” though for some of the artists, this throughline was lost.
Part video work, part installation, ENEMIES! at TCB Gallery is a send up of the Melbourne arts scene that’s as funny as it is true. I’ll admit, when I first walked into TCB and saw two coffins, my expectations plummeted. Death of the artist, death of creativity, death of art were the first things that crossed my mind. The computer, perhaps too reminiscent of those I’ve spent my career working on, did not beckon me in. I turned away and took a look at Emma Nicole Berry’s a week long waiting room, filled with colour and images and prose before contending with Brunswick's own corporate hellscape.
Be the first to know about new reviews.
Erin Hogan embarks on a solo journey across the American West in search of Land Art. The 2008 book is deeply reflective of current anxieties for arts in Australia, with funding cuts, a world in turmoil, and an internal search for place in an uncertain world.