LOWBROW
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LOWBROW •
The opening of Fragmented Tensions at Blindside was not somewhere I lingered when I visited on Thursday night. Each year Blindside facilitates an Emerging Curator Mentorship, and this year Ella Simpson was mentored by the gallery’s artistic directors. Charlotte wrote on Simpson’s work when we went to the RMIT Post-Grad show last year but this Blindside show sadly feels far from the success of the artist’s grad show presentation. Fragmented Tensions is a series of works made in response to the Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy and Pathology at the University of Melbourne, which Simpson has been engaging with for two years as a way of exposure therapy to contamination based OCD.
We talk broadly about censorship, the death of print media, whether the internet is actually forever, and the shifting tides of Australian art and culture. Ultimately we came to the shared conclusion that while the book is well worth the read, Lindsay’s art perhaps isn’t worth the second glance.
Tucked away on Capel Street is KINGS Artist Run. Truly a working space (something with many branches and powertools was being created right at the front entrance upon my arrival), it still feels like a hidden gem when you make it far enough down the leafy block to glimpse their frameboard outside. More than anything, it feels like a reminder of what the area used to be – industrial, working warehouses between one story bungalows. Currently on show at KINGS are Elijah Cristiano, Anna McDermont, and Parker Lev Dupain, with distinct and disparate works.
Getting to Ballilla Mansion was a trek for me. You’ll notice I usually only write about northside and city centre galleries. But! The Melbourne Sculpture Biennale was worth the visit southside, even just as an excuse to catch up with some friends who live in the area and drag them with me to see the show. Housed in a historic mansion built in 1878, the works are site specific and respond to the house itself. Complete with peeling paint, squeaky floor boards, and phallic stained glass windows, the mansion has clearly seen better days, but its dilapidated charm offsets the contemporary sculptures housed within. I’m not usually drawn to sculptural work, and there were many things in the mansion that I didn’t care for or have desire to spend time with, but there were a few that truly stood out.
Hillvale’s Photo Trophy is one of the great equalizing opportunities for artists, in this case photographers, that exist in Melbourne. Bec covered it last year, and in our good tradition of swapping coverage on prizes, I’ve taken it on for its 4th edition. My favourite work, for reasons that also resulted in me dragging my whole family to Roswell, New Mexico, was Nora Merralls’ (0538) alien, standing out against a bubblegum carnival ride background. It’s the type of image I’m endlessly collecting vintage postcards in the hope of finding.
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