Parker Lev Dupain
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.
Elijah Cristiano’s Fresh Blood Washings is a mixed media piece, combining video, sound, and ink on paper to make a niche of the space truly their own. Cristiano makes full use of what can only be a room for one. With the headphones on, you are forced to be fully immersed by the work on screen. The works on paper (Not a place for your village) follow you from the ground all the way to the ceiling. Immersion feels like the wrong word when the audio track is constant in your ears: you are consumed by it. Eaten up by the colours, the river, the 1855 Yarra River Pollution Act, the history of the ground you are working on, the fact that worker protections are written in blood, that you are within a stones throw of the Queen Victoria Market, and all the meaning behind that title and institution, and the [Indigenous] blood that was spilled in its name. In Cristiano’s niche, in that old building, you are a horse with blinders on, forced to only look ahead at what you must, whether you want to see it or not.
Being a horse with blinders on is not an out of pocket reference when the first work that actually greets you in the space is Parker Lee Dupain’s Bird in Space. Hitting the hallmarks of things I love (clearly an art historical reference, a horse girl joke to be, a reworking) Dupain made me question if I actually knew what I was seeing for a split second. Homage is paid to Brâncuși’s work with the name and the bronze form. The dollies the erstwhile saddle sits on are as much part of the work as the thing itself. More than anything, it made me think of Puzzle Gallery in Sydney’s Here Before from August. Another ARI, another formerly industrial space, another saddle made not, by changing the matter of the thing, rather than the shape itself.
A play and a mistake is Anna McDermott’s intervention in the space. The largest work by far, you feel perched upon it, far different from the engulfing of Cristiano. More than anything, you feel on the edge of something, much like the artist. On the edge of understanding, the edge of a conversation that will not turn to include you. McDermott gives you the art of the spectator sport. It is a play, no call and response a-la Rocky Horror. It unsettled me, the building of the music making me feel like I should be outrunning… something? Like chasing a meaning that was forever a bit out of reach, and perhaps that is the truth of this work. It wasn’t until Act II was flashing on the screen that I could even hear the soundtrack, and by that point I was too far in, some art world monster chasing me, and I had no choice but to pick up the pace and outrun it.
KINGS Artist Run is part of a cohort of spaces in my beloved pocket of North/West Melbourne that is growing bit by bit, inhabiting the formerly industrial buildings and empty shopfronts. A block away from the Western edge of the Queen Vic Market, you can almost hear it yelling to HAIR over on the Eastern fringe. There’s a day to be made going from one end to the other, picking up your fruit and veg in between, and then heading to Blindside for good measure (with a stop at One Star if you happen to find them open) – but we are not in the business of day guides. At least at the moment.