Sydney's Original Art House?

Damien Minton Gallery has made arguably the first example of an art film in Sydney and even Australia available for viewing online. David Perry's Walking (circa 1955) depicts a young flâneur wandering Sydney, giving attention to the the abstract shapes and the movements of the city, and the moments and poses of contemplation.


Walking from Damien Minton Gallery on Vimeo.

Perry's Walking will be featured in the group exhibition 'Five Bells - A Visual Ode to Sydney' that runs from 1-18 February, 2012. See previous post for more information on the 'Five Bells' exhibition. Below, Perry describes how he came to make Walking.


My career since the early 1950’s encompassed all the visual arts, painting, drawing, photography and video and film making. [Once ] someone gave me an 8 mm camera, I began randomly recording events and images in all these media and have never stopped.


In the early sixties I encountered Albie Thoms and together with him, John Clark and Aggie Reid we founded Ubu films.  I was on camera and also directed my own experimental films and videos as well as doing a large number of graphics for posters and flyers advertising not only our films but also the light shows/dances which we organised and which were so popular at the time.

WALKING

During the early years I used to frequent the Roundhouse at the then East Sydney Technical College, Sydney’s only Art school at the time.  A man called Kaplan used to regularly show 1920’s and ‘30’s European art films.  I was deeply moved and entranced by these films, especially by the camera techniques used.  From then on my approach to filmmaking was strongly influenced by what I saw, and all my work comes from this artist’s perspective, rather than from the popular, narrative form of cinema.

Walking was the very first film I ever made on standard 8 mm film (there was no other way to make low budget films at the time).  I tried to capture the feel of the industrial landscape of Sydney of the ‘50’s particularly around the old Pyrmont Bridge, to express the working class grittiness of Sydney, the aspects of it that I knew and loved, and the art film techniques and sensibility were the best way I could see to do this.  

The original footage has been lost but when it was still available I made a copy on videotape.  That copy imported to my modern computer and edited to remove clunky transitions.  It remains the only record of Walking.

While Walking was my first exploration of these art film camera techniques, I continued to make films and subsequently videos, using these techniques and experimenting with them.   A number of my videos and films have been and continue to be shown at various exhibition s and festivals throughout the world.

David Perry

6/1/2012

Five Bells - A Visual Ode to Sydney

WE ARE EXCITED TO OPEN 2012 WITH THE GROUP EXHIBITION: 
Five Bells - A Visual Ode to Sydney.  
Exhibition dates: 1-18 February.
To be opened Saturday afternoon, 4th February, 2-4pm
by poet and friend of the late Kenneth Slessor 
Geoffrey Lehmann.

Elaine Campaner, Breakfast in Sydney, digital print, 553 x 830 mm, 2009

I looked out my window in the dark
At waves with diamond quills and combs of light
That arched their mackerel-backs and smacked the sand
In the moon's drench, that straight enormous glaze,
And ships far off asleep, and Harbour-buoys
Tossing their fireballs wearily each to each,
And tried to hear your voice, but all I heard
Was a boat's whistle, and the scraping squeal
Of seabirds' voices far away, and bells,
Five bells. Five bells coldly ringing out. Five bells.

This passage from the poem Five Bells by Australian poet Kenneth Slessor appears in the very first section of the book ‘Sydney’, by Delia Falconer. Falconer's re-reading of the city of Sydney through the lens of this haunting and seminal poem has inspired the Damien Minton Gallery to invite 40 artists to contribute artwork about Sydney. We received a phenomenal response and are pleased to announce the final list of contributing artists:

Gallery artists:
Michael Callaghan • Elaine Campaner • Chris Capper
Tom Carment • Lottie Consalvo • James Drinkwater
Di Holdsworth • Cecilia Heffer • Hobart Hughes
Pia Larsen • Ross Laurie • Marie McMahon
Eric Niebuhr • Louise Tuckwell • Tony Twigg


We are delighted to host the following:
CLARRICE COLLIEN (Roomies Artspace) ELISABETH CUMMINGS (courtesy King Street Gallery on William)
ANNE FERGUSON
BECKY GIBSON (winner Brett Whiteley Scholarship 2011) JOHN GILLIES
MYFWANY GULLIFER (courtesy King Street Gallery on William)
ADAM HILL
ALEX JACKSON WYATT
PETER KINGSTON (courtesy Australian Galleries)
BRUCE LATIMER (courtesy Australian Galleries)
FRANK LITTLER (courtesy Watters Gallery)
EUAN MACLEOD (courtesy Watters Gallery)
DAVID PERRY (featuring one of Sydney’s first art films, “Walking”, 1957)
AMBROSE REISCH (courtesy Stella Downer Fine Art)
LIANE ROSSLER
KEN SEARLE (courtesy Watters Gallery)
PAUL SELWOOD (courtesy Watters Gallery)
MARTIN SHARP
ANDREW SIMPSON
STEVE SMITH
MARC STANDING (courtesy Brenda May Gallery)
BRETT STONE
TONI WARBURTON (courtesy of Mori Gallery)

PLUS A PROGRAM OF TALKS, READINGS AND PERFORMANCE AT THE GALLERY:

SATURDAY, 11TH FEBRUARY, 3-5 PM
Geordie Williamson (chief literary critic of the Australian)
in conversation with Gail Jones (author of the book 'Five Bells')

SATURDAY, 18TH FEBRUARY 3-5 PM 
Fiona McGregor (author of 'Indelible Ink') 
Martin Edmond (Author of 'Dark Night, Walking with McCahon)

SATURDAY, 18TH FEBRUARY 5-6 PM 
Laurie Scott Baker and Ruark Lewis 
performing Five Bells Remix.

Peter Gardiner selected as a finalist in the Dobell Prize for Drawing

Peter Gardiner features as a finalist in the 2011 Dobell Prize for drawing, which can be viewed at the Art Gallery of NSW until the 5th February.

Peter Gardiner in front of 'Hexham (swamp)' 

"Peter Gardiner's Hexham (swamp) [...] is an unusual venture for Gardiner, who often favours the more dramatic scenes. The swamp is almost featureless but possessed of a strange, crackling vitality. The artist has filled the sheet with small staccato dabs of charcoal that extract a glimmer of individuality from the uniformity of the landscape"
Says John MacDonald in a review of the show for the Sydney Morning Herald's Spectrum (10/12/2011).

We also congratulate James Drinkwater for being selected as a finalist in the Dobell 2011.

James Drinkwater's selected work 'Trails Beginnings', part of a suite of works on paper featured in the March 2011 exhibition at our gallery 

In other Peter Gardiner news, we are proud to announce that the Damien Minton Gallery had been accepted into the 2012 Hong Kong Art Fair.  We will be exhibiting in the ASIAONE section with a development of Gardiner's Ravensworth Series.

Trinkwasser's Art Attack

We thought we might share some news from Berlin as it trickles in from Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship recipient James Drinkwater. With Berlin arguably the street art capital of the world, and considering Drinkwater's existing practice of working with and transforming found materials, his 'trash can assemblage' actions appear as both a logical and astute exploration. Ragtag refuse becomes part of a whole, subsumed by James' signature style. Signing them off as "Trinkwasser" we only hope he's not becoming German for good. 

See images below of Drinkwater's 'Boss' project in Amsterdam. 

Godfather of street art, Blek le Rat

 tags a Drinkwater

Jon Frum Art Foundation's '2020'

Damien Minton Gallery is proud to host the momentous '2020' project at our Annex Space. Statement from organisers Jon Frum Art Foundation below.

Alex Jackson Wyatt, 'Enough to store in a storage unit', Friday 14th October

Who: Jon Frum Art Foundation and Robert Lake
Where: Damien Minton Annex Space, 583 Elizabeth St, Redfern
When: 6-25th October 2011

Time: 6-8 pm (nightly)
What: 20 consecutive days, 20 local and international artists and art groups will stage 20 one-night exhibitions.

In the words of the organisers:
Jon Frum Art Foundation & Robert Lake are proud to present a new model of art exhibition practice, “2020” (twenty art shows in twenty consecutive days). 

The 2020 platform which is a hybrid of a number of art exhibiting models, aims to support experimental and progressive artwork, by creating a system that is part performance, part artist-run and part commercial thus enriching existing models of exhibition practice. Each morning the previous show will be dismantled and a new show will be erected for the 6-8pm opening. We are expecting to attract a new and different audience nightly increasing the cultural awareness of arts in Sydney.

In 2020, Australian and International emerging artists will be exhibiting along-side established artists, encouraging a supportive and nurturing exhibiting environment for our art contenders. The participating artists will be encouraged to liaise with one another for future exhibition opportunities, as our aim is to provide an International bond between artists, galleries and curators through the social aspect that the show will provide. 

The space, courtesy of Damien Minton, provides a progressive change in the way we view and exhibit art in Sydney by blurring the boundaries between commercial galleries and artist run spaces; it is free for artists to exhibit, we encourage sales, and encourage commercial gallerists to view and pick artists from our 2020 selection. Each of the twenty shows will run for two hours and will be streamed live across the internet, encouraging the projects potential for world wide recognition.

With web presence, blogs and social networking tools in place we anticipate generous media coverage for the 20 days and whilst the two hour duration of each show may seem short, the exhibition will continue indefinitely in cyber space in the form of live streamed video documentation. Australian audiences are encouraged to view a new exhibition every day for twenty days, either in person or live on the web at www.2020art2011.com. 

The future and long-term goal for 2020 is to exhibit annually, further bridging the gap between artists globally forming an alliance of contemporaries. As a progressive and experimental exhibition format the future of 2020 is very exciting. 

Full program:

For more information head to the Jon Frum Foundation website.

Philjames: 'A Moth in a Chandelier' in the Annex space

Philjames, Number 27, Oil on found vintage print, 400 x 300 mm

Next pop-up show in the Damien Minton Annex (583 Elizabeth St, Redfern) is Philjames, 'A Moth in a Chandelier'. Opening 23rd September 6-8 and running until the 24th September only. Read what Archibald Prize winner Guy Maestri says about Philjames' work below:

Philjames's art can be on one hand playful, even childish, and on the other, arresting, disarming, and shocking. In this body of work Philjames has juxtaposed icons of popular culture into sublime and kitsch landscape paintings sourced from opp shops and skip bins. The results range from comical to apocalyptic. But  he is not engaging in an act of destruction, more like a thoughtful readjustment. An offering of a new vision, or version, of the future.  Many of the protagonists in Philjames's paintings include people dressed in super hero suits, dumped in these alien worlds. A seemingly bizarre and incongruous act, these people in a second skin, unnatural in nature. Yet strangely poignant. Philjames is well aware of the world we live in. This is man vs nature in all our clumsy, unnatural glory.

Philjames often bolts these works to public walls, literally offering his art to the people, to be considered by those who may not generally consider art, and to encourage response and interaction. They get tagged, smashed, scarred and often stolen, but these are artworks which weren't Philjames's to begin with. He puts his hand to them, and releases them back into the wild. Some of them survive and are included in this exhibition, as works of anonymous collaboration.

I travelled through China with Philjames. All along the way he would pull out his pen and make "thoughtful adjustments" to signs, posters, graffiti etc. Or just leave small offerings for the hell of it. For example, on a riverboat on the Yangtze river he planted a small pink penis on a print of a manicured, english garden hanging on the wall of our cabin. I like to think it would still be there. Largely unnoticed, offering occasional amusement or bewilderment the unsuspecting traveller. Art for the people!

- Guy Maestri


View a selection of the works on our website

Bilums, bilums, bilums

PAIGATASA BILUMS

A fundraising exhibition for the mother and child health clinic of the Paiga community, Eastern Highlands PNG.

TUESDAY 27 SEPT 2011 6-8PM
In the Project Room

Exhibition 27 SEPT – 15 OCT


Statement from organiser, community worker Paul van Reyk:

Take a flight from Port Moresby to the Eastern Highlands Province capital town, Goroka. Get on a PMV (mini-van, truck, ute) and bump head to Okapa on a road, which depending on the rains and how recently anyone's had money or energy to fix it will either be a reasonable gravel road or a series of potholes, wash-aways, and bogs, till you get to Ke Efu (ask the driver or any of the passengers cause it won't be signposted). Then trek for several hours, depending on your fitness and the state of the track, up and up and up then along the ridges through forest and hamlets, spectacular views to both sides of you, to Paigatasa, an area of scattered market gardens and bush material round huts housing 6000 people 2000 metres above sea level.

Like much of remote PNG, this area remains shamefully underserviced in health. Women and children still regularly die during childbirth for lack of access to midwives and hospital beds. Six years ago the community decided to do something about it. They asked Paul van Reyk, an Australian community worker, one of the first ‘white men’ to travel into the area since PNG independence, to help them build a clinic to deliver community mother and child health programs.

Since then, the women have been making bilums for sale to raise funds for the clinic and to supplement the meagre income they get from small coffee plantings. Contact with Western culture, materials and markets, have changed these gathering and market bags from brown bush material open styles to vibrantly coloured synthetic yarn close weave styles that play with the products and signage of their contact and development experiences. From bank logos to religious texts, football colours to mobile phone advertisements, anything and everything is used in these exuberant, individual creations without any hint of irony or embarrassment.

Money raised through sales at the exhibition will go directly 50% to the maker of the billum, and 50% to the mother and child clinic.

More information on Paiga and the project: www.paiga.com.au
See images of the bilums on our facebook page