Adam Hill at the Marrambang Meeting

MARRAMBANG MEETING

GOULBURN REGIONAL ART GALLERY

2 – 25 MAY 2013

Goulburn was traditionally a Meeting Place for surrounding Aboriginal peoples. In this spirit, Adam Hill from Sydney, Peter Swain from Canberra and Perc Carter from Goulburn come together in an exhibition at the Goulburn Regional Art Gallery, NSW, of sculpture and 2D works including photography. 

ARTIST STATEMENT

BLAK DOUGLAS (AKA- ADAM HILL) 2013 

‘HALF’

General hearsay re the original inhabitants of Goulburn (according to local knowledge) states that ‘no one peoples presided within the local area’. However, the lands were apparently traversed by some dozen groups whom apparently met for ceremonies upon lands now occupied by significant icons. Sadly today, a significant population of the Indigenous peoples here is housed within one of the continents most notorious gaols.' 

Coinciding with the ‘150th’ Celebration of ‘Australia’s first inland city’, this exhibition seems appropriate time to enlighten. At first glance when arriving or passing through Goulburn, one may be excused for noticing the absence of acknowledgement of cultural detail. Alarmingly, this is further emphasized when perusing the March / April Council Newsletter. 

Granted, It is indeed commendable that Goulburn HAS adopted ‘Mulwaree’ (presumably the closest clans people within cooee) as part of the official title. However, the remainder of the newsletter- complete with two pages of pie graphs boasting economic expenditure seems a sad promotion of a community forged over one hundred & fifty years. 

GREY 

Upon the current ‘map of Aboriginal Australia’… the few areas across the continent that were NOT occupied by a language group per se, are conveniently coloured ‘GREY’. Goulburn however appears distinctly marked ‘Gundungurra’ (and coloured grey). Perhaps at time of printing, there existed uncertainty as well. Either way… grey seems an apt metaphorical colour defining ‘neutrality’. 

PURPLE 

The chosen logo featured to celebrate this festive occasion is a stylized Cathedral. Appropriate of course, given the enormity of the largest landmark within the CBD of Goulburn. The colour ‘purple’, the adopted colour of the dominant introduced denomination. I’ve therefore chosen to rely largely on purple as the basis of my installations within this show. 

SEVENTY-FIVE 

With such astute focus being placed on the numeric analysis, pertaining Goulburn Cities historic existence within the Colony, I’ve hypothesized my own mathematical equation. The timespan of the overall Colony arrives at two hundred & twenty – five years (225). The timespan of Goulburn- one hundred – fifty (150). Purely coincidental it may be, however… by subtracting 150 from 225 we arrive at ‘75’. Exactly half and sadly… the average life expectancy of an Aboriginal Female in ‘New South Wales’. That’s TEN YEARS less than the average female face featured upon the cover of the current newsletter. 

CARDBOARD 

Through no fault of our own… much withstanding history relative to Indigenous cultures has been / or is being recycled. Often then presented in the most ‘fashionable’ way possible. Urban ‘Dot Painting’ is a prime exemplar. I felt that by using salvaged cardboard often from ‘Plasma’ TV’s, this presented an interesting metaphor for such recycling of culture, and, the relative fragility of our remaining Indigenous cultures today.

Image: Half, 2013, mixed media assemblage, 770 x 1130mm.

THE ETERNITY OPENING

View a short film by Haydn Keenan, Smart Street Films, from the opening of the Eternity exhibition.

At the opening address of the Eternity exhibition I attempted to allude to the cultural importance of gallery spaces in Sydney. 

Along with the early experiments of artist run spaces like The Yellow House there is a rich history of commercial galleries continuously nurturing artists, providing a sense of purpose for the artwork they produce. 

They are more than just places of monetary exchange. Commercial galleries in Sydney have been vital in shaping the visual history of this city. They have been at the forefront of providing a safe place and outlet for the rich and varied eccentricities and passions of creative people; both artist and audience. 

There is no doubt the commercial gallery scene world wide is experiencing a seismic shift as it deals with the changing nature of doing things in the digital age. 

On one hand it is an exciting time working towards new unique and successful formulas, reinventing the 20th century format of white wall gallery spaces. Yet there is a concern the very tight paradigm is strangling a very genuine legacy. 

It is a sentiment echoed in a recent essay by New York art critic Jerry Saltz in the on line magazine Vulture. 

“Galleries are social space, collective séances, campfires where anyone can gather.” 

Yet he has found in New York the majority of galleries at the moment are ‘eerily empty’, that the shift of emphasis into art fairs, auctions, biennales and the ‘push push’ of jpegs is eliminating the essential role of art gallerists to nurture, develop, curate and juxtapose. 

“Shows go up and don’t seem to have consequence other than sales or no sales. Nothing builds off much else. Art can’t get traction.” 

What is worse he declares is: 

“A jadedness appears in people who aren’t jaded”. 

Yet this is not a reactionary rant, it is an attempt to look at the reality of what is happening. 

Saltz concludes by saying: 

There is no “the” art world anymore. There have always been many art worlds, overlapping, ebbing around and through one another. Some are seen, others only gleaned, many ignored. “The” art world has become more of a virtual reality than an actual one, useful perhaps for conceptualizing in the abstract but otherwise illusory. 

Once we adjust to that, we can work within the new reality. If the galleries are emptier, the limos gone, the art advisers taking meetings elsewhere, and the glitz offshore, the audience will have shrunk to something like it was well before the gigantic expansion of the art world. When I go to galleries, I now mainly see artists and a handful of committed diligent critics, collectors, curators, and the like. In this quiet environment, it may be possible for us to take back the conversation. Or at least have conversations. While the ultrarich will do their deals from 40,000 feet, we who are down at ground level will be engaging with the actual art—maybe not in Chelsea, where the rents are getting too high, but somewhere. That’s fine with me.” 

Fine with me too Jerry! 

Comin’ all the way from Redfern Sydney.

The Keating Redfern Park Speech

The exhibition commemorating the 20th anniversary of Paul Keating's Reconciliation Speech in Redfern Park featured Gail Mabo talking and reflecting on its significance. 

It was a privilege to conceptualise and host this event.

We featured work by Papunya Tjupi, Adam Hill, Jason Wing, Susan Nakamarra Nelson and Will Coles. 

The below section of the Keating Speech still resonates for all of Australia. 

“It begins, I think, with that act of recognition.

Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing.

We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life.

We brought the diseases. The alcohol.

We committed the murders.

We took the children from their mothers.

We practised discrimination and exclusion.

It was our ignorance and our prejudice.

And our failure to imagine these things being done to us.

With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds.

We failed to ask - how would I feel if this were done to me?

As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us.”

PAUL KEATING, 1992

Watch the video here

WELCOME TO THE NEW DARK AGES CUTTING THE VISUAL ARTS IN TAFE

Remarks by Damien Minton at the SAVE TAFE ART

rally held at the Damien Minton Gallery 19 November 2012

To witness a living, breathing 120 year old institution like the Newcastle Art School being kneecapped by the O’Farrell government is a scandal.

This act of school yard bully boy violence is distressing as it has sent the dedicated art teachers, both full time and part time, into trauma as they scramble to salvage a new structure to stay alive in 2013.

The actions of this NSW government to stop funding the visual arts departments within the TAFE system from next year shows how we as a society has slipped back into a new cultural dark age. 

As one drives through or visits many regional towns in NSW there are still stately Victorian era buildings with the words ‘School of Arts’ sitting proudly on the façade.  They symbolise our 19^th century great great grandfathers and mothers developing and maturing an understanding and resolve in placing the visual arts and crafts shoulder to shoulder with their work ethic of employment and business.

At the turn of the 19^th into the 20^th century there was real pride in using a visual language to inform, define and articulate community and society.

The O’Farrell decision to stop funding the visual arts within TAFE illustrates how far we have regressed from that proud stance.

We are back into the cultural dark ages, the neo age of despots, it is an act of Cromwellian proportions.

Macquarie Street has no understanding or knowledge as to how the visual arts in TAFE is an essential component of an economic eco system that circulates well beyond the art school walls.

The vast majority of artists this art gallery presents teach in the TAFE system, passing on their knowledge and skills for 8 to 10 hours a week.  Without it, their art practice becomes vulnerable and precarious.

Also, the first solo exhibitions by emerging artists staged at this gallery have invariably been recent graduates from TAFE.

The eagerness and enthusiasm of the artists’ families and friends is far more meaningful and infectious than the nickels and dimes that flow from the red dots on the white walls.

It gives young artists the confidence and possibility of being productive creative human beings.

The TAFE system provides a ‘hands on’ environment for creative people to be nurtured and encouraged, a ‘pastoral’ care model of teaching.

So to suddenly witness these ‘culture houses’ being destroyed is like watching a You Tube video of an Israeli missile slamming into its target.

The complicity of the TAFE bureaucracy to step aside and point at the soft target is cowardly and deplorable.

The art staff involved in this essential part of the broader visual arts industry now have to gasp for air in order to survive.  They are scrambling and stitching together a new fee structure for students in order to survive, all within four months.

You may ask yourself, why?

Cutting the funds of Fine Arts in TAFE compared to the enormity of NSW INC is hardly a cost saving measure.

It is the mosquito, not the elephant, in the room.

These gruesome and lethal cuts stem from the war the apparatchiks within TAFE have staged for decades.

It is a war against creativity, because creativity will never fit neatly into an economic determinist excel spreadsheet. The visual arts is irritating and the word culture immediately makes the eyes roll.

The bureaucracy’s obsession with quantitative data goes right up to the level of the Bacon and Kapoor shows currently on offer this summer.

Money spent in the visual arts can be justified if it fits into an economic strategy.

These people get turned on by balance sheets neatly adding up, they get orgasmic when red ink turns into a surplus.

So they fear creativity, even within themselves.  They don’t understand it, they don’t want this irritation.

So get rid of it.

Ironically this becomes the main weapon for artists and arts administrators.

It is something O’Farrell and his dark age Macquarie Street cronies fear the most … the joy and potency of creativity.

DAMIEN Minton

Director

Damien Minton Gallery

NOVEMBER 2012

Bronwyn Barwell's opening address, 17 November 2012, Merchants of War: Tribute to Michael Callaghan

Thank you all for coming to Merchants of War. Especially thanks to the contributing artists and Damien Minton who has been pivotal to this show.

The focus of the exhibition is on the international corporations and middlemen – private and government, who foster and profit from the international trade in arms – from light weapons such as the iconic AK47 through to the new wave of technology driven weapons epitomised by the Drone.

These men and women in grey suits with neat suburban lives far removed from their victims are real perpetrators of war and the natural opponents of negotiated settlement.

War is fuelled by global economic imperatives. Countries far removed from the zone of conflict are profiting every minute of every day from the arms trade. Their victims grow exponentially.

Their blood money powers the growth of first world companies and economies.

This exhibition was borne from a commitment to community in the widest sense and fuelled by the anger at the sheer wrongness of a world where negotiated settlement is held to ransom by the merchants of war and frustration at the duplicity and inertia of our political leaders to come to the table on an Arms Trade Treaty.

Merchants of War is also about the more intimate community we inhabit as friends and colleagues who have come together to both pay tribute to Michael and his artistic and political legacy and in solidarity, to continue the tradition of politicised art practise.

This was to be Michael’s last exhibition – he had a number of works in progress. The night before he died, he said he didn’t know if he had enough strength to get the work done. My reply was all we can do is try and thanks to you all we have succeeded.

Michael’s practise was collective in nature.

The AK47 sculpture could not have been realised without:

         Greg McLachlan’s fine computer rendering in dissecting the connecting layers, OR

         Greg Page’s considerable carpentry skills in assembling the gun.

  

As Greg McLachlan commented, Michael always surrounded himself with artisans – the AK47 is as much a product of their skills as of Michael’s vision.

This exhibition in its entirety is testament to the power of collective practise.

On Michael’s behalf thank you and congratulations on a fine body of work.

Michael’s website is to be relaunched with the poster archive available for sale and viewing through the site. The profits from the sale and from this exhibition received by the estate will be held in a trust in Michael’s name and over time will hopefully, in a modest way, fund a travelling art scholarship amongst other things.

LOTTIE CONSALVO: STEER A STEADY SHIP

Last Saturday's performance by Lottie Consalvo, 'Steer a Steady Ship', has created a lot  of online media interest. Consalvo endured seven hours of consistent and persistent drops of black dye falling on her face. The international online visual art site, ArtInfo, had her on their front page. 

Our local Sydney Morning Herald ran a piece on the day and SBS World News Australia Online presented some coverage as well, read and see it here. 

This is what Lottie Consalvo was attempting to achieve with the performance:

“For seven hours I lay in a bed beneath the boat suspended in midair.  From the boat black liquid will drip upon my head. This is based on Chinese torture which can cause psychosis.

”This performance piece was conceived 12 months ago at a time when I was so consumed by anxiety that I could not sleep. I was scared of the thoughts that kept me awake. I feared my partner falling asleep before me. I would beg him to tell me stories of life in a sunroom by the sea to keep my mind afloat, sometimes this would work but mostly I would sink. When he would fall off to sleep it was just me and my mind, I felt completely alone. 'Steer a steady ship' was a line I heard a lot growing up, it meant, hold yourself together and stay focused. At this time I felt like I couldn't hold it together, the ship hung heavy above me, I had no control. Bedtime was a time of absolute torture. I couldn't stop my mind.
 

“I think this experience is shared by many. The days and nights of struggle living with anxiety and depression.”

This performance was part of Lottie's current exhibition, The Life Exchange, and its aftermath creates an eerie echo of the work on the walls, which can be viewed here.

Exhibition dates: 3 - 20 October 2012

Toby Zoates in the Annex Space

Happy New Year, 1978, acrylic on paper, 560 x 380 mm

We are humbled and excited to have a slice of history from the Sydney underground in our Annex Space with Toby Zoates' exhibition Regurgitated, Posters + Paintings 1978-2012. For anyone who missed it, the Sydney Morning Herald ran this candid article on punk-activist-street artist Toby Zoates in the Spectrum 1/9/2012. 

Come along to the opening 

TUESDAY 11 SEPTEMBER 2012

6-8 PM

583 Elizabeth, St Redfern

Don't miss Toby Zoates performing:

'The Artist's Sob Story' on

SATYRDAY 22 SEPTEMBER

3PM

with original music by Peter Urquhart

Exhibition dates 11-29 September 2012