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MAR/APR 2021<br />
Tony Albert<br />
Glenn Barkley<br />
Sanné Mestrom<br />
Jeremy Sharma<br />
María Fernanda Cardoso<br />
Yang Yongliang
Editorial Directors<br />
Ursula <strong>Sullivan</strong> and Joanna <strong>Strumpf</strong><br />
Managing Editor<br />
Harriet Reid<br />
Senior Designer &<br />
Studio Manager<br />
Matthew De Moiser<br />
Designer<br />
Angela Du<br />
Proofreader<br />
Nicholas Smith<br />
Production<br />
polleninteractive.com.au<br />
SYDNEY<br />
799 Elizabeth St<br />
Zetland, Sydney NSW 2017<br />
Australia<br />
P +61 2 9698 4696<br />
E art@sullivanstrumpf.com<br />
SINGAPORE<br />
P +65 83107529<br />
Megan Arlin | Gallery Director<br />
E megan@sullivanstrumpf.com<br />
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FRONT COVER: Tony Albert, Conversations with<br />
Preston: Christmas Bells (detail), 2020<br />
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on canvas<br />
300 x 400 cm<br />
<strong>Sullivan</strong>+<strong>Strumpf</strong> acknowledge the Gadigal people of the<br />
Eora nation, the traditional custodians of whose lands the<br />
Gallery stands. We pay respect to Elders, past, present<br />
and emerging and recognise their continued connection<br />
to Culture and Country.
CURATED BY NINA MIALL<br />
27 MARCH –<br />
11 JULY 2021<br />
twma.com.au<br />
Grant Stevens, Below the mountains and beyond the desert, a river runs through a valley of forests and grasslands,<br />
towards an ocean 2020 (digital render detail). Courtesy of the artist and <strong>Sullivan</strong> + <strong>Strumpf</strong>, Sydney<br />
MAJOR<br />
SPONSORS<br />
MAJOR<br />
PARTNERS<br />
EXHIBITION<br />
SUPPORTERS
Sanné Mestrom, works in progress.
5
Glenn Barkley<br />
nearwildheaven, 2021<br />
earthenware<br />
23 cm diameter<br />
MAR/APR 2021
Level Up<br />
Ursula <strong>Sullivan</strong>+Joanna <strong>Strumpf</strong><br />
One of the greatest rewards as a gallerist/art dealer/<br />
human is watching artists take their practice to the<br />
next level, become representatives of their generation<br />
and use that miraculous, silent, visual voice to start<br />
discussions about our world that need to be had.<br />
The four feature artists in this issue are all doing this –<br />
Tony Albert, Sanné Mestrom, Glenn Barkley and María<br />
Fernanda Cardoso – all in their own way, definitely<br />
leveling up, and definitely taking on the issues of<br />
our time.<br />
Angela Goddard, Director, Griffith University Art<br />
Museum and Chair of University Art Museums Australia,<br />
has known Tony Albert since he was 20 years old working<br />
as a junior trainee at the Queensland Art Gallery. She has<br />
seen him mature and develop from a young artist, into<br />
the (now 40) contemporary hero he is today. Her text<br />
for his exhibition Conversations with Margaret Preston<br />
mirrors the sensitivity in the work – Tony refers to it as: a<br />
bit like a velvet boxing glove – approaching this tricky<br />
but necessary conversation with the care and intelligence<br />
it demands.<br />
Sanné Mestrom is one of the most dynamic and<br />
challenging sculptors working in Australia today.<br />
Imogen Dixon-Smith draws parallels between Sanné and<br />
Dada artist Hannah Höch, and how they both explore<br />
creativity, labour and the female body. She challenges<br />
the giants who have gone before her, defiantly<br />
deconstructing, rearranging and questioning their<br />
legacy, the Modernist patriarchy.<br />
Glenn Barkley is a disruptive force in ceramics today.<br />
His work – some so small they fit in the palm of your<br />
hand – reaches way beyond the traditional language<br />
of ceramics. At once beautiful, weird and hilarious, his<br />
latest work is a melting pot of the deeply personal and<br />
the overtly public social media: American presidents,<br />
Caesar, Mozart, bushfires, gardening, music, COVID,<br />
poetry. He represents life as we know it. So immerse<br />
yourself.<br />
Ahead of her 50th solo exhibition Gumnuts and<br />
Sandstone, we take a closer look at the remarkable<br />
career of María Fernanda Cardoso. Spaning over<br />
30 years and three continents, her career has one<br />
common thread throughout – a fascination with the<br />
intrinsic geometry of the organic. From representing<br />
her homeland of Colombia at the Venice Biennale to<br />
performing her Cardoso Flea Circus literally everywhere<br />
from the Pompidou in Paris to Sydney’s own Opera<br />
House, we learn a little more about Cardoso before her<br />
May exhibition at <strong>Sullivan</strong>+<strong>Strumpf</strong>, Sydney.<br />
In this issue we also take a sneak peak into the studios<br />
of Yang Yongliang and Jeremy Sharma, curate a small<br />
but lovely selection of works on the timely theme of<br />
Renewal, and give the Last Word to our great friends<br />
and contemporary art supporters Rob Postema and<br />
Trish Jungfer.<br />
The rewards abound.<br />
Enjoy,<br />
Ursula & Joanna.<br />
7
10<br />
24<br />
32<br />
MAR/APR 2021
Contents<br />
64<br />
10<br />
18<br />
24<br />
32<br />
46<br />
54<br />
60<br />
64<br />
66<br />
Sanné Mestrom: Body as Verb<br />
In the Studio: Jeremy Sharma<br />
Glenn Barkley: The Urn of Bitter Prophecy<br />
Tony Albert: Conversations with Margaret Preston<br />
María Fernanda Cardoso<br />
Yang Yongliang: Allegory of the cave<br />
Last Word: Do you Collect?<br />
Quick Curate: Renewel<br />
Up Next<br />
9
Sanné Mestrom, works in progress.<br />
Sanné Mestrom:<br />
Body as Verb<br />
The distorted echos of Hannah Höch’s photomontages reverberate<br />
through Sanné Mestrom’s stone sculptures. The mashups of<br />
both women transform pre-existing images and forms into entirely<br />
new entities with inescapable references to modern life. Almost a<br />
century later however, Mestrom’s work lets us sit with the lived reality<br />
of Höch’s modernist legacy.<br />
By Imogen Dixon-Smith<br />
Exhibition: April 15 - May 8<br />
+ REGISTER FOR PREVIEW BEFORE APRIL 15<br />
11
Sanné Mestrom: Body as Verb<br />
One of the hallmarks of the English language is<br />
the provision of a substantial lexicon where<br />
one can find multiple terms to describe a<br />
single phenomenon, each with specific connotations<br />
that deviate ever so subtly. We can select from a<br />
list of synonyms a word that pinpoints with relative<br />
precision an action we wish to communicate and a<br />
particular feeling we wish to signify. We can hold,<br />
carry, bear or cradle a weight, each term’s accuracy<br />
changing with the context of the situation described.<br />
Sanné Mestrom’s new series Body as Verb formally<br />
and conceptually explores the complex relationship<br />
between support and agency, which is echoed in the<br />
slippage between these four words. Experimenting<br />
with notions of monumentality, permanence and<br />
precision, Mestrom has fashioned abstracted bodily<br />
forms of varying materiality, finish and size. She has<br />
intentionally designed the series, including six robust<br />
legs and a reclining body, to be both aesthetic and<br />
functional – to hold each other (and the viewer) up<br />
visually and physically.<br />
Mestrom’s practice has always worked to complicate<br />
understandings of sculpture, but has recently focused<br />
more intently on exploring the agency of sculpture<br />
and its accountability to public and private space and<br />
the people that inhabit it. For Mestrom, this research<br />
is inseparable from the personal: “like my body,<br />
particularly since giving birth and motherhood…every<br />
bit of me now has to ‘function’. My body has a job<br />
to do, it has a responsibility to the world, and to the<br />
beings in my life. Equally, these objects are not inert,<br />
they also have a responsibility to other objects, and to<br />
the world at large.”<br />
While each individual object is autonomous, the group<br />
can be reconfigured in countless arrangements –<br />
prostrate, outstretched or squatting structures all offer<br />
up sturdy support for smaller components or real bodies<br />
in the space. Scattered across the lush green grass of<br />
her Blue Mountain’s yard, Mestrom moves her models<br />
around countless times allowing these humanesque<br />
contours to climb and cradle one another, a process that<br />
is equal parts chaos and nurture. The physical enactment<br />
of her creative process becomes a rumination on her<br />
own maternal body pulled in all directions as she works<br />
to sustain her loved ones and her career. She laughs as<br />
she describes to me how you would find her moving<br />
through life most days, “I’ve always got my baby in<br />
one arm, grocery bags in the other, I’m kicking the car<br />
door shut with my foot, phone on my shoulder; that’s<br />
kind of the picture of the working mum – everything is<br />
working, every bit of me has a job to do – my brain as an<br />
academic, my body as an artist, my heart as a mum.”<br />
The utilitarian state of the female body could not be<br />
more relevant to the lives we’ve lived over the past 12<br />
months. Termed the ‘she-cession’ by researchers in the<br />
US, women have been disproportionately affected by<br />
the ongoing social impacts of the global pandemic.<br />
The situation is strongly tied to the realities of women’s<br />
labour. Female-dominated industries have been hit<br />
the hardest and the pressure on working mothers to<br />
juggle careers with caring responsibilities has intensified<br />
during periods of school shutdowns. The ambiguity<br />
of Mestrom’s raw, changeable forms enact visual and<br />
experiential cues that reflect the ambivalence linking the<br />
theoretical offerings and practical realities of liberation;<br />
the conundrum of keeping up fulfilling work both within<br />
and beyond the walls of the home.<br />
MAR/APR 2021
Sanné Mestrom in her studio.<br />
13
Sanné Mestrom: Body as Verb<br />
“Like my body, particularly since giving<br />
birth and motherhood...every bit of<br />
me now has to ‘function’. My body has<br />
a job to do, it has a responsibility to<br />
the world, and to the beings in my life.<br />
Equally, these objects are not inert,<br />
they also have a responsibility to other<br />
objects, and to the world at large.”<br />
Mestrom’s now distinctive curvilinear language has been<br />
developed, remoulded and refined in constant dialogue<br />
with male masters of modernism such as Brancusi and<br />
Picasso. Previously referencing particular works or<br />
archetypes of their stylistic legacy, here Mestrom shows<br />
a maturity that exceeds the deconstruction of extant<br />
historic objects and forms, instead manifesting the<br />
visual residue left from a lifetime of canonical exposure<br />
into novel forms that take on a life of their own. The<br />
inheritance of Modernism is still palpable, but here, the<br />
playfulness of her mutable sculptures share a resonance<br />
with a particular female figure of 20th century art.<br />
Pivoting away from her equivocation between reverence<br />
and defiance of male modernists, the parallels that<br />
can be drawn between Body as Verb and the work of<br />
Dada artist Hannah Höch offers a reappraisal of women<br />
exploring notions of creativity, labour and the female<br />
body in new contexts.<br />
The echo of Höch’s cyborg-like ‘New Woman’ mashed<br />
together through the process of photomontage is<br />
palpable in Mestrom’s sculptures. Described by Matthew<br />
Biro as a “heterogenous constellation of fragments”<br />
these images of the archetypal modern ‘liberated’<br />
woman – part machine, part human, part media –<br />
reflected both trauma and regeneration, the dual spirit<br />
of the interwar Weimar period. Like Mestrom, Höch used<br />
photomontage to move beyond plain political critique<br />
and transform pre-existing images and forms into<br />
entirely new entities, yes with inescapable references<br />
to modern life, but with their own agency and energy<br />
to perform. While Höch dealt with an unprecedented<br />
historic moment that saw women enter the political and<br />
professional sphere, almost a century later Mestrom’s<br />
work allows us to sit with the lived reality of the these<br />
modernist legacies. As our weight is lifted from the floor<br />
we can appreciate the value of supportive mechanisms,<br />
be they as conspicuous and tangible as a bench or as<br />
ineffable as maternal nurture.<br />
Imogen Dixon-Smith is a curator and writer currently<br />
based between Gadigal, Ngunnawal and Ngambri<br />
country.<br />
Exhibition: April 15 - May 8<br />
+ REGISTER FOR PREVIEW BEFORE APRIL 15<br />
MAR/APR 2021
Sanné Mestrom, work in progress.<br />
15
Sanné Mestrom: Body as Verb<br />
Ursula <strong>Sullivan</strong> chats to Sanné Mestrom about<br />
Modernism, motherhood and modular art.<br />
URS/ SANNÉ, I LOVE THE NEW WORK AND I’M<br />
INTRIGUED ABOUT THE AESTHETIC PROGRESSION<br />
FROM YOUR LAST EXHIBITION CORRECTIONS. BOTH<br />
BODIES OF WORK ARE BASED IN FIGURATION, BUT<br />
WHAT WAS CLEAN LINED, MODERNIST CURVES, HAS<br />
BECOME CHUNKIER, SOLID, WEIGHTY. CAN YOU TELL<br />
ME ABOUT HOW YOU ARRIVED HERE?<br />
MAR/APR 2021<br />
Sanné Mestrom, work in progress.<br />
SM/ Yes, in a way the new works are more figurative than<br />
those in the Corrections exhibition, albeit still modular<br />
and somewhat contorted. The new works in Body as<br />
Verb consist of interchangeable component parts made<br />
from concrete, timber, plaster, steel and bronze. In<br />
each work the sculptural forms that loosely resemble<br />
body parts that are stacked on top of each other, but<br />
not so as to form a single body, but rather a single<br />
work might consist of one body holding another body.<br />
Like people holding people, they assume an obscure<br />
kind of intimacy - perhaps a comforting relationship<br />
between forms, or perhaps a menacing co-dependency.<br />
The irregularity of the forms is born out of their fairly<br />
frenzied process of production: they are all made by<br />
hand in a process of adding and subtracting materials<br />
and elements, of building and breaking, constructing,<br />
deconstructing, reconstructing, gathering and<br />
disbursing, sealing and healing.
Watch Sanné working on Body as Verb.<br />
URS/ THERE IS SOMETHING IN YOUR WORK THAT HARKS<br />
URS/ AS LONG AS I’VE KNOWN YOU, YOU’VE BEEN<br />
BACK TO MODERNIST WORKS, AND YET THEY FEEL<br />
PASSIONATE ABOUT PUBLIC ART, THE WAY WE LIVE<br />
DIFFERENT, LIKE MODERNISM HAS BEEN SUBVERTED<br />
WITH SCULPTURE AND ALSO THE USE AND FUNCTION<br />
BUT IT DOESN’T ACTUALLY REALISE IT YET… IS THERE<br />
OF SCULPTURE. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THIS IN<br />
A SUBVERSION/ DECONSTRUCTION/ FINGER UP TO<br />
REFERENCE TO THE NEW WORK?<br />
INTERVIEW<br />
MODERNISM?<br />
SM/ Initially my practice was deeply engaged with<br />
post-modern discourse - a critique of Modernism.<br />
But over time the work has moved away from such<br />
explicit assumptions. Certain ideological critiques<br />
are embedded in my practice, as they are in me as a<br />
person, but these days my creative process is a much<br />
more intuitive one. I spend a long time - a year or<br />
more - moving slowly towards a body of sculptures.<br />
Over this time period, as I continue to proliferate in the<br />
studio - continuously testing, experimenting and playing<br />
with forms - the works themselves come into view -<br />
sometimes leisurely, sometimes sluggishly. It’s a bit like<br />
moving through a fog, where you can only take one step<br />
at a time and you just hope like hell that you’re moving<br />
in the right direction. But the most important thing is<br />
just to keep on moving. Looking back on a body of work,<br />
once it’s near completion, things all look so obvious -<br />
the forms, the materials, the ideas coalesced - but the<br />
process of getting there can be harrowing.<br />
SM/ I’m really interested in sculpture being integrated<br />
into our everyday lives, rather than an inert object<br />
that sit politely in a corner or on a pedestal. This<br />
is why I’m interested in what I think of as ‘playable<br />
sculpture’: something that is integrated into public life<br />
by inviting physical engagement, alongside the works<br />
more traditional artistic, intellectual and cultural value.<br />
Ultimately, I’m interested in adding to intergenerational<br />
and child-friendly art experiences in the public realm.<br />
This has become of increasing interest to me since<br />
becoming a mother, and seeing the world down on my<br />
knees, through my son’s eyes. A child's experience of<br />
public space consists largely of steps, eaves, drains,<br />
gutters, corners, potholes and reflections - the very<br />
features of public space that are largely invisible to<br />
adults. Too often they are a neglected amenity of urban<br />
design. I’m interested in exploring what role art can play<br />
in redressing the world as it’s seen through a child’s eyes<br />
so that public space can become less threatening and<br />
more curious, dynamic and alive.<br />
17
In the Studio:<br />
Jeremy Sharma<br />
My studio is located in a building dedicated for artist studios. It is modest in size with<br />
windows, quite untypical, and the setup changes every three years when I reconfigure<br />
it for the types of projects I’m developing.<br />
Right now it looks a little like a work station and jamming studio as I have many<br />
musical instruments lying about, a little library and a section dedicated to storage. It’s<br />
an organised mess.<br />
I have my older works stored at the back, where I’ve built a storage system. I have<br />
a huge work table with my electronics gear, and the other space is like a living area<br />
when I house my musical instruments. I generally make my large drawings downstairs<br />
in the multipurpose hall and my little ones on my kitchen table in my apartment. If it’s<br />
video editing I do it mostly at home, too.<br />
I try to spend time in the studio as much as I can. Right now it’s every week, but it gets<br />
intense sometimes.<br />
For me, art and music don’t necessarily influence each other, but I think most artists<br />
are into music. Music is more abstract and formless and uses a different part of<br />
your brain that goes beyond the visual field, and hence I think it’s more free. Maybe<br />
because I’m not schooled and I don’t have to explain to anyone what my music means,<br />
so I try to adopt that sensibility in my art. Art has crept into music for me in the way<br />
that sound and music are legitimate disciplines or mediums in contemporary art<br />
and interdisciplinary practice. It is really about doing what interests you. Music can<br />
produce images and images can produce music too, either through data translation or<br />
just imaginatively. In a way, music can be the subject of art and art can be the subject<br />
of music.<br />
Jeremy Sharma at <strong>Sullivan</strong>+<strong>Strumpf</strong> Sydney June 10 - July 3<br />
MAR/APR 2021
“For me, art and music don’t<br />
necessarily influence each other...<br />
Music is more abstract and formless...”<br />
Jeremy Sharma in his studio.<br />
Interview<br />
19
In the Studio:<br />
Jeremy Sharma<br />
Jeremy Sharma<br />
Changi, 2020<br />
carbon on paper<br />
23 x 31 cm<br />
MAR/APR 2021
Jeremy Sharma<br />
The Bathers 2 (after Géricault), 2020<br />
carbon on paper<br />
24.9 x 34.5 cm<br />
21
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EMAIL: art@sullivanstrumpf.com<br />
Australian Contemporary Art Magazine
On Fire:<br />
Climate and Crisis<br />
Until 20 March 2021<br />
ima.org.au<br />
07 3252 5750<br />
420 Brunswick Street<br />
Fortitude Valley QLD<br />
Gordon Bennett, Naomi Blacklock, Paul Bong, Hannah Brontë,<br />
Michael Candy, Kinly Grey, Dale Harding, Tracey Moffatt with Gary Hillberg,<br />
Erika Scott, Madonna Staunton, Anne Wallace, Judy Watson,<br />
Warraba Weatherall, Tintin Wulia, and Jemima Wyman.<br />
Curated by Tim Riley Walsh.<br />
The IMA is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, the Australian Government through Australia<br />
Council for the Arts, and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Federal, State, and Territory<br />
Governments. The IMA is a member of Contemporary Art Organisations Australia. This project is supported by the Queensland<br />
Government through Arts Queensland and by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and<br />
advisory body.<br />
Image: Jemima Wyman, Haze...,<br />
2020, 124.5 x 183 cm, handcut digital<br />
photo collage. Courtesy the artist,<br />
Milani Gallery, Brisbane, and <strong>Sullivan</strong> +<br />
<strong>Strumpf</strong>, Sydney.
Glenn Barkley<br />
Apocalyptic splash back (detail), 2021<br />
earthenware<br />
9.5 cm each (dimensions variable)<br />
Glenn Barkley:<br />
The Urn of Bitter<br />
Prophecy<br />
Anna Dunnill visits Glenn Barkley at home in his sprawling garden. It’s<br />
a revealing perspective of the artist, who describes the language of<br />
ceramics as a compost — an ancient pile, as old as people, holding<br />
shapes, designs, glazes, cooking traditions, stories and the buried<br />
thumbprints of millennia.<br />
By Anna Dunnill<br />
Exhibition: April 8 - May 8<br />
+ REGISTER FOR PREVIEW BEFORE APRIL 8<br />
25
Glenn Barkley: The Urn<br />
of Bitter Prophecy<br />
01. Glenn Barkley<br />
Jefferson with butter chicken tumour, 2021<br />
earthenware<br />
13 x 6 x 5 cm<br />
02. Glenn Barkley<br />
Mozart Stink Bottle with classical base, 2021<br />
earthenware<br />
11.5 x 10.5 x 4 cm<br />
03. Glenn Barkley<br />
Caesar Stink Bottle, 2021<br />
earthenware<br />
9 x 5.5 x 2.5 cm<br />
04. Glenn Barkley<br />
Small flouro vase, 2021<br />
earthenware<br />
9.5 x 7.5 cm<br />
05. Glenn Barkley<br />
onthatjaggedshore, 2021<br />
earthenware<br />
23 x 14 cm<br />
06. Glenn Barkley<br />
Stinky Little Baby Bottle, 2021<br />
earthenware<br />
10.5 x 8.5 x 4 cm<br />
01 02<br />
MAR/APR 2021
03<br />
04 05<br />
06<br />
27
Glenn Barkley: The Urn<br />
of Bitter Prophecy<br />
“Good years follow bad, the earth<br />
renews itself, trees fruit, flowers<br />
bloom. Fire and flood and plague<br />
and war pass over the surface, leaving<br />
fragments in their wake.”<br />
MAR/APR 2021<br />
I<br />
collect ceramic shards from my garden. They show up<br />
with surprising regularity, broken fragments emerging<br />
from the rich clay soil along with a beetroot or a clump<br />
of mallow. When I brush off the dirt I can conjure the<br />
vessel-bodies they came from, filling in the blanks of a<br />
china plate or a patterned tile, following the curve of a<br />
heavy brown-glazed flowerpot. Buried for years, perhaps<br />
decades, they rise to the surface, disturbed by plant<br />
roots, by the swelling and evaporation of water,<br />
by digging.<br />
In 2020 I got really into plants; when the usual routines<br />
and milestones dissolved into a soupy blur I clung to the<br />
cycles of nature to prove that time had passed. And it did<br />
pass, slowly, steadily. The earth doth like a snake renew.<br />
It sheds its exhausted old skin, emerges a gleaming<br />
creature. Green shoots emerge, uncurl, sprout buds.<br />
I became very invested in our compost bin with its<br />
jewel-bright worms. I marvelled at the transformation<br />
of rancid food scraps and torn paper into dark rich<br />
sweet-smelling soil, which we dug back into the garden,<br />
beginning again.<br />
Glenn Barkley describes the language of ceramics as a<br />
compost. It’s an ancient pile, as old as people, holding<br />
shapes, designs, glazes, cooking traditions, stories, the<br />
buried thumbprints of millennia. Fossicking through,<br />
he pulls out an amphora—a large round urn with two<br />
handles, scored with geometric shapes—made in Cyprus<br />
around 2700 years ago. A salt-glazed ‘Beardman’ jug<br />
from 17th century Germany, found on the wreck of the<br />
Batavia, off the Western Australian coast. A bust of<br />
Abraham Lincoln. A clay pipe. A Japanese glaze. A 1980s<br />
mass-produced ceramic platypus. A 1789 Wedgwood<br />
medallion depicting a classical Greek scene, made using<br />
clay dug by Arthur Phillips from present-day Sydney<br />
cove, within days of landing.<br />
The compost of history is eaten by worms and excreted<br />
as contemporary culture. “Worms are like the selfextruders,<br />
in the same way that an artist might be,”<br />
Barkley said in a 2015 interview. “When you read and<br />
you look at history and look at objects, and you go<br />
to museums and you look at ceramics, all this passes<br />
through you into the work, in the same way as the worm<br />
passes molecules and wastes through its body.”<br />
My notes from our conversation are a catalogue of<br />
extruded scraps: Fire, plague. Classicism. Internet<br />
language. Protest. Folk tradition. Op-shop aesthetic.<br />
The Founding Fathers.
Glenn Barkley<br />
beforethefirstfarflash, 2021<br />
earthenware<br />
59 x 33 x 37 cm<br />
29
“Worms are like the self-extruders, in<br />
the same way that an artist might be.”<br />
Glenn Barkley<br />
pox pot with tokens and handles, 2021<br />
earthenware<br />
51 x 32 cm<br />
MAR/APR 2021
Glenn Barkley: The Urn<br />
of Bitter Prophecy<br />
Surfaces textured and pitted, Barkley’s tiles and pots are<br />
adorned with fragments pulled from the pile. A beard,<br />
an ear, a pattern, a stamp; cast, pressed and moulded,<br />
glazed in brilliant colours that defy the false purity of<br />
classical white marble. These pots are monumental<br />
in size, huge urns heavy with accumulated histories<br />
transformed into something new.<br />
Barkley’s pots also bear texts sifted from the humus of<br />
literature, from ‘The Lark Ascending’ to Judith Wright’s<br />
‘Black Cockatoos’ to a Guns’N’Roses song (‘I used to<br />
do a little but a little wouldn’t do’, the refrain of both<br />
addiction and capitalism). The exhibition’s title, and the<br />
texts on several pots, are drawn from the final chorus of<br />
Hellas, a narrative poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Written<br />
in 1822, the poem recounts the ongoing war between<br />
Greece and Turkey. At its end, a chorus of captive Greek<br />
women plead for the end of war and death: The world’s<br />
great age begins anew, they prophesy; we return to<br />
the beginning of the cycle and history repeats itself, an<br />
ouroboros, a perpetual worm.<br />
four acres, which he manages to the point of being “sort<br />
of in control but not really.” He likes “blowsy flowers”,<br />
colourful untidy things like dahlias and camellias, like<br />
the pops of colour in his glazes. “We’ve had the biggest<br />
dahlias we’ve ever had, this year,” he says, “because of<br />
the rain. It’s been rainy—really hot—rainy—really hot.<br />
We’re going to have a bumper crop of citrus too. It’s<br />
been a really great year for the garden, after a really bad<br />
couple of years.”<br />
Good years follow bad, the earth renews itself, trees<br />
fruit, flowers bloom. Fire and flood and plague and war<br />
pass over the surface, leaving fragments in their wake—<br />
potsherds, poems, battleground debris—that sink down<br />
into the clay and decompose, or wait there until they’re<br />
disturbed by roots, by water, by digging.<br />
Exhibition: April 8 - May 8<br />
+ REGISTER FOR PREVIEW BEFORE APRIL 8<br />
Clay, Barkley says, is “inherently scatalogical, the same<br />
way that gardening is”. He tells me about his garden:<br />
31
MAR/APR 2021
Tony Albert<br />
Conversations with Preston: Fennel Flowers and Sturt’s Desert Pea, 2020<br />
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on Arches paper<br />
62 x 57 cm<br />
Tony Albert:<br />
Conversations with<br />
Margaret Preston<br />
An important strand of Tony Albert’s practice is appropriated and<br />
abstracted Aboriginal designs, symbols and caricature images of<br />
Aboriginal people, under a loose banner termed ‘Aboriginalia’. In<br />
this latest series of works ‘Conversations with Margaret Preston’,<br />
Albert turns to the well-known oeuvre of Australian modernist<br />
printmaker and painter Margaret Preston (1875-1963).<br />
By Angela Goddard, Director, Griffith University Art Museum<br />
Exhibition: March 18 - April 10<br />
+ REGISTER FOR PREVIEW BEFORE MARCH 18<br />
33
MAR/APR 2021
Tony Albert<br />
I feel the weight of the world on my<br />
shoulder, 2020<br />
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric<br />
on Arches paper<br />
57 x 76 cm<br />
35
Tony Albert: Conversations<br />
with Margaret Preston<br />
Now acknowledged as Australia's preeminent<br />
modernist between the wars, Preston<br />
enjoyed immense popularity in art and design<br />
communities in Australia from the 1920s for several<br />
decades, with many of her articles published in The<br />
Home magazine and Art in Australia encouraging<br />
readers to take designs and symbols from Aboriginal<br />
art to devise a uniquely Australian cultural expression.<br />
One of the most popular of these was her 1930 article<br />
‘The Application of Aboriginal Designs’ in which she<br />
called for all Australians to ‘be Aboriginal’.(1) However<br />
benevolent in intent, an expression of a larger interest<br />
in Aboriginal art and culture informed by her travels<br />
throughout Australia, these exhortations have since been<br />
criticised by subsequent generations for their casual<br />
lack of understanding of the appropriation of sacred<br />
designs. As curator Hetti Perkins has said of Preston’s<br />
use of Aboriginal motifs: ‘It's like speaking in a French<br />
accent without speaking French. The accent is there, the<br />
intonation is there, but the meaning is not.’(2)<br />
Many contemporary Indigenous artists have since<br />
engaged with Preston’s appropriations, calling out<br />
her lack of acknowledgment of individual makers and<br />
sources, including Trevor Nickolls, Marshall Bell, Richard<br />
Bell, and perhaps most determinedly, Gordon Bennett.<br />
Bennett took motifs including the male Aboriginal figure<br />
from Preston’s ‘Expulsion’ and the black swan from a<br />
1923 woodcut and tangled them in Piet Mondrian’s high<br />
modernist grid in his ‘Home Décor’ series (1995-2013),<br />
and directly quoted from a suite of designs Preston<br />
published in Art in Australia in 1925. In his later series<br />
of abstract paintings ‘Home Décor: After M. Preston’<br />
(2008-13), Albert has primarily been drawn to Preston’s<br />
hand coloured woodcut still lives of native flowers. These<br />
works were incredibly popular but often dismissed as<br />
‘decorative’ by critics and the art establishment. Preston<br />
herself was dismissed as a mere flower painter by many<br />
powerful art world figures such as Norman Lindsay<br />
and John Reed, for her privileging the decorative and<br />
avoiding realism or literary references in her work.<br />
Albert’s interest lies in the consequences of Preston’s<br />
encouragements - these kitsch caricatures of Aboriginal<br />
designs and motifs still found on tea towels, tablecloths,<br />
table runners, handkerchiefs, placemats, and lengths<br />
of fabric, rather than the sophisticated abstraction she<br />
envisioned. Albert’s own relationship to these objects<br />
is affectionate - he has collected these items since<br />
childhood, tempered with a keen awareness of the<br />
cultural inappropriateness and disregard for the spiritual<br />
significance they embody. His collection of fabric<br />
accumulated over decades, sourced from op shops, eBay<br />
and friends, has in part been seen in an earlier body<br />
of work ‘Mid Century Modern’ 2016 as backgrounds to<br />
vintage ashtrays where ‘Aboriginal faces and bodies<br />
were once receptacles for hot ash and cigarette butts.’(3)<br />
Their motifs include a mélange of caricatured Aboriginal<br />
faces, stylised boomerangs and other weapons; motifs<br />
and animal shapes borrowed from Yolgnu and Tiwi<br />
bark paintings, to north Queensland rainforest shields<br />
and jawun baskets, to desert body painting designs, all<br />
mixed in together. These are cut into shapes and glued<br />
onto Arches paper or canvas, ringed with painted black<br />
borders. Albert chooses source prints by Preston for the<br />
graphic strength of their hand-coloured flat planes of<br />
Cubist-influenced modernism.<br />
MAR/APR 2021<br />
Tony Albert<br />
Conversations with Preston: Peace Lily (detail), 2020<br />
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on Arches paper<br />
153 x 103 cm
37
Tony Albert: Conversations<br />
with Margaret Preston<br />
MAR/APR 2021<br />
LEFT: Tony Albert<br />
Abstract: Aboriginal Art IV, 2020<br />
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on Arches paper<br />
76 x 57 cm<br />
RIGHT: Tony Albert<br />
Conversations with Preston: Abstraction (Curtain Design), 2020<br />
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on Arches paper<br />
153 x 102 cm
39
Tony Albert: Conversations<br />
with Margaret Preston<br />
MAR/APR 2021<br />
Albert’s major diptych ‘Conversations with Preston:<br />
Christmas Bells’ 2020 is based on Preston’s handcoloured<br />
print ‘Christmas Bells’ 1925, held in the<br />
National Gallery of Australia’s collection. The reds and<br />
yellows of the native Blandfordia nobilis are made up<br />
of strong black outlines on bright red fabric. The vase,<br />
which was black and inscribed with a white V pattern in<br />
Preston’s original, is here made up of squares of mostly<br />
linen tea towels, many of them with the text ‘Australian<br />
Aboriginal Art’ with glimpses of both a calendar and a<br />
map of the continent.<br />
Interestingly, fake Preston works abound in op shops and<br />
on the internet, and Albert has used several questionable<br />
Prestons as source images further extending a complex<br />
web of appropriation and cultural theft, such as his three<br />
depictions of single protea flowers.<br />
Albert has also used one of Preston’s mysterious late<br />
religious works in this series. Her 1952 colour stencil,<br />
gouache on thin black card ‘Expulsion’ was part of<br />
a series of biblical themed works, popular perhaps<br />
due to post-war religious revivalism that also saw the<br />
inauguration of the Blake Prize for Religious art in 1951.<br />
Never sold by the artist, the work was gifted by her<br />
widower in 1967 to the Art Gallery of New South Wales.<br />
On a flat background, at the very top of the composition,<br />
a white God presides symmetrically like an icon figure,<br />
with a whip in one hand and a sword in another. Instead<br />
of an archway to the garden, a corrugated iron fence<br />
and a wire gate, secured with a padlock as the central<br />
focal point. Adam and Eve are depicted as Aboriginal<br />
people – they have dark skin and wear loincloths, being<br />
driven from the garden into an Australian landscape<br />
overrun with scotch thistles. Adam holds an object<br />
aloft, appealing to the God who has forsaken him; Eve<br />
holds a baby. This work is confounding in its casting of<br />
the sinners as black, and god as white. It could perhaps<br />
be seen as depicting the Christian biblical allegory to<br />
describe how Aboriginal people were cast out from their<br />
own country, by the misuse of Christianity itself, but<br />
this is reading too much into the work of an artist who<br />
avoided political statements herself on the realities of life<br />
for Aboriginal people.<br />
Preston saw the use of Aboriginal imagery as a vehicle,<br />
a way for Australian artists to make truly original<br />
contributions to the pursuit of Modernism. Art historian<br />
Ian MacLean asks if Bennett’s works both parody<br />
Preston as well as participate in and reproduce her<br />
framing of Aboriginality within modernism.(4) Albert is<br />
also doing this and more - not making a damning call<br />
to denounce Preston, but, as the title of this series title<br />
suggests, answering her call to dialogue with Aboriginal<br />
art and motifs with his own conversation, while also<br />
demonstrating that the ambition to ‘be Aboriginal’ has<br />
resulted in the sometimes grotesque caricatures we see<br />
in these fabrics, which counteract the positive spirit of<br />
her making. Albert says:<br />
At the core of my work is a kind of reconciliation with<br />
these racist objects’ very existence. Yes, they are painful<br />
reiterations of a violent and oppressive history, but<br />
we cannot hide or destroy them because they are an<br />
important societal record that should not be forgotten.<br />
I’m trying to reconcile those two positions.(5)<br />
This project of constructive reconciliation has multiple<br />
implications. Albert highlights Preston’s formidable<br />
skill at rendering the humble still life into the most<br />
graphically powerful expressions of Modernism in<br />
Australia, while also reminding us of the consequences<br />
of using sacred images without acknowledgment or<br />
respect. His intention is dialogue; a conversation, which<br />
is not to say these conversations will not be confronting<br />
and uncomfortable, but will hopefully and ultimately also<br />
be productive.<br />
Exhibition: March 18 - April 10<br />
+ REGISTER FOR PREVIEW BEFORE MARCH 18
Tony Albert<br />
Conversations with Preston: Protea (attributed) III, 2020<br />
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on Arches paper<br />
76 x 58 cm<br />
Endnotes<br />
1. Margaret Preston, ‘The Application of Aboriginal Designs’ Art in Australia, 3rd series, no 31, March 1930.<br />
2. Hetti Perkins quoted in Alexa Moses,’ Shadow cast over a painter's legacy’, Sydney Morning Herald, July 25, 2005, p.11.<br />
3. Bruce Johnson McLean, ‘Invisible truths’, Tony Albert: Visible [exhibition catalogue], Queensland Art Gallery I Gallery of<br />
Modern Art, Brisbane, 2018, p.18.<br />
4. Ian McLean, ‘Gordon Bennett's Home Decor: the joker in the pack’, Law Text Culture, 4, 1998, p.290.<br />
5. Tony Albert interviewed by Maura Reilly, ‘I am important: An interview with Tony Albert’, Tony Albert, Art & Australia/ Dott<br />
Publishing, Paddington, NSW, 2015, p.49.<br />
41
Watch Tony working on Conversations with Margaret Preston.<br />
MAR/APR 2021<br />
Tony Albert<br />
Abstract: Aboriginal Art II, 2020<br />
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on Arches paper<br />
153 x 102 cm
43
Tony Albert<br />
Conversations with Preston: Peace Lily, 2020<br />
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on Arches paper<br />
153 x 103 cm
Tony Albert<br />
Conversations with Preston: Ranunculus, 2020<br />
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on Arches paper<br />
153 x 103 cm<br />
45
María Fernanda<br />
Cardoso<br />
Three continents and 30 years of art making.<br />
MAR/APR 2021<br />
The work of María Fernanda Cardoso has a consistent<br />
feature – looking at the different ways geometry<br />
manifesting itself in living creatures. Cardoso has<br />
developed a powerful body of work based on the<br />
intrinsic forms of animals and plants, and combining<br />
them in unexpected ways. Her work evolves in series<br />
that are developed over a long periods of time, from<br />
sculpture to scientific research, through to public<br />
performance.<br />
Initially when Cardoso still lived in Colombia, she would<br />
take local materials and native dead animals in order<br />
to build sculptures and enigmatic objects alluding to<br />
pre-Columbian myths and indigenous traditions. Typical<br />
objects such as totumas, earth soaps, homemade glue,<br />
bocadillos, and other elements pertaining to local<br />
cultures were combined in surprising works. Pieces with<br />
flies, grasshoppers, snakes, wall lizards and frogs are<br />
considered key pieces of contemporary Colombian art:<br />
one of them, Corona para una princesa Chibcha(Crown<br />
for a Chibcha Princess) was awarded the first prize for the<br />
II Biennial at Bogotá’s Museum of Modern Art in 1990.<br />
In the early 1990s, Cardoso moved to the United States,<br />
where she began her research on fleas – a ubiquitous<br />
domestic parasite. A few years later, the Cardoso Flea<br />
Circus, initially a performance belonging to the realm of<br />
art, becomes an authentic mass show. Simultaneously,<br />
Cardoso investigates the behaviour of insects, with a<br />
particular interest in the phenomenon of camouflage,<br />
characteristic of some species that may be seen as<br />
a reflection of the immigrant’s will to belong and to<br />
become one with her context.<br />
After living in San Francisco for several years, Cardoso<br />
moved to Sydney, Australia. This led to a renewed<br />
investigation of different traditions and materials, such<br />
as sheep’s wool and emu feathers, while preserving<br />
an emphasis on the intrinsic geometry of the organic.<br />
Cardoso devotes long periods of time to her series,<br />
with her work on fleas taking a whole decade. Since<br />
the beginning of this century, the artist has undertaken<br />
an investigation into the incredible formal diversity of<br />
the reproductive organs in some animals, particularly<br />
at the microscopic level, in a long-term project on the<br />
morphology of reproductive organs of small animals and<br />
insects, featured in the Museum of Copulatory Organs<br />
(MoCO).<br />
In the last decade, Cardoso has delved further into<br />
her research on plants and animals, often resorting to<br />
scientific tools and processes to create images otherwise<br />
impossible to attain. The Naked Flora series shows<br />
close-ups of reproductive organs of flowers, composite<br />
images obtained by a complex optical and digital setup.<br />
On the Origins of Art I and II and the Actual Size series<br />
focus on the elaborate courtship “dances” of miniature<br />
Peacock spiders. In recent years she has created several<br />
large-scale public works: Sandstone Pollen, scientifically<br />
accurate pollen models digitally carved in sandstone.<br />
While I Live I Will Grow, a living urban sculpture that<br />
embodies non-human timeframes as a powerful<br />
commentary about the transience of monuments, and<br />
Tree Full of Life, a large tree whose foliage is entirely<br />
composed of insects that resemble leaves. Gumnuts,<br />
her latest series, uses seeds from various species of<br />
Australian trees to create vibrant optical pieces that<br />
highlight the intricate morphologies of this overlooked<br />
but ever present feature of the local landscape.<br />
José Roca & Alejandro Marin<br />
Excerpts from: Animalario de María Fernanda Cardoso.<br />
Bogotá: Seguros Bolívar, 2013. p5<br />
Exhibition: May 20 - June 5<br />
+ REGISTER FOR PREVIEW BEFORE MAY 20
47
PREVIOUS PAGE: María Fernanda Cardoso with her work<br />
Eucalyptus Gumnuts Kuru Alala, Photo credit: Jillian Nalty<br />
MAR/APR 2021<br />
LEFT: María Fernanda Cardoso<br />
Emu Flag #1, 2007<br />
emu feathers, fibreglass netting, metal rod, glue<br />
209 x 180 x 20 cm<br />
RIGHT: María Fernanda Cardoso<br />
Reversible B (Emu rectangle worn), 2006-2008<br />
180 x 120cm
49
María Fernanda Cardoso: Timeline<br />
CALABAZAS<br />
1987 — Moves to NY<br />
from Bogota, Colombia<br />
– completes Masters of<br />
Fine Arts, Sculpture at Yale<br />
University 1990.<br />
CORN COIL<br />
AMERICAN MARBLE<br />
1989<br />
1990 Arte Colombiano de<br />
los 80: Escultura. Centro<br />
Colombo Americano. Bogota,<br />
Colombia.<br />
1994 Ante America. (Touring<br />
exhibition). Biblioteca Luis<br />
Angel Arango, Bogota,<br />
Colombia.<br />
Collection: Tate Modern,<br />
London and the Museum of<br />
Contemporary Art, Sydney<br />
1992<br />
CEMETERY / VERTICAL GARDEN (1992-1999)<br />
1999 Modern Starts: People, Places,<br />
Things, Museum of Modern Art. New<br />
York, U.S.A<br />
2003 Zoomorphia: María Fernanda<br />
Cardoso. MCA Museum of<br />
Contemporary Art. Sydney<br />
Collection: Perez Art Museum, Miami<br />
2002<br />
BUTTERFLY DRAWINGS SERIES (2002-2003)<br />
1990<br />
CROWN FOR A CHIBCHA PRINCESS<br />
1994<br />
CARDOSO FLEA CIRCUS (1994-2000)<br />
2006<br />
II Bienal de Bogotá. Museo de Arte<br />
Moderno. Bogota, Colombia. First Prize<br />
Collection: DAROS Latinamerica<br />
Collection<br />
Returns to Bogota.<br />
1991 — Moves to California.<br />
Cardoso Flea Circus, live performances and exhibitions<br />
including , San Francisco Exploratorium, The New Museum<br />
of Contemporary Art, New York, Centre Georges Pompidou,<br />
Paris, Sydney Opera House.<br />
Collection : Tate Modern, London, UK<br />
EMU SERIES (2006-2009)<br />
WOVEN WATER / SUBMARINE LANDSCAPE (1994-2003)<br />
2003 Woven Water. 50th International Art Exhibition Venice<br />
Biennale. ILLA Pavillion, curated by Irma Aristizábal.<br />
2015 Contingent Beauty: Contemporary Art from Latin America.<br />
The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, USA.<br />
Collection: Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston<br />
1997 — Moves to Sydney.
IT’S NOT SIZE THAT MATTERS IT IS SHAPE (2008-2011)<br />
SANDSTONE POLLEN (2014-2016)<br />
Museum of Copulatory Organs (MoCO). 18th Biennale<br />
of Sydney. Sydney, Australia.<br />
International Convention Centre ICC, Darling Harbour,<br />
Sydney. Commissioned by Lend Lease.<br />
Collection: National Gallery of Australia<br />
MUSEUM OF COPULATORY ORGANS (MOCO) (2008-2012)<br />
MARATUS SERIES (2014-PRESENT)<br />
2008<br />
2014<br />
On the Origin of Art, Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). Hobart, Tasmania.<br />
Collection: Tate Modern, London and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney<br />
2009<br />
2015<br />
GUMNUTS KURU ALALA (2009-21)<br />
2011 Kuru Alala, Tjampi Desert Weavers residency<br />
2009-12 Kuru Ala: Eyes Open Tjanpi Dessert Weavers. María Fernanda<br />
Cardoso, Alison Clouson – a nation-wide touring exhibition<br />
WHILE I LIVE I WILL GROW (2015-2018)<br />
Green Square Public Art Program<br />
Commissioned by the City of Sydney Council.<br />
51
MAR/APR 2021
Agua Tejida Blanca / Woven Water White, 2003<br />
Blue Starfish, metal<br />
dimensions variable<br />
Included as Colombia’s representation in the 50th<br />
International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale. ILLA<br />
Pavillion, curated by Irma Aristizábal. Venice, Italy.<br />
53
Yang<br />
Yongliang:<br />
Allegory of<br />
the cave<br />
In the lead up to his June exhibition, Yang<br />
Yongliang chats about New York and its influence<br />
on his work.<br />
MAR/APR 2021<br />
Yang Yongliang<br />
Early Spring, 2019<br />
giclee print on fine art paper<br />
200 x 135 cm<br />
edition of 7 + 2 AP
55
Yang Yongliang:<br />
Allegory of the cave<br />
YOU MOVED TO NEW YORK FROM SHANGHAI IN 2018.<br />
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?<br />
Yang Yongliang (YYL)/ I moved to New York from Shanghai<br />
in the summer of 2018. I was thrilled to find a cozy studio<br />
office in Garment District in midtown Manhattan. It was<br />
a dream come true. Throughout the turbulent year of<br />
2020, I stayed in the city and experienced the ups and the<br />
downs with it. In the hardest time, I’ve seen New York’s<br />
vulnerability as well as its strength. New York used to<br />
be a dreamland to me. But after 2020, it started to feel<br />
like home. I grew a sense of conviction with New York<br />
along with its hardship. Strangely, it gives me a sense of<br />
belonging.<br />
From February 2020 until now, small businesses moved<br />
out from Manhattan one after another. By the time my<br />
lease ended in November, most of my neighbours on<br />
my floor were gone. To me, it also doesn’t make sense<br />
to keep an office aside from home. I extended my<br />
office lease until my home lease ended, before leaving<br />
Manhattan by the end of January 2021. Now I’m happily<br />
relocated in a loft space in Long Island City, Queens.<br />
Moving to Queens is liberating, I have to admit!<br />
DO YOU WORK PRIMARILY USING A COMPUTER? WHAT<br />
KIND OF STUDIO DO YOU HAVE? WHAT WOULD YOUR<br />
DREAM STUDIO BE?<br />
HOW DO CONCEPTS FORM FOR YOU?<br />
YYL/ I believe good concepts form naturally. Concepts<br />
form naturally for me, at least. The one thing I know to do<br />
is to be patient with myself. I also believe that concepts<br />
are very personal. It has to do with the places one has<br />
lived in, the cultures one has experienced, the languages<br />
one has spoken and the people one has cared for. I try<br />
not to change the concepts before new concepts were<br />
naturally formed.<br />
Recently I’ve been thinking about a new series of works<br />
that are more deeply tied to nature. Even though I still<br />
live in the city, I don’t necessarily interact with it. Instead,<br />
I go to upstate New York every other week for open air.<br />
Nature has given me new impact in the year of 2020.<br />
WHAT ARE YOU READING RIGHT NOW?<br />
YYL/ A Brief History of Time (Stephen Hawking), Homo<br />
Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (Yuval Noah Harari),<br />
and Killing Commendatore (Haruki Murakami).<br />
Exhibition: June 10 - July 3<br />
+ REGISTER FOR PREVIEW BEFORE JUNE 10<br />
YYL/ Yes, on daily basis I work primarily using a<br />
computer. At the moment, I have a home office with<br />
many screens in it, in which I refer to as my cave. I like my<br />
cave for what it is right now. However, due to the travel<br />
restriction that have pretty much grounded me for a year,<br />
my dream studio would be the same cave with mobility.<br />
It would be wonderful if the cave can travel freely.<br />
MAR/APR 2021
“I also believe that concepts are very<br />
personal. It has to do with the places<br />
one has lived in, the cultures one<br />
has experienced, the languages one<br />
has spoken and the people one has<br />
cared for.”<br />
Yang Yongliang in New York City.<br />
INTERVIEW<br />
57
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Aïda Muluneh Seed of the soul 2017 (detail) from the A Memory of Hope series 2017<br />
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n Cope// Jennifer Herd // Gordon Hookey // Laurie Nilsen // Vernon A<br />
UQ<br />
ART MUSEUM
Last Word:<br />
Do you collect?<br />
Robert Postema and Dr Patricia Jungfer<br />
MAR/APR 2021<br />
Whether it is the opening of a commercial<br />
gallery’s latest offering or a curated exhibition<br />
at a public gallery, contemporary art has<br />
its protocols and rituals. The attendees are frequently<br />
dressed in a neutral colour, more probably than not in<br />
black, so as not to overwhelm the art that is on display. If<br />
you go to these events often enough, the faces become<br />
familiar. There is an acknowledging nod and smile. You<br />
start to chat with others. Connections and commonalities<br />
are explored, with the work closest to you often the<br />
focus of a shared commentary before the ritual of<br />
engagement follows a predictable path.<br />
Following preliminaries, the conversation moves on to<br />
‘have you bought anything in the show’ (commercial<br />
exhibitions) or ‘are you familiar with the artist’ (public<br />
exhibitions). Not infrequently, the question then arises<br />
‘are you a collector?’ We can recall the first time this<br />
question was posed. We looked at each other and the<br />
provocateur, not knowing what to answer. As time has<br />
gone by, we understand we do ‘collect’. To us it means<br />
supporting a sector of the community that is brave and<br />
prepared to document and comment on the issues of<br />
our time. It also means we have a hopeless addiction to<br />
buying art.<br />
Of course, and almost inevitability having made the ‘we<br />
are collectors’ admission, the next question is ‘what is<br />
the focus of your collection’ Our hearts would sink again<br />
because we would then have to confess that there is no<br />
focus, no theme and we cannot even stick to a genre.<br />
Behind our cheery façade, we worry ‘what does the<br />
person asking this question make of us’ because we<br />
have an ‘eclectic’ collection. The polite description of<br />
what we have accumulated over the years. We admire<br />
the collector who sets out to buy only women artists,<br />
time-based media art or some other defined or erudite<br />
theme. We are in awe of the discipline that comes<br />
with buying exclusively conceptual or minimalist work.<br />
However, these are not characteristics we possess. Alas,<br />
as well as having little self-control, we appear to have<br />
no focus in our collection. Initially we would then smile<br />
and quickly shift the conversation to what the other<br />
person’s focus was. We knew this was safer ground and<br />
terminate the squirming discomfort that reminded us<br />
of our childhood and being caught being naughty or<br />
undisciplined.<br />
We don’t worry about this question anymore. We<br />
have worked out we just like seeing, experiencing and<br />
immersing ourselves in contemporary art. We can cope<br />
with the dreaded question now. We can even afford a<br />
knowing smile, when it comes up. We do in fact have a<br />
theme to our collection. It reflects who we are and how<br />
we view the world. No, we don’t collect one type of art<br />
or one medium or whatever. We just collect what we love<br />
and what speaks to us!
Sydney Ball, Infinex #45 (2019), in Robert and Patricia’s home.<br />
61
“As time has gone by, we understand<br />
we do ‘collect’. To us it means<br />
supporting a sector of the community<br />
that is brave and prepared to<br />
document and comment on the issues<br />
of our time. It also means we have a<br />
hopeless addiction to buying art.”<br />
Tony Albert, Brothers (The Prodigal Son) 1 (2020), in<br />
Robert and Patricia’s home.
Sanné Mestrom, Garden commission (2016),<br />
in Robert and Patricia’s garden.<br />
63
Quick Curate:<br />
Renewel<br />
Grant Stevens<br />
The Waterfalls III, 2016<br />
archival ink on archival paper<br />
82.5 x 55 cm<br />
edition of 3 + 2AP<br />
AUD $1,950
Sam Leach<br />
Boucher x Superstudio, 2020<br />
oil on wood<br />
50 x 50 cm<br />
AUD $18,700<br />
Sam Jinks<br />
Untitled (Babies), 2012<br />
silicone, pigment, resin, human hair<br />
36 x 36 x 18 cm<br />
edition 3 of 3 + 2AP<br />
AUD $38,500<br />
65
Up Next<br />
TONY ALBERT<br />
CONVERSATIONS WITH MARGARET PRESTON<br />
18.03.21<br />
GLENN BARKLEY<br />
THE URN OF BITTER PROPHECY<br />
08.04.21<br />
SANNÉ MESTROM<br />
THE BODY IS A VERB<br />
15.04.21<br />
MAY<br />
JUNE<br />
20.05.21 María Fernanda Cardoso<br />
Gumnuts and Sandstone<br />
10.06.21 Yang Yongliang<br />
10.06.21 Jeremy Sharma
Kirsten Coelho<br />
Kirsten Coehlo creates functional forms and vessels of otherworldly perfection. In Kirsten Coelho,<br />
the first major publication on a practice spanning thirty years, author Wendy Walker traces the<br />
evolution of Coelho’s textured practice, in which an ever-expanding framework of art historical,<br />
literary and cinematic references has driven a succession of formal shifts – a shaping of changes.<br />
This beautiful, lavishly illustrated book of 176 pages will be released in<br />
September 2020. For pre-orders and enquiries, please contact publisher<br />
Wakefield Press at info@wakefieldpress.com.au or phone +61.8.83524455.
Tony Albert, History Repeats, 2020<br />
acrylic and vintage appropriated fabric on Arches paper<br />
76 x 57 cm
SYDNEY<br />
799 Elizabeth St<br />
Zetland, Sydney NSW 2017<br />
Australia<br />
P +61 2 9698 4696<br />
E art@sullivanstrumpf.com<br />
SINGAPORE<br />
P +65 83107529<br />
Megan Arlin | Gallery Director<br />
E megan@sullivanstrumpf.com