LOWBROW
•
LOWBROW •
It is with full confidence that I can say not a single art gallery on Gertrude Street is lowbrow. I mean, it’s Fitzroy: of course they aren't. This week though, I went back to my art history roots, and took a look at A Seat at the Table from Art & Collectors. Spanning 101 years (the oldest work a floral still life from 1925, the most recent a self portrait dating from this year) the exhibition is a snapshot of female Australian artists. At first glance, the show is filled with the prerequisite floral still lives, self-portraits, and snippets of home life that come with the territory of a broad subject matter like simply “female artists.” It's when you look through the works, take them in one by one that you see that this is a show of echoes – artists are echoing each other and themselves, calling out through the decades to continue a conversation.
You might be wondering, if we’re reading John Berger, why aren’t we reading Ways of Seeing? Quite frankly, great question and I’m glad you asked. Between the TV series (which I am not opposed to including in Bottom Shelf at some point) and how ubiquitous the text is in studying art and art history at any level, I don’t feel that I had much to add to the discussion. Permanent Red, on the other hand, was Berger’s first book, published in 1960. Reading his early criticism, his thoughts and arguments with himself, there’s a lot to identify with and unpack. Berger is an expansive author, winning prizes for his criticism and even the Booker Prize for his fiction, he’s also an author that feels unwieldy, so the beginning is where I will enter into the bibliographical fray.
After visiting Inter-narratives of hope: building catastrophe resilience at MADA and before reading the accompanying exhibition I called a friend and had a whinge about this show. I complained that I didn’t see a strong connection between the works on display. I grumbled that the curatorial vision isn’t strong enough if it’s unclear from viewing the show alone, and you should’ve have to read an essay to derive meaning from an exhibition. I whinged that the title of the show was an over intellectualisation from PhD candidates (which I still partly stand behind) and inaccessible for the public as a curatorial concept. I’d like to make a correction to what I said to my friend; this is a great show, and made stronger by its accompanying text. I feel blind for not reading it while in the space and for only being able to view the work with this lens in hindsight.
Forever Bedroom, Nina Seeburg’s ode to our quietest, most personal spaces is an intimate portrayal of the refuge found in our childhood bedrooms, the first rooms of our own. Greeting you up the stairs that lead to Changing Room Gallery is a vanity, littered with personal effects (clown, axe, and giant dildo included) a taster for the intimacy and clarity of theming that defines Forever Bedroom.
Though Bec has covered it before, and I live less than a kilometre away, I had never been to George Paton Gallery before this week. The UMSU Gallery was a trove of artistic potential, but perhaps none more so than As Long As You Love Me, the video installation work by Alanna Baxter, Lara Oluklu and Naimo Omar. I couldn’t tell you how long the loop is, as I was so engrossed, walking back and forth between the three screens so as to not miss anything, that I didn’t think to note the timing. Simple on a surface level – three screens, a dark curtain, white text on black cutting between film snippets – Baxter, Oluklu, and Omar have made something totally their own out of an entirely borrowed script.
Be the first to know about new reviews.
