The Top 53
MATT CONNOLLY, ‘Untitled’ from the ‘Skin’ series, pen and ink, Swinburne Senior Secondary College, Hawthorn; WILL SUTHERLAND, ‘Coyote?’, oil stick, oil pastel, synthetic polymer paint, chalk, pastel and pencil, Scotch College, HawthornOn the weekend I headed to the gallery to check out the Top Arts 2010 exhibition. Top Arts showcases Victoria’s most talented art students graduating from high school, and is in its 17th year. Over 1800 students apply, and this year only 53 of them were accepted.
KATE NELSON, ‘One last sip’, porcelain and porcellaneous stoneware, Strathcona Baptist Girls Grammar School, Canterbury
Top Arts (formerly Top Cats, which was a much more fun title) is always enjoyable, and I try to view it every year. For the most part I deliberately don’t read the explanatory text that accompanies the artwork. Many of the students fumble inarticulately for some profound rationalisation for their art, but although it often sounds juvenile presumably it is a requirement for their assessment. I, however, am not a teacher, so I prefer to let the art speak for itself. These pictured here were some of my favourites.
Go check out the exhibition if you’re in the state, and see what it says to you. It’s on at the Ian Potter Gallery, NGV at Federation Square, until 19 June. Read more at The Underage.
Images: Matt Connolly image from The Underage; all other images from WA Today.
DEMI GERARDI, ‘A series of absurd events’ (detail), colour inkjet prints, Ballarat High School, Ballarat
JUSTIN WHITELOCK, ‘Bursting water balloon’, type C photographs, Ballarat High School, Ballarat; MARISA LAI, ‘Unit’, cut paper, cotton thread, Carey Baptist Grammar School, Kew
Art Fair in Canterbury
In the black and white room (with a touch of red) :: Lucifer IV // Cano Cafenol // No flashI went to the Canterbury Art Fair today. My friend Rapunzel (aka Polka-Dot Lisa) had some work in the show, so we thought we’d tram it down to Canterbury and check out the fair.
There was some good, and some very bad art, mostly 2D, but there were some interesting sculptures too in rusty iron and some made from driftwood.
Lisa in front of some her paintings :: John S // Blanko Noir // Laser Lemon Gel
The fair was held in Canterbury Primary School, which was built in 1908. There were lovely stained glass windows everywhere. After we finished the circuit, and browsed in the well-stocked giftshop (handcrafts, jewellery, prints etc), we went to the Canvas Café and enjoyed some homemade lemon syrup cake with our coffee. There were even Crayola crayons on the table for kids to draw on the butcher’s paper tablecloths – a cute touch.
I didn’t buy anything (apart from a little bag of meringues), and it was a pleasant afternoon. It did inspire me, however, to pick up my own oil pastels and get back into the drawing. But I need a studio first.
Stained glass overhead :: Chunky // BlacKeys B+W // No flash
I liked the Paris sign in Canvas Café :: Lucifer IV // Blanko Noir // Laser Lemon Gel
The Ceramic Architect
Last week I visited Craft Victoria to view ceramicist Susan Robey’s exhibition Inhabit. Sculpture is one of my favourite artistic disciplines, and ceramics has always been appealing to me as well; both are attractive on a tactile level. At exhibitions I always long to caress their silky surfaces.
She creates, like Dr Frankenstein, tiny creatures that roar with life; that eyeless, blunder about.
In these works Susan Robey, a Melbourne based ceramic artist and architect, combines the structural elements of architecture – walls, columns, windows – with pliable, paper thin slabs of clay. She applies texture: ribs and punctures; repeated patterns like knit and corrugation. She creates, like Dr Frankenstein, tiny creatures that roar with life; that eyeless, blunder about. She says of her work:
”Of the many definitions of ‘animate’, I am particularly interested in ‘to fill with life’ and ‘to make as to create the illusion of motion’. Words such as scuttle, sneak, and perch come to mind, borrowed from the animal and insect world. In addition to support, I believe it is the legs which have enabled the objects to develop individual personalities. In the making order, they are attached last and therefore suddenly the objects appear to be lifted to life.”
Some of those wonky creatures indeed look like cheese graters come to life. I want to pick them up and caress them, take one home with me. These are not critters to fondle however, their folds and sharp edges class them as dangerous creatures of some future, primeval world – waiting to bite your ankle when you get out of bed in the morning.
~
Inhabit is showing until 5 March in Gallery 1, at Craft Victoria
31 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
View the gallery online
Photo by Terence Bogue; via Craft Victoria
Starry Nights and Valentine’s Days
To fuel four starry nights
on a love affair
the glamour of a spy of the world
inspired inventive and exotic games
in a garden setting the best-dressed beauty
with a refreshing charm
of a myth
awaits the fruits of a desire.
…Some random poetry and happy Valentine’s Day wishes.
Luminous Cities
Edward Steichen, The Flatiron Building, New York City, 1905
I have always loved the city: give me concrete; give me smog; give me the wail of sirens in the distance! A big city never fails to make me feel alive; I love the hum of the streets, the endless headlights and tail-lights, and the lonely sound of car horns in the darkness.
So I was not sorry last Friday, unable to see two fashion exhibitions that had closed, when I found myself viewing this photography exhibition Luminous Cities at the National Gallery of Victoria instead.
I was most drawn to this 1905 image of New York’s Flatiron Building by Edward Steichen (above). It’s a wet winter evening, dusk is falling and the atmospheric effect creates a beautiful mood. It immediately made me think of a Georges Seurat charcoal drawing.
Eugène Atget: Coin de la rue Valette et Pantheon, 5e arrondissement, matinee de mars, 1925
I have long been an admirer of Eugène Atget’s photography, and this image of an empty Parisian street (above) that looks to be shrouded in fog is full of quiet mystery.
Another favourite was Paul Strand’s image of Fifth Avenue (below). I love the considered composition: the people so insignificant under that great, empty sky; the flagpole and the church spires meeting in a point. Of course I also like the fashionable note of the three young women’s plumed hats in the foreground. The fact that they are peeking back at the photographer makes the image so much more fascinating. Without that touch, the image would have been far more impersonal; they are warm and alive even uder that enormous, impassive sky.
These views of streets, both crowded and empty beckon me within, into a world long-gone; into a culture and society made foreign, exotic, by time. We’re lucky to have such little windows into these old worlds.
The exhibition continues until 13 March.
Paul Strand, Fifth Avenue, New York City, 1915