ACCA

ACCA - Pat Brassignton - A Rebours

The title of the show means, "literally" - against the "nap"
Or figuratively, it means, "backwards"
or "wrong way", or "against nature", or "rubbed the wrong way", "uncomfortable", "to get the wrong idea".

I think appropriate for the show.

The Pink she uses? its "nasty", because its the color of burnt, chafed or infected flesh, and she uses it against black and white, or very little other color.

The whole Psycho thing, I wonder if Pat is off kilter, or repressed, or dealing with people in her life that are experiencing some kind of psychological disorder?
A normal thinking person just doesn't conjure up these kind of weird concepts without reason. It's twisted, off and unpleasant for sure. It shows that repression is unhealthy, and may induce strange deranged behavior that actually reveals indirectly that something is being repressed. She may want to express some things more explicitly, but is attempting to make it more ambiguous.

She uses space in a way that leaves the subject at the focal point, sometimes turning the image from its natural view point to make it look like something else is happening, to mess with the brain or to create discomfort.

I do think there is a place for things to be revealed subtly and slowly to bring an element of surprise, or gradual unveiling in design in general, but all according to the purpose of the design. Some things need to be immediate, while much advertising is done in such a way as to create curiosity in our minds so that we will stick around to ask questions, or to wait to see the end result, but generally we want to be rewarded with a good thing.


The ACCA building architecture itself is interesting more so from the outside, than anything I have ever seen inside of it. It makes one look and wonder what is going on inside, and the expectancy of something can actually diminish the experience once inside. It seems there should be more to it, and because the outside is so impacting, you expect that on the inside as well. The sculpture display... perhaps combined with more, may have been ok, but what was in there and the combination of it, in my opinion, was a bit sad.

NGV ...cont

How was it curated?

hmmm, I think its really well done. I love how you can walk into a space, a room, and its impacting, in its own way.
The collections have been well chosen to work in harmony, and complement the other works around it. I love how the European paintings ar displayed, although the rooms with multiple images on the wall, I felt should have more information about the paintings for those who want to know.

The highly set pictures need to have relevant plaques lower down for visitors to see and correlate to the pieces. Its interesting to feel like you are in a labyrinth, as each room seems to lead to another and another, and when you think you've missed a whole section, you discover it coming back through. Yes, it's well done.

NGV Jewellery

I missed the contemporary jewellery show, but I found some in the NGV collection that might do. The question was to find 4 pieces that confront your understanding of jewellery.
I have images of three, I could have included a ring or two to this, but the collection was small, and the rings, although cumbersome, might not be so confronting really.

This is a necklace made of aluminium and brass, made by Gert Mosettig. I would find this very uncomfortable to wear, it looks like bullets and hinges  combined. It has more of a connotation of a crown of thorns I think.

Necktie Necklace, by Alan Bacon 1971Silver, transparent and opaque synthetic polymer. This is probably more wearable, but it would be very stiff and awkward. I could see this on a cat walk, but not worn by most.

This bracelet or bangle, is made from silver and ebony. It looks more like a fancy dip bowl, or table decoration, and would be very cumbersome to wear due to the amount of ebony that protrudes out sideways. This would make doing anything rather awkward. Not very confronting, but design wins over being practical.

NGV , design? Lightworks...

Does the NGV have an area for design?

I would say yes, but design is a broad term. There is furniture, various objects and fashion pieces and jewellery, but I'm not sure its a really good dedication specifically to design. You have to ask, what defines design, and what specific design are we looking for. There is design in everything.

Lightworks:

This was a small exhibit dedicated to works on photographic paper and substrates that react to light. In my view the image created with just a hanging light bulb to form the concentric circles on the paper, was quite clever. I think if you didn't know that, the image itself would be ho-hum.

Bill Henson's images to me are like underexposed photos I have thrown away, so its curious to look at this and feel it's importance as an image depicting the late hours of a day, the sun being swamped by thick clouds, taking the light away... ? It has a morose feel to it, take away light, and we have darkness, uncertainty, fear?

I found the exhibit somewhat boring and uninteresting, (perhaps due to my own ignorance on the subject), lacking purpose I thought, and dark in subject although it's meant to be about light. It just didn't capture my imagination at all. I guess this is why I didn't see the "quote" here.It just didn't really "intrigue" me on any of those levels. I have played with photographic paper and light, creating shapes, black on white, for a bit of experimentation, I guess it could develop further if given a chance.

NGV Cont..

The European Collection is stunning, the detail and realism is admirable.This room is one that you walk into and want to stay for awhile and just look and ponder. I felt this room was for me a highlight.

La Defenestration. By V. Brozik. I chose this as a stand out for it's composition, use of light, his ability to capture so much going on in one room, the characters, movement, emotion, atmosphere and detail. It left me wondering how he did this so well.

This one I could not see the title or the artist, its the one of the horses, a beautiful play of horses and their handlers in the surf. This one is casual and pleasant, no gallantry, war, or ferocity, just a lovely depiction of this occasion as if it is an ordinary part of their routine. You could almost walk into this painting.It was just a bit high up to see the title and artist.

Anguish, by A.F.A Schenk. AS a complete contrast, this image is provokingly powerful. A sheep has lost it's lamb, we don't know how, but the despair in this is wrenching as you see the inevitability in this painting. Ouch, I had to walk away, as I noticed other people commenting on the sadness of this image. I had to wonder what heart ache would provoke an artist to paint such an image so painstakingly.

NGV Collection

I found the NGV collection really varied on many levels, and I must admit I found it hard to choose particular individual pieces as highlights, when to me it was more a "room" full of works that might be the highlight collectively. However, I chose a few works that impressed me one way or other.

The first was seeing the religious carvings of wood and stone from the early 16th century. Just looking at them so closely, I felt as though the artist so long gone, and survived this long by these works of art, is still speaking to us about his life and culture that was so very different from ours today. It just impacted me that this thing before me was lovingly carved by the hands of another human from an incredibly long past time. caption

The Carved Passion of Christ Altar Piece.
It just makes one say "wow"! Incredible, the intricacy of the carving, attention to detail, is amazing. in our culture, people don't do this sort of thing. The way this was created to tell a story, not only does it open up like a book, or an unfolding doll's house, you can imagine people just wanting to sit before it and take it all in with devotion. Apparently made in special studios in Antwerp to be sold "off the shelf" to chapels etc. This one dates back to 1511.

I Love "October" by Bastien Lepage, 1878
His paintings of rural life, depicting peasants with dignity, while revealing their hardships with a sense of the reality of life on the land. This one depicts the potato harvest in the bleakness of Autumn in his own native village north of Paris.Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, French, 1824-98
St. Genevieve provisioning.
Paris Under Siege.
Distemper, pencil and chalk on canvas. In this case, distemper is a paint mixture of pigment and glue of some kind. It looked to me like

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, French, 1824-98
St. Genevieve provisioning.
Paris Under Siege.
Distemper, pencil and chalk on canvas. In this case, distemper is a paint mixture of pigment and glue of some kind. It looked to me like black paint applied with a brush or a stick.
This massive three piece canvas display was created as full size preparatory designs for one of Paris city's great civic buildings, the Pantheon, to tell the story of Paris under siege. If you look closely at these canvases you can see the meticulously drawn out grid that he used to position his images correctly. It must have been an incredible task, these are huge. I noted that his drawing skills are confident and well practiced, with strong, flowing, unwavering lines. I felt this work could easily take place amongst today's modern artists as a black and white rendering just as it is.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

MGA  exhibition, Abstractions in Photography, had a huge response from photographers. This Exhibit shows selected photographs from approximately 2 500 entries – the largest number received in the history of Australia’s most coveted Browness photography prize. 42 photographers are selected as finalists.

For me, this exhibit reveals much juxtaposition in society, quirky, odd elements in our lives, some clever images direct from nature depicting mystery, questions, or design elements seen by the photographers eye and some are deliberately set up to tell a story. Much of it reflects deep thought, rather than just happy snaps of nice things.

David's exhibition at the Walker Street Gallery was inspiring and interesting. The impact was immediate, with large canvases of color, movement, interesting shapes, video screens, and sounds. Ambiguous imagery created with a combination of digital art & oils invited the viewer to stop and figure out what the content was depicting, layers upon layers of photographic  images cleverly rendered, texture, color and paint creatively applied to make up an intriguing presentation. I would say my favorite was the big red multi panel labelled FluxV. This piece had lots of red, a lot of movement, people, traffic, as if a busy life of people coming and going to and from work or some destination in their focus, all blurred together into a deceptively pleasant image to ponder. David's intent appeared to cause one to question the world as we know it, the information we are fed through the media etc, on issues like the environment, finances, terrorism, disease such as cancer, the confusion and fear that can be caused by all of this. It seems his ideas behind the exhibition  are to make the viewer think and decide what is right for him or herself, rather than just believe out rightly what we are told. I was impressed.