Big Fag Press

An article I had published on the Art Month Blog

I don’t know much about DIY printing techniques, or any printing techniques for that matter. I have friends in the business, but oddly my curiosity has never really been sparked past a vague curiosity. That changed on Saturday afternoon. I knew what to expect of every other artist talk/video screening/dealer presentation that I had on the agenda for the 13th, but this was the odd one out. I had heard of BFP (just like Big Friendly Giant, right?) somewhere in the ether but had never really checked them out.

I don’t know, perhaps I had envisaged big, bald, butch guys wearing overalls, sweating and laughing over a printing press, their moustaches sharp and bristly and imposing. But this should have been nothing to be afraid of. After all, A A Bronson is a pretty sweet dude, and he is big, and he is gay, and he does lots of printing.

Maybe it was the oftentimes sickly sweet idea of the utopian DIY collective.

BFP really deserves more attention and congratulations. Their alignment with the Slow Food movement seems apt. The BFP encourage an empowering educational experience. The process may be slower than more industrial techniques, and the output of the machine may not be as

efficient or bountiful, it may even be more expensive, but there is a really appealing grassroots element to what they can do. And the results are outstanding.

The approach of those at Big Fag Press is to view the completed product as a souvenir, a way of capturing someone’s ephemeral art practice. They describe the joys of working with each artist from the outset of the project right through to it’s completion, a relationship that is absent from a great deal of more industrial techniques. This removal of alienation between client and producer is imperative to what they do, and allows a great deal of flexibility and improvisation. And the effects are evident. Obstacles can become creative goldmines; for instance it is obviously cheaper to print using fewer colours, so a lot of the output take the form of striking monochrome posters. Importantly, the client’s presence can radically alter the end product. Unforeseen contingencies can be straightened out on the spot with all the parties present, and this creative environment can take projects to places the client would never have expected. A few minds are always better than one.

Saturday the 13th of March saw Lucas from Big Fag Press address a full house at CrossArts Projects in Kings Cross. BFP are part of a group show entitled ‘Hurry-Hurry: Radical Printmaking’ which shows work as diverse as posters for Good God: Small Club right through to election
posters for Jakarta, Indonesia. This sort of event cannot but leave one feeling inspired. Printmaking, ultimately does not cost a lot of money, and may not take that much time; yet the results can be quite stunning.

Archibald 2010

An article I had published on Concrete Playground.

The Archibald is to art writers what a solar eclipse is to human vision. Without fail, it captures the attention of art journalists all over the country. Some writers quickly articulate their dislike and even distrust of the prize (perhaps there is elitism here?). Other writers are like moths to the flame, keen to interject on any controversy that prevails. This year, that controversy seems to be circulating around the number of female artists (just seven) that have been selected in the final spread.

I wonder what JF Archibald envisaged of the prize way back in 1921. From the outset it has been controversial; stoushes have gone on over definitions of portraiture, subject matter and the profiles of the artists themselves. But try to ignore all that. These are artistic depictions of those deemed to be important Australians, by some of our most distinguished painters. Winning turns someone’s life on its head, and at the same time sends the price of their work through the proverbial roof. This year that person is Sam Leach (who also took out the concurrent Wynne Prize for Proposal for landscaped cosmos) with his portrait of comedian Tim Minchin, topping a list of 34 finalists whittled down from 849 entries. Go down to the AGNSW, have a look, and pick your own winner.

Missed Tutorial.

I missed the tutorial this week, though I was present for both the lecture and the screening. The showing of Mad Max was timely, because I have just started research for a short piece of writing on Shaun Gladwell. Gladwell was chosen for the Venice Biennale of 2009 for his work MaddestMaximvs. Gladwell has spoken about his preconceptions of the outback being formed in a significant part by cinema, and I would have to concede to a similar idea. I could count on one hand the number of times I have really bushed it. It is interesting that the conception the rest of the world has of us is greatly infiltrated by images of the great outback, yet this reality figures on a microscopic level for most Australians.

I think one of the reasons for this is the uniqueness of our outback. Nothing much differentiates us on an urban level. An appropriate metaphor for this could be sought in the kind of Australian art that is recognised overseas (please note my hesitation in calling indigenous art, 'Australian', but for the purposes of being concise, bare with me). The art of figures like Shaun Gladwell, Tracey Moffatt, and Julie Rrap for instance figures in an incredible small way on the international art scene; mostly, because there is no recognisable style, essentially nothing all that unique. Aboriginal art however, possesses a totally new visual style and accompanying language.

Interestingly, this leads us back to something that has repeatedly been raised in our tutorials. The idea that perhaps the Australian film industry needs to develop a genre that it could specialise in. At the beginning of the semester, I was hesitant to accept this as a good proposition, but as the semester goes on, I see more Australian films in class (films that I have loved for years), I really am beginning to ask myself, "what are these films missing, why are they not competing overseas?" and perhaps the answer is, because they are too derivative (no matter how much they may subvert a genre) and do not require a new lexicon to decipher and discuss them.

Film Review ONE

Rolf De Heer's 'Ten Canoes' is an epic. There are multiple timelines, battles, spirit worlds, great teachings, wrong love, rugged landscapes. However this is an epic that creeps up on you. Before you know it you are deeply imbedded in a series of gripping narratives. And unlike most epic films it didn't cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

In Australian cinema this is a landmark film in many ways. The level of co-operation between the indigenous people of Warranmining and the white Anglo-Saxon filmmakers is worth noting. Also, this is the first film to solely use an Indigenous language. But, significantly for me, there are no 'white fellas'. And for this reason I hope it has evaded any comments from white audiences of "Oh, not another Aboriginal film". Ultimately, these comments are factually inaccurate. Perhaps this is the first authentically Aboriginal film. The films that are normally labelled Aboriginal films are simply films about Aboriginals.

The whole way through the film I kept thinking about funding. I'm sure that without government funding this project would have been incredibly difficult, perhaps untenable. I normally hate funding bodies, and their arbitrary content rules. However, if they have to make ten below average Australian films to mean that a film like this qualifies for funding, then perhaps I'm happy to turn a blind eye.

Perhaps, this is not a good way to look at it. We have been discussing film funding in our tutorials and perhaps a conservative/libertarian approach is the best one here. That is, a firm belief in the operations of the free market economy; in this case, no film funding. If our film industry cannot support itself perhaps it shouldn't exist. But where do you draw the line on this issue. Can you say the same for libraries, art galleries, etc. Ultimately very few people use these institutions, and some would argue that taxes would be lower, and more could be spent on health and education without these facilities draining fiscal policy. But ultimately are these institutions necessary for a healthy society?

All this aside, Ten Canoes, works. There is a great story, the visuals are fantastic, there is humour, and we genuinely worry about what will happen in both stories.

Week Three Response

Unfortunately, I have to start this post in a negative fashion. The first group presentation was given this week and unfortunately I think they missed the point of the week. Though it may seem semantics, the two girls hadn't quite grasped the difference between 'nationalism' and 'patriotism' and in reference to Gallipoli there is quite a necessary disctinction. I would hestitate to suggest that there was any nationalistic sentiment in the film, either as depicted during the Great War, or as it would have been received in the 1980s. However, the two girls continually spoke of nationalism in the film, when they should have been speaking about patriotism.

Every Australia Day, a new series of debates arise over the matter of our national identity and writers constantly try to pigeon-hole sections of our community under broad, general headings. Not enough is the complexity of this issue acknowledged, and I fear any national identity we do have is an intellectualised one, rather than an organic, naturally occurring one. Perhaps we are not alone in that; I'm sure the case is the same in the United States, and national identities are meticulously constructed in the few Communist outposts that still remain.

I love the film Gallipoli, and I qualify that by stating that most other discussions of the battle leave me feeling rather ambivalent. I feel no tangible connection to that past, and only through this film do I get a sense that, "hey, those guys are just like me", their humour, attitudes, and values. I think Peter Weir has acutely studied young men from the 1980s and transmuted those observations into the fictional characters of the film. As such, I feel this film works on two levels; it provides us with a reflection of who we are now, as well as commenting on the contextual issues of 1914-15.

I will clarify the statements I made at the outset of this post; With reference to the reading, I believe that nationalism is an externalised phenomenon. Whereas, patriotism is an internalised phenomenon, that perhaps can only be felt and thus shared by those who possess the certain qualities in question. It is rare that I feel patriotic, but watching this film I do; that is the power of films like this. These events which happened almost 100 years ago are re-contextualised to an extent that I can connect and identify aspects of my own character and milieu in the filmic world. To galvanise my point about patriotism, few other nations could watch the scene where the Diggers mount donkeys and mock their British officers; to understand this there must be a degree of self-reflection and internalisation that is fundamental to a sense of patriotism. Ultimately, these are the moments, the sensations the girls were hinting at. But to suggest that they are nationalistic is unfortunately just plain wrong.

Week Two Response

The lecture from Week One was repeated in this week so I will focus on our first tutorial instead.

A tautology was raised: that the reason we watch films is because there is an inherent human instinct which makes us worry for the characters. Students protested, citing many film genres, whose conventional make-up suggest a happy ending as a default. In these cases, although we know consciously that all will be well in the end, the worry becomes about how this resolution will come about. My one criticism of this relates to an analogy that was used; it was suggested that even if Arsenal were playing a team of cripples, a fan would still watch, simply out of worry for his team. As a continuation of the idea that was raised earlier, in regards to worrying about characters in films that we know will end happily, what is the reason for watching a game of sport when we know the conclusion. There are other factors; for instance, the other night I watched a repeat of the Waratahs game despite knowing that they won by a comfortable margin. I was interested to see the tries scored, who played well in relation to national selection, and more-so, to see how well they played. Perhaps the worry concerned with every game could be extended to worry for the outcome of the entire season?

A second proposition to be raised in the tutorial was that all films have a premise. Good narrative films will not state this premise too bluntly, and instead will provide audiences with a “fair fight”. I must say I am less convinced by this second idea. There have been films which are so strongly driven by narrative or some stylistic motif that premise have been overlooked. Unless you can conclude that narrative or stylistic features count as premise. Wes Anderson’s more recent films seem to be absent of premise, as do some of Tarentino’s films, even some of Kubrick’s films, The Shining, for instance. What is the premise there? Steer clear of anyone with eyes as creepy as Jack Nicholson’s? Horror/Thriller films are actually quite good examples of films which seem to lack a premise. Their ontology is based on narrative progression. They are polemically opposite to a didactic Disney film for instance.

Reg Mombassa Artist talk at Frank Watters Gallery

An article I had published on the Art Month Blog.

Take yourself back to 1993. It’s Boxing day. A barbeque is ablaze, the bin is quickly filling up with empty bottles of VB and cheap white wine, a game of backyard cricket is in full swing. Chances are someone is wearing a Mambo t-shirt, and chances are Reg Mombassa designed it.

The New Zealander-cum-Australian has lived a double life of sorts; The name Chris O’Doherty appears on his birth certificate, but during his years of playing with Mental as Anything, designing for Mambo, and during the fine art career which has run concurrently with these “distractions”, he has been known as Reg.

I saw Reg speak last Tuesday at Frank Watters Gallery in Darlinghurst, where he has been represented since the mid-1970s when he was a student at the National Art School. As his presentation made abundantly clear, this is an artist who does not take his work, or indeed anything too seriously.

O’Doherty showed works dating back to his early years when his paintings depicted the fibro houses in the outer suburbs of Auckland. These works suggest a nostalgia bordering on melancholia, but as always with O’Doherty’s work, there are double meanings. These new houses pictured glowing in the afternoon sun also reflect the optimistic, prosperous time following the rigours of the Depression and war.

Most recent works are more directly humorous and even show Surrealist tendencies.

Works like the Hireronymous Bosch parody, The Road to Clovely (1977) include crucifix-like TV poles. Works like Poplars and copse near Oberon (2000) allow O’Doherty to reveal his affection for the landscape and for the small, fragile dwellings we erect so proudly in the most isolated locations, perhaps as a proof of our existence.

The works that really strike me are his small black and white drawings or ‘false etchings’ as he named them on Tuesday. Like in the work of Peter Booth, the landscapes are distorted and even border on the apocalyptic. But he did not dwell long on these works, instead highlighting his more satirical works, in which he takes an aggressive stance in relation to the ugliness and stupidity that he finds nestled in whatever passes for the Australian Dream. The familiar becomes vaguely sinister; barbeques look like visiting spacecraft; dogs and birds gambling near Lucas Heights wear the explosive belts of suicide bombers. Smartly dressed footballers (1993) shows two men in business suits engaged in murderous grappling on the football field.

It was a real joy to see one of Australia’s most understated icons discuss his varied career. O’Doherty has a way of playing down everything; the anecdotes of his time on the road with the Mentals took the form of band members entertaining one another by wearing ice-cream cones on their noses. There were no stories of wild and reckless drug and alcohol binges, just of quickly sketching with charcoal the vistas he saw out of the tour bus window. And the great sense of humour, which is on show in his work, is definitely apparent in his persona.

Images courtesy Watters Gallery.

Chris Town: My Aid? at China Heights

An article I had published on Concrete Playground.

Chris Town has traveled the world and collected, well, bits and pieces. Posters, bandages, ticket stubs, cigarette packets and bodily fluids are all assembled in collages that remind one of the horror vacui of some Grateful Dead posters.

I liken Chris Town’s work to the 'Poubelles' of Arman, a Nouveau Realist artist from 1960s Paris. Arman and his friends worked to promote what Camille Bryen called the “adventure of the object”. Arman, and Town in turn, are indebted simultaneously to the Cubists who championed the use of shallow space, and the Dadaists who constantly suggested the absurd.

Perhaps Town’s work has not really conceptually furthered the ideas of Arman, but there is something to be curious about here. The use of collage allows Town to suggest the disorientation that capitalist subjects experience as they rely more and more on objects to construct their sense of identity and place. Town’s works are dense, colourful accumulations. Go down to China Heights on Friday, enjoy an early evening beer, and let Town lead you through his accumulated history.

Joseph Kosuth at Anna Schwartz Gallery

An article I had published on Concrete Playground.

As a prodigy of sorts, with his work One and Three Chairs in 1965, Kosuth began a career of questioning the nature of art. He and his peers (the conceptual artists) championed not the formalist aesthetics and craftsmanship of the previous decades, but the notion that the idea behind a work was to be revered. Throughout Europe and North America, Kosuth’s work has served in a series of retrospectives; now, in his first solo show in Australia (may I say, a few decades late), Kosuth will occupy both Anna Schwartz’s gallery space and the cavernous halls of CarriageWorks.

The works exhibited serve as a dialogue between the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and the survival-of-the fittest perversion of those theories by Friedrich Nietzsche. Darwin’s tree-of-life sketch’s logical conclusion is found in Nietzsche’s famous adage, “creating — as selecting and finishing the selected”.

Despite your knowledge of Kosuth, Darwin, or Nietzsche, the cold white neon lights against the pale grey gallery walls will strike you; these are enlightenment thoughts, real light bulb moments.

Dale Frank: Ice Age

An article I had published on Concrete Playground.

Despite their lack of figuration, Dale Frank’s varnish paintings tell a story. The story of his process — layers of transparent varnish and pigment clashing and separating, creating whole new psychedelic phantasmagoria. Don’t be fooled. These seemingly random configurations, which will encourage different reactions (at his last show, one friend remarked the works heightened his sense of taste, while another quickly remarked that the colours mixing together reminded him of vomit), are actually the result of Frank’s intensely controlled working environment; dust is kept to a minimum, temperature and humidity are constantly monitored, as is the positioning of the canvases.

When Frank started his varnish oeuvre, there were myths of great pockets of wet paint exploding out from his works onto boardroom floors. But fear not; a poncho won't be required. The varnish Frank now uses takes only three weeks to dry.

Dale Frank has been showing at Roslyn Oxley9 for near on 30 years, and his work is held in every major public gallery in Australia, as well as in private collections throughout Australia, America, and Europe.

Definitely visit this show, and be sure to pick up a price list and carefully read the title of each work as you view them. At times seemingly mundane, at others overtly profound, Frank’s titles, though on first inspection rather ambiguous, are as undeniably psychological as his paintings are physical, and will greatly inform your subjective impression of each work.

Week One and Week Two Response

The lecture from week one was repeated in week two, so this response will count for both.

I left the lecture theatre mulling over the notion of what makes an Australian film? Evidently, I believe this questioning is analogous to questioning the nature of Australian identity, and perhaps the former is inextricably linked to the latter. For me, the definition of an Australian film will depend, in conjunction with details of the film itself, on who is asking the question; what their position is, what their motives are. A film funding board, for instance, has nationalistic intentions; they want to see as much "Australian content" as possible, and the maximum amount of Australian involvement in the production. A film critic, perhaps would take a more sociological point of view. How is Australia depicted in the film, from whose point of view is Austraia viewed?

In the tutorial a tautology was raised; that the reason we watch films is because there is an inherent human instinct which makes us worry for the characters. Students protested, citing many film genres, whose conventional make-up suggest a happy ending. In these cases, although we know consciously that all will be well in the end, the worry becomes about how this resolution will happen.

The second proposition to arise from the tutorial was that all films have a premise. Good films will not state this premise too blatantly, and instead will provide audiences with "a fair fight".