Faded Crush – UK Frederick @ M16 Artspace

2-19 March

Rock music holds and endless fascination to all sorts of artists both in musical styles and visual. UK Frederick created a marvelous video collage of amateurs who have recorded themselves singing bubble gum hits of past decades. The takes on the songs were attractive in their range and style and recreate a sense of the possibilities that were there in the original simple song.

The exhibition includes some stylised arrangements of monochrome rock star images to add ambiance to the room. This was a delightful re-exploration of a past era through its images and sounds.

Images below.

Polarising Light – David Keany Georgly Potopalsky @ M16 Artspace

9 – 26 February 2017

This show is in the darkened gallery 2. It is a gorgeous combination of fluid coloured images that are apparently delivered by slides and some electronica music. It is wonderful to watch this and listen as it flows past.

The Band Played On @ National Library of Australia

The National Library of Australia runs great historical document exhibitions. The Band Plays On was an exhibition that showed the sheet music and ephemera connected with World War One popular songs. The famous and popular songs are on the walls in the music etc. An exhibition like this is uniquely able to give a sense of the sentiment at the time on issues such as nationalism.

A few pics below of the exhibits

 

Marking the spirit John Forrester Clark and Tobias Oliver Clark @ Nishi Gallery New Acton

19 Aug – 11 September 2016

The power of black and white art comes through the focus on line and form through the absence of colour. The art of the father and son Clark exhibition is gloomy in tone and fuzzy in definition. Tobias works in charcoal and John uses oil and charcoal.

Some pics below and the gallery sheet in parts

Scores – Manuel Pfeiffer @ M16 Artspace

16 June – 3 July 2016

The corridor gallery of M16 has a great advantage in that it gets you close and focused on the art on the wall – You have no choice of standing at a distance. The works in the Manuel Pfeiffer set celebrate the interplay between art and music. The images are beautiful in themselves but the weaving into the image of musical score makes for another layer of interest.

I really loved the stark colours and the layering of images within the works. There a few of my favourites reproduced below from the phone camera.

http://www.m16artspace.com.au/now-showing/

Wendy Saddington @ Canberra Museum and Gallery

I was a teenage rock fanatic.Wendy Saddington was one of my idols. She sang blues with an awesome power and passion. There were lots of bands she collaborated with but in the presence of all she shone. It was wonderful to see a retrospective of her career in the open gallery of CMAG. The exhibition spans much more of her talent than I was aware of and I enjoyed the learning.

The web page for the exhibition

http://www.cmag.com.au/exhibitions/wendy-saddington-underground-icon

 

David Bowie Is.. @ Australian Centre for the Moving Image

16 Jul – 1 Nov
This exhibition was a truly great experience for me. I saw the three concert visit David Bowie made to London in the 18 months I lived there in my 20s. When I heard this was on in London some years ago I even priced the cost of flying there so the delight when told it was coming to Melbourne I was ecstatic
In my humble view Bowie is one of the greatest creative people in the last 50 years. The exhibition confirmed me in the view. It took me just 210 minutes to get through. The costumes, the dance steps, the videos, the music, the films, the collaboration, the ephemera, the lyrics, the interviews,the collaborations, and the list goes on.Always creating new personas aways setting new trends and always with a unique take on the times.
I am deeply grateful to David for over four decades of enjoyment and to the V&A for their role in creating this exhibition.
Surprisingly for such a great media user there was a no photography policy. I sneakily took a few of the costumes they are only a tiny fraction of what is there at ACM?I
Website page with lots of limits and a few pics and ephemera below.
http://www.acmi.net.au/bowie?gclid=CPCf0Y7jxsgCFQqAvQodCx4J2A

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Angelica Mesiti – Citizens band 2012 in ScreenSpace @ Art Gallery of WA

29 August – 8 November 2015
“Citizens band documents the individual performances of four migrant musicians, concluding with a polyphonic piece created by playing all the soundtracks together. Each player produces a distinct sound through techniques that are inflected with their cultural origin. All poignantly evoke their remembrance of the homeland and their displacement from the urban Western context in which they perform.” The blurb tells you that but the videos show something much more wonderful.
There is a wonderful juxtaposition in each of these. The lady waist deep in a Paris swimming pool brings a vitality to performing drum beats in a distinctly different context. The others maintain the same striking disconnect but the one that amazed me was the blind man playing a keyboard on his shoulder standing in a Paris Metro carriage. The music was haunting and the reaction of the people as their lives intersected with his music were riveting.
The sequence, the beauty the size makes the reproduction here a bit pointless but I have done some snaps. The web page is linked here\
http://www.artgallery.wa.gov.au/exhibitions/Screen-Space-Angelica-Mesiti.asp

Colour Music @ ANU Drill Hall Gallery

Often I walk towards a gallery thinking “What on earth is this going to be about?” If I have done no pre-reading and am not familiar with the topic or artist that is the best I can do. Approaching the Drill Hall Gallery in the rain today that was exactly what was going on in my head.

What a powerful surprise awaited me.A colour and sound explosion in vital and energetic forms is in that building right now.These artists were intrigued with the possibility of representing sound visually. Some screen savers on early computers tried that and must have been influenced by these artists.

At heart this exhibition straddles two sets of artists past and contemporary that use painting, film, light and music To me the star of the show is Ludwig Hirschfield Mack. There is lots of his work and it is exciting, colourful and playfully musical. Of the modern group Cathy Blanchflower’s marvelous musical looking large flowing works are a delight. John Aslanidis has other great interwoven images that cry out a musical background.

Gallery Three has a wonderful video musical creation on multiple screens that are immersive and invigorating to sit amongst. It has been created by an audio-visual performance group called Botborg. The performance is called Neural Luminance Amplifier.

Below are a few pictures and the hand out. I was surprised by how exciting I found the art on the wall and all the other forms of representing music visually.

Lumen Alexander Boynes @ ANCA Gallery

I only discovered the ANCA Gallery in the last couple of years. I have grown to love this little space for its rich variety and the adventurousness of the art on display. The current exhibition is titled Lumen  and its blurb says “New work by Canberra-based artist Alexander Boynes, exploring human adaptation, the boundaries set by our environment, and the ephemeral nature of existence.. It is not my favourite style of stuff – projections, installations – all very abstract. However I loved it and let me tell you why.

 
You know something is happening because the glass doors are covered in paper for light control. The first works you encounter are produced on an Aluminium surface and the etched surface combined with semi abstract images create a sense of movement. The next set included a range of small screen videos that are moving in similar forms to the early aluminium sheets.
Then you emerge into a big space in which there are three basic elements. There are two large thin acrylic two metre discs hanging from the roof and on which are projected moving scenes and a large enclosed netted square a bit like those things you put around trampolines these days. Something about the netted work really gripped me. The base had four woofers in the black base which was covered with polystyrene balls. The net had constantly moving images on the sides and there was striking music performed apparently on a cello.. The music played through the woofers drive the poly styrene into the air ad different rates and heights in response to the music. Words do not do it justice. Not a fan of this style of work I was entranced through a whole cycle of the music.
Alexander Boynes was in the room and talked me through some aspcts of the work and I was charmed by the work as a whole and especially the works titled Lumen and Dark Matter Variation 1
For further information

http://www.anca.net.au/exhibitions/346/lumen/

Canberra Times Article
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/entertainment/alexander-boynes-grows-up-and-gets-serious-20140328-35opn.html