Weaving Ideas

Art can be a like a foreign language - and like language it is often difficult to understand and appreciate the significance of an artist’s work unless you have some prior knowledge or skills that help you decipher or translate its meaning.

Perhaps one of the greatest artistic movements which has been greatly misunderstood or not understood at all is conceptual art which first began in the 1960s. As the name suggests conceptual artists decided that the idea of an artwork is more important than appearance or form. Since “ideas” were essentially their media conceptual artists didn’t need to paint or sculpt in the traditional sense. Instead they adopted a role similar to that of a manager or an architect who through carefully worded instructions, rules or formula could be responsible for the creation of something significant. It was logical therefore that conceptual art typically took the form of language, text, photography and readymade objects.

What makes conceptual art difficult for most people to understand is because it requires a lot of patience and willingness of the viewer to contemplate on what might seem as overly simple gestures. This challenging experience is important to conceptual artists because their artwork is meant to act as a trigger for ideas as opposed to a landscape painting which aims to woo the viewer with the illusion of reality. Conceptual art is more like a riddle or a crossword - you have to actively think about the artwork rather than being passively feed information or imagery. The result of conceptual art therefore might be as simple as a single word written on a wall or a specific object placed in a particular location – but despite their simplistic appearance these artistic acts can be keys to vast corridors of knowledge and rooms filled with complex meaning. The conceptual artists of the 1960s have had a considerable influence on contemporary art today. Many artists currently employ the conceptualist methodology in order to create artwork – despite whether they paint or sculpt in a traditional manner or not.

Information Given – a solo exhibition by artist Justin Morgan currently on show at the Lesley Kriesler gallery - toys with the legacy of conceptual art but does so to interrogate the authority of academia and question how we study and understand the world. The exhibition is centred around two expansive but unobtrusive works displayed on two parallel walls. The two works entitled Outer and Surface Samples 1-40, and Sample Drawings Bagged 1-51 both consist of sequential rows of clear plastic bags pined to the wall. In Outer and Surface Samples 1-40 the bags are filled with samples of various organic matter such as splinters of wood, leafs or hair. The samples appear as evidence from a forensic investigation or an archaeologist’s archive. Despite the pretension of specialist research we are not presented with any explanatory information and the specimen labels are folded over so the viewer can’t read them. Sample Drawings Bagged 1-51 features plastic bags containing simple line drawings in blue ballpoint pen that appear to reflect the contents of the other bags. Being physically situated between the two one cannot help but playing a game of comparisons trying to match the physical sample with its drawn depiction. However, this game quickly appears to be futile as it seems impossible to make positive matches.

Our understanding of the exhibition is further complicated whilst considering another work situated in the middle of the room. The work is entitled Sample Booklet 1.1 and consists of a book and a standard white art gallery plinth with a removable Perspex box lid. The book is filled with captions and technical information pertaining to images that don’t exist in the book or else ware in the exhibition. Spinning our confusion even further into orbit is the display of the book. Rather than encapsulating an artefact the Perspex lid is placed on the floor with the book on top - leaving the plinth itself with no displayed object and the book open for visitors to leaf through.

At first glance the artworks appear to be the result of some intensive study giving the exhibition an austere academic sensibility. However, after assessing the incoherent evidence on display the reliability and accuracy of what we are presented is brought into question. Indeed, this exhibition poses more questions than it answers. With no didactic explanation or logical descriptions there also seems to be no purpose or result of the displayed research. Therefore, the exhibition as a whole indicates towards the possible fallacy of academic study - leading us to question the Babel like towers of supposedly reliable research, facts and theories that saturate our information age. Facts and theories that also might support the formation of governmental policies, change how we live and influence our perception the world. The exhibition also plays on the tradition of conceptual art by using seemingly simple objects and information to weave ideas into poignant artistic statements.

Information Given closes on 1st December
The Lesley Kreisler Gallery
Gill Street above Portofino Restaurant

Curiouser and Curiouser

artwork by Jared Bryant

Clear order is a dull illusion. Before the dawn of modern science, known as the pre-enlightenment, it was a European pastime (of the affluent class during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries) to compile collections of wonderful and strange cultural objects and natural specimens from faraway lands. These collections stored in shelves and cupboards were called a cabinet of curiosities – they were called this because the world and life during this period was a mystery and only explainable through spiritual beliefs. This all changed, however, when modern science became the popular mode of thought and so vanished the bizarre cabinets - replaced by collections ordered in rationally and objective categories.

Today the closest collection that most people have to the curiosity cabinet is common garage junk – the obvious difference being is that this collection is an unwanted residue. A residue that we tend to shed at this time of year in an almost ritualistic attempt to create order out of apparent chaos. When the complexity of reality confounds us we seek solace in the simple by creating stacks and piles, categories and compartments, boundaries and grids. However, life is not black and white – it is a screaming jungle of vibrant colour. Or as I found out last Saturday the brilliance of life could be a fluorescent pink pair of sneakers dangling from a gallery spotlight, row of beer bottles smeared in paint, box of bananas made out of wool, fence paling sprouting from a bucket of paint or pristine circles of blue and red powder precariously dusted on the floor. This is not the description of a curiosity cabinet or junk in a garage but artworks in an exhibition by The Cavendish Banana Company. The exhibition is called Trudy’s Motorbike and is currently on show at the Lesley Kreisler Gallery.

The company’s representatives Eugene Kreisler and Jared Bryant are the artists responsible for this baffling assortment of objects. Either from spending time with a particular artwork or by observing the relationships to those around it - these objects are symbolic of life’s contradictory complexities and overlooked everyday splendour. For instance, the quirky simplicity in Kreisler’s painting entitled ‘Thunder’ is significant of both sincerity and disillusionment. It is made out of a large circular canvas with a roughly painted black zigzag. Attached to the bottom of the canvas are brightly coloured threads that dribble onto the floor. The work resembles an American Indian dreamcatcher amulet believed to lure good dreams and repel or ensnare bad ones. These days the dreamcatcher is reduced to a meaningless kitsch object that you can buy from the $2 shop. Kreisler’s dream catcher however, is deliberately blown out of proportion and made in an odd fashion giving it a strange appearance. It could be symbolic of either a sincere homage to the noble mysticism of the American Indian or an ironic critique of how it has been reduced to a tacky souvenir. Or even the muddled and surreal imaginings of a deep sleep.

In a different vein but equally curious is a series of paintings placed on the floor. Brandished across the surfaces are passionate strokes of thick paint slapped onto otherwise clean stretched white canvases. On top of each painting is either a beer or energy drink bottle. Studying the expressionist gestures brings to mind the analysis of hand writing or body language as a judge of personality. Similarly with the placement of the beer and energy drink bottles makes one think of the influence that substances have on our behaviour. Behaviours that interestingly contradict the advertised images for these beverages.

Like a murky dream were one thing morphs into another, directly opposite Kreisler’s painting ‘Thunder’ is a different work that shares some uncanny formal similarities but in miniature form. The work, by Bryant, is a tiny white handcrafted skull that is bleeding a redeeming rainbow of dazzling colours. Accompanying the skull are equally troubling works including one depicting a small body trapped in a web like lattice of paint. Close by is a painting that sports the slogan “PILL POP ‘N’ PUBLIC’ and another that simply reads ‘FAKE’ in bold 3D letters. The combination of all these works point to the beguiling nature of pop culture commercialism, the trappings of societal expectations and the fear of conservative normality.

One of the great things about this exhibition is that it could easily be viewed as one large amazing artwork, it is after all produced by one entity: The Cavendish Banana Company. In all its entirety and disparity Trudy’s Motorbike suggests to us that life is not clear and rational but rife with complex beauty and nonsensical relationships. Exiting the exhibition though a green, yellow and blue striped fly curtain I felt as though I had witnessed both the mystical significance of the cabinet of curiosities, and the meaningless accumulation of the garage. Trudy’s Motorbike is a precious art experience full of bewilderment and brilliance.

Trudy’s Motorbike closes 29th September 2007
The Lesley Kreisler Gallery
Gill Street above Portofino Restaurant