Down in the Woods Today
April 2013
McClelland Sculpture Survey & Award
Remember when modern sculpture began to resemble a snake hung on a fence to die? Everyone knew that it wouldn’t die until sundown but by the later 1970s the light was fading. Conceptual and post-object art looked to have delivered the killer blow.
Thirty years later and that snake looks in rude health. What happened? How is it that by-the-sea sculpture projects are big and getting bigger, no self-respecting freeway is complete without some funky sculptural ornamentation and installation art is the weapon of choice for countless artists? The trick was to keep an eye on that snake. It didn’t die, just changed its skin and address. American art critic Rosalind Krauss nailed it in 1979 when she introduced the idea of ‘sculpture in an expanded field.’ Through this new deal sculpture got to keep its brand name but it did have to concede territory. Sculpture could keep on calling itself sculpture provided it was also about everything else. Like, somehow the spacy bits between object, artist and viewer were sculpture too. Couldn’t be simpler.
Talking of expanded fields, the 5th McClelland Sculpture Survey is currently reaping the benefits of expanding into some of its ‘new’ territory, adjacent to the Gallery and existing Sculpture Park. This area heavily wooded, ti tree scrub. There are paths and the odd clearing but there is a sense that, once on the Survey trail, you are being swallowed by the bush. Most works are visually isolated from each other. They just appear. This dynamic works a treat for sculptures such as Christopher Langton’s Away with the fairies, a group of sexed up animatrons who look like runaways from a teen party teleportation caper gone wrong. Likewise for Troy Emery’s Golden Beast which blocks the path like a spangled Gay Mardi Gras Yeti which everyone knows must be obeyed. Add to this Matt Calvert’s cookie cutter kid, Boy pointing down, which commands a clearing with the kind of purposeful gesture I thought only Flat Stanley was capable of. So many works feed off this peek-a-boo dynamic. It fires at the get-go with Anton McMurray’s Seed which greets Survey trekkers while they are still putting on the sunblock. The McClelland Survey team must have Seed high on its praise the lord list because it has ‘enter’ written all over it from its gonzo-gothic tips to its stolidly classical roots.
The Survey Award has gone this time around to Adelaide artist Greg Johns for his At the centre (there is nothing). Johns is a determined survivor of the 1970s – 1980s turf wars, which (in Adelaide at least) cast object makers against ideologues. These were testing times in which artists committed to making welded steel sculptures were type cast as patriarchal, knuckle-dragging formalists. But Johns is old school, who took from his mentor, Bert Flugelman, the lesson that nothing beats time in the studio. So he just kept working and thinking and in the process transformed his work from heeding the sirens’ call to geometric cadence to embracing elements of paradox and duality which give his current work, and At the centre (there is nothing) in particular, poetic presence. When engaging with this work be alert to the sudden visual ‘flip flops’ which in a handful of steps can translate a circle into a square and a cluster of subatomic protons into a medieval rose window.
The survey continues to be successful in attracting the participation of artists who have variously taken on board the idea that sculpture today does work within broader frameworks. The fact that works are required to function in an outdoor setting and survive for an extended length of time in all kinds of weathers is a practical consideration not faced by installation preferencing free spirits. Despite this, and the ever-present threat of succumbing to the art-and-nature default position, there are signs that the Survey is settling into its own skin without becoming overly risk averse. Strong works give it backbone and bite. These include Isaac Greener and Lucas Maddock’s Apostle no. 2, a ‘replica’ of a member of the so-called 12 Apostles off the Western Coast of Victoria, which fell into the sea in 2005. It ticks a lot of boxes. Incongruity (so what’s an Apostle doing on the outskirts of Frankston?). Spooky factor (this big hunka hunka fibro rock really glows). Big (size isn’t everything but when referencing Australia’s penchant for big sculptures it does matter). Karleena Mitchell’s bird boxes (Cacophony) have novelty and conservation concerns on its side. Tick entertainment and social engagement. But factor in the clever use of sound (ambulance sirens, hooning cars and bash the bush parties) and the enveloping bushland suddenly looks very vulnerable.
There are other works which hopefully will stretch the imagination of Survey trekkers; John Kelly’s implacable The weight of words, Bozo Ink’s (Cameron Bishop and David Fitzsimmons) Bunker-de-bunk and for reasons I’m not quite sure of, Will Heathcote’s Synthesis which basically consists of blackened tree sections. It was this work with its pitch-black surfaces suggesting tree victims of yet another oil spill which spoke of materiality and surfaces as the entry point for so many works in this exhibition. There’s a lot of skin in this show. Focus on that and you may find where the snake is headed.
The McClelland Sculpture Survey & Award, at McClelland Sculpture Park + Gallery, currently until July 14.
1. Chaco Kato. Himo theory 2012. white fabric string, pegs, bamboo, recycled materials
2. Greg Johns. At the centre (there is nothing) 2012. Corten steel
3. Anton Mcmurray. Seed 2012. Hinoki (Japanese cypress)
4. Christopher Langton. Away with the Fairies 2012. PVC, polyester resin and acrylic
Photos by: John Gollings