The other side of things (on the other side)

Haraldur Jonsson, Sigurdur Gudjonsson, Darri Lorenzen, Birta Gudjonsdottir & Geirthrudur Finnbogadottir Hjorvar, curated by Birta Gudjonsdottir
Bus Gallery
117 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne, April-May 2006

image Sigurdur Gudjonsson
I had never been to BUS Gallery before so I was up for the new experience - “Artists from Iceland”. I think my partner Jessica’s view of the exhibition was doomed before we got to exhibition, so many factors contributed to her mood before arriving. It was on empty hungry tummies, after a strange run in with a homeless man and spending a little while walking around trying to find the gallery in an unfamiliar part of the city. What was in the exhibition (or the building itself) didn’t help to ease any anxiety or tension that accumulated prior to viewing.

The building was dark and raw with brickwork, building beams and structural inside supports showing. The works within the space showed a quiet unease, separateness and somehow seemed to capture the moment before a scare. In hindsight, we sought out the video work in the next room to comfort ourselves, assuming it would be predictable and passive like television or popular commercial cinema.

We were faced with more of the aforementioned only now that it was moving, life-animated; it was real and therefore worse. Breaking point came when the piece played scenes of darkness which were inexpectedly broken by a flashing of a horror-face screaming, like a strobe from the darkness prompting a shriek from my partner. We hadn’t seen the whole film and were not sure how long it was but she was quite anxious to leave. I almost felt that the exhibition was there for us as art’s representative of “shocks and thrills”, like that of the recent spate of shock-horror films from Hollywood and all its cinematic extensions (Wolf Creek, Hostel, Evil Aliens, High Tension). I am also interested in what I would think of the exhibition if I had of viewed it in a content, relaxed and clinical manner but maybe I wouldn’t have got as much out of it.
Ace

Colleen Ahern

Angels on Airwaves
Neon Parc
1/53 Bourke Street Melbourne, May 2006

Bedtime 2006 oil on board 30x30cm
Colleen Ahern is kind of like Elizabeth Peyton. She makes art about pop music. Whereas Peyton’s works look like they have been made by a music fan, Ahern’s paintings have a studied and, in some cases, Old Master look about them. Most of the paintings are portraits of people like Tom Waits, PJ Harvey and Leonard Cohen, but there were also pictures of a concert, a girl playing guitar and this weird triptych of naked chicks on bicycles. While the show was hung pretty sparse, the arrangement of the works seemed to reflect different sensibilities in the treatment of the subjects. The Harvey painting looked rushed and was probably the least successful work in the show. On the other hand, paintings like Winter were Richteresque in their execution; as were Cohen, London and Asylum. Overall it was a really good show, but I think that it could have benefited from more works and works of different sizes.
Jules

Rosebud

a collaboration between Kate Daw and the weavers of the Victorian Tapestry Workshop
262-266 Park Street Sth Melbourne, May 2006

installation view
At the opening of ‘Rosebud’ I probably paid more attention to the workshop than the exhibition. There were hundreds of spools of thread, many half finished works, all accompanied by a small print out or photocopy of the original they were replicating. Or reproducing. Or interpreting. Whichever you like. I wanted to touch everything.
Fabrics and threads do that, where paintings and drawings don’t really. They’re tactile. I think when you touch things (or when a feeling comes over you that you want to really badly), it’s far more intimate. And you remember those sensations. My grandma’s silk cushions in her living room. The floor of my dad’s house rubbing the soles of my feet. Even my bed sheets.
I bought new ones a bit back and I couldn’t really sleep at all the first night. They didn’t feel right. I decided to ease myself into it, like a small child. I had to stick with the new linen, but I got to keep my old, hole ridden pillow case until I could learn to let it go. I’m sure it sounds abit silly, but it was quite an adjustment for me at the time. And then I moved house. The trials and tribulations of attempting to make everything that was unfamiliar feel like home. And then I thought to myself (or realised), that I probably just care too much.
Jade Venus