Flinders University Museum of Art. 25 May 2024

Cover Image: Mandy Martin, Adelaide railway station 2 (detail), 1973, screenprint, ink on paper, 50.0 x 73.7 cm (image) 55.9 x 75.9 cm (sheet), Ann Newmarch Collection, © the estate of the artist

The Flinders University Museum of Art is staging a highly illuminating and thoroughly researched exhibition of posters and prints produced in the 1970s, a turbulent era in politics and in visual art.

Most of the prints and posters are drawn from its collection and some from private sources, and the exhibition provides a unique and compelling analysis of this era of artistic, social and political change in South Australia.

Installation view: If you don’t fight … you lose: politics, posters and PAM, 2024; Flinders University Museum of Art, Adelaide, photo: courtesy FUMA

The posters and prints were produced by members of the Progressive Art Movement (PAM), a group of as many as 30 people working in various art forms and centred at Flinders University’s philosophy department. PAM emerged in 1974 from discussions related to the teaching of the Politics and Art unit offered by the philosophy department whose head, Professor Brian Medlin, was a political activist noted for his earlier protests against the Vietnam War and who considered that art should be used for the benefit of society. The group questioned art’s purpose and reacted angrily to what was seen as American cultural imperialism as exemplified by modernist trends in visual art.

The early 1970s saw the election of the Whitlam Labor government in Canberra and the Dunstan Labor government in South Australia. Both were considered progressive governments that fostered the arts, but while the period may be seen as progressive politically, the PAM artists and associated groups were frequently highly critical of those governments. For example, the Whitlam government’s purchase of American abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles, for what was considered an exorbitant price, was especially criticised (nationally as well as locally) as being elitist, as an egregious example of US cultural imperialism and as a challenge to Australia’s cultural independence.

The If you don’t fight… you lose exhibition is accompanied by an extensive catalogue which includes an essay by exhibition curators Jude Adams and Professor Emerita Catherine Speck outlining the events surrounding the formation of PAM and associated organisations including the Progressive Printers Alliance and the Worker Student Alliance.

The exhibition title, If you don’t fight… you lose, was the also the title of the PAM exhibition of 1977, a title PAM had taken from a song by popular Adelaide-based musical ensemble Redgum which was also associated with PAM.

PAM’s visual arts group suffered from ideological differences and eventually split into factions. It dissolved altogether in 1978, but it had a significant impact well beyond its short lifespan. The PAM artists addressed a range of issues, primarily the class structure and the exploitation of workers, and also women’s liberation. With respect to visual art, Speck and Adams state that,

‘Their activism raised questions pertaining to the funding of international exhibitions and acquisitions, how best to support Australian art and artists, and who art should serve.’

The catalogue also contains an essay by curator and writer Julie Ewington, entitled Five Years in Adelaide, reflecting on her participation in events of the time. As well as PAM, she was involved with the then recently established Experimental Art Foundation and the Women’s Art Movement. Ewington states,

‘What I found in Adelaide was a compact, intense network of passions, commitments, conversations and, yes, rivalries in the arts, which were underpinned by positions that were often, in the end, political.’

Arts educator and curator Suzanne Close’s essay A Contemporary Perspective, addresses today’s socially engaged art practice, particularly the work of the activist First Nations artists group proppaNOW which challenges the very idea of ‘Aboriginal art’.

The posters are grouped thematically in the exhibition. The first group, entitled We must risk unlearning all the things that have kept us alive for so long, comprises posters questioning traditional perceptions of women’s roles and advocating women’s liberation. It includes Ann Newmarch’s We must risk unlearning (1975) that suggests that societal attitudes are deeply imbedded.

Ann Newmarch, We must risk unlearning, 1975, screenprint, ink on paper, edition 28/40, 71.2 x 55.5 cm (image), 81.4 x 66.0 cm (sheet), Collection of Flinders University Museum of Art

The second group of prints, entitled And even if they say that you never had it so good, that is still a slogan of those who have much more…, challenges the myth of Australia as a classless society. Mandy Martin’s poster You never had it so good juxtaposes an image of women at leisure, representing an upper class, with an image of women factory workers.

Posters included under When workers unite bosses tremble call for the nationalisation of Australia’s car industry. In the 1970s, the Adelaide factories of US-owned vehicle manufacturers GMH and Chrysler (both factories since defunct) were seen to exploit workers, resulting in voluble and disruptive union protests. Activist posters were displayed by workers in workplaces, prompting an angry response from management. Ann Newmarch’s Free Will Heidt (1976) shows an image of the union leader of that name who had been gaoled. The issue of foreign control of Australian industries more broadly is reflected in Mandy Martin’s Who owns Australia (1976), which shows the image of a hand holding banknotes superimposed over an image of miners.

Mandy Martin, Australian Independence, 1974 screenprint, ink on paper, 55.9 x 76.0 cm, Collection of Flinders University Museum of Art 5053, © the Estate of the artist

Robert Boynes’s Let’s make things perfectly clear (1974) characterises the use of posters to project simple, clear and powerful messages to a wide audience. PAM was closely connected with the communist movement, and produced posters supporting communist election candidates, such as Jim Cane’s Vote Communist (c1970s).

Jim Cane, Vote communist, c. 1970s, screenprint, ink on paper, 66.5 x 44.0 cm (image), 70.8 x 50.9 cm (sheet), Collection of Flinders University Museum of Art

Many of the prints, however, make extensive use of text and invite close reading and analysis of their symbolism. The comprehensive Exhibition Guide lists the works and their related themes. The artists’ work was often a form of very personal expression and embodied a strong commitment to the causes they championed.

The work of some PAM artists continued after PAM disbanded, for example, Andrew Hill’s New technology for prosperity not unemployment (1984). Some artists also worked in other media — Ann Newmarch made pillowslips bearing the Eureka flag, an iconic symbol of rebellion that was displayed in the call for nationalisation, and she reused some of her images to create postcards.

The exhibition reflects the expansion of the nature of art and the shift in the role of artists that emerged in the 1960s with the emergence of Pop Art and the creation of multiple examples of works that would be more accessible to the public. Some of the posters were produced in large numbers for display in public places, while others were produced in limited editions for gallery display. In many cases, the printing techniques were quite sophisticated, using multiple layers of colour rather than monochrome. Work produced by teams of artists challenged the tradition of the heroic, solitary artist making unique works for an elite market.

The themes that occupied the minds of the PAM artists are still with us today. Issues such as warfare, the cost-of-living crisis, homelessness, the exploitation of workers, the concentration of wealth in few hands, the abuse of women, the suppression of protesters and the threat of authoritarian government seem not only perennial but worsening.

We might wonder if the protests identified in this outstanding exhibition had achieved anything, but we might also wonder where we would be if there had been no protests. The exhibition title, If you don’t fight… you lose may be seen as a call to recognise the issues we are facing and to take action. This is a most timely and thought-provoking exhibition.

Chris Reid

When: 6 May to 5 July

Where: Flinders University Museum of Art

Bookings: flinders.edu.au/museum-of-art

Exhibition Guide: flinders.edu.au/museum-of-art/_/exhibition-guide

Aldo Iacobelli. Adelaide Central Gallery. 9 May 2024

The entrance to Aldo Iacobelli’s exhibition at Adelaide Central Gallery is via the reception area, past open plan offices, through the kitchen and down a corridor. It is quite a ceremonial passageway drawing the visitor towards Iacobelli’s latest solo exhibition, The Book of Questions.

The first element of the exhibition to be encountered is a pad of single-page A3 catalogue hanging from a hook on the door. When ripped away, each page contains an essay by gallery curator Andrew Purvis on one side and a reproduction of a predominantly black painting And when you change the landscape is it with bare hands or with gloves? on the other. This collection of black glossy catalogues appears like a portent or harbinger of darker things to come; as Purvis noted, it was hung on the door due to a lack of space within the gallery to place it.

On entering the gallery, the scale of this ambitious new body of work is evident. Twenty oil-on-canvas paintings are hung salon style, filling almost all of the wall space. A series of wax sculptures, all titled Debris, are dotted around the edges of the floor, not quite against the wall, but almost touching. The overwhelming first impact is of a stark space – all white and black – with monochrome paintings filling the entire gallery. The portent becomes even more ominous with a welcoming piece of Mount Gambier limestone, mounted at waist height on a black wall with the carved words: WHAT WILL YOU DO, GOD, WHEN I DIE?

What will you do, God, when I die?, 2024. Photo Sam Roberts @samrophoto

With this text drawn from a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, Iacobelli posits the first question of the exhibition. It sets the mood of an artist contemplating his own mortality and what is left of the body, soul and spirit after the flesh has died. Death and the questioning of life and purpose are vivid threads throughout all of the works — with each painting inspired by a line of poetry from Pablo Neruda’s The Book of Questions. Published in 1973, just before Neruda’s death, the book of 320 unanswerable questions evokes the wonder of childhood with the experience of growing up and becoming an adult.

Yesterday, yesterday I asked my eyes when will we see each other again?, 2024;

Do you have room for some thorns they asked the rosebush?, 2024; Debris 1, 2024.

Photo Sam Roberts @samrophoto

The questions are playful but also steeped in ambivalence and the mystery of the natural world and our place within it. A large painting of a dead cockroach on its back is a dominant image in the space. With the title Yesterday, yesterday I asked my eyes when will we see each other again? the effect is unsettling, but also compelling. Iacobelli recreates the underbelly and fine hairs of the six legs and antennae as a monstrous abject object. Even in death, the cockroach both repels and attracts, as it invites closer inspection and a study of the nuances of the artist’s finely tuned technique and brushstrokes.

Beneath the cockroach is a smaller painting of three black circles, seemingly balanced or rolling along the base of a white oblong. With the title Do you have room for some thorns they asked the rosebush? are these perhaps giant droppings of the dying cockroach, or a Sisyphean ball endlessly being rolled up a mountain then crashing back down to earth? Close by on the floor, a dark brown wax sphere rests on the ground, solid and dark, creating a textural element, inviting a desire to touch and feel the weight of this ‘debris’.

Like most of the paintings in The Book of Questions, the black shapes against a white background create an effect of negative and positive space — reflecting the nature of a question and its response. The wax sculptures are also heavy and dark, appearing to be anchors or discarded industrial parts. The dark material has an alchemical and earthly feel and gives three-dimensionality to elements contained in the paintings.

Why do we keep erasing the truth?, 2024. Photo Sam Roberts @samrophoto

The canvases are of varying sizes and are unframed, yet they are all bordered by a single or double black line. This bordering is inspired by the public death announcements of the Italian city of Naples; simple white notices outlined in black, which are hung in public spaces to alert the community to a recent passing.

On first glance, the blurred-out words and sentences in the painting Why do we keep erasing the truth? might appear to be one of these death notices. But on closer inspection the words ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart’ across the top of the painting come into focus. For many Australians, the ‘No’ result in the 2023 Voice Referendum represented a time of shame and sadness. Iacobelli captures this and reflects on his own response to the referendum by blurring the words of the Uluru statement. Through the disappearing words, and question posed by Neruda, Iacobelli ponders why Australians cannot face and accept the truth of colonisation, recognise First Nations peoples, and move forward as a country.

There is a pervasive sadness and almost despair in these works. With a range of themes hinted at including loss of innocence; climate change and ignorance; of voices silenced and words wanting to be spoken but erased. The Book of Questions could be read as a lament to a world that is in crisis — and it is partly this, but it is also an ode to optimism. To see the world as Pablo Neruda saw it; complex, playful, full of questions, yet full of potential and possible answers.

It is always a pleasure to see new works by this important, senior South Australian artist. Iacobelli has exhibited for several decades and maintained a consistent practice, continuously evolving in scope, technique, and concept. He worked closely with Andrew Purvis on the development of this body of work and they have carefully collaborated on the placement and assemblage of paintings and objects in the space. However, this is a substantial body of work, which did feel cramped and hemmed in by the limits of the gallery space.

It seems that Iacobelli has a lot to say at this point in his life and the paintings might have benefited from more ‘air and oxygen’ around them. These are subtle yet big statements on life, death and the unknown and require room for contemplation.

Where the close proximity of the hang does work successfully, is that the paintings may be read as a series of pages. As a selection of questions gathered like a book, which evolves from beginning to end, with chapters, arcs, and storylines.

The Book of Questions might be inspired by death notices, but this exhibition is also an affirmation of life. Iacobelli invites the audience to contemplate their own views of life and death, to feel both the lightness and heaviness of everyday existence. He reminds us that art and literature are vehicles for us to interpret the world and that asking questions is essential to how we understand each other and everything around us.

Julianne Pierce

When: 9 Apr to 25 May

Where: Adelaide Central School of Art Gallery

More Info: acsa.sa.edu.au

2024 Finalist Artworks. South Australian Museum. 22 Apr 2024

Public awareness of the changing environment and the impact of global heating has escalated rapidly in recent years due to the frequency and intensity of climate-related weather events, the problem of pollution and the growing calls for action.

Visual artists have long used art to illustrate elements of nature, from botanical illustrations to landscape paintings. As might be expected, many artists today address the changing environment, species extinctions and the characterisation of significant natural phenomena. Increasingly, it seems that artists are concerned not only with the scientific documentation of the environment but with the articulation of its vulnerability and preciousness.

Established in 2003 by the South Australian Museum, the biennial Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize encourages artists to create artwork from a natural science perspective and to contribute to the environmental debate. This year’s Waterhouse Prize exhibition showcases a diverse and illuminating collection of artworks that range in perspective from the microscopic to the geological and from the representational to the metaphorical.

Jessica Murtagh, Six is the loneliest number, Emerging Prize finalist, photo Angus Northeast

Jessica Murtagh’s Mongarlowe Mallee comprises six exquisitely crafted glass vessels illustrated with images of the leaves of the six remaining specimens of the Mongarlowe Mallee tree which are estimated to be between 3,000 and 13,000 years old and which are nicknamed ‘ice-age trees’. It may be that such artworks will be the only reminders of extinct life forms when they are gone.

Joseph McGlennon, Leap Number 5, Open Prize finalist, photo Angus Northeast

Joseph McGlennon’s startling image of a leaping kangaroo, entitled Leap No 5, which shows a sailing ship in the background to represent colonial settlement, draws attention to the impact of colonisation on native fauna. The kangaroo is an Australian emblem, shown on the coat of arms, and is hunted for food, and its habitat has been significantly eroded. McGlennon’s work is both a superb illustration and a reminder of the need to balance conservation with exploitation.

Laura Wills, Encounter, Open Prize finalist, photo Angus Northeast

Laura Wills’s Encounter is an illustration of a sea lion superimposed on a Department of Lands map of Encounter Bay, highlighting the tension between the local environment, the traditional Kaurna custodians, and the ‘legal’ recognition of the colonial appropriation of the district.

There are two absorbing videos that represent life from very different viewpoints. Sophia Dacy-Cole’s Soil Breathes is a three-minute video of a soil sample under a microscope. She says:

‘The title, Soil Breathes, refers to the natural science practice of measuring soil's vitality through respiration tests. Soil literally breathes. These images were taken from tablespoons of topsoil, dug out of humus and filmed under the microscope while still wet. These sounds were taken from that same layer, the sensitive microphone buried between layers of damp sedimentation.’

The video provides the viewer with an unparalleled appreciation of the life of the ground on which we walk, something that we should not take for granted.

By contrast, Kailum Graves’s epic five-hour video entitled Cosmos, or A Chronicle of Life’s Incredible Order, Complexity, and Remarkable Struggle Against Entropy and Resistance of Decay comprises a mesmerisingly rapid sequence of still images that depict, in the artist’s words, ‘the interconnectedness and interdependence of life… the project documents diverse ethnicities, cultures, and perspectives, narrating the story of life's intricate order amidst the entropy of the universe.’

Emma Jackson, King Prawn, Emerging Prize finalist, photo Angus Northeast

A broad geological perspective emerges from Emma Jackson’s King Prawn, a rug of wool and silk that represents the Gawler Craton in South Australia’s Gawler Ranges, the various colours representing particular rock formations. At first glance, King Prawn is an abstract artwork that would nicely decorate any home, but its depiction of a unique three-billion-year-old geological formation makes us aware of the age of the Earth and the brevity and fragility of human existence.

Nyunmiti Burton, Seven Sisters Story, Open Prize finalist, photo Angus Northeast

Nyunmiti Burton’s Seven Sisters Story, which depicts her Tjukurpa (creation story) about the constellations of Pleiades and Orion, takes us a further step back from earthly concerns so as to see the planet in the context of the wider universe. Most importantly, Seven Sisters Story offers an alternative appreciation of the origin of human existence and the nature of the universe, and it asserts the cultural significance of such understanding.

Harry Sherwin, Altered Hawkesbury Landscape, Open Prize finalist, photo Angus Northeast

Harry Sherwin exhibited two fine paintings showing rural areas in flood. Floods are very much in the public mind, but the artist states:

‘I wished to avoid making 'disaster art'. Rather, the lyrical treatment of these vast watery landscapes fits within my own painterly practice and the wider tradition of Australian landscape painting.’

While Sherwin’s declared emphasis is on artistic representation, the viewer cannot remain emotionally or intellectually detached, and Sherwin’s work subtly but firmly prompts consideration of the increasing frequency and intensity of flooding and its impact on affected communities.

Jenna Lee, Grass Trees – Growing Together, 2024 Open Prize winner, photo Angus Northeast

The Waterhouse Open Category prize of $30,000 was awarded to Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman and KarraJarri Saltwater artist Jenna Lee for her extraordinary work Grass Tree – Growing Together which is strikingly different from the other works in the exhibition and brings together two important stories. These representations of grass trees are composed from the shredded pages of a decades-old Aboriginal language dictionary (Aboriginal Words and Place Names) that contained errors. The artist states:

‘By transforming a flawed Aboriginal word dictionary into a pair of Grass Trees, I draw parallels between First Peoples linguistic resilience, and this plant’s ability to rise from ashes. This work celebrates the enduring spirit of both traditional language and flora in the face of their ecologies near destruction.’

The interrelatedness of the impact of colonisation and environmental mismanagement is made clear in Jenna Lee’s work.

Andrew Gall, Coming Together, 2024 Emerging Prize winner, photo Angus Northeast

The $10,000 Emerging Prize was awarded to Pakana artist Andrew Gall for his 3D-printed shell necklace Coming Together. He describes it as:

‘The first kanalaritja strung using 3D printed porcelain shells. Ocean acidity levels are rising; our shells for kanalaritja are fragile and diminishing. How can we protect our sacred Pakana tradition, practiced since time immemorial? This necklace is my response to this threat of cultural extinction.’

The artists shortlisted for this year’s Waterhouse Prize take varying approaches to the balance between dispassionate scientific or technical illustration or representation on one hand and environmental or cultural statement on the other. The use of 3-D printing, as exemplified by Gall’s thoughtful and evocative work, speaks of how the latest technology might be used to represent traditional cultural forms and the species on which they are based.

The artworks in this outstanding Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize exhibition are thoughtfully conceived and finely executed, and the exhibition is a must-see, not only for the scientifically and artistically minded but also for the general public.

Chris Reid

When: 12 Apr to 10 Jun

Where: South Australian Museum

Bookings: events.humanitix.com

Exhibition page: samuseum.sa.gov.au

Ena Grozdanić. Post Office Projects. 2 Apr 2024

Ena Grozdanić’s exhibition A politics of the living at Post Office Projects comprises a series of small images mounted on the wall of the front gallery, adjacent to a video with a voiceover. In the video, an essay entitled A politics of the living: a fugue, is quietly read, ruminating on recent and current wars, their devastating impact and the apparent human predisposition to violence.

One set of the wall-mounted images comprises collages of scans of various objects, collectively entitled Death to fascism freedom to the people. The scanned objects all have symbolic significance — flowers and flower petals, stones, a piece of text, shells, a still from the video and the photo of a clockface — elements of daily life.

Ena Grozdanić A politics of the living, 2024, scanned objects, digital collage. Image courtesy of the artist.

Also adjacent to the video is another pair of images, entitled Monument and Monument at night respectively, made by the artist’s father, Enes Grozdanić. These are etchings of a large structure and suggest day and night scenes of that structure, the latter under moonlight. The structure in the images resembles the Monument to the Revolution, a World War II memorial sculpture in the former Yugoslavia, now Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Ena Grozdanić’s video intersperses images of a verdant garden with images of books she has read showing quotes included in her text. The video includes footage of her Google search for sources of information to be used in her essay, showing how she compiled it, and she speaks of accidental discoveries of materials that prompted her search. One such discovery was a postcard, displayed in the Jewish Museum in Berlin, which had been thrown from a deportation train bound for Auschwitz, and she references the Holocaust and also the witch-hunts of the Middle Ages in her attempt to comprehend violence and subjugation.

Ena Grozdanić, A politics of the living, 2024, still image, single channel video with audio, 19:30 minutes. Image description: A postcard written in German in hurried handwriting, dated 27 June 43, 2 p.m. The subtitled text reads: ‘I noticed a postcard in glass casing’. Image courtesy of the artist.

In her eloquent and compelling essay, which she dedicates to “the martyrs of the war machine”, Grozdanić addresses several characteristics of modern warfare, particularly the use of drones, which are controlled remotely and whose anonymous users are safely isolated from their targets. In the video, we see an image that appears to show two drone pilots at their consoles, as if they are video gamers, and, later, footage of a demonstration against the use of drones. Those authorising the use of such weapons claim that they are carefully targeted to avoid civilian casualties, but there are always civilian casualties, and these may be accidental or intended consequences.

‘The people of Waziristan know that the drone always strikes twice, in five to ten minute intervals. [“In order to kill the relatives who rush out to help”]’

Grozdanić states, ‘The grammar of war has always been one of mystification, which suggests a certain shame, or at least a suppressed guilty conscience.’ She speaks of how warfare is rationalized, or sanitized, for public consumption:

‘With the institution of the military, and its international laws of war, modernity has coded the killing site as a conflict zone, conferring justification and rationale on the maiming of bodies. Thus murder via a machete becomes unacceptable while flesh torn apart by the blades of ‘Hellfire’ missiles becomes foreign policy.’

She addresses the manufacture as well as the use of weapons including napalm, and the ‘othering’ or depersonalization of those being targeted to render them less than human so as to assuage the feelings of guilt felt by those making and using the weapons. Finally, she questions whether war is ‘inscribed into the genetic code of every border, every enclosure, every nation-state? Is it an impulse/the death drive/Thanatos…, an aberration of history?’

The voiceover in the video is soft and restrained, quietly contemplative rather than raging with anger. This era of war, with its daily televised imagery of the slaughter of civilian adults and children, has provoked a stream of condemnation from around the world. Grozdanić’s is one of the most articulate statements, simultaneously heartfelt, analytical and detached. It is significant that, in an art exhibition, she has used spoken word as the primary medium of communication to enunciate her very personal reflection on the nature and impact of warfare.

Ena Grozdanić’s A Politics of the Living is sobering but ultimately illuminating in that it proposes an alternative approach to the analysis of conflict — that, in prosecuting warfare, we should consider the impact of the means employed rather than the ends pursued.

Chris Reid

When: 20 Mar to 20 Apr

Where: Post Office Projects

Bookings: postofficeprojects.com.au

Ena Grozdanic, 2024, A Politics of the Living (indicative),

scanned objects, digital collage, cropped version of full image.

Courtesty of the Artist

Penelope Cain. Post Office Projects. 2 Apr 2024

Penelope Cain’s Ice-told stories through layers of dust tells of how ice-cores recently taken from the Antarctic ice-shelf contain dust emitted through the mining of silver, zinc and lead at Broken Hill. The dust was carried by the wind to Antarctica 20 years before the first expeditions to the south pole in 1911.

Cain is concerned that, as the Antarctic ice-sheet melts, the dust held in the ice will find its way into the ocean and into the phytoplankton at the bottom of the food chain. (It’s likely that mining dust will have already entered the ocean on its way to the Antarctic.)

Penelope Cain, Ice-told stories through layers of dust, installation view Post Office Projects 2023. Image courtesy of the artist.

Cain’s exhibition is set out as an installation — the main Post Office Projects gallery space is converted to a 1960s style loungeroom, with various images printed on cloth hung as decorative drapes. The feature image, of a lead-silver galena crystal magnified to a huge size, is printed onto curtains, on the reverse side of which is an image of an Antarctic expedition from 1911, the whole being entitled Ice told stories of lead and ropes.

There are images of mining dust printed onto a large drape, entitled Wherever you may wish to go, know I’ve already arrived. There is a satellite image of Antarctica, a meteorological image of an atmospheric river flowing towards the Antarctic, and an image entitled Beginnings to Ends: Underground and Undersea: mapping at a molecular level the lead dust from the mineral load of Broken Hill, which is printed onto cushions on which viewers can sit to watch a 3-D video showing the locations of Broken Hill mining sites and the underground ore deposits.

Penelope Cain, Ice-told stories through layers of dust, installation view Post Office Projects 2023. Image courtesy of the artist.

The exhibition thus depicts scientifically the flow of mining dust from its source to the Antarctic and sets the imagery within a domestic setting as if to sanitise the process and commodify and even glorify the extracted minerals. The choice of the mid-twentieth century interior design of the furnishings is intended to reflect the moment of transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene eras, when the effects of human activity on the environment became measurable.

Penelope Cain, who has a background in biological science, brings art and science together in this powerful statement about the impact of mining on the planetary environment. The colonisation of Wilyakali Country to establish the Broken Hill mine 150 years ago is an important subtext — the colonisation of Country, the chemical and then physical colonisation of Antarctica and the subjugation and despoiling of the environment may be seen as parallel processes. Cain does not extend her critique beyond representing the facts, but viewers might draw conclusions about the march of technology, capitalism, colonisation, and modernity generally. The important message is that traces of human activity will shape the environment for millions of years.

Chris Reid

When: 20 Mar to 20 Apr

Where: Post Office Projects

Bookings: postofficeprojects.com.au

Penelope Cain, Ice told stories of lead and ropes.

Image courtesy of the artist.

Alice Hu. Nexus Arts Gallery. 2 Apr 2024

Alice Hu’s remarkable installation at Nexus Gallery surrounds and contains the viewer — it’s as if you are inside an organic, evolving form. Hu’s complex and detailed installation exemplifies the Chinese concept of Hundun, which is described as:

“a state of ‘deep chaos’; an embryonic condition that is placed at the root of creation; a primordial state of ‘nothingness’ that is pregnant with endless possibility, where form and matter are undifferentiated yet teeming with energy. ”

Chaostopia, installation view, photo Yusuf Ali Hayat

Tree branches emerge from the white gallery walls which are mostly overpainted with a broad, sweeping gush of black, suggesting a cosmic void. Mounted on the walls are dozens of small objects such as glazed ceramic balls, some painted decoratively and others resembling eyeballs. There are tiny doll faces, some painted and resembling totems. Hanging from the tree branches are tiny plastic doll torsos and limbs and some ceramic facsimiles of these doll body parts. Hands emerge from the wall, and on opposite sides of the gallery there are two paintings showing a pair of hands making a cat’s cradle from wool.

Chaostopia, installation view, photo Yusuf Ali Hayat

In the catalogue essay accompanying Hu’s exhibition, writer Ena Grozdanić likens the assemblage to a fractal and notes how chaos generates the many kinds of fractal forms which are to be found in the physical world. Across the gallery space, forms and patterns are repeated with slight variations, just as in the real world, so that the concept of fractal growth becomes analogous to cosmic evolution.

Chaostopia, installation view, photo Yusuf Ali Hayat

The use of tree branches creates a visual pun — fractal forms branch in many directions as they grow, and tree branches thus exemplify chaotic growth. The dolls could be seen to represent the evolution of our society from its primordial origins in the cosmic chaos, and they remind us of the conceit that we humans represent the pinnacle of the evolution of life.

The overall effect of this playful but thought-provoking exhibition is to characterise a burst of evolutionary activity, with each of the objects symbolising the various ‘branches’ emerging from ongoing chaotic processes. The installation may be seen as a snapshot of this cosmic evolutionary process, which has brought us to the current state of the world. But we are informed that, in Taoist cosmology, the universe’s evolution is a cyclic process, suggesting that it is poised to continue developing in unexpected and unpredictable ways before returning to a primordial state.

Grozdanić suggests that what we see in the world around us is a combination of the unpredictable and the predetermined, and we might note how political, economic, and societal processes appear to result from the interaction of unpredictable and the predetermined influences.

Chaostopia may thus be seen as an allegory for the currently chaotic and unpredictable state of the world, which seems far from any commonly understood idea of utopia. Eyes and hands represent surveillance and control, and human society seems naturally predisposed to try to create order out of chaos. But, in so doing, society comes into conflict with itself, and we might also predict that the current cycle will bring a greater level of conflict and chaos in the future.

The reference to Taoist philosophy reminds us of the fundamental concept of wu wei, the principle of non-action or of refraining from intervening in the natural order of things.

Chris Reid

When: 28 Mar to 3 May

Where: Nexus Arts Gallery

More info: nexusarts.org.au

Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia. 27 Mar 2024

The crowd was in a celebratory mood at the launch of Samstag Museum’s Festival of Arts presentation of Bruce Nuske with Khai Liew, originally scheduled to open in 2023, but thwarted by the gallery’s unavoidable closure for most of that year. Its pairing in 2024 with two moving image works by Dana Awartani – an artist similarly preoccupied with pattern, albeit of an abstract kind – is serendipitous.

Exhibition design by the late Khai Liew provides an inspired framing for a dazzling array of more than 50 narrative-laden ceramic objects – some arranged in clusters – which includes several earlier works, as well as pieces from private collections. However, the majority of works have been created for this exhibition.

Bruce Nuske with Khai Liew, 2024, installation view, Samstag Museum of Art.

Photography by Grant Hancock. Courtesy Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia.

Manipulating three differently patterned wallpaper designs – based on drawings from Nuske’s surface treatments and overflowing notebooks – Liew has cleverly configured the upper gallery as a domestic space with walls and windows that allow multiple viewpoints. Viewers may note that the walls do not quite meet at corners, permitting a flow of air and light and subverting any sense of complete enclosure. (It’s a small detail, but emblematic of Liew’s fastidious approach.) Shelves – seemingly cantilevered – project from windows/apertures, while sculptures are displayed on tables with tapered timber ‘tablecloths’ featuring Liew’s familiar starched ‘Dutch cap’ motif; a detail Liew has amusingly described as also resembling a dog’s drooping ears. Perhaps most striking of all, additional works – teapots and a variety of vessels – occupy three wall-hung, shelving constructions (unit seems just too prosaic a term) of supreme precision and elegance. (Like the tables and stools, there are echoes of the Arts and Crafts’ flourishes that distinguished Liew’s 2010 Prue cupboard.)

Bruce Nuske with Khai Liew, 2024, installation view, Samstag Museum of Art.
Photography by Grant Hancock. Courtesy Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia.

While other ceramicists of Nuske’s generation pursued the influential Bernard Leach/Hamada (Anglo/Japanese) strand of studio practice, Nuske plotted an alternative path. His frequently playful titles – such as Josiah Baby, Japonesque, Rococo Swan Tea – are an indication of an expansive sphere of influences, which ranges from the pottery techniques and styles of eighteenth and nineteenth century British/European industrial wares to movements such as, Rococo, Arts and Crafts, Japonism, Art Nouveau et al. and as essayist Robert Reason points out, British and European porcelain was heavily influenced by China and Japan. Viewing the array of botanical motifs in this exhibition, visitors will not be surprised to learn that Nuske is a passionate gardener, who works from a home studio surrounded by lush foliage and exotic plants. To achieve the wrapped leaves of Leaf Wrap Tea (2022), Nuske collected foliage from his garden, which he pressed into wet clay and then fired (to create a ‘negative’ form). The ceramic leaves thus formed were manipulated (and carved) to enclose the body of the teapot.

So, what are the elements that constitute the distinctive Nuskean vocabulary? Certainly, the technique is virtuosic, the imagination boundless and the immersion in ceramic/art history on fulsome display. A relatively contained palette is offset by an astounding variety of forms, techniques and clay mediums; stoneware, earthenware, terracotta and porcelain. Surfaces may be variously stained, painted, dimpled, pricked, sprigged, carved, or modelled.

“I like looking, gleaning, glancing backward into ceramic history”, Nuske explains, “to interpret and represent ceramic history, elements from the past, which I can mix with my own narratives and decorative impulse”.

It’s an ambitious undertaking; a potentially risky form of hybridity – rich with allusion and satire – that in the course of 50 years of practice, Nuske has accomplished with aplomb. Care is lavished on each unique, hand-built or wheel-thrown object, which may be appreciated on a purely aesthetic level; however, there are personal narratives – Never believe anything you hear and only half you see (2008), for example – and multiple references to be unravelled by those of an enquiring disposition. In May, there will be an opportunity to hear Nuske’s stories in person, when he will be in-conversation with Robert Reason at the Samstag Museum.

Viewers will find it impossible not to anthropomorphise many of Nuske’s objects, which he intentionally animates with diverse personalities. Details such as eccentric handles, assertive, sometimes avian spouts and meticulously finished and inventive feet are indispensable aspects of their acquired attitude. Observe the corpulent swagger of the Fecundity (2022) teapot, the elegant insouciance of Fashionistas’ (2020-2022) vase and pitcher duo, or the arms-akimbo jauntiness and crenelated headpiece of Wallpaper Vase (2021).

Bruce Nuske with Khai Liew, 2024, installation view, Samstag Museum of Art. In foreground, Exaltation of Birds with Weeds (2023) and on right, Wallpaper Vase (2021).

Photography by Grant Hancock. Courtesy Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia.

Historically, the teapot has appealed to a succession of renowned architects as both a design challenge and potential ideological platform. Witnessing for the first time, such a comprehensive assemblage of Nuske’s works, it’s apparent that the teapot persists as his form (or canvas) of preference, providing as it does endless opportunities for surface treatments, eccentric handles, unexpected lids and delightfully witty finials. A black swan, for example, which rests on top of Rococo Swan Tea (2022) is an allusion to the Empress Josephine and her obsession with swans. (Courtesy of the Nicolas Boudin expedition, Josephine’s remarkable menagerie at Malmaison included Australian black swans.) A captivating white swan cup may also suggest Meissen’s groundbreaking, eighteenth-century Swan Service. Elsewhere, a bemused cockatoo, a March hare, a Chinese hat, a perky fragment of an acanthus motif contribute to the particularly Nuskean sense of drollery. Interestingly, Nuske says he is especially drawn to the tactility of the interplay between maker, teapot and its user. Writing in the accompanying (online) catalogue essay ‘Living up to one’s teapot’, Robert Reason makes the following point;

“Nuske’s teapots are infused with the human characteristics of wit, satire and glamour, all the while retaining their functionality… and when used, awakening our senses of touch, smell and taste.”

Amidst all the exquisite decoration, the abundance of botanical references, there is also a discernible hint of the kind of whimsical sculpted creatures associated with the renowned Martinware Pottery (1873-1923). A key sculptural object – exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum as part of Australian Contemporary at COLLECT 2006 – is one of a number of past works included in this exhibition. Unusually within Nuske’s oeuvre, it is inscribed with the text; Plainly Ornate & Extravagantly Meaningless. The symbolic creature is a hybrid dodo/pelican and was created in 2004 at a time, when Nuske felt pattern and decoration were viewed as an “unnecessary complication or somehow anachronistic.” Although there have always been outliers, undeniably the momentum at that time resided with the austerity of monochromatic, pared-back forms (Edmund de Waal, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott et al). In 1999 the Victoria & Albert Museum had staged the exhibition The New White, as a response to the colourful, more painterly new ceramics of the 1980s and 1990s.

Ceramics began to achieve heightened art world currency, as important galleries and museums realigned their public collections to incorporate the decorative and applied arts. In the last decade or so, as visual artists adopted clay as a medium, the field of ceramics has dramatically expanded to embrace a colourful and dynamic diversity of practice – a development that has generated lively discourse within the global community.

Bruce Nuske ceramics with exhibition furniture and design by Khai Liew, 2024, installation view, Samstag Museum of Art.

Photograph by Sia Duff. Courtesy of Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia.

The Samstag Museum has invested in an admirable (and ongoing) program dedicated to showcasing the work of selected, outstanding South Australian practitioners. Bruce Nuske with Khai Liew is the fourth in a series notable for the thoughtful and highly evocative staging of these presentations; Kirsten Coelho’s contemplative Ithaca in 2020, Julie Blyfield’s exquisite Flowers of the Sea (2022) and also in 2022 the astonishing terracotta objects of Helen Fuller – the latter an exhibition designed by Liew.

Clearly Nuske and Liew shared a quest for beauty and perfection, but their antithetical decorative/minimalist aesthetic might have appeared to preclude collaboration. What they did have in common was a practice defined by a deft synthesis of myriad – often mutual – influences and perhaps more unexpectedly, a sense of playfulness. In their earlier 2012 Samstag collaboration, Irrational and Idiosyncratic and most ambitiously in this exhibition, Liew demonstrated his ability to realise and amplify – with an extraordinary degree of sensitivity – the visions of other artists. It is impossible not to wonder where this capacity might have taken him, since the very sad aspect of the exhibition’s unavoidable rescheduling, is that the late Khai Liew did not experience the exceptional outcome of their collaborative project. For Nuske, this exhibition represents the triumphant culmination of a lifetime’s work and experiences. It is also inevitably an exhibition that is wreathed in a sense of poignancy.

In-conversation with Bruce Nuske and Robert Reason: 4 May, 3–5 pm, Samstag Museum of Art.

Wendy Walker

When: 1 March to 10 May
Where: Samstag Museum of Art

Bookings: unisa.edu.au

Flinders University Museum of Art, Bedford Park. 15 Mar 2024

Between [the] Details is an engrossing exhibition of diverse video art showing at the Flinders University Museum of Art (FUMA), and the five videos on display constitute an exemplary sample from the collection of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), in Melbourne.

ACMI is a museum of screen culture, showing film, television, videogames and video art. Between [the] Details is touring regional centres from late 2023 to late 2025, and the presentation of this selection at FUMA provides a valuable opportunity for Adelaide audiences to engage with some acclaimed video artworks.

Kaylene Whiskey, Ngura Pukulpa – Happy Place, 2021, Courtesy Kaylene Whiskey and Iwantja Arts. Photo: Max Mackinnon.

Yankunytjatjara artist Kaylene Imantura Whiskey’s delightfully happy video Ngura Pukulpa – Happy Place (2021) celebrates indigenous culture and her community. The video shows footage of Whiskey’s Indulkana Country with animated imagery superimposed over it, and the short narrative shows Whiskey as a caped superwoman flying over her Country and then producing animations that fly off her canvas to become the superimposed images of the people, animals and objects that populate her dreamworld. We see a nun, representing the arrival of Christianity, we see Whiskey and the women of her community partying before a Santa steals their celebratory cake, and there are references to heroic women, including a Blak Wonder Woman.

Ngura Pukulpa – Happy Place is a brilliantly composed artwork, and the use of superimposition becomes a metaphor for the inscription of culture on Country. The video is set to music with song lyrics such as:

This is my Country,

This is my land,

Iwantja rising up,

Strong in red sand.

Iwantja refers to the Aboriginal art centre of that name at Indulkana, and Whiskey’s video may be seen as a powerful assertion of sovereignty on behalf of her community.

Zanny Begg, The Beehive, 2018 (video still), photo: Philippa Bateman, featuring Koco Carey.

Zanny Begg’s fascinating video, The Beehive (2018), is perhaps the most interesting technically of the ACMI videos on display. The Beehive is described as a “non-linear experimental documentary” concerning the unsolved murder of Juanita Nielsen in 1975.

Nielsen was a journalist and publisher, a model, and most significantly, a heroically vocal anti-development campaigner in inner Sydney during the era of resident demonstrations against development that would destroy heritage buildings and local communities. It is presumed she was murdered by underworld figures to silence her, and it has been suggested that police corruption prevented any resolution of the case.

The video is named The Beehive as Nielsen typically wore her hair (or a wig) in a ‘beehive’ style, and the area of Victoria Street, Kings Cross, which was under threat, resembled a human beehive as it was so densely populated. The queen of the hive was Nielsen, whose elimination was presumably intended to destroy the hive. Actor Pamela Rabe plays the role of a beekeeper and represents Nielsen’s ghost now looking back at historical events.

The video has the appearance of a documentary but is experimental in several respects: multiple actors play the role of Nielsen and various speculative re-enactments portray the possible action. There are four versions of the video that are shown sequentially and elements of each version of the video are randomly selected for screening by an algorithm, so that there are 1344 possible variations of the story — each time you see it, it will be different. The multiple versions parallel the multiple possible personal memories and interpretations of, and speculations about, the events that took place, and every viewer will make their own interpretation of the story.

The mutability of the video questions the nature of documentary as journalistic reportage, and challenges the idea of a single, definitive version of an artwork. The use of multiple actors to portray one individual suggests the interchangeability of individuals and implies that any woman might get caught up in such events. There is a strongly feminist flavour to The Beehive as it addresses the issues of Kings Cross prostitution and the role of women in politics.

Deborah Kelly, The Gods of Tiny Things, 2019 (video still).

Deborah Kelly’s The Gods of Tiny Things (2019) is dazzling animation composed of sequences of collaged images of imaginary deities that dance across the screen like strange insects. Kelly brought together several collage artists who chopped up old encyclopedias and magazines to create the images, metaphorically destroying old beliefs to create new ideas. The imagery is symbolically powerful, reflecting for example on gender stereotypes, politics and the changing environment. Shown on two adjacent screens, the effect is kaleidoscopic, creating a mesmerising but thought-provoking experience for the viewer.

Internationally renowned video artist David Rosetzky’s Gaps (2014) shows dancers in rehearsal and performing, and then speaking with each other privately, thus comparing human expression through dance, movement, and speech. Gaps shows some beautiful dance performances, and watching it is like eavesdropping, as we observe the subtleties of human communication.

Jason Phu’s Analects of Kung Phu, Book 1, The 69 Dialogues between the Lamp and the Shadow (2021) is an 85 minute sequence of fragments of dozens of martial arts movies and television shows. Such programs often convey wise sayings, and the video’s English subtitles form a continuous flow of advice — which you may find profound or hilarious — on how to live your life. The result is a wondrous montage that questions the kinds of advice that are ubiquitous in popular culture. Like a book of aphorisms, you can dip into it and take what you want, for example:

The past is history,

The future, a mystery,

Today is a gift,

That’s why it’s called the present.

This well-curated exhibition is both thought-provoking and highly entertaining and is a must-see for anyone interested in video art and its artistic and political potential.

Chris Reid

When: 19 Feb to 19 Apr

Where: Flinders University Museum of Art, Bedford Park campus

Bookings: Free entry - www.flinders.edu.au

Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia. 12 Mar 2024

The Samstag Museum of Art reopened with a joyful launch of its Adelaide Festival exhibitions Dana Awartani (Saudi Arabia/Palestine) and Bruce Nuske with Khai Liew (Australia). It has been a significant absence on Adelaide’s visual arts’ landscape following a dramatic flooding episode that necessitated its closure for nine months in 2023.  

With a lengthy title drawn from a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, Dana Awartani’s I Went Away and Forgot You. A While Ago I Remembered. I Remembered I’d Forgotten You. I Was Dreaming (2017) is by chance, showing simultaneously in Adelaide and Maraya – the vast mirrored cultural complex near the desert town of AIUIa in Saudi Arabia.

In this performance-based, moving image work, the artist slowly, methodically sweeps up an intricately patterned carpet of sand, representative of the Islamic geometry of traditional tiled floors, historically a feature of that region. (In interviews, she cites a Buddhist parallel, in which sand mandalas are laboriously created and then ritually dismantled.) Intended as a symbolic commentary on the relentlessness of modernisation, it was filmed in Jeddah in an abandoned apartment building of the kind once occupied by her grandparents’ generation. Awartani, who was born and raised in Jeddah, where entire neighbourhoods are being razed, states she is not anti-progress; rather – as her practice demonstrates – she desires an accommodation of the old alongside the new.

Dana Awartani, I Went Away and Forgot You. A While Ago I Remembered. I Remembered Iʼd Forgotten You. I Was Dreaming, 2017, mixed media installation with sand and natural pigments, single-channel video, no sound, 22 minutes. Detail of video courtesy of the artist.

Viewable only from Samstag’s upper gallery, the presentation in Adelaide features the addition of a truly remarkable recreation of the original sand installation – approximately 8 x 4 metres of precise mosaic ‘tiles’ – meticulously constructed on the ground-floor gallery using stencils and multi-coloured (dyed) sand. (Art aficionados may recall the ceremonial destruction – with brooms – and subsequent transformation of Lee Mingwei’s Guernica in Sand at the 2016 Biennale of Sydney.)

Dana Awartani, I Went Away and Forgot You. A While Ago I Remembered. I Remembered Iʼd Forgotten You. I Was Dreaming, 2017, (installation view at Samstag Museum of Art, 2024) mixed media installation with sand and natural pigments, single-channel video, no sound, 22 minutes. Photograph by Sia Duff, courtesy Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia.

Awartani followed study at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design with a post-graduate course at the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts – also in London. These formative influences cohere in a multi-disciplinary practice that addresses issues of cultural destruction, sustainability, gender, and healing in works, which range from sculpture and painting to performance and multi-media installation.

In a cultural context where figurative representation is forbidden, geometric compositions may assume symbolic and spiritual dimensions. “Sacred geometry plays an important role in my practice” Awartani has stated in interviews… “I use it a lot; it’s a combination of mathematics, science, spirituality and nature.”

Dana Awartani, I Went Away and Forgot You. A While Ago I Remembered. I Remembered Iʼd Forgotten You. I Was Dreaming, 2024, detail of mixed media installation with sand and natural pigments. Photograph by Sia Duff, courtesy of Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia.

It is not surprising to learn that the artist selected a broom as a less abrasive means of obliterating her Jeddah installation and it is this pervasive methodology – a gentle, yet innately loaded mode of delivery – which also imbues her animated, single-channel digital installation, Listen to my words (2020).

For this white-on-white digital installation, she couches compelling statements about the agency of women within a fine tracery of ever-mutating, geometric patterning, characteristic of the jali latticed screens, which are a feature of traditional Islamic architecture. Developed as an architectural corrective to extreme climatic conditions, it is also the kind of screening employed as room dividers in interior spaces, in order to provide privacy and security. Awartani makes the point that these screens – simultaneously practical and aesthetically pleasing – additionally serve a socially/visually divisive role, “marking the confinement of women within the domestic sphere and the impossibility of seeing them clearly.”

A succession of impassioned statements – just visible at the base of the screen – is derived from historical poetry by Arab women. In a darkened space that invites contemplation, these words have a heightened resonance. “I have been free all my life and in debt to no man.” Or, “I am a lioness and will never be a man’s woman”, to cite just two. Voiced on an accompanying soundtrack by contemporary Saudi women, this subtle work inevitably prompts questions about the status of women.

Thus, in a deft interweaving of poetry with her interpretation of (and research into) traditional Islamic/Middle Eastern motifs and techniques, Awartani has found an elegant way to highlight (sometimes uncomfortable) contemporary issues in quietly powerful works that are in every sense finely wrought. Notably, her work is one of several visual arts’ offerings in this year’s Festival of Arts that gives prominence to and celebrates the written word.

Samstag Museum of Art’s second exhibition Bruce Nuske with Khai Liew will be reviewed next week.

Wendy Walker

When: 1 Mar to 10 May

Where: Samstag Museum of Art

Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au