An amateur account of the 2013 PSM lecture series.

Brown Council – Monday May 27th 2013 – PSM Lecture Series

  Two members of the performance based art collaboration known as Brown Council joined us to finish off the PSM Lecture Series for this year. Diana Smith and Kate Blackmore talked us through some of their works created since the group was born in 2007. They kicked things off with Milk Shake (2007), a video work in which all four artists dressed in DIY skeleton costumes each drank a liter of milk and danced in a style reminiscent of endless rap and R&B music videos. It was amusing to say the least, and hard not to consider the objectification of women all over MTV, but honestly the whole time I was waiting for one of them to throw up, it was all I could think about.

(Brown Council 2012)

The four women met at COFA and share an interest in how we perform various roles in our lives: gender, love, intimacy, artist, etc. Their work is heavily informed by the 1970’s and they choose to explore feminism through humor and parody. “Women do have a sense of humor.” This is quite obvious in works like Milk Shake (2007) and One Hour Laugh (2010). I find myself once more wondering about young Australian artists and the fine line between sincerity and piss take. Big Show (2009) leaves me (again) in fear of witnessing projectile vomiting as one of the groups’ members scoffs down bananas for four hours.

(Brown Council 2012)

I can appreciate what they’re doing, but not all of the works resonated with me. I found Remembering Barbara Cleveland (2012) evoked a more genuine and thought-provoking response within me, as well as Mass Action: 137 cakes in 90 hours (2012).  These seemed more serious and both paid tribute (to things real and imaginary) to women, be they bakers of the CWA or forgotten female artists of the 1970’s. I’m still thinking about and deciding exactly what to make of Brown Council, however I loved their motto from 2011 they kindly shared with us in a candid moment, “Think big, be loud, take up space.”

 Image References:

 Unknown 2012, TheAustralian.com.au, viewed Sunday June 2nd 2012,

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/women-explore-the-themes-of-life-in-contemporary-australia/story-e6frg8n6-1226335673335

 Unknown. 2012, AltMedia.net, viewed Sunday June 2nd 2013,

Darren Sylvester – Monday May 20th 2013 – PSM Lecture Series

The penultimate lecture of this series featured Melbourne based artist, Darren Sylvester. It seemed that a lot of us knew a little bit about Darren but none of us had any clue just how many pies he had fingers in. He is – or at least was initially – a photographer. Using a method many lecturers might consider contradictory to standard practice (if there is such a thing), Sylvester starts with a title. To be more specific he starts with words, an idea, a sentence… reminiscent of song lyrics, and the rest evolves from there.

  (Sylvester 2007)

Though it was debated amongst our tutorial, I feel that Darren’s work has a cinematic aesthetic combined with an advertising feel. At first glance I would never have assumed the terrific amount of work that exists for him to create each shot. I joked that if Thomas Demand and Petrina Hicks had a love child with a great sense of humor… Voila! Darren Sylvester. Though there is certainly more to him than that. His career has seen him move from photography into video, to sculpture and publishing a book, to making music and touring – and back again. He wears one hat until it tires him and then swaps it out for another. After a massive construction for a video project that I can’t help but describe it as an homage to his beloved The Carpenter’s (I Was the Last in the Carpenters’ Garden 2008), he’d had enough video to last a lifetime. Along with the Carpenter’s, he cites Peter Savilles’ record covers and Steven Kleins photography as sources of inspiration.

(Sylvester 2008)

Though Sylvester’s photographic work didn’t immediately grip my attention, his personality sucked me right in. Like many of the artist’s that have kindly spoken to us, there is a slight insecurity in his nature. He speaks openly about his fear of death being the major catalyst to most of his work. Hi is the antithesis of lazy! He never shies away from working in any medium, no matter how unfamiliar, he just dives right in and figures it out along the way. Above anything I walked away from his lecture with a reality check. No one is born with the knowledge of how to do something, it is a process, and if we never try we will never learn. No risk, no reward!

Image References:

Sylvester 2007, Futureshipwreck.com, viewed Sunday May 26th 2013,

http://www.futureshipwreck.com/category/pop-culture/page/2/

Sylvester 2008, Sullivanstrumpf.com, viewed Sunday May 26th 2013,

Patrick Pound & Lillian O'Neil in Conversation with Adam Jasper – Monday May 6th 2013 – PSM Lecture Series

  Last week’s lecture was the standout so far. Patrick Pound and Lillian O’Neil in conversation with Adam Jasper, what more could you ask for? Patrick started things off, delivering an eloquent lecture, his words carefully selected and pieced together in a most poetic fashion. I was fighting an internal struggle whether to madly jot down notes or just sit back and digest his witty articulations. His wit won out and I am so glad it did. I am always appreciative when artists share personal stories. Hearing about Pounds’ family and the way they each – one by one – fell in love with photography was endearing. He described to us how as a boy, shooting from the car provided him with a platform from which to view the world without participating in it. And if I weren’t smitten enough with his lovely candor, he mentioned William Eggleston, a personal favorite of mine, and how he’d mastered the “rightly wrong look of the amateur snap”.

(Pound (detail) 2007-2010)

 Lillian O’Neil seemed hesitant to speak following Patrick, she said shyly to Adam something along the lines of “I thought we were just having a casual chat”. I liked her immediately. Lillian currently creates large collages from images found in vintage books she scours cities for. She describes her works as personal maps and shared with us how she started to make these collages in the throes of falling properly in love for the first time. An admitted rom-com junkie, Lillian had realized these movies had destroyed love for her, so she went gone cold turkey off the romantic garbage and began to work toward understanding love by researching in a scientific way. I personally found her honesty and vulnerability charismatic, particularly as I had recently attempted to understand my own heartbreak through a collage project (that failed in the artistic sense and barely passed in the marking sense) and understood exactly what she meant when she spoke of making a “smooth surface out of a broken mass of things”, and the symmetrical nature of her works reflecting love, two people “trying hard to combine but they can’t”.

(O’Neil 2013)

Adam, as only Adam could, discussed the similarities between the two artists visually different styles in an eye-opening way that explained why they feature alongside one another in his exhibition Living in the Ruins of the 20th Century, (currently showing at the DAB Gallery). He also, as only Adam does, knew exactly when our brains were at capacity for new information, and invited us to tour the gallery with a cold beer in hand. I wish every lecture were this interesting, honest, inspiring and amusing, and I wish every lecture ended with beer.

Image References:

Pound, 2007-2010, Portrait of the Wind (detail), StillsGallery.com, viewed Monday May 13th 2013,

http://ocula.com/art-galleries/stills-gallery/artworks/portrait-of-the-wind-(detail)/ 

O’Neil, 2013, Total Romance, thecommercialgallery.com, viewed Monday May 13th 2013,

Jeff Wall – Thursday May 2nd 2013 – PSM Lecture Series

 Canadian photographer, Jeff Wall’s lecture was certainly anticipated as the highlight of this years PSM lecture series, to 2013 what Thomas Demand was to 2012… Unfortunately the MCA did a shocking job of preparing for the event. We were guided into the Foundation Hall, a giant echoing space used predominantly for cocktail parties and society hobnobbing. There was no sound set up to accommodate the several hundred people sitting farthest from Jeff. Every noise, be it a cough or the orchestra of plastic chairs scraping on the floor, reverberated throughout the art deco space making it nearly impossible to follow Wall’s lecture. A series of his images were projected on loop on a large screen above him. It didn’t take long for me to realize I was exerting more energy guessing which image in the series would reveal itself next than listening to Wall.

  (Wall, 1999-2000)

Regardless of the disappointing production value, I did manage to walk away with a few interesting ideas rolling around in my head. Rather than speaking in detail about his life or creative process, he shared with us a history of photography as he saw it through the 20th century to now. Wall referred frequently to film, specifically Italy’s neorealism, and how cinematography – unlike photography which proved limiting at times – allowed him to “begin anywhere”. “Anything can start you off without having to engage in that journalism.” Wall discussed in detail photography as reportage and documentary, he says that the practice of reportage is an artistic method, and that this artistic quality had the power to show us things of social value in a way that others couldn’t.

  (Wall, 1984)

Jeff discussed his definition of beautiful as “not pretty, but the appearance of quality in art”. This reminded me of Petrina Hicks lecture from earlier this week, her work being of the highest technical and aesthetic quality, and leaving to the audience the task of deciphering from it whatever cryptic message they choose. Another similarity I sensed between these two very different artists was respect for the craft, understanding the medium so well that you can pursue it as you would any other artistic process. Jeff believes we should treat photography as any other art, not special or different, but emphasize the dimensions it shares with literature or painting, and really pursue it as a fine art. Overall I found Wall’s lecture to be interesting and thought-provoking, the parts I was able to hear anyway…

 Image References:

 Wall, 1999-2000, After “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue (detail), ArtBlart.com, viewed Saturday May 4th 2013,

< http://artblart.com/2012/11/30/exhibition-jeff-wall-photographs-at-the-ian-potter-centre-national-gallery-of-victoria-australia-melbourne/>

 Wall, 1984, Mimic, Tate.org, viewed Saturday May 4th 2013,

Monday April 29th 2013 – PSM Lecture Series – Petrina Hicks

A visit from Sydney based photographer, Petrina Hicks, marked our return to the lecture series after a brief hiatus mid-semester.  Hicks studied photo media at ANU before entering the world of commercial photography, for years as an assistant and then as a photographer. Through her education and career, Petrina honed her skills and gained a thorough understanding of her craft. She cites that expert familiarity with photography as the reason she is able to explore it as an art form so organically. Petrina returned to her roots as an artist as she found that working in the commercial industry left her unmoved, “it lacked a complexity of ideas… It was not mentally stimulating”.

(Hicks, 2005)

She shoots predominantly on a Hasselblad medium format film camera and always in the controlled setting of the studio. Occasionally she requires the assistance of a specialist in some field or another, but more often that not she is alone with her subject. I appreciate that Hicks shared with us her entire creative process (in detail), as well as her influences, and finally the miscellaneous collection of images that she draws inspiration from for each idea. It was obvious to see how this all came together to inspire one of her meticulous, glossy yet jarring images. Hicks discussed juxtaposition; within each image exists conflict between commercial/art, seduction/consumption, desire/repulsion. When prompted she explains that her work is about her personal mission to understand the essence of photography. She strives to create images that resist interpretation and allow space for the viewer to enter the image and make their own speculation.

(Hicks, 2011) 

I was particularly amused by the fact that this self-proclaimed control freak described the unpredictability of the film process as ‘spiritual’. She casts and considers and plans every minute detail of each shoot, yet once the film has been exposed she hands it over to be processed and enjoys the wait to see what the results will deliver. I am also a fan of that wait, that vulnerability created by entrusting your precious film to someone else to complete the process. It’s intriguing to me that this portion of the process that goes against (what appears to be) her way of life, is what makes it magical to her. In fact, I love that this impeccably presented, über-organized, woman standing before us enjoys the surrender, though it’s hard to imagine her ever letting go.

Image References:

Hicks 2011, The Message, Art Collector, viewed April 30, 2013,

< http://www.artcollector.net.au/ArtistInterviewPetrinaHicks>

Hicks 2005, Zara II, PetrinaHicks.com, viewed April 30, 2013,

Monday March 25th 2013 – PSM Lecture Series – Kate Mitchell

A question is beginning to form as week by week we get to know these Australian artists, are they sincere or are they taking the piss? I find it ironic that the one artist blatantly choosing to address humor in her work somehow exudes the most sincerity. Kate possesses a charisma that ropes you in immediately. Standing in front of us, looking every part of the beautiful young artist, she proceeds to fumble through a lecture cursed by powerpoint induced struggles and random one–liners. She is occasionally egged-on by long time friend Todd McMillan, with whom she shares a slightly self-deprecating sense of humor.

  (Kate Mitchell 2012)

Kate is a performance-based artist that explores what she refers to as the cartoon impossible, think Looney Toons or Buster Keaton, both of which are listed by Mitchell as sources of inspiration. However Kate’s practice isn’t all about fun and games, she is often addressing ideas of work and work ethic, and labour for her art she does. In her 2012 work, Get into it, Kate uses two plungers to climb up a façade she’d constructed herself, and climb into an open window. She not only labors, she quite frankly endangers herself for her practice. She speaks about the fact that in these cartoons, no one ever gets hurt, but when she reenacts these scenarios, it’s real. She’s trying to achieve an ‘aliveness’ through these works, a reminder that we’re living in the present.

(Kate Mitchell 2010)

One work I’d have loved to see in situ for myself is Being Punctual, where she leapt onto a chandelier and swung back and forth until dismounting. I found particularly interesting the differences she mentioned between the behavior and demographic of her audiences when the piece was showed in Paris compared to in Australia. In one case, elderly Parisians gathered on the street with their wine to regard the work, while in her homeland of Australia, it was met with sports fan like cheers of encouragement. Regardless of the response, it looks like fun! I think what resonated with me personally was Mitchell's candor, I always wanted to swing from a chandelier, so I did. “This is my work and this is what I do.”

Image References:

Mitchell, 2012, Get Into It, Chalk Horse, viewed on March 26, 2013,

<http://www.chalkhorse.com.au/artists.php?a=MITCHELL&s=1&i=3>

  Mitchell, 2010, Being Punctual, Chalk Horse, viewed on March 26, 2013,

Monday March 18th 2013 – PSM Lecture Series – Grant Stevens

Any artist that opens a lecture with a work created from looping scenes from (one of my all time favorite films) Top Gun is all right by me. After what felt like the longest two-minute elevator ride of my life, Stevens launched into how his work examines the inability of language to communicate effectively. Perhaps it isn’t a hard idea to push to a room full of hopeful visual artists, but it’s an interesting thought to ponder nonetheless.

  (LA Louver 2013 - Installation Shot)

Many of his works, at least those he chose to share on this occasion, incorporate text on screen: moving, floating or rotating, accompanied by generic, lyric-less music. One particular piece, Really Really, created in attempt to communicate to the artist’s girlfriend living 8000 miles away in Los Angeles, just how much he loved and missed her possessed an element of cheesiness. Snickers were heard throughout the lecture hall and the audience struggled to decipher what it is they’re meant to be taking away. However, I imagine anyone sitting in that audience would be lying if they said they hadn’t at one time or another experienced some of what they were watching. Who hasn’t missed someone? Who hasn’t struggled with how to communicate that longing for another human being in a way that’s both honest and original? It’s no simple task. And from what I gather, that’s kind of Grant’s point… We all fall back on popular culture: be it films, song lyrics, or literature, to communicate love. We all appear lame or hopelessly romantic whilst existing in the privacy of our own love bubble.

(Stevens 2007) 

Grant followed up this work a couple years later, after the relationship unfortunately failed, using his art as a process to understand what was going on emotionally and intellectually. Stevens recalls listening to Willie Nelson as he wallowed in the initial stages of post break-up grief. He admits that he hopes someone might find a similar comfort while watching this work. Ironically, (irony being another point the artist touched upon), I did have my own rather emotional experience at AGNSW whilst exploring the Balnaves exhibit, We used to talk about love. I was there with my now ex, feeling melancholy about the relationship as it had recently developed that sensation of doom. Both independent people, we wandered in different directions. Some 30 minutes later he found me, (embarrassingly) near to tears watching Grants work, Crushing, he scoffed. I knew it was over. 

Image references:

Unknown, Installation Shot, 2013, LA Louver, viewed March 24th 2013,

<http://blog.lalouver.com/post/40193659672/artist-grant-stevens-optimizes-his-video-files#.UU-Y71smmxo>

Grant Stevens, Really Really, 2007, Anna Schwartz Gallery, viewed March 24th 2013,

Monday March 11th 2013 – PSM Lecture Series – Tim Silver

Australian artist Tim Silver creates sculptures, typically through a casting process, that force their audience to contemplate ideas of transformation and decomposition. Unlike many sculptures, Silver’s work opposes monumentality. It is not intended to last forever. It is intended to interact with the world. He discusses art and exhibition as spectacle, “presenting something not to be preserved”. His early works were often formed from perishable food goods, chocolate, bubblegum, fairy floss… Chew me up and spit me out featured action figures molded from already chewed bubblegum crawling across a gallery floor. Not everything Silver works with is edible, he also used blue-tac, silicone rubber, crayon, and eventually began to make his own blue watercolor pigment from a 1930’s recipe. 

(Tim Silver 2004)

Silver is interested in entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. He cites Robert Smithson and his ideas about entropy in the arts as a source of inspiration, “all systems and all things are in a certain state of decomposition and demise”. Because all of Tim’s work decays or erodes, documenting it is paramount. However, he hesitates to label this documentation as such due to its highly stylized nature. The photographs are works of art in and of themselves. An interesting point made by Silver was how important it is to limit, monitor and control the images of the installation process as in many cases, the images are all that will remain of the original work.

 (Tim Silver 2011)

 It’s hard to avoid comparing and contrasting Tim’s work with Todd McMillan’s (who spoke to us last week). Obviously the mediums are vastly different, but both artists feature in their own work. What I found intriguing is that as McMillan’s work matured, the transition saw him leaving the frame. The opposite is true of Silver’s work. His early pieces feature subjects that are readily recognisable, cars and skateboards and action figures; but his later work features casts of himself. The shift in his work involved an introspective train of thought, moving away from the decay of inanimate objects and material possessions, and towards ideas of mortality and our own inevitable demise.

  Image References:

Tim Silver, Adrift, 2004, Museum of Contemporary Art, viewed March 17th 2013,

http://www.mca.com.au/touring-exhibition/exposure

Tim Silver, Untitled (bust), 2011, Art Collector, viewed March 17th 2013,

 Monday March 4th 2013 - PSM Lecture Series - Todd McMillan

The premiere speaker for this year’s Photography and Situated Media Lecture series was Sydney based artist, Todd McMillan. In 2006 he was awarded the Helen Lempriere Travelling Scholarship and is currently represented by GrantPirrie Gallery in Redfern. While failure is the recurring theme often discussed in Todd’s work, he is far from being one himself. His ability to see the triumph in unsuccessful endeavors endows his so called failures with a romanticism reminiscent of the past writers and artists from whom he draws inspiration (Caspar David Friedrich, Lord Byron).

                    (Todd McMillan 2005)

One might argue that his work isn’t necessarily about failure. Some earlier pieces, such as Good friends and conversation or Waiting despite/to spite myself give off a melancholy, but cynical vibe. To quote McMillan, “Nothing means anything and we’re all lost and doomed, it’s quite funny.” Moving into film, Todd stays – as with earlier works – in the frame, though almost never shows his face. The work is not autobiographical, it is a first person narrative, but he is not the character. He is allowing us to witness for ourselves by inviting us into the experience through his presence. When asked which failures were successes, his response was simply, “the honest ones”. It’s that sincerity in works such as By the Sea that, in my opinion, don’t communicate failure at all. He discusses an opposing sense of hope “I will try to do something that’s beyond me”, as well as allowing himself to be overcome. I, personally, see surrender. I see a willingness to open oneself up to whatever an experience has to offer; be it beauty or suffering, be it reaching the limits imposed on the body by time or the elements… In By the Sea Todd stood atop a cliff (a la Caspar David Friedrich) for 12 hours, from 6PM until 6AM, back to camera, looking out over the ocean he “shivered and shook” to create a time lapse that silently spans just over a minute when seen.

(McMillan 2011) 

Time is another element one can’t ignore in Todd’s work. From By the sea to Go on, (in which he hobbles up stairs on crutches somewhere in Berlin), and into later works where he no longer features in the frame, Mountain Study and albatross. Albatross, shot on 16mm film off the coast of Tasmania on a rocking boat, of the Shy Albatross circling over the horizon is hypnotic. The albatross, thought to be a symbol of the souls of lost sailors, faces extinction. As does the 16mm film the piece is recorded on, every play of the film slowly eroding its existence. This is not lost on McMillan who appreciates the fragility and scarcity of film as a media and believes, accurately in my opinion, that it supports his work conceptually.

  Image References:

Todd McMillan, Waiting despite/to spite myself, 2005, Art Monthly Australia, viewed March 10th 2013, <http://www.artmonthly.org.au/artnotes.asp?aID=5&issueNumber=194>