Eastern Suburbs Art Group

The prize this year was rather muted. This might have had something to do with the size of the exhibition space. In fact all of the three shows seemed to be in smaller spaces than usual. In the Wynne I liked this watercolour (see below). Sort of speaks for itself, you don't really need to describe the painting. The quality is there in the intense figuration that draws the viewer in. The suprising sort of modern notes like Pop art colour swatches somehow highlight the skill involved in the realistic scene. I'm only making a small selection this year, including this night sky with bits of space junk streaming over the earth (above). The painting above is 'Garrapara' a polymer painting on aluminium, quite striking. Like  I said the number of paintings in each show seemed to be smaller than usual.

The room with the portraits was quite crowded, but funny to say people were just sort of hanging around near the works, apparently not even looking at them. Just sort of filling the room like someone had put in an order for 100 people to fill a room and they had turned up like movie extras. This sore looking face is Dale Rhodes' 'Suzie', I quite liked the raw nakedness of the woman's face. It has a sort of painful caste but the woman also looks like she can hold her own, she might be exposed emotionally but she is not going to collapse. Sarah satha's painting is sort of appealing, the strange black border around the figure of the man and possibly his son forming a kind of circle encompassing the two figures. Maybe it is protective. In any case the black border is out of synch with the beach scene, I mean beaches are usually where people go to be exposed. the border doing the opposite, enclosing. Nick Stathopoulos' margaret Fink is arch and superior, perhaps she ...

Some really nice paintings this year including a James Drinkwater painting magnificent in its scope (it is huge) and colour (see below). This artist is really talented and keeps on producing work of class and originality. This one looks like a Drysdale landscape but of course it is not. The horizontal split in the upper part of the canvas suggesting a horizon line. This Nathan Hawkes painting (see below) has lovely colour use also, and a strange sense of fantasy that the explosion of colour tends to mitigate. The little faces that peep out are expecting what exactly. Is it with malice or something else. I guess each viewer will come to their own conclusions. A painting by David Griggs has a rider on a horse (see below), but the horse is an odd sort of bright red. I mean the grass is green and the sky is blue but why a red horse, and this particular type of red? A green dog in Jessica Nothdurft's painting (see below) has a rangey outback feel about it, like is it feeding the man (Ro...

While I was in town I took in as many of the displays in the gallery as possible. I was curious about Tell Us A Tale because it is quite naive, though obviously there is support in the administrative apparatus for a show like this that features the multicultural aspects of the city. The pictures are by children and there is interpretive apparatus left next to the images to help guide visitors around the walls. The display took up an entire room on one of the gallery floors. The interpretive apparatus is held by the same type of frame used to hold the drawings. This is curious, and you can see why it was done, since clearly it is simple to use the white frame for everything. It does end up being a littel confusing however. The frames weren't always perfectly fitted to the artworks furthermore, but this is a minor issue. But it was as though the explanation was as much a part  of the show as the drawings. I am not sure what I think of this, as normal curatorial practice is to disting...

I was a bit curious about these works on paper by Peter Sharp. Some seemed intriguing but there was a bit of a lag between seeing the work and understanding the artist's intention. The references are a bit esoteric, for a start. I mean I know that Albers was a psychologist and artist of some sort - but I may have that wrong. In the whow there was not much explanatory material or at least I didn't see it if it was there. But this is the curator's responsibility not the artist's. For example the items above are titled interaction with Albers. Presumably there was some sort of idea exchange or else a stylistic handover. But what was it, how did this exchange happen and what was the result. The items on display presumably. But what then? Actually these pieces (above) are not very attractive. They are a bit dull and possibly intentionally modest in their expressive capacity. So I wasn't sure about this artist and will have to keep an eye out for his work down the track. ...

 This was a great show. Funny name though, I mean obviously he added the first name in place of the first name his parents gave him. But I had never heard of this artist and it's strange as he is obvioulsy important. These little regional galleries often have such great shows. Actually I really related to these works, they contain a lot in common with my own practice but I won't go into too much deetail about that here. But the colours (see above) are quite strange. I mean even though the works sort of share a lot in common with advertising, including the mixture of shapes and text, the overall tone of each work is very arty. Not about selling but about something else, something on the fringes. These colours won't appeal to everyone. Richardson's collage also appealing, though less impactful. Echoes of Rosalie Gascoigne of course. But clever figuration to make the stack of names look like an office tower (see above). Something cheeky about this composition, pointing to ...

Mackie is adaptable working in paint as well as photography. I liked his rodeo shots which are distorted to emphasise the movement of the animals and the rider (see below). His paintings are colourful but figurative, I mean the colours are half realistic and half not. As if the saturation knob had been turned right up to max (see below). So a unique and talented artist who is not conforming to metropolitan ideals of how to represent, how to use colour, and how to depict the world. His landscapes are almost surreal in their contemporary feel, though they conform to old styles buried in the country's past. When I see his work I think of course of Albert Namatjira, but also of European models. Even if these models are rooted in Europe Mackie's works remain cemeted in the Australian landscape.