20th Hobart Art Prize.

Stutter by Anthony Johnson.

20th Hobart Art Prize.

Judging by the number of letters into the Mercury not many viewers are impressed by this year’s offering. The winning entry, Stutter has provoked considerable debate. On the one hand Anthony Johnson has attempted to create a random or accidental piece, although both new shelves have been disfigured in similar places and so defeat the purpose of accidental. So what is the artist trying to tell the viewer?

 According to his statement he wants us to examine quote, ‘how people experience time and space through often banal experiences and objects’.

It has often seemed to me that far too much contemporary art relies on such statements, rather than the work itself. Having now viewed this exhibition twice, I have been unable to extract any meaning from this work or see how the artist’s statement has any relevance. If we accept that we live in a world of over indulgence, a world of the throw way, a world of disinterest in the  sustainable, then this is for you. Whether this was Johnson's intent, I can not say. It is possible to claim that this mirror image is the only purpose of art, and to a great extent you would be correct. To most people Dada has come and gone and very little has been contributed to the movement in recent years. It is debatable whether two shelves costing $17 deserve the $30,000 prize.  Personally, I think such a philosophy of rehashing these Dada ideas is a dead end and I am surprised, that any thinking person would support such a position let alone feel obliged to give it airtime.

This is Hobart's major art prize, and I am disappointed in the lack of new ideas in the exhibits. There is little that is new, or has a wow factor, what the rejects were like we will never know. Hobart's' ratepayers deserve better.

Sculpture Trail. -BENCHMARK. 2013.

                                               Simon Pankhurst     'A Seat Somewhere'
                                           reconsidered scrape metal  200cm x 60cm x24cm.

Forty five minutes south of Hobart, a second generation Tasmanian has created an annual sculptural trail on his family's farm. When the idea first took root the annual exhibition was to highlight benches.
As the exhibition is open to anyone naturally the concepts and finished works tend to be uneven depending on who has decided to take part in any given year. A young self taught metal worker Simon Pankhurst has over the years gone from strength to strength as this year's entry above shows. Simon has taken part in most of the past shows and displayed a great sense originality'

In recent years the trail, and it is a trail as the viewers are required walk up through the bush and on up a hill to view all the exhibits, looking at the various entries displayed along the track. Some pieces are retained from previous years and thus enrich the experience. Not all participants necessarily make benches ,often preferring to use all sorts of materials in their statements to create straight forward sculptures.

Jaffa Rascal   'Splash'

50cm x 100cm x 50cm.

ceramic and salvaged timber.

 

  Total view of 'Splash' below.

Jaffa Rascal work appears to be based on sea crustaceans growing on fallen trees sections.

Sally Brown 'Espalier'

82cm x 60cm x60cm.

Steel.

 

This work is best described as a relief rather than a three dimensional sculpture. The artist felt that we view the world from one perspective rather than in the round. I found the above had a lot of affinity with the play of shadows on a wall that offers many possibilities.

 

I felt that to many of this years exhibits were not fully resolved, and the artists involved have not explored to full possibility of three dimensional space which after all is what sculpture is all about.

Francis Bacon.



"Studies for a human body" Section.
Francis Bacon

Many curators and critics consider Francis Bacon among
the most important artists of the 20th cent. An artist whose
main focus was on the act of painting, the manner of the brushwork, and the physical presence of the paint being the all important quality of his work. Bacon's painting are framed under glass, so when a viewer looks closely at work in the current exhibition at The Art Gallery of New South Wales, they become aware of the need to move around from one foot to another. This need for physical engagement is the only way to really see what is going on, the need to move the reflections on the glass in order to fully view the work. This is a deliberate device to force to enter into and connect with the painting. In other words the viewers subjectivity must over ride other conscious interpretation of the image.

Bacon once pointed out in an interview that "in the end painting is a result of the interaction of those accidents
[chance in the process of applying paint] and the will of
the artist or, if you prefer, the interaction of the uncontentious and the conscious".

Bacon stands alone in 20th cent. art, as realist who is not a realist.He was not an expressionist and rejected strongly any suggestions he was. Nor was he an abstract artist, rather he was a realist who was not interested in literal or illustrative interpretation of the world. He loved the element of chance inherent in his paint application. At times he Incorporated sand, sweeping from the floor in his work. Bacon applied paint not only with a brush and palette knife, but made use of rags, and foreign materials to produce the effects desired. He was always looking for the unexpected result.

Bacon was a realist painter in a very loose way, but had the ability for a viewer to recognise the image.He shun ed any idea of story telling and rarely included more than one figure in a painting. These figures were in turn often enclosed in suggestive boxes or rooms that contained them but not completely. He did not what the viewer to be tempted to relate one figure to another. The figures as you can see are in varying degrees distorted, but still recognisable. One is tempted to view his work as violent, but the scenes are not violent so as to force the viewer to experience a raw aspect of reality. To unlock their conscious attempt to interpret the image in some conventional way.

Bacon wanted to counter any tendency to define meaning in his paintings. His aim was to create a new aesthetic through the physical presence of paint. Abstraction for him was a dead end. His art was an attempt to create a
                                                                      new way to lock reality into something arbitrary.