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Transported
Still, is being without movement, motionless, static, it is
dormant, absent of sound or noise in a sense inanimate, dead –
nature morte.
Movement, as implied by the exhibition title, comments on the tidal
flow of ports, freight ferrying, vessel maneuvering and the physical
transportation for basic consumer commodities, it is also the form
of carrying and conveying. Transportation is undeniably a necessity
for modernist living/lifestyles. Our geographical distances determine
this, it is an essential link/chain into communicative systems.
Transport is constantly in a state of flux, always in motion.
We move ourselves in a multitude of ways and means; by feet, pedal,
piston, wheel, motor. We are powered, propelled and fuelled by a
variety of energies and needs. Our neurons guide and direct us,
they can take us to infinite destinations by land, air, sea, across
beyond and through inner and outer spaces. Transport is determinate
of our every move. It synthesizes our operation and the operating
of moveable systems.
Transport encompasses an enormity of complexities, a myriad of individual
units and networks to create functional systems and processes. Trans-ported
has provided a platform for a diverse grouping of Melbourne and
Adelaide artists to present and express commentaries in varied forms
and juxtapositions. Each of the artists involved in the exhibition
has provided their own interpretation of transport, approaching
the topic from various social, political, physical, metaphysical
and geographical associations.
The central Melbourne tram system is the city’s core, providing
a coursing network of arterial feeders, spidery veins which act
as main threads to and from the city and outer suburbs. An alternate
definition of Tram is ‘thick silk thread used for the cross
threading of the best silks and velvets’ ,
the material used for complex weaving and threading to create a
seamless narrative.
Bridget Currie’s theoretical investigations
dictate the physical manifestations of her work, using thread on
textiles to create drawings of a sculptural nature that float atmospherically
onto the surface of the materials employed. Minimal signifiers are
used to suggest expansive ideas. Cosmic Spade is derived from a
ceremonial spade used to dig the first sod of the Mississippi canal
- a reference to the worker, tilling and turning the soil, the movement
of nature; clouds, stars, air, tidal pull of rivers, streams, oceans,
and the vessels traversing the surface.
‘Man has always looked for new lands, new
mountains, new worlds to conquer’.
The spade, symbol of manual labour, facilitator of work and progress.
Alluded to within the work are associations with Duchamp’s
readymade snow shovel, In advance of the Broken Arm, but more importantly,
with the social actions of Joseph Beuys tree plantings, 7000 Eichens
(Oaks). These actions symbolize
the concept of unity in diversity.
Cosmic Spade suggests a visionary constellation, orbiting through
the universe ad infinitum. Announcing time and space travel, dreams,
sub and unconscious awakenings, astral plains and hallucinatory
feelings. Ultima Thule. This work recalls the audio atmospheric
soundings prevalent in ‘70’s space and kraut rock. Electronic
bands that where expanding horizons of pop-rock mediocrity, think;
Neu, Galactic Supermarket, Cosmic Jokers, Electric Sandwich, Can,
Tangerine Dream, taking us through to Kraftwerk’s celestial
highway, Autobahn. Bridget’s sensibilities and vintage are
likely to include more contemporary ethereal recordings, such as
Devendra Banhart or Sigur Ros, conjuring up collective consciousness
and communal festival gatherings.
Bridget Currie’s transcendental offerings heed towards the
unity of labour, the deep South (USA), of song, toil and slavery,
it reminds us of the past and suggests an alternate future. The
work is at hand in the material.
Ross Hall’s offering is of a more physical
nature, grounded in the practicalities and mechanics of transport.
He reinterprets objects scale and context, fabricating sculptural
works from materials commonly used in building and trade industries
(such as concrete, timber and carpet). Hall has constructed a scaled-down
shipping container made from concrete, one of the most common materials
associated with the building and construction industry.
A hint of model making is at play. However, what Hall has manufactured
is far more sophisticated than the balsa, plastic and glue kit constructions,
often assembled during the burgeoning years of childhood fascination
with replications of the real world.
The transformation of a contained structure, such as the vessel
used for basic commodities, into a sculptural form made of concrete,
shifts and locates it to a different place. If we envisage this
concrete structure in its original scale, it would become permanent,
static, stabilized - unlikely to be removed and far less transportable,
monumental.
Ross Hall’s concerns are form and structure, the actual mechanisms
required for the shifting and moving of the object, the lugs and
ribbings, provisions for interlocking and stacking. Space is the
optimum. Form follows function. Although static (cemented to the
floor) it is mobile (slides in its own fluid). It’s exterior
is hard, forming a protective shell. Hall’s container takes
on a different life as it shuttles from place to place, from holding
yard to sea to port to road to rail. It is trans-global as it traverses
from state to state, country to country, like some weary animal.
The external shell slightly chipped, its surface a little rough
from exposure to the elements. The structure’s skeletal form
transmutes, as an oozing gaseous liquid seeps from beneath its undercarriage,
contents unknown, contained within.
A Trip to the Seaside by Greg Geraghty takes us on a journey by
linking three seemingly unrelated images together to form a larger
narrative. This clustering of images enables the presentation of
individual experience within larger systems. Alluded to within this
work are those systems of transport where journey’s end is
the sea. The railway, the wheel and the sewer pipe are basic to
the functioning of a metropolis. They carry crowds, goods, waste
and connect cities to the sea.
The title of the work suggests happy childhood memories of a day
spent going to the beach. Things do not always go as planned. A
train goes through the roof, a burning pram heads into the sea and
we serenely watch as shit goes down. A bad trip is evident. When
systems break down individuals are stopped in their tracks, left
puzzling over the mechanics of the journey.
The work is in the surrealist mode, filmic in a sense and suggestive
of another era. Perhaps Hitchcock, the master of suspense, or the
writer Somerset Maugham are at play, puzzling us to question current
events, to make sense of this constructed jigsaw configuration.
Geraghty is not the surrealist of old, his thoughts are here and
not with the past as they appear. His carriage is not merely some
child’s first Victorian vehicle but a re-presentation of the
structures, mechanics, fears, hopes and surprises of contemporary
life. His visions are earnest social commentaries. Trains do collide,
bombs go off and planes fly into buildings. Transport is political.
Echoes of recent bombings on the London Underground reverberate
fresh in our memory, replacing the romanticized recollections of
a Parisian Impressionist scene. Geraghty’s pram is more likely
aligned with recent governmental debacles, resonating the Brian
Eno verse; Baby’s on fire, better throw her in the water.
Oceans cover unbounded space and volume. They carry and contain
an enormity of objects, living and innate, natural and unnatural.
Greg Fullerton’s Pong as, the title describes,
is the sensation of smell, in particular an offensive stench or
stink, unpleasant - niff. The work is fragmented in appearance and
hints towards the flotsam and jetsam that scatters and disperses,
shifts and moves above and below the waterline - painted markers
indicate this, suggesting constant change and flow, the passage
of time.
Pong refers to the detritus that floats upon our rivers, streams,
oceans and estuaries, often emitting a foul smell from pollutants
that spew daily into the waterways. Everyday bits and pieces form
and coagulate the surface leaving traces, elements from an array
of sources and in varying quantities that float endlessly.
The early 1980’s work of Tony Cragg exemplify some of the
concerns of this work. In some ways Pong is not that far removed
from Cragg’s early objectives of fragmentation and productiveness4.
Despite the associative devices used, the commentary of this work
is of a multifarious nature, it comments both on the act of production
(art making/ art history – minimal and formalist sculpture
and painting) and events of actuality and memory.
The work also draws to the surface focus and attention on recent
Government policies of stricter coastal surveillance and the importation
and smuggling of narcotics5. Tiny botanical drawings of Papaver
somniferum and Cannabacae, references of illicit imported cargo,
drift alongside a digital photographic image of a freighter. These
signify the conveying of mysterious and unknown haulage on the seas.
A star (representations of celestial, national and commercial formatives)
hovers above an air horn sounding out warnings.
‘Be alert not alarmed’ is what we are told. Surveillance
abounds and Border Patrol pops up on our Television screens amongst
Friends and Neighbours. Don’t panic is the word, as the nation
readies to deploy more troops for the front line.
Something is in the air.
Lisa Young’s focus is the core elements of
transportation, the mechanical units that work in unison to propel
and create movement. She has interpreted a variety of cogs, gears,
pulleys, levers, wheels, axles, and circuitry to create inventive
prototypes for phantasical, meandering mechanics. Illustrating driving
forces behind motion; velocity, cause/effect and momentum.
Young’s illustrations parody the blind faith in mechanized
motion, the accepted wisdom of the machine as an unfailing and purpose-built
system. She creates nonsensical gizmos reminiscent of Rube Goldberg
Machines, presenting complex apparatus that perform simple tasks
in an indirect and convoluted manner6. Influenced by the illustrator
and inventor of improbable inventions, W. Heath Robinson, otherwise
known as the Gadget King7, this work portrays the absurdist notions
inherent in contraptions. Young’s diagrammatic computerized
graphics of old world gadgetry revisit and reinterpret wacky Pythonesque
non-functional devices - machines that go ping.
Digital and computerized prints are generally produced on photographic
papers, an acknowledgement of advanced technologies, emphasizing
innovation. The use of watercolour paper gives the work a more antiquarian
Victorian impression, resembling the etched monochromatic lines
of wood block and metal engravings from a bygone era.
Young brings into play a sense of contemporary vaudevillian humour,
similar to the ringing and clanging of Sgt Peppers. Her fictional
pataphysical devices allude to early 20th Century thought. During
the Industrial Revolution inventions were created to improve the
general standard of living, and developments in the machine age
aimed at making life simpler and easier. Instead of focusing on
practicalities, Young’s work embraces Pataphysics, the French
absurdist philosophical concepts of the sciences, dedicated to the
studies beyond the realm of metaphysics, intended to parody methods
and theories of modern sciences, often using nonsensical language
or representations.
Parables could be drawn with former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam’s
satirical movies Brazil and 12 Monkeys, combining elements that
blur the senses between reality and fantasy, and mix outmoded technologies
with machines of the future.
Oscar Yanez’s collages are pastiches stemming
from a Kippenberger absurdist nonsensical paradigm10. A neo–folk
sensibility abounds with layerings of geometric patterning, derivations
from modernist furnishings that collide with a cut and paste, no-frills
hands-on approach.
Rorschach blots appear amongst seemingly unrelated subject matter
- flowers, planes, bicycles, chairs, tracings of plant formations
spreading feelers across the confined page like some Shaman’s
note pad enclosed within ornate borders. Funny gnomes walk the paths
collecting miscellaneous items along the way, germinating the odd
and unusual. Symbolic magical gestures are evident with the physical
markings made by the artist’s hand.
The simulations of road networks in the shape of rhizomes or tree
roots (necessary arterials for the sustenance of plant life forms)
act as feeders, connectors of modes of travel. Mappings or aerial
views, suggestions of cartographic scribblings, journeys to unchartered
destinations, some known and some unknown. Blasting off into anomalous
explorations. We encounter a spaceman propped up, sitting in his
walking mechanical machine, something cheesy is astir. His life
support is more Tom & Jerry than NASA’s latest billion
dollar budget space missions.
Oscar’s work navigates idiosyncratic pathways, citing artists
such as Franz West and Albert Oehlen as models for inspiration,
offering Beuysian notions of the “transcendental nature of
artistic production”11. Yanez overlaps motifs ranging from
religious tableaux to iconographical cultural symbols, mapping the
contours of ever-present sensory overload. He strings us along for
a ride of whimsical musings, sending us reeling into space with
Dots and Loops - a Ticker-tape of the Unconscious.
We live in a busy throbbing metropolis, engorged with the business
of ferrying people and product. A city reliant on the trajectory
transport nervous system. Rarely static or staid. Our systems of
transport are subject to change, they are transitional, we move
in all directions emanating to and from the city’s core. Intervention
of human nature can throw a spanner in the works of these mechanized
systems of order. Nature can still impact with all-mighty force,
and we will always be mapping these terrains both physically and
psychologically.
Greg Fullerton
Melbourne 2005
Footnotes
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Greg Geraghty
’A Trip to the Seaside’
2005
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