4 postcards from Bega

 

 

Now that the main holiday period has ended I thought I would do my bit to promote the advantages of off-peak travel to this beautiful part of the world. Don't be put off by the major development at the back of the private hotel. They don't work at night...just make sure you take a torch with you if you go to the bathroom. There are plenty of alleyways and discrete backs of buildings should you feel the need for a quick one. The town is wonderfully devoid of graffiti, and you won't be bothered by crowds at the many exclusive shopping areas...Bega awaits you!

Imaginary Landscape

Bob Georgeson, Imaginary Landscape, 2012, Acrylic on Panel

Art in the digital domain

Every now and then I feel the need to remind my son, who is 29 years old and knows everything, that it was old farts like me that invented and developed the Internet and WWW, and that the sophistication (and I dare say usefulness) of things like HTML, cascading style sheets, online relational databases etc, are far more interesting and likely to be remembered than the ability to be able to Tweet from your smartphone. Of course pronouncements such as this fall on deaf ears to the Me++ generation who, in an attempt to find relevance in a world where everything of interest has already been done, have formed the spatial ability to arrive at the conclusion that the universe began in 1980, and that anything prior to that is therefore irrelevant.

I mention this in relation to art. When people ask me what kind of art I do, and I respond that I work in photomedia, photomontage, video and predominantly online in the public domain, their eyes glaze over, the bottom lip starts twitching, and the ensuing silence seems interminable. Young artists just stare with incredulity that someone of my age can even mouth these words, while my peers mumble stuff about the tactile nature of art. Unless it hangs in a frame on the wall of a gallery then it can't be taken seriously. I understand their point, for many of them computers are things to be feared and used only under sufferance, and when it's a sunny day in paradise who wants to be inside anyway? And, there is always the question of money...

So, what is it and why do it? Just about every major gallery in the world has an online presence, in some case their entire collections are available, as well as research or commentary. Past criticism of online galleries has been image resolution. The Google Art Project aims to bring together high res pics from major collections. Wikipedia's Arts Portal is worth bookmarking, particularly for more detailed information about creative culture across the ages. In an earlier post I have featured UbuWeb, and I cannot reiterate enough how good this site is for anyone interested in 20th and 21st Century contemporary culture and the avant-garde. It continues to amaze and inspire with every visit...

For the artist two sites deserve mention. First Wikimedia Commons is a vast repository of public domain images, sound files and videos made available through the GNU and Creative Commons licences. And there is The Internet Archives, an equally if not more outstanding resource in the public domain that contains video,  live music, audio and texts. Many artists are now drawing on these resources, and some, like myself choose to work almost entirely within the public domain. Why? Exposure is  the answer. While it is nice to be  a legend in one's own backyard, ultimately not many people get to see your work, let alone participate in thoughts or discussion. Starting this blog and a new way of working this year I had no expectations of what might happen. Now, over 7000 page views, 800 looks at my profile, discussions with artists and organisations around the world later, to go back to the white cube with 20 visitors a day seems a little, well, quiet.

For me working in the public domain is exciting and challenging. I am always learning, or having to learn something new. This is rewarding because, unlike my son, I know very little.

Electric Woolies

Part 5 of the Bega deconstructed project...revisiting the scene of the architectural crime that is the new Woolworth's complex...

Bob Georgeson, Electric Woolies, Auckland St, Bega, 2 Sept. 2012

When did you last have an orgasm?

Various locations, Bega, New South Wales, Australia, 22 August 2012...

Alleyway

Part 3 of Bega deconstructed...Auckland Street...July 2012...

Bob Georgeson, Alleyway, 2012, Digital photograph

Ecstasy

Part two of the Bega deconstructed project...

Bob Georgeson, Ecstasy, 2012, Video projection, Woolworth's complex, Bega.

Bega deconstructed

They say that Bega will be transformed when the new bypass is completed, but for many local residents they might have wished that they could have bypassed this town forever. 'I've had a Bega of a day' is instantly understood as meaning NOT GOOD. However, as the largest centre of the Far South Coast it's facilities such as the hospital, local government and shops make it impossible to ignore. There are little treasures amongst the architectural monstrosities. The Historical Society's museum, Candelo Books, the Regional and Spiral Art Galleries, the Anglican Church are small cultural havens that contrast with the arguing couples outside the Centrelink offices, or the bunch of colourful characters that sit at Gloria Jeans Coffee Shop. A visit to Bega makes one realise how fortunate ones life has been...

So, I have decided to deconstruct Bega with a view to eventually using it's vagaries for public art projects. I am indebted to Craig Cameron for sparking this project with his original idea of using vacant shops as art spaces...

Bob Georgeson, Undercover Parking, 2012, Installation view, Woolworth's complex, Auckland St, Bega.

Cultural conflict

Spotted in the temple of consumerism in the Nation's capital last week...

It's a worry. Meanwhile a few blocks away outside the School of Art...

All aboard!

MONA

David Walsh, the creator of Hobart's Museum of Old and New Art, describes it as "a subversive adult Disneyland". It certainly is an experience unlike any other gallery in Australia. No expense spared in its creation it mixes antiquities with a who's who of the global contemporary art scene, and particularly those artists who work outside the traditional formula. Even getting there is unique. Embarking on the MONA catamaran at Hobart's Sullivan's Cove for the twenty minute journey up the Derwent River, we arrive on a typically beautiful late autumn morning...umbrellas thoughtfully supplied...

The architecture is stunning. Carved into a sandstone point the three levels of the Museum sit on a structure of high tech steel with the sandstone left exposed. The effect is like being in an ancient temple with James Bondian trimmings. The architecture has been determined by the need to accommodate Sidney Nolan's Snake, a massive work comprised of 1,620 A4 sheets...

Sidney Nolan, Snake, 1970-72, Mixed media on paper.

Equipped with our iPods we begin to explore...the 'app' sensing what artwork you are viewing and supplying information as to its title and creator. Artworks are given luxurious amounts of space in which to exist. For example Anselm Keifer's Sternenfall/Shevirath Ha Kelim is afforded it's own purpose built room...

Anselm Keifer, Sternenfall/Shevirath Ha Kelim, 2007, Lead and glass.

One of my favourite pieces is Callum Morton's Babylonia. The large rock like structure with light emanating from a mystery source that when discovered and entered takes you into an intriguing spatial illusion appealed to my sense of mystery and the unexpected encounter.

Callum Morton, Babylonia, 2005, Mixed media.

Inside Babylonia

The antiquities sit a little uncomfortably with the mostly large scale of modern works, but Walsh has a discerning eye and has selected his collection with purpose, often relating to his overall interest in sex and death. And it is this theme that pervades wherever one goes. One could argue that a collection based on the whims of one man lacks a certain intellectual diversity that older cultural institutions have built up over time and with changing personnel. But Walsh is no fool. He knows his stuff, he thinks about what he is doing, and is prepared to take risks to share his vision.

At times this is uncomfortable. For example Wim Delvoye's tattooed pig skin is at first a striking object, but when one reads about the pig being tattooed while alive then slaughtered and tanned in China (because that's probably the only place that would do it) one questions not only ethics but whether process has become the art, rather than process becoming the means to the end.

Wim Delvoye, Untitled (Osama), 2002-3, Tattoed pigskin.

It is Walsh's embracing of video art that is perhaps MONA's greatest strength. Judiciously placed throughout the museum as well as in it's own cinema, this medium displays an interest to the audience that is often lost when shown in isolated context. One of my favourites is Paul McCarthy's Painter, a film that shows that art can not only be funny, but hilarious. His piss take of the art scene is a laugh a minute comedy of all that is wrong with contemporary art, and should be on the curriculum of every art school in the country. A master piece...

Paul McCarthy, Painter, 1995, Video still.

The overall effect of MONA is one that mixes confrontation with beauty and accessibility to art that is largely ignored in the traditional institutions. And it is this accessibility that is MONA's strength. The public is invited (and encouraged) to engage with art, not be alienated by it. Walsh has thrown the gauntlet down. He is to be commended...

Too many curators spoil the wrath

Raoul Hausmann, The Art Critic, 1919-20, Photomontage, The Tate, London.

Regular readers would already have noticed I have 'issues' with curators, and being curated. After 45 years of looking at, studying, thinking about, and occasionally making art, I think I have a pretty good idea what work of mine should be seen, how it should be presented, and to whom. Therefore I now blog where I have control over these factors. I don't need a curator. However these days it is hard to go anywhere in the art world without seeing the result of curatorial input. Do curators add value to the art experience, or are they stifling it?

I don't want to tar all curators with the same brush. There are curators who bring scholarship and innovation to the process. One example is Simon Gregg at the Gippsland Art Gallery, who in a recent exhibition Dreamweavers showed he could draw together diverse artists across continents and decades who might not have seen the links between their work, and present it all in an intelligent fashion. He also has the capacity to write about it in a way that is easily understood. (More about this show later).

I find I am not the only person considering the curatorial dilemma at the moment. How have we reached a stage where the curator is more important than the artist? And where one can do a curatorial course without having a prerequisite understanding and knowledge of art history? Well, certainly the arts organisations have not helped in their penchant for bringing in overseas curators, directors, conductors, principles, etc. at the expense of local talent. The grass is always greener syndrome. Only trouble is these people have to waste time learning who the local talent is, and then bow to corporate sponsorship which often results in treading a very conservative path and one that can exclude anyone outside the establishment scene.

In the latest issue of Broadsheet Contemporary Visual Art + Culture Vol 41.1, Brad Buckley and John Conomos (Associate Dean & Associate Professor at the Sydney College of the Arts) have written a polemic called 'The Delinquent Curator: or how curators shafted Australian art'. In it they say:

And yet who today, among our curators, is looking, and is not strictly governed by a non-risk taking, self -congratulatory and self-perpetuating ethic of more of the same? After all, looking should be one of the cardinal points of our compass of artistic creation, exhibition and understanding...

Sadly, what we have locally is a proliferation of curators who wish to be media circus stars and celebrities, and who are lost in the contemporary art scene's aesthetic of razzmatazz and the spectacle.

No wonder many artists today, myself included, are choosing to turn their backs on the traditional gallery, museum, it's who you know, brown-nosing, artist as performer scene and exhibit in public places where artistic integrity can be maintained. Curators take note...the white cube may be suddenly empty.

The Quarrymen

Bob Georgeson, The Quarrymen, 2012. Installation view, Eaglehawk Quarry, Bendigo, Victoria.

In interview discussing I Am The Walrus, John Lennon said he was writing nonsense lyrics in response to a teacher getting students to analyze the words to Beatles songs. He also commented on Bob Dylan's lyrics saying he "was getting away with murder" and added "I can write that crap too". Of course Lennon was following his already established tradition of montaging phrases from a  wide variety of sources.

I often look through art magazines, shake my head in wonderment, and think I can make that crap too...

...and for John Lennon's final word on Bob Dylan: after Bob had gone all Christian on us Lennon did his piss take on Gotta Serve Somebody, called Serve Yourself...John at his acerbic best...

Threshold

Bit of a lag in posts recently while touring regional Victoria. This is the facade of Latrobe Universities Visual Art Centre in Bendigo...most annoyed when I saw it because I had a similar idea and she's beaten me to it!

Jenny Pollak, Threshold, 2011, Digital photos

Jenny says:

'On the margins of experience

at the edges of understanding

-right there at the periphery of perception-

there is a point of entry

a threshold...'

...and that's a nice intro to some future posts about arts in Victoria, where art is valued, nurtured and supported by Government, councils, communities and even business...