This is the first time I’ve been to Rumpus Room when the sun is still shining. It’s daylight savings in Melbourne, and there’s lots of light and nowhere to hide. This is probably a good thing for Bryan Spier‘s show, Actual Painting, (Saturday, 25th Oct. 6pm-8pm) “an improvised wall painting and installation composed from scraps, offcuts and various objects found onsite at Rumpus Room.” It’s a site-specific painting, if you will. But it’s also a collage and an installation.

When I open the garage door, I experience a real jolt of pleasure as I step into a whole other magical space of colour and angles and lines. The colours sing. And the tune is lighthearted almost euphoric.  I stand and enjoy. That’s when I notice the complex play with space. The forms, which at first appear to me as abstract, on closer viewing I realise are full of hints and touches of the non-abstract, even figurative.

The picture plane itself is not flat, with drawings of plank-like objects criss-crossing each other, creating a complex sense of depth. And later Bryan explains that these line drawings are actually tracings of wooden pieces he found in the backyard of Rumpus Room, or nearby. And there’s lots of other suggestions of the figurative and the ‘real’ with suggestive drawings, things, found objects, collaged images from prints as well as the detritus of making, left where they landed at the base of the wall – giving a real sense of the actual performance of this painting. ( there’s that word ‘actual’ again)

Abstract painting is said to have three separate but simultaneous champions: Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Malevich. Spiers manages to reference all three at the same time, in the same work. The clear and flat primary colours recall Mondrian’s neo-plasticism; the constant sense of movement across the composition summons up the spiritual and painterly dimensions of Kandinsky; and as for the third of this triumvirate of pioneers, Malevich, he is cleverly referenced through a canvas bag hanging in front of one wall with the words MALEVICH printed on it in black. The very humble and material form of the canvas bag, hanging almost forlornly from the ceiling, seems to both pay homage to this Suprematist innovator and to quietly disagree.

Under Suprematism I understand the primacy of pure feeling in creative art. To the Suprematist, the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth. (Malevich)

It is almost one hundred years, since Malevich wrote his Suprematist manifesto and hung  Black Square (1915), the work that would be so influential to following generations throughout the 20th century, in the top corner of the room, in the 0.10 Exhibition. A lot has happened since. If ‘pure feeling’ and the denial of the visual, objective world was the advanced ideas for 1915, in 2014,  it is the very materiality of our world and it’s connections, it’s flows and spaces that are of interest to today’s artists and theorists. Although like Malevich we too have turned away from the optical, the purely visual to embrace all of our senses, including the  troubled relations between the virtual and the material. Given the current interest in materialism driven by the several theories circulating under different names like post-humanism, post-materialism and Object Oriented Ontology (OOO), I can’t help experiencing Spiers abstract/figurative material and performative painting as part of that conversation.

But if the initial impression of a painter deeply engaged with abstraction and its ongoing relevance is one resonance, on closer inspection this too opens out to a broader engagement across  20th century modernism with its many twists and turns. The title “Actual Painting” suggests a clever pun on the very material, and actual found objects that make up the painting – the offcuts lying on the floor, the bits of things incorporated into the composition, a stool, a stop sign, even a broom. I’m suddenly aware of Duchamp and the snow shovel, ‘in advance of a broken arm’. Perhaps the broom is ‘in advance of a sore arm, soon’. The play with the words “actual” and “action” encapsulates in one near-slippage the difference, the time differential between the performance of historical “action” painting and the performance of Spier’s “actual” painting. The latter’s concern with the material objects of the world, right now in the present, in this case in the artist’s present – push against the play with the virtual, the space of the painting which is always more, an excess.  With all these rich associations, drawing upon a broad and generous vocabulary of modernist painting, Spier seems to remind us that we live in a world that is both material and virtual – and in this composition, as in our ‘actual’ everyday mediated experience, these two disparate worlds are held in tension, together.

The BARI Festival is a bi-annual event in Brisbane, “founded by the crew at Jugglers Art Space in 2008”. This year it ran from the 9th to 19th October. The Festival’s Creative Director was Jaclyn Bates. The festival featured many of Brisbane’s ARIs including  Jugglers Art Space, The Hold Artspace, Post Datum, Boxcopy, Fake Estate, Lost Movements, Scribble Slam, The Wandering Room, Frank and Mimi, DM, Fractal Division, Aggregate and Inhouse ARI.

As Randal Breen, Festival Founder notes, the festival gives people a chance to experience the community of artists, rather than the single artist, “The concept of BARI is about celebrating the coming together of artists and the community they’ve developed more so than one specific artist…”

I’m only here for two days: Looking at the online BARI program I plan my nights. Clicking through the 12 different ARIs featured on the BARI programme website, I notice a singular feature of Brisbane ARIs and one that I discuss briefly with different artists during my visit, and that is their approach to “space”. It seems that a high percentage don’t have a dedicated physical space, rather they are nomadic or virtual, creating spaces temporarily or in alliances with other fixed spaces. And there’s a high incidence of showing/exhibiting/performing in people’s own homes. For instance,  inHouse ARI usually shows in one of the collaborator’s own home. (Although for BARI they have secured a grand office space right in the centre of the city.) The Wandering Room co-curated the Brisbane chapter of Justin Jade Morgan’s travelling project titled Tools of the Trade, which was then installed at Juggler’s Art Space. Fake Estate made a collaborative work titled  ‘I’m Sorry The Letter Is Late’  with Romii Fulton-Smith, Zoe Knight, Madeleine Stack and Jarrod Van Der Ryken and installed it at Aggregate Projects. And DM ARI (Dhana Merritt Artist Run Initiative) which Dhana describes on the BARI video as “me as the gallery”. In the last few months DM has exhibited in the front window of Ryan Renshaw’s Gallery.

In brief chats with some artists I mentioned my observation about Brisbane ARIs and nomadic spaces, wondering if Real Estate, an important factor for most ARIs, was a consideration…yet real estate doesn’t seem to dominate Brisbane artists’ thinking when imagining an ARI.  I think this is an interesting difference between the capital cities. One of the artists suggested that perhaps the tradition of artists showing in their own houses – like the well known Accidentally Annie Street ARI or the longer tradition going back to the 1980s and 1990s, where artists had to make their own spaces, with little financial support from the State – could have something to do with the creative, lateral and innovative approach to space. I make a note to investigate further. Thursday night: Scribble Slam 19

Scribble Slam is a live art battle between two artists held at Kerbside — a sort of indoor/outdoor pub in an alleyway — with a theme announced at the start of a 90 minute timer. Winners are chosen by two judges and a crowd vote. My visit to Brisbane, and BARI, was too brief to see all, but I was lucky to catch some of the turbo-charged energy of Scribble Slam 19. It was a great event with lots of noise and cheering as the two artists attacked the wall-sized canvas tackling the theme of Darkness and Light. The ‘slam’ set-up owed much to the outrageous antics of TV wrestling shows like WWE, with their colourful monikers, Cherie Buttons and Bambi Wants Revenge – complete with online taunts and provocations. It’s a battle. Here’s the final pictures. Darkness.

Light.

Friday night:  A travelling exhibition titled Tools of the Trade opened at Jugglers Art Space. The project was initiated by Justin Jade Morgan and began life in New Zealand. The project seeks to create a global archive, both physical and digital, of artists’ tools by way of artists donating their own tools.

“Tools of the Trade is a snowballing project where willing creatives are invited to present their tool of choice from the studio in a physical and or digital form towards a global archive. Through this ongoing project Justin seeks to address the disparity between artworks and the tools that create them by elevating and re-contextualising selected tools within an online and exhibition context.”

The resulting ‘tools’ donated by artists were displayed on long wooden trestle tables in the gallery. They showed a witty yet serious engagement, with artists donating objects as simple as a ‘multicoloured biro’. Or the humorous “conceptual depth analyser” ( a strange ruler-like instrument), or the essential but overlooked humble ‘jar for medium’. The archive of tools shows the vast range of ways and means that artist’s utilise to create their work. And as Justin alludes to in his artist statement, this archive creates a nice reversal of roles for these objects/tools which are no longer in the background, but are shown as objects in their own right, objects fit for our attention. For a list of the contributors see the The Wandering Room website.

Nearby, Aggregate Projects was showing  ‘I’m Sorry The Letter Is Late’  with Romii Fulton-Smith, Zoe Knight, Madeleine Stack and Jarrod Van Der Ryken (a collaboration with Fake Estate) The project engaged with ‘mail’ –  both online and offline forms, using postcards on the one hand and on the other, email/facebook communication. It seemed to play with our current over-communication behaviours,  mixing and displacing the different forms  that we all engage with daily, sometimes minute by minute. Mixing up the official with the intimate, the public with the private, and thus disturbing the usual borders of these communication lines. On entering the foyer, I found a wall of pigeon holes, the sort of structure that institutions like universities have to distribute mail amongst staff. If you work in a public institution like a university, you will be assigned a pigeon hole much like this one, with your name on it. The perfect symmetry of pigeon holes, with their narrow rows lined up one after the other, in a pleasing seriality, lends itself well to an art context. I walked over to find that these pigeon holes held lots of postcards. All of the postcards I picked up were free postcards announcing an event of some sort – but written or scribbled over with intimate messages. The other form of ‘communication’ that this project was concerned with entailed guests registering online (Facebook) that they were “attending”. On arrival at reception, after giving their name, they received their “mail”, a white envelope. As I didn’t register with Facebook, I didn’t have any mail waiting for me. Zoe later explained that the mail each registered guest received was an envelope which contained a single A5 page with a short typed phrase on them… ”  Reluctantly explaining the mystery of the letters Zoe revealed that “The phrase on each letter was some kind of a soft apology (e.g. “sorry to pester you…”) taken from a list of “sorry” phrases we each collected from our email account history (sent and received).” 

Lots of people gathered around the  wooden pigeon holes reading the many postcards — I was struck with how people were intensely focused on the postcards, reading  with quiet concentration. Zoe also explained, that “we asked fellow artists/people to write a postcard for us (we did some too) with an intimate message of some sort of emotion, be it longing, lust, anger, friendship or humour, as long as it was sincere. These were then collected and displayed in the pigeon holes…” and people interacted with them.

Aggregate Projects is itself a delightful and provocative use of space pointing to the endless possible forms/ways that an artist-run initiative could be. It’s situated in a commercial building, in the foyer, under the stairs . To have a space ‘under the stairs’ conjures all sorts of flights of fancy and imagination. I’m immediately back with the little people in The Borrowers. It’s something about the miniature, the small and the found. And I’m reminded of the artist who created an exhibition under his hat. “In 1962 the Fluxus artist Robert Filliou started walking around with a traveling miniature gallery in his hat, which he called La Galerie Légitime (“The Legitimate Gallery”) It was an exhibition under his hat.” There’s a fantastical dimension to the idea of ‘under the stairs’, a bit like under his hat – it’s an idea that can transport you.  Aggregate Projects is directed and curated by Zoe Knight, who I was lucky enough to interview for my project. More on this later. The first day I visited Aggregate Projects the exhibition under the stairs was the work of Alrey Batol, titled Obso-tele. The artist has been collecting obsolete technologies, especially old analogue TVs that people simply abandon on streets and pavements.  It’s a found object and a solid announcement that the owners have bought something new, something to replace it. They no longer value this old and useless thing. It’s hard to believe that analogue was so recent. Looking at this huge cumbersome monster of a set it’s like looking at another historical era, a ruin or a remnant from another civilisation. But hang on, I only got rid of my own analogue TV ten years ago. How quickly all is forgotten. How quickly we accustom ourselves and our bodies to these new technologies, with little thought to what it all means in terms of materials, energy, the real cost of labour to build these new technologies — and all done in ‘third world’ countries.  This work, Obso-tele, creates a moment to pause, to contemplate our habits of consumption,  to ponder the constant change that compulsory obsolescence brings. Yet it’s complex too. Even the magnet on the front of the TV giving it the distinctive pattern, is mysterious. As someone commented to me as I stood gazing at its mezmerising pull, the analogue frequency has been turned off. What is this old TV picking up? what does the invisible electromagnetic frequency vibrating on this screen, mean? Can such an old piece of technology still communicate with us? On Thursday I took a ferry down the river to the West End to visit The Hold Artspace, a gallery space above an art supply shop. The exhibition in the first gallery was The View From Here a show by two Brisbane painters, Kate McKay and Angelica Roache-Wilson. Their ways of painting are radically different. Although one commonality that ties the exhibition together visually is the size of the pictures. On the most part they are small jewell-like pictures. In the catalogue essay Eileen Abood writes that the exhibition “is about the process of slowing down and reflecting upon our experiences and reactions to the constructed, civilised world in which we live.” Kate McKay’s paintings are strange, otherworldly landscapes, painted in a pared down palette using just one or sometimes two colours with a perfect tonal facility. This monochromatic colour range created a very ethereal and dream-like feeling. The influence of the German Romantic painter Casper David Friedrich permeated each picture. Yet the monochromatic colours also created a break from that romantic tradition, as if something has been drained away from our world. The sense of beauty in these pictures teeters on the edge of something else.

Angelica Roache-Wilson’s paintings on the other hand are abstract and expressive, the flattened surfaces giving a satisfying sense of the worked-in paint. Each small painting an intense and intimate moment of felt experience.

InHouse ARI is a collaboration between Jenna Baldock and  Meagan Streader. They have a singular vision, which is to pair local artists and writers to create opportunities for dialogue and critical engagement. This sort of artist/writer collaboration is not about writing a catalogue essay or promoting an artist, rather it is a recognition of the contemporary situation where discourse and text are essential sites for art and its production. As yet InHouse ARI doesn’t have a dedicated space, but uses either their own house or other temporary spaces and opportunities.  On Saturday night, October 18,  InHouse ARI opened their show CTRL + SHIFT + SPACE’  — unfortunately I was already back in Melbourne, so I can’t report on the show itself.  But before I left I did get a glimpse of the enormous space they were working with – an empty office space, right in the centre of Brisbane.

CTRL + SHIFT + SPACE  is the outcome of a  collaborative curatorial project with three local writers – Lisa Bryan-Brown, Nicola Scott, Tara Heffernan – who were invited “to generate a shared critical discussion surrounding relevant issues present within local artistic and cultural life. From this dialogue, each writer was asked to curate two artists that reflected the overarching conversation.” The minute-type notes of this conversation and process, which begins with the very first meeting between the writers and InHouse ARI (Jenna and Meagan) can be viewed on their website. Here. It’s a fascinating read, and takes you through the whole process of how they first identified the theme of ‘control of space’ within the context of the G20 Summit that is being held in Brisbane this year, to the discussion and choice of artists. It was also really wonderful to read the amicable, sophisticated and lively discussion and watch it unfold, and to get an inside view of the process of making an exhibition. For more info on InHouse ARI and specifically on their current show CTRL + SHIFT + SPACE, you can visit their website, here. (http://www.inhouseari.com.au)  

Behind Smith St, and down a small alleyway I found Rear View Gallery. The door was ajar, and sort of small – a harbinger that something else is happening here. Immediately on entering the space I encountered  Sarah Byrne’s Poor Traits + Other Quantities, a multi-channel video installation. The video images showed lush portraits of figures half glimpsed through the decay of the digital image – accompanied by a similar sonic landscape. This is a wonderful sort of glitch aesthetics –  suggestive, rich and poetic.

Walking around the corner I met Rex Veal, minding the gallery, and whose work was installed in another space, called Flake, at the far end of the building. Flake, initiated by Kate Meakin – it is her studio –  is the name of the space that you reach after walking down a long corridor, past busy cluttered studios. It felt underground – maybe it is underground – I could hear the claketty clak of high heels above my head, in the Chemist shop, on Smith Street.

Flake is a long narrow space that you need to step up to, or, you could stick your head in and look. I wasn’t sure. Rex Veal and his art partner Rohan Whitely work together as Rare Candy. They are currently showing a work titled Squinting at Tiffany’s. At first I just look from the door, wondering if I can cross the threshold, I do. The tightness of the room creates a sense of immersion, I feel like I’m in the work, there’s an as if quality, as if I’ve entered a crime scene or perhaps a romantic movie with a sad end. There’s a nice spareness to the space except for some carefully placed vintage fashion accessories –  careful yet with an air of abandon…There’s a teasing violence to these old and worn objects. The woman’s handbag dangles an excessive load of keys as well as locks, the chain is anything but Tiffanys… it’s a scene without the actors, suggestive of something more, a tantalising snippet in which an aged Holly Golightly is no longer so carefree. Perhaps.