Meditation on Bone

Heide 11: Albert & Mary Tucker Gallery

Heide Museum of Modern Art

1 September 2018 - 24 February 2019

Curated by Glenn Barkley

Barkley had the envious opportunity to sticky-nose around the Albert Tucker personal archive and library. Much of what he puts on public show highlights how deeply patronising many 1940-50s publications about indigenous cultures were.  Tucker's magazines, articles and book are set a amongst his collection of 'primitive' or 'naive' masks and sculptures. A group of Tucker self portraits, all with lascivious lips (no images of these!) and journal cover with Picasso as clown sets a creepily ambiguous tone. 

Added to these discoveries are hand-crafted beauties from contemporary Australian artists. The hang is dense, utilising Barkley's off-used 'history of ceramics prints' as gallery wall paper. This show hints at the what was in shadows of the sun-shiny Heide compound.

Louise Meuwissen, 

Scott Duncan Blank Expression, 2018, stoneware

the eyes have it - brrrr! From 1958 

Lynda Draper, Tony, 2014

Tom Polo

Ramesh Nitheyendran, Orange Mask,  2018 earthenware, shell

Tony Albert, No Place 3, 2009 type c photograph

Glenn Barkley (apologies missed this caption)

Artists are:

Laurence Aberhart
Tony Albert
Glenn Barkley
Dorothy Berry
Karla Dickens
Lynda Draper
Scott Duncan
Ruki Famé
Caroline Garcia
Simon Gende
Tarryn Gill
Raven Halfmoon
Glenda Havilah
John Havilah
Adrian Lazzaro
Louise Meuwissen
Ramesh Nitheyendran
Jason Phu
Tom Polo

Slice of Life

Craft goes pop in this exhibition at Craft, where a collection of artists present comments on food, consumption and all the stuff of everyday life. Objects are representational with a deliberate 'handmade-ness' or hyper-real. This is a good opportunity to compare how the past creative genres of West Coast Funk, Skangaroovian Funk or Nut Art can be reinterpreted or reinvented to question contemporary issues. 

Curated by the irrepressible Sofia Cai, she says of the exhibition:

The everyday is both universal yet also deeply personal, and it is in this interplay between collective experience and individual narrative that the works in this exhibition achieve their potency. 

The exhibition features works by Mechelle Bounpraseuth, Julie Burleigh, Scott Duncan, Phil Ferguson (Chili Philly), Katie Jacobs, Josephine Mead, Tricia Page, and Cat Rabbit. 

22 April - 27 May 2017

Craft, 33 Flinders Lane Melbourne

www.craft.org.au

In a time of food styling to a point of fetishism,  Michelle Mounpraseuth notices the gross and  unhealthy elements of everyday consumption.

Katie Jacobs' scores a goal with trophy emblazoned with captions using vernacular sporting language 

Scott Duncan's Smoko rocket is an cracker.  Riffing off Margaret Dodd's ubiquitous  Holden Cars, the thermos is a quirky throw back to the 1980s and South Australia's Skangaroovian Funk via USA's west cost funk of the 1970s. 

Scott Duncan

Josephine Mead's video is redolent with art history reference to the female and vessel  as signifier.