In contemporary society UNEASE and
uncertainty is commonplace amidst a fast paced POST-DIGITAL lifestyle
dominated by advancing communication technologies, ubiquitous surveillance, political
unrest, DISEASE, gender dysphoria, gender politics, physical & psychological
trauma and a particular ALIENATION borne from a loss of community and
traditional values. Within this ethos, a
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY has occurred in
which both sexes struggle with the idea that certainty and security
may be an illusion, out of reach, simply unobtainable? Always this ANXIETY is played out on the body, no more
so than on the female body, which is presented in the media as dismembered,
fragmented and sexualized, encouraging women (and sometimes men) to view their
bodily parts as individual pieces to be scrutinized for unwanted blemishes,
disease and disfigurement. The body then is in a state of being cut, or containing the potential for being INCISED. It is wounded and remade.
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| Tracey Lamb Un-ease (2013) © |
In her photograph of a discarded mannequin, positioned upright amidst lush, green flora TRACEY LAMB’s Un-ease (2013) acutely depicts the ‘classical’ rounded female
torso, the most famous being Aphrodite of
Cnidus (a sculpture by Praxiteles c.350BC) which was
originally discovered without head or limbs, and, of course
Rene Magrite’s now famous Act of Violence (1932). The naked
‘dummy’ makes particular reference to the fashion industry, in which the model is
mere armature for designer clothing and not required to think. However, the stained
area on the front of this WHITE mannequin of more diminutive body contours,
speaks to an industry that applauds the small, thin female body as the
appropriate type to wear designer clothes, as opposed to the actual size of
ordinary women. The BLEMISH formed by the
fact that the empty vessel was partially filled with dirty water, mosquito
larvae and debris - indicative of our WASTE culture, is a reminder of the tossed
aside naked, polluted body of Laura Palmer, homecoming queen who was murdered
in the first episode of the television drama TWIN PEAKS (David Lynch, 1990). Abuse of women, whether beautiful or not, neglect, and anxiety about
body image and disease are all evoked in this simple, but powerful image. The
stain also suggests tainting of the notion that women should conform to a
particular body schema.
The mark or stain is what our eye is drawn to in New York photographer ARIANA PAGE
RUSSELL’S self-portrait. Dermatographia causes her immune system to release excessive amounts
of histamine, causing capillaries to dilate and welts to appear. This allows
her to painlessly draw on her skin. She reveals her vulnerability and dis(ease) by alerting us to her desire
to articulate her difference in Heatwave (2009) a self-portrait in a Man Ray like fashion pose, in which her
lips are exposed as diseased or damaged.
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| Ariana Page Russell. Heatwave (2009) © |
We are reminded of the swollen mouths of women who have received Botox injections or undergone plastic surgery
in order to enhance their lips making them look and feel younger and hopefully
warding of aging and death – two of the major anxieties of our times. And also of those who inflict
self-harm in order to ‘feel’ like they are alive. Like Lamb’s Un(ease) the fragmented part of the woman
is stilted like a store-dummy, the only saving feature is that she has
positioned her hands so as to cradle and frame her own experience.
In ALANA TOMPSON's April is the cruelest month (2012) the female body cloaked in
fabric is confined within a sarcophagus-shaped bath permeated with a rubescent glow.
Reminiscent of the red light ambiance used in a dark
room for developing film or in low light control areas, such as the one she
has set up herself with soft candles, the photograph alludes to sacred or profane rituals associated with death, dying or mourning, but also to photography itself, which makes an object
of its subject.
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| April is the cruelest month. Alana Tompson. (2012)© |
Shrouded in this magenta, almost amniotic fluid, which hints of
the blood of menstruation, childbirth, miscarriage or traumatic injury, the un(ease) experienced by the viewer
might be borne from the idea that the female body is disintegrating under the
fabric of life – the material she wears like folds of loose skin lifted away
from the body during decomposition, the woman’s head extended backwards
exposing the soft, vulnerable throat, like a lamb to the slaughter. The woman’s
head, the only fleshy part of the scene evokes a severed head, an amputation.
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| Memento Mori (2008). Mariano del Castillo. © |
MARIANO DEL CASTILLO's Memento Mori (2008) mixed media (painted
ceramic, vintage binoculars, glass, plastic, printed image and matches) resurrects
discarded objects and creates a narrative around history, perception and mnemonics. The severed head with rounded red beads to demarcate the point at which the
head was traumatically cut from the body may be regarded as the intellect
divorced from emotion. The transparent glass bubbles which spew forth from where the mouth
should be, articulate a delicate balance in which words themselves are frail
and language itself may be shattered. The lifeless eyes, although enhanced by
the binoculars, stare out at us, cloistered and protected from the outside
world. However, amputating the intellect from the body alert us to the absent body from which our experience emanates. The un(ease) occurs because the body that interacts with the world is absent here and in its place, is the thinking part, which is afforded more status.
But it IS the human body that causes anxiety. It is marked with endogenous
and exogenous dis(ease) – a burden carried within our microscopic insides where it remains invisible to the human eye or, is revealed on the soft
outer surface. Often when the body is marked with signs of disease it signals a
sense of horror in the viewer; for the perceived body becomes OUR body, an
internal projection of what we fear WE may eventually become. PAM KLEEMANN dealt in part with her own breast cancer by making a series of breast plates that evoke armoring of the female body against intrusion by dis(ease) as well as medical intervention. In her mixed media work Cut Me (2006) the fleshy, soft and malleable mammary gland has become a hardened shell, rendered so by surgical intervention. The acrylic food cover represents protection, however its transparency evokes the silicon gel implants inserted under the skin during breast reconstruction and exposes the innermost body as a site of fragility. The words 'cut me' served up to the viewer on a cake plate, play with the notion of delicacy/delicate but exhibit resignation, for this site of the body may only be saved by being WOUNDED!
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| Cut Me. Pam Kleemann© (2006) |
PEZALOOM WD’s digitally manipulated
image Health to the Abyss (72) (2012) recalls the sense of body horror and anxiety we have about the possibility of dis(ease)
since the image is isolated from the body it represents. The viscous and
visceral bodily part suggestive of a monstrous being with long, extended finger
nails, evokes alien life-forms prevalent in science-fiction films,
creating an un(ease) or disquieting effect on our senses; for the fragmented
entity provides little clues to what the remainder of the body looks like.
Indeed, the anonymity of the subject shields the person (perhaps the artist)
from over-exposure or identification with the disease.
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| Health to the Abyss (72) Pezaloom Wd©(2012)
|
ALIEY BALL’s Blight (1997) (plaster, bamboo, wire mesh and gallery walls) creates
a situation in which the walls themselves have produced a dis(ease) that infiltrates and moves threateningly into the gallery
space. The walls, have become anthropomorphized, indeed the artist said:
I wanted the skin of the walls to grow a disease,
which leans threateningly into the room to confront the audience with its
presence. The phenomenology of a space infected. There is a hint here that walls, which usually
protect us from intrusion and harm, have become purveyors of the very
anxiety they was designed to eliminate. If we imagine that the wall is a skin
that surrounds the nebulous skeletal structure then it has certainly been captured
by the walls extended tentacles, rendering the sculpture as simultaneously
human and non-human, viral, bacterial and potentially dangerous.
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| Blight. Aliey Ball. (1997 © |
A danger exposed in WERNER HAMMERSTINGL’s Remembrence #2
(1978-2013) a somber, black and white photo-montage of five different panels
comprised of fragments from larger photographs taken over the past three
decades of rapid change.The photograph depicts protest, anger, sloganism, identity, anxiety and political
unrest. Documentary photographs are juxtaposed with those that appear digitally
manipulated, clear images site side by side with those less clear. How do we
read this image of people holding flags at a remonstration, the steel structure
that forms a X alongside a medium close-up of an unknown man? The abstracted
images incongruous amongst the easily readable partial panels - a sense of
uncertainty or un(ease) in the viewer as to how the images connect. In my mind they chart patterns of existence - calligraphic, a trace, a
glyph, a reference to writing or how we write, think, make images and create change; the ink
of pen to white paper, the scratches and scrawls demonstrated in Cy Twombly's works or better still
the activism and subversion of the urban graffiti artist. LANGUAGE is a POWERFUL tool.
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| Remembrence #2. Werner Hammerstingl.
(1978-2013) © |
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| Mildew on page of Webster's English Dictionary 1856. Julie Clarke © 2013 |
noting this.
in the end
we all need to be carried
dead weight of departure
too much to bear alone
you reasoned too soon
with your opiate driver
timing
is everything, you said
with memory looking
ahead at a dust storm
that inexplicable twist
of light and weight
lifting off a map
you never found or
couldn’t quite see
with living in the way
perhaps you were lost
in books or trees
they often look the same
with their naked intent
in particular
the calligraphy of silver birch
deep ink strokes
moving between sky and skin
and you transported
in that same vein
breath reading leaves
to the end of sound
location
is everything, you said
rising from the road
on ink, air and wood
noting this
will not happen again.
Cecilia
White©2012
____________________________________________________
A Conversation with Clouds on the immensity of solitude.
They have
mal dis(ease).
From the middle of nowhere
we travel from Oadlawirra to
Wilcania.
A black crow picked the rest
of
un(ease)
& a wild Emu dancing
with my left hand
dis(ease).
There is
deep silence in the plain
desert.
I pronounce: drop of rains
as a sound of life.
A dialogue with clouds.
We stop under a
blue sky and its shadows
Drawing us a border, radio
given us signs of reality.
Made this place a total
loss.
We make a break in our
journey
Distance is a mirror
app(ease) to be
a citizen of death.
Juan Garrido-Salgado©(2013)
That was the first disappointment, many followed. However, having said that here's some photographs I took of the artworks that I really enjoyed. The first is a full-scale lounge-room in the foyer of the gallery in Federation Square by the Hotham Street Ladies made of icing - I loved Picasso's Weeping Woman on the wall. 
And this wonderful mixed media sculpture, including human bones is a tribute to Tasmania indigenous people also at NGV International..
Here's a different view showing the skull inside the glass case.
I noticed that not all art was inside the gallery and the legs and feet of a young Asian girl with her white stockings with black hearts, white socks and black and white shoes captured my attention as she was sitting on the steps at Federation Square.
MELBOURNE NOW is a huge exhibition and I'm sure to visit it again. I'll keep you updated here.
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