October 2009, “Mrs Edwards presents Wild Wood”
images: Nick Banks, ‘Mrs Edwards presents Wild Wood’ installation views and details
September-October 2009, “…et fleurs”
images: Shane Haseman, ‘et fleurs…’ installation views + details
September 2009, “HOPELESS”
images: Scott Donovan + Dane Mitchell, ‘Hopeless’, from top to bottom: installation view including Dane Mitchell’s ‘Minimalosis’ 2009 (timber cube with sound element) and Scott Donovan, ‘The Crisis of Contemporary Art’; in descending order: SLOTH, ENVY, GREED, PRIDE, LUST, 2009
August 2009, OFFSITE PROJECT: I.C.A.N. at Ocular Lab
Quinto Sesto; Fighting for Peace (1975-76) - In June 1975 Quinto Sesto, an unregistered pacifist group, was formed in Sydney. Little is known about the activities of this collective. They were listed as a subversive organisation by the NSW State and Federal Police although their actions broke few laws and failed to capture the imagination of the public or indeed, other 70’s peace groups. In fact, Quinto Sesto were more generally written off as a public nuisance not to be taken seriously.
The group, whose core comprised four members and a ‘guest’, were activated by the general political and social tumult of the era. Like many, they were deeply angered by the Vietnam War as well as outraged by the summary sacking of the Whitlam government in November 1975. Furthermore, they were inspired by those they viewed as international fellow travellers like the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Black Panthers as well as John Lennon and Yoko Ono, to name a few.
However, unlike most of these organisations Quinto Sesto harboured artistic aspirations. One of its founders Warren (aka. Sesto) Mitchell, also wrote poetry, song lyrics and plays. Such ambitions culminated in the group’s attempt to encompass their political aims in the form of a rock-opera partially inspired by the The Who’s ‘visionary’ enterprise ‘Tommy’, also released in 1975. Unfortunately, Quinto Sesto’s own aborted production ‘Fighting for Peace’ like most of the group’s activities, barely got off the ground due to lack of collective coherence and talent. It exists today only as series of musical sketches and some crudely scrawled, heavily derivative lyrics. By mid 1976, Quinto Sesto, a failed activist and artistic entity, finally imploded under the combined pressures of internal bickering and excessive drug taking.
In this exhibition at Ocular Lab, the Institute of Contemporary Art Newtown presents documents, artefacts and memorabilia associated with Quinto Sesto on loan from one of its surviving members. Included also are recreations of some of the events associated with the group’s attempts to write and perform a genuinely ‘political’ musical. Instructive for what happens when ambition exceeds ability, Quinto Sesto remain a significant, if under-recognised entity emerging from the dim recesses of Australian political and artistic ‘folk’ history.
images: Quinto Sesto; ‘Fighting for Peace’ part 2; documents, artefacts and memorabilia
(installation views + details)
August 2009, “HYUNMIROHMIYAROH”
HYUNMIROHMIYAROH
I am a – hybrid identity (?); border crosser (?); avant-diaspora (?); post-diaspora (?); neo-diaspora (?); 3rd generation diaspora (?)”Diaspora. What a lovely word. I can just picture myself in Paris whispering it into the ear of an innocent victim”.
images: Miya Roh, ‘HYUNMIROHMIYAROH’, (installation views + details)
July-August 2009, Salvatore Panatteri
images: Salvatore Panatteri, ‘Untitled’ (Icandescent), (installation views + details)
“Salvatore Panatteri’s Untitled (Incandescent) works can be understood as a tribute to the earliest form of electric light and also to the related technology of photography. The two technologies are not only paradigmatic of the industrial age in which they were conceived, but both also have influenced our ways of seeing over the past two hundred years… This series is a dynamic distillation of the technologies of a time past, one that could only occur in the present historical conjuncture when the digital era has made chemical photography and the incandescent light system system redundant”.
Extract from ‘On Salvatore Panatteri’s Untitled (Incandescent) series’ By Dr. Helen Macallan
July 2009, “Head Line, Blood Line, Fault Line”
images: Kevin Sheehan, ‘Head Line, Blood Line, Fault Line’, (installation views + details)
June 2009, “The Gift”
“The GIFT” Ocular Lab (Melbourne) June 12 – 28
An exchange exhibition at I.C.A.N. of Ocular Lab members: Sandra Bridie, Damiano Bertoli, Raafat Ishak, Sean Loughrey, Jonathan Luker, Sally Mannall, Tom Nicholson and Elvis Richardson.
Ocular Lab is an artists’ project initiated for the purpose of promoting dialogue and experimentation amongst its members, peers and associates. Run out of an old milk bar in West Brunswick, Melbourne ‘The Lab’ has evolved out of the histories of ‘h’ project (1997-1998) and its past incarnation, Ocular Laboratory (2000 -2001). The exhibition at ICAN is of works responding to the idea of a Gift by various Lab members and builds on a history of off-site exhibitions, hostings and events.
The Gift 2009 exhibition at ICAN exhibits works of eight members of Melbourne artists’ group Ocular Lab. In the context of an exchange between likeminded organizations, the exhibition’s premise engages with an idea of the offering of a gift. In the simplest and purest sense, a gift is a freely given generosity, a humble acknowledgement of goodwill. Likewise, some gifts are neither pure nor simple and may be deeply enveloped in layers of intent and potential interpretation. The Trojan horse was a disguised form of a gift or offering.
The gift requires the act of giving. An artwork may portray the act of giving or it might represent the actual gift without the act, yet the gift will still be defined by the act of giving the gift If one gives a child a stone in a gift like manner, the child accepts the stone as a gift. If one throws the stone at the child, the child will most likely through the stone back. Either way the stone is still a stone, hence, the paradoxical nature of the ‘gift’
Works on display will range from a painting that helps people who want to emigrate to Saudi Arabia by Raafat Ishak, a residue of postering action over 10 nights by Tom Nicholson, the restaging of a Last Mans Club photograph featuring the 1996 /97 directors of First Draft by Elvis Richardson, a video of a waiter setting a dining room in preparation for a function by Sally Mannall, 240 volt decorative handkerchiefs by Jonathan Luker, a type of research project into ‘gift declaration’ informed by Duchamps declarations of the ready made, by Sean Loughrey and more.
Each year Ocular Lab hosts off-site projects engaging with specific locations such as ACMI, Spacement Gallery, Trinity College University of Melbourne and George Paton Gallery. The Gift continues this off-site engagement with other spaces and their particular environments.
(The core group consists of artists: Damiano Bertoli, Sandra Bridie, Julie Davies, Raafat Ishak, Sean Loughrey, Jonathan Luker, Sally Mannall, Tom Nicholson, Elvis Richardson and Alex Rizkalla).
images: top to bottom (left to right); Ocular Lab, “The Gift”, installation view (floor work by Sean Loughrey); Tom Nicholson, Rafaat Ishak; Sally Mannal, Elvis Richardson; Damiano Bertoli, Sandra Bridie; Sean Loughrey, Johnathan Luker.
May-June 2009, “Perfect State”
images: (top to bottom) ‘Perfect State’ (installation view); works by Mikala Dwyer, Justene Williams (screen still/installation detail) and Petra Maitz (screen stills/installation details)
