PENNY BYRNE, SAM LEACH & VR MORRISON - AT MELBOURNE ART FAIR 08
Penny Byrne
Collateral Damage
What are words worth?
In 1981, new-wave group the Tom Tom club asked in a catchy hit single, “What are words worth?” Centuries earlier, Shakespeare had Romeo pensively enquire, “What’s in a name?” These questions are rhetorical. Both the bard and the rhythmic New York hipsters knew perfectly well the power of language.
One little word can make a big difference. On February 12, 2008, our hot-off-the-press Prime Minister Kevin Rudd managed to utter the word which John Howard had choked on for eleven years. He said “Sorry”, a small word carrying a massive burden; a tiny gesture that was simultaneously a very large step, long overdue. It won’t fix everything, but it did do something.
As an artist, Penny Byrne is keenly aware of the potency of language. Words are a key ingredient in her creative arsenal. For years, through her cunningly modified sculptures, mutant cutsie china figurines with bad attitudes and double entendres titles, she has railed against the inequities perpetrated by Howard and his coalition of willing cronies. Post change of government, post apology, she still has plenty to say.
According to Byrne, “There is a language of art, but I don’t understand it.” However, this isn’t strictly speaking true. Byrne may not be conversant in the art-speak babble so popular with a certain segment of the intelligencia, (a deliberately obfuscating dialect which is often as meaningless as it is irritating), she many not know those words, but she knows plenty of others which pack a much more powerful punch.
In fact, Byrne is something of a word-meister, she plays games with them, gets them to turn tricks and do her bidding. Common sayings are twisted, tweaked and press-ganged into service to make a point. Take ‘the elephant in the room’. Byrne transforms this well worn phrase, which refers to something uncomfortable and wilfully ignored, into a physical object demanding attention. Byrne’s camo painted, gun toting The Elephant in the Room is the fact that we are a nation at war. Not just bystanders protected by the TV’s flickering screen, we are active participants in a bloody, seemingly endless battle based on greed and misinformation. Like a kid with a pair of comic book ex-ray specs, or a shiny new patented bullshit detector, Penny Byrne sees through media hype and political spin. She has spotted a whole posse of elephants, wrangled by emperors wearing no clothes.
Tracey Clement
Sam Leach
Intersection and Union
Sam Leach lives in a strange world indeed. While rendered with painstaking skill and very much in the here and now, in other respects this is another dimension altogether, one where centuries collapse in on one another and species have morphed or mutated for reasons unknown. It is both the future and the past. It is epic science fiction in the true sense of that term: ‘science’ meets ‘fiction.’ His is a world where the 17th Century meets the space race of the 1960s all fuelled by some corporate Matrix-like corporate future force.
Let us first back-track some centuries. We will never know when the first fisherman accidentally landed the first caulophryne. Regardless of who, when or where, it is safe to assume that the bewildered individual thought this monstrous aberration of nature came swimming straight up from the murky gates of hell. With its grotesquely bulbous head, wavering illicium, toad-like body and razor sharp teeth it is unlike anything else seen in nature. Its’ sex life is equally bizarre. The males of the species are miniscule compared to the females (Females reach a total length of 20cm, but males only grow to 1.6cm) and bite into her flesh and spend their lives as parasites (this may sound familiar to some single mothers who never see their child support).
But this is Leach’s world and his caulophryne looks set for an unusual lunch.
The Sputnik was representative of the space race between the USSR and the USA in the late 50s and early to mid-60s. The first Sputnik was launched by the pesky Russians on October 4, 1957 and can be seen as the direct precursor of today’s satellites, those things that feed our television sets (to which most of us are attached to like parasites). The move shocked the yanks who set up various organisations to counter the Ruskies, including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1972. DARPA was in large part responsible for many of the key building blocks of today’s World Wide Web, another creature to which we are parasitically attached.
What happens when the caulophryne meets the Sputnik? Will there be a meal or is there a strange sexual attraction? Will the illicium entwine with the antennae, creating a mutually parasitical union, a melding of fish flesh and steel? In a day and age of genetic engineering and advanced prosthesis technology, almost anything seems possible. Science plus Fiction is no longer Science Fiction – it’s a blue print for the future.
When two stag beetles go into battle, it is not in the natural forest environs of such creatures, but in an artificial void. This is by no means a far-fetched notion. With their coppery hides, these wee monsters could have sprung from the mind of Australian-born roboticist Rodney Brooks who, in 1989 in a paper delivered to NASA experts, proposed colonising other planets with tiny robots based on insect forms. (If you find the notion of insect/robot cross-over intriguing, read Kevin Kelly’s Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, 1994, 4th Estate).
You see, this is the thing about Sam Leach’s paintings. Not only are they exquisite little jewels, but if you take the time they are also wonderful idea-factories. Each one of these images deserves an essay in itself. The significance of the space station, the insidious creation of blinded, albino kangaroos, the crossover of nature and technology, the all pervasive power of corporate entities and even the history of painting itself all crop up in Leach’s oeuvre. The hints are there aplenty, but they need a little time. It is time worth investing in.
Ashley Crawford
VR Morrison
Rouge
Sweet decollation
Betrayal is a vice. It can be as mundane as a childish lie or as timeless as the great story of decollation - Judith and Holofernes. Artist VR Morrison, who has long been engrossed in the work of 17th century Baroque artists, and the heroines who appear frequently in history painting, has a new take on the Judith and Holofernes legend.
According to biblical legend, the widow Judith tricked the evil Assyrian general Holofernes by seducing then decapitating him with his own scimitar in order to save the Israelite town of Bethulia. In Morrison’s version, the male figure is forced into submission by a coterie of violent damsels, dressed like Robert Palmer’s Addicted to love bass players - clad in little black dresses and pointy stilettos. Instead of an opulent setting, Morrison incorporates packing crates and a cardboard box to collect the grisly head. But despite the contemporary paraphernalia, her painting has all the classic narrative elements of a Baroque betrayal. The lustrous-skinned actors grapple for control and the Holofernes character resists, creating a dynamic which refers more to Caravaggio’s painting of ‘Judith’ than to fellow Baroque artist Artemesia Gentileschi’s five versions of the same.
Morrison also flirts with the indulgent allure of nature morte paintings, which peaked in 17th century Holland, and which comprise symbols of impermanence, death and the debauched weaknesses of humankind. But instead of skulls and half-burned candles, Morrison utilizes stilettos and designer handbags.
Her recent work My Red Soul Richelieu refers to the political rule of French Cardinal Richelieu who was known for his lavish and indulgent red vestments, at the expense of the starving masses. In Morrison’s painting, Richelieu is represented by a laced up two-tone stiletto pulled on wheels by an innocent baby chick, which might signify the people or the artist.
Contemporary art is seldom relevant unless there is a relationship with history. Morrison fulfils this prophecy with her soft light, her selective palette (pearly whites, burgundy reds, satin blacks) and her fondness for social ambiguity. Her recent paintings focus on the colour red which symbolises sensual beauty, luxury, bloody death, femininity and maternity.
At a time when art often revolves around consumerist whimsy and the immediacy of illustration, Morrison stands apart. Her works, which are as concerned with beauty, strength and fashion as grand historic narratives, are the protracted result of building sets, sewing costumes and doing make-up and lighting before painting her tableau scenes. Her inventive tales of female heroines and the symbolism of memento mori force the viewer to look both backwards and forwards.
Prue Gibson