Elizabeth Cummings - Paper Trail: 30 Years

Simpson Desert, Ed 25 2007
Etching 34 x 50cm
image courtesy of King Street Gallery on William

Elizabeth Cumming's recent exhibition at King Street Gallery on William features the gentle, undulating landscape of the Australian outback. Her etchings are exquisitely harmonious, composition gently tempered by the use of warm gold, ochre, violet and rust. She uses a cohesive, satisfying palette of autumnal colours. Desert horizons, a sensual jumble of hill are covered in disorderly scrub. Shallow skies, narrow and sparse, seem almost devoured by ancient, dry land. This is not an endless desert, flat and monotonous. Her landscapes are undulating with small hills and nooks, dotted with detail. Iconic references to windmills, paddocks and cattle are interspersed throughout.

This exhibition, Paper Trail, also features Cumming's abstract works on paper of a more quotidian, domestic world. The artist has drawn inspiration from her home at Wedderburn, near Campbelltown, Sydney. Few appealed to me, they seemed insipid and wan, faintly detailed in wispy pencil and pastel ink. Others in the gallery, however, seemed moved by them. An older, well-heeled woman could be heard loudly speaking with her husband via cell phone trying to convince him to agree to the purchase. Very annoying, indeed!

Aside from the pastel images of dogs and teapots, classic surgery waiting room art, her desert etchings take one a meditative journey. Her use of composition and colour are calming and transporting. When contemplating her desert etchings I felt as though I was in the outback, breathing in pure desert air. I soaked up the warmth and basked in the light.

Karla Dickens - Black Madonna at Casula Powerhouse

Black Madonna VI, 2009 mixed media on canvas
image courtesy of casula powerhouse

Black Mother 1, 2009 mixed media on canvas
image courtesy of casula powerhouse

Holy Mother II, 2009 mixed media on canvas

image courtesy of casula powerhouse

Sumptuous and textured, laden with floral motifs, beads, and mother of pearl, Karla's new works invite you to almost touch. Black Madonna is a sensuous, introspective yet life affirming and deliciously feminine exhibition. Using a lush and uninhibited palette of bright colours and media, this series of nine explores themes of m aternity, spiritual protection and memory. Religious iconography and Aboriginality are central to the framing of the image of the Mother,fortifying against the fear of malevolent spirits, curses and death.

Bold retro fabrics and faded upholstery florals form the background for many of Karla's new mixed media work. Highly decorative they also invite association. For me the associations were intrinsically female; memories of my grandmother, of being a child fascinated by textured cloth, the smell of a widow's formal parlour room, the embroidered cushions on a faded settee. One can remember what it is to feel small, in a vast old house with curios, spirits and dust.

Black Madonna was inspired by Dicken's recent experience of a malevolent spirit that invaded her home and attacked her daughter and herself. Aboriginal elders were summoned to purge her home of its presence. During what was a most difficult time Karla turned to the image of the black Madonna for protection. In all this series the mother is central and powerful, she holds, nurtures and shields the living. Her body is also a fountain of life and regeneration. Heaving with texture, Liberty flowers, beads and tropical flowers she is also
goddess of memory, darkness and renewal.

Karla's work is both intentional and casual, occasionally almost childlike. In once piece precise floral collage lie beneath the arch of a clumsily painted rainbow. Under the Madonna words such as Holy Mother, Divine Mother, Black Mother are written with a natural unpolished candor. Some of her smaller pieces are far tighter, the composition is refined and clean. On a larger scale the effect is more organic, naive and loose, occasionally rough in places. The other small works, Shining 1 and Shining 2, combine both styles. Using delicate mother of pearl tiles, shimmering and refined, heavy outlined figures are illuminated by broad spontaneous white brushstrokes.

The Black Madonna has been portrayed for hundreds of years, across cultures. Karla's first Madonna was a leather shadow puppet that also had the shape of Sheela na Gigs, the Irish female creative spirit. Karla too is of Aboriginal and Irish descent. The Black Madonna has been a controversial figure that has refused to be buried or forgotten. She has been revered, privately and in some cases illicitly for eons. She is the outsider's protectorate. For Karla the fascination is apt. The Church refused to bury her grandmother and her uncle due to the nature of their death and lives. In return Karla's family forbade her to attend Church. In this realm of marginalization and expulsion, Karla has retrieved this oft abandoned deity and given her centrality and prominence. She has wrapped her in flowers, adorned her with jewels and invited you to worship. A defiantly spiritual exhibition Karla Dicken's Black Madonna was on at the Casula Powerhouse, 1 Casula Rd, Casula.

Aris Prabawa – Exhibition Hilang Kemanusiaan – Humanity Lost

Artist with

Taring Padi

1600 x 1200 cm

image from: www.isrol.multiply.com/photos/photo/15/6

Visceral, political and horrific, Aris Prabawa’s recent exhibition at Casula Powerhouse, left me completely stunned by the power of its imagery.

It is rare that an exhibition catches the darkest nightmarish imagery lurking in one’s subconscious and puts it on view. Upon seeing this show my eldest daughter said, “I don’t know if I’ll sleep well tonight”, and I don’t think she did. His work has an impact that truly lingers. Aris was at the opening of this exhibition, a young smiling, open faced man. I asked him how he felt after completing one of his many pieces, “Yes, sometimes I cannot sleep”, he concurred.

Born in Indonesia , Aris is a multidisciplinary artist, whose work explores the dark underbelly of Indonesian politics, military oppression, corruption and violence. Hefty military generals, sleazy businessmen and soldiers ride massively engorged pigs, eels, rats, and bats painted in lurid, sickening oil colours. Vile and macabre the effect is menacing and disturbing. The interconnection between the military, corporations and government are portrayed terrifyingly. Each sordid character is huge in scale, the Indonesian peasant dwarfed intheir presence. The effect is to recreate the horror of living smothered by an oppressive blanket of military totalitarianism, beneath which the everyday folk cower.

300 x 216 cm

image from: Sika Gallery

Prababwa’s influences include German Dada, Mexican muralists, Indonesian political artists and graphic artists from early 20th century Europe. Technically his work is excellent, detailed and richly textured. The colours are not pretty viewing, nor is his work. Yet its powerful, brazen and impacting. Australia, awash with apathy and art-for-interiors, has a lot to thank Aris for. We could well consider his experience of growing up during Suharto’s regime and how the Indonesian populace have been repeatedly quashed by their own government. As we attempt to reshuffle our relationship with Indonesia, Aris’s work reminds us that the key players are still those that were in charge before. The psychological impact is described by Aris, as ‘hilang kemanusiaan’, meaning ‘humanity lost’. Indonesians today are controlled by fear of reprisal and collectively stumble in their efforts to fight for justice. Uncompromisingly, Aris’s terrifying work denounces the power of violence and summons us to reject complacency. Aris is a founding member of the art collective Taring Padi and the band Black Boots. He is inspired by punk, DIY and antiauthoritarianism. He currently divides his time between Indonesia and Sydney.

Adam Hill: Caste-ing Call

Half-caste ten in the morning

2010 synthetic polymer and eucalypt leaves on Aust. made cotton canvas
165 x 200
image courtesy of Harrison Galleries

Adam Hill paints with incendiary bravado; a sharp palette of vivid colour, bold graphic lines and furious symbolism. Caste-ing Call, his current exhibition at Harrison Galleries, takes aim at the cultural hegemony imposed on black Australia. A brilliant exhibition rich with political message, Hill depicts how white Australia engages with black, how it voraciously seeks Aboriginal minerals, women, spirituality, cultural control and at what cost and consequence.

Caste-ing Call features seventeen paintings. Half-caste 10 in the morning depicts an Aboriginal woman striding through desert dust in stilettos, long black hair, huge breasts barely covered by a taut bikini, smiling sensuously. She holds up a placard with number 10 in white letters, which Hill says refers to the movie 10 staring Bo Derek. In letters painted in reverse an ad reads,’Wanted Extras Stereotypically Half Caste Classic White Teeth Characteristic Skinny Legs Broadish Nose’.

The advertisment lists the Australian film industry's obligatory features for an Aboriginal extra. Through this prism an Aboriginal women must climb in order to be given a part, one can only read the ad correctly in a mirror because through this reflection we see what we want to.

This exhibition exposes and debunks commonly held cultural stereotypes that are routinuely bandied about ignorantly. What is an Aboriginal? Where and how is a 'half-caste placed in a heirachy of racial identity? Popular notions of racial characterisitcs are exposed. As the painter recalls, ‘…my personal favourite…”oh yes…you DO have that type of forehead!”’.

The term ‘caste’ has tremendous load in Aboriginal parlance. It is still used as an insult in some communities and in others it is still a way of verifying identity. ‘Are you a half caste?’ - a question that demands a response, a clarification. Because if you don’t have the skinny legs, broadish nose, then what are you? The requirement to vouch for one’s cultural identification and demonstrate to which ‘half’ one still belongs is an odious tagging that occurs within boththe Aboriginal and non Aboriginal community. Caste is a term with eons of historic baggage and remains divisive and affronting.

He hasn't got a leg to stand on
2010 synethetic polymer on canvas
65 x 90cm
image courtesy of Harrison Galleries

In He Hasn’t Got a Leg to Stand On a one-legged man pulls a toy cart containing a small child and kangaroo. Cultural identity is divided into the ‘essentialist’ black man, the desert dwelling native and his ‘half caste’ progeny. The sign on the cart says Halfies Cart, Tried and Tested and the large letters around the one-legged man in classic ‘native’ pose says Hop in Hell, an ironic reference to the genetic load this man may one day carry.

Painted words and symbolism repeatedly feature in Hill’s powerful work. Frequently we see a scorched, fractured sun smouldering menacingly in a harsh blue sky, its nuclear fire matched by the fury in Hill’s paintings. Burning sun, wasted people, parched landscape, the dysfunctional icons of a bright land where racial tension smoulder and lie. Omnipresent seven clouds hover low in the sky, these are the artists depiction of the seven government states and territories that serve as an oppressive glass ceiling above Aboriginal people.

Wong Place Wong Time
2009 Synthetic polymer on canvas
150 x 250 cm
Image courtesy of Harrison Galleries

Far from being politically didactic and predicatable in left/right inclination, Hill takes aim at hypocrisy from wherever it flows. Wong Place at the Wong Time puts Penny Wong’s decisions as Minister for Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Water as the cause for the parched landscape, dying lizards and denuded environment. Using sharp edged humour Mine over Matter illustrates a light haired Aboriginal man walking along with a carrot dangling from his spear. In the background a large sign is emblazoned with the words, “Your Future Is Mine’.

There is a vitality in Hill’s paintings that enlivens his sharp political discourse even when it hinges on bitter rage. He straddles the capacity to deliver a thunderous bolt of political discourse with a striking graphic style and humour. It is appealing even to those he critiques. He has exhibited his works in the most unlikely settings, the foyer of the AMP building in Circular Quay being one of the more corporate settings. His work is urban and reflects his strong interest and support of street art and graffiti.

Originally from Penrith in Sydney’s west, he now lives and works in Redfern, in Sydney’s inner city. Caste-ing Call is Adam Hill’s latest exhibition and well worth a visit; this artist has a penchant for provocation and a larrikin’s way with language, his paintings are rich with colour and the passion of a forceful message.