So the Australian Centre for Photography has been around for 30 years? Wow, we actually remembering it opening! Send flowers, send cakes, send presents… To celebrate they are having an exhibition called Zeitgeist that showcases a bunch of artist/photographers chosen by a bunch of curators, collectors and others, and the results are on show until September 5.
The artists are up-and-comers and players in the Sydney art scene and the curators are museum big wigs and people in the know. The result is a dog’s breakfast of a show in a gallery space that has been painted dark grey, divided up with walls at odd angles, has the names of the artists emblazoned on the walls in white and spot lights picking out the unframed works. It is a brutally unsympathetic environment, part HSC art show, part Showbag Pavilion at the old Royal Easter Show. We’re not sure what the ACP thought they would be getting into with 14 curators (Virginia Baxter & Keith Gallasch, Rex Butler, Robert Cook, Patrick Corrigan, Max Doyle & Malcolm Watt, Juliana Engberg, Caroline Farmer, Peter Hill, Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, Daniel Palmer and Steve Vizard) but it’s a stinkin’ mess.
The works of these apparent superstars of tomorrow is pretty darn average. The video installations probably come off best since watching a TV in any space is usually OK. The King Pins Dark Side of The Mall is amusing enough and the half-mad security officer patrolling a shopping centre who wears a T-shirt that reads “I survived the Cremaster series and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” is value enough. But we’re starting to wonder if the King Pins have got something else up their gender-confsuing sleeves? IT’s a great act for now but they’re also in serious danger of being over exposed. We think of The King Pins as being like a promising new band with a few good singles out but soon they’ll have to make an album and stop stuffing around on these club dates. Similarly, Grant Steven’s video installation of words flashing on a screen (BROKEN HOMES WITH HOT SHOWERS) accompanied by Hendrix, Zep and other Westie favourites, is blank but interesting and beckons us back for another look.
Elsewhere, however, the jumble of images and crappy hanging make otherwise good works look rather lame. Rachel Ann Hobbs’s series called Couple Physics is witty but hung in what seems like random order and the presentation, stuck to the walls without frames, makes them seem like the work of someone who needs a bit of cash to realise their concepts. David Thomas’s painted photos are great, reversing the viewer’s perceptual relationship to the picture surface, but why are they hung at such a low height and in semi-darkness?
Silvia Velez has one of those breathtaking works called Post Its, which, from a distance, makes you go “Ooh wow! Somebody drew hundreds of overlapping post it notes!” but when you get up close you realise that they are all print outs from a computer. What a disappointment. Speaking of let downs, Shaun Gladwell is in Zeitgeist too and we would have thought that someone represented by Sherman Galleries was already here, not up and coming, and surely Gladwell has been in rather too many shows in the last year? Perhaps he is the zeitgeist? But never mind. He’s represented by three photographs, two the same and one not the same. We’ll leave it to you to discover what exciting images Gladwell chose for the show because there is little else to be excited about.
We like what the ACP does but for a 30th anniversary show celebration they could have come up with something better than this poorly staged exhibition – and is it too much to ask that when such a major event is staged the room notes are actually available at the gallery or online?
