Just because you can do a thing, is it necessarily a good idea to go ahead and do it? This is the conundrum of art that is a conceptualised practice rather than an impressionistic impulse – should the artist go to the very end of the idea when she and her audience can see that end, rushing up with the inevitability of an egg heading for the floor? This is the problem for Jude Rae and her show at Gitte Weise Galleries (Sydney & Berlin) .
Rae has been doing paintings of objects set up in a product shot-like setting where the objects are pictured against a background with red flock wallpaper and a neutral ground on the bottom. You can’t really fault Rae’s highly aestheticised choices – everything is balanced just so and even if you’re not wild about her technique, it’s there for all to see. The more problematic part of her work is her choice of subject. Recently, Rae painted cups, saucers and vases and the works had a classic feel. For this show, Rae has done a couple of plastic chairs, two portraits of people and a group of still lives. Of what? you ask, of fruit? flowers? Actually her paintings are of fire extinguishers and gas cylinders.
At this point, we must admit we were struggling. Gas cylinders contain flammable material – the fire extinguishers put out fires. Is this something we should be thinking about? No clues in the titles, unfortunately: Still Life #146, Still Life #161. Hmmm. Do we really need to think about this? Is this as far as the concept goes? Is this how the egg feels?
Then we realised there was another way to look at this show and we immediately felt a whole lot better.
Rae is clearly a fan of gas cylinders and so are we. We looked a bit closer and found that the artist had pictured a range of LPG cylinders in various sizes with a selection of classic Primus-style gas cylinders ranging from the 1.25kg to 3.3kg capacity range up to the longer lasting 4.5kg and 9kg models which, as you know, are ideal for bbqs, leisure and other domestic uses. The artist has gone to great lengths to depict the three most popular types of valves from the right-hand thread internal valve and the left hand thread of the 3/8ths of an inch leisure and industrial models to the more durable and fool-proof POL connectors.
The artist is no trudge with the fire extinguishers either. At first we thought we were looking at some of the rightly famous Automatic Fire Services (pre Wormald take over) models designed for electrical fires, (using foam as the main retardant) but we noticed by the shape of the safety notice that these are EAC 5 Type E extinguishers used for electrical fires utilising carbon dioxide gas as it does not conduct electricity, but are of some assistance for other types fires as well.
Perhaps the key to understanding the import of Rae’s show is that these are gas extinguishers. As the highly respected journal Fire Safety News and Review put it:
“…as a gas, it will not leave a messy residue over your equipment, which can be helpful for salvage if the fire has not totally destroyed your electrical/electronic equipment. Remember, as a gas, it will dissipate into the atmosphere, so direct the stream to the base of the fire from as close as you can get.”
Indeed.
It must be awful to be a gallery artist and have some upstart having a show in the Gitte Weise Gallery downstairs hire space Room 35 that’s a better show than yours. Paul Donald has a show on called Flatware and it’s a beauty.
The pieces are simple – abstract shapes cut in acrylic and resin on MDF with a glossy check pattern. The artist has then added a cartoon eye to the work, a black dot on a white circle cut into the MDF. By adding the eye (which can be rotated in any direction), the works take on bizarre allusions to animals. The shapes aren’t really suggestive of real animals, but hybrid reatures, and the titles of the works say it all – Untitled (yawnpuppy), Untitled (tanglebunny). Truly and exceptionally weird.
