From Andrew Frost…
What is the future for the white cube gallery? This vexed question is being asked in the face of the ongoing crisis in the commercial gallery sector as depressed sales and post-GFC gloom puts a question mark over the traditional artist-gallerist relationship. So what else could it be? Could sales go online, could artists cut out the middleman, could a new kind of gallery experience emerge? Perhaps in part answer to these questions Platform 72 dissolves most of the high brow snobbery of the gallery for the egalitarian access of the shop with exhibitions by artists mixed nestled in amongst a selection of homewares, jewellery and accessories.
The exhibition Acid Reign by Sarah Howell is the hybrid gallery’s latest offering, a mixture of bright graphic art works – large collages and smaller prints that explore “…altered states of perception through drug use and takes influence from drug cultures effect on art.” The classic elements of psychedelic art here – bright contrasting colours, elements of pareidolia-inducing patterning aided – by the addition of googly eyes – and trippy life-death motifs including skulls and skeletons. The artist’s devoted adherence to the psychedelic menu is admirable, but Howell’s real ace is the contrast in the works, a byproduct of the digital age the artist’s Haight forbears could only have dreamed about.
Until June 22
http://platformstore.com.au/collections/acid-reign”>Platform 72, Darlinghurst
Pic: Sarah Howell, Acid Reign, 2014. Giclée archival and non-archival print, 33x33cms.
