Rue de Belleville at Galerie pompom - 22 June

It was a wet weekend but nice and dry inside the gallery (or galerie in this case).  Accompanied by one of my junior critics we were at pompom to check out the group show called Rue de Belleville.  My daughter was coming down off the high of having seen Barbie in real life at Bondi Westfield.  I don't think I was that excited but I was really looking forward to see what these artists had in store ...

Having seen before and liked three of the six artists in this group show I was expecting a treat.  And I wasn't disappointed.  It is just a single room at pompom and I honestly didn't know where to look first.  Nana Ohnesorge's has a work from 2010 in this show, 'The Journey' (pictured top).  This is quite a large work (150 x 112 cm) and hard to miss with its use of vivid colours. Described as acrylic paint and aerosol, pigment pen and oil on linen it is a great display of what I take to be Nana's nearly trademark style - vintage images remixed with hyper colours and collage type elements.  Personally, I really like her work but subject wise would prefer a Ned Kelly in the Big Lamington collection to the european* looking waif in this show.  My daughter is also a big fan of colour so it is no surprise that she gravitated towards Megan Walch and Jonny Niesche's work.  Megan was a new artist for me and her 'Jamming on the Rue Fontaine, Folding of the old horizon' (above, again don't ask me about the title - I tried googling and got some interesting links to surrealism but it was all a little too much for me) was a fantastic Mr Whippyesque landscape of oil on canvas that included quite a few random little pine trees dotted around like on a ski run (you can kind of make them out on the image).  I read an article that described this Taswegian's art as 'pretty but with a scent of something else'.  I did get both, even if I couldn't pick what that scent of something else was.  Jonny Niesche's work dials up the pretty to 11.  My daughter loved all the glitter in both his canvas work and his "logic stick" (below, left).  I saw Jonny's work at Roslyn Oxley before and it really made an impression.  To quote Eric B and Rakim, "I'm thinkin' of a master plan" to get some Jonny into the Big Lamington collection.  Watch this space.  Rochelle Haley was another familiar face.  Her jewels were nice but I think I preferred the watercolours from her previous show that also added animal skeletons to the bling.  Tara Marynowsky's watercolour was pretty trippy.  I liked the pacman style ghosts lurking around the edges of this work.  More importantly she also has a website so I could see more of her work. I've not seen Ron Adams' work before, his Shenanigans (great title by the way) is another rainbow coloured work that again was like mainlining colour. It's another great show from pompom, I would love to have any of these artists grace the walls of Big Lamington HQ.  

Points:  I think colour was the real winner on the day!  In terms of the art I am going to give the 3 to Nana Ohnesorge.  As I said I am really loving her trademark style of vibrant colours and interesting images.  Such a shame I was late to the party here, my favourite from her last show sold before I saw it, I have it as my iphone screen saver as a memento mori to get there first!   2 points to Megan Walch who was my daughters top pick (one to watch there) and 1 point to the glittering stick of Jonny Niesche. 

*although maybe I was influenced by the the whole Rue de Belleville group show name, which I am still a little confused about even after reading up on.