Full Court Press at Artereal - 8 August

Artereal curatorial board member Seb Goldspink is an art world baller and shot caller.  His first (?) curatorial outing for Artereal sees him create his own version of 'hardwood dreams' in the Rozelle gallery for a handpicked selection of emerging artists.  For what I would like to believe are copyright issues he has chosen to call the show 'full court press'.  We managed to sneak over just just before half time on the opening night to cheer them on ...

I read that the Artereal space reminded Sep of an actual basketball court and with the temporary hoop in place and Biljana Janic's silver tape interpretation of a 3 point line installed on the gallery floor I could see it too.  All the artists in this show have been inspired by basketball.  A sport that despite 7 years in the US I really only appreciate for its influence on hip hop, although I do have a soft spot for AI and would love to put some Sprewells on my ride!  Anyway, where were we?  This show has a couple of names I have seen prior, Mark Whalen, Julian Meagher and Philjames; and a couple of debuts for Big Lamington like Tully Arnot, Nicole Breedon and Hamishi.  There were some hits and misses.  I really liked Philjames' flight school series where he has done these intricately detailed oils of NBA players getting up above the rim and juxtaposed the image with both the old school materials, technique and framing. I thought Nicole Breedon's basketball hoop sculpture that seemed to merge a generic hoop with a macrame hanging basket in the colours of the Harlem Globetrotters was right on the mark. And Tully Arnot's kinetic sculpture of a spinning ball was pretty cool. Speaking of hits and misses during the opening a deathly hush fell on the crowd and a young basketballer started to showcase his moves with a ball that had materialised form the stock room.  I thought, cool - a young local player is going to light it up.  Turns out it was artist Hamishi doing some performance art (which explains the couple of easy lay ups he missed - and with yours truly enjoying a significant height advantage I was tempted to play a little defence).

Points - 3 to Philjames for the flight series, I think the celtics was my fave (top).  I will give 2 points to Nicole Breedon's Sport's Decorated sculpture (middle) and will give 1 point to the tape that really set the scene (Biljana's Open Key, above).