Opening night at Chalk Horse and who happened to be walking by? You guessed it. This guy. A good reminder of an opening night here is the crowd milling about outside on William Street, a drinking and a smoking. After a couple of quick hellos to some familiar faces it was downstairs to check out the wares.
In the front room is Will French's show Uno Momento and around the corner you'll find Addison Marshall's It's What you Don't See. I was a little disoriented upon entering and actually walked all over one Will's works, a coiled piece of rope on the floor called 'Attension', yours for $3200. Feeling a bit self-conscious I scurried over to check out his photographs and then calmed down when I saw another half a dozen punters step all over the art! His photos (pictured top) document a performance undertaken a few weeks ago when he got a plane to write 'This will never last'. Quite. Great idea and I always like seeing an artist merchandise performance art. Other works included a random steel pennant which looked like oversize castle lego hanging from a wooden pole attached to a mirror on the ceiling, aka 'Half Masked'. So you can see this had everything! My preference was the skywriting which was a novel idea, and apparently also using themes of the momento mori according to the catalogue essay. Yeah, I can see that. I'm liking this even more. Speaking of likes, I thought Addison Marshall's sculptures were pretty cool. These were ceramic works that were variously freestanding, attached to the wall, and hanging from the ceiling. I didn't really get the titles, but reading the accompanying essay learnt he has taken them from self-help books. I am still none the wiser. I did like the pieces hanging from the ceiling but these were hard to take a snap of on opening night so I'll illustrate the show with mainly pieces on the wall. I thought the use of coloured thread on variously white or coloured ceramic was a great touch. Gave a real luminosity to some of the pieces. I just may steal this technique for the Easter Show ...
Points: Tough one. Had I looked up on the evening of 22nd September and seen the art in the sky and then on the walls tonight Will French would've had a lock on the 3. As it is, the photos are cool but they are one step removed as documentation of a performance, 2 points to Will. Addison will take the 3 points for Sink or Swim and the 1 point for the Stress Relief series (pic above, they were actually 10 in all). These were 9cm diameter and only $200 each. Nicely.
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