Thursday, October 9, 2014
Ingenious Inhabitants at William Street Windows - 9 October
So I am still making the daily trek into the City from Paddington via shanks pony. Which means I get to walk past the William Street windows on a daily basis. Their current show, Ingenious Inhabitants, is on until 12 October. Will this be as good as their last show? Let's find out ...
So first off, I think there are a few less artists this time around. The windows certainly feel a little emptier. Which means you can't miss Ramesh Nithiyendran's work. His oil, acrylic, enamel and resin on plywood works are big, bright and a little out there in subject. I've also only just discovered their names, 'My Birth' (pictured top) and 'Self-portrait masturbating' - I never considered that moment as worthy of art before. Performance art maybe, but not a self portrait! Next to this was Monica Brooks' work, 'Besia's Glasses' (pictured below). This looked fairly plain, and is usually the type of thing I would slag off a bit, especially when I am in a narky mood. But I didn't mind this. Yes, it looks like you could pull it off for about $80 from your nearest SVdeP but the backstory is quite interesting. I couldn't work out whether Monica or her aunt was the collector, but I've got that bug as well so this could be in line for some points! At the other end of the same window was Amber Boardman. Amber will have "achieved [her] goal if someone feels something, anything at all" about the work. I like where she is going here. To me it recalls the ambition of Andres "I like to make pieces that make people feel something. Any reaction is better than indifference" Serrano of piss-christ fame. So no pressure then, how do I feel about these works? Well, to be honest, I'm not feeling all that much. Maybe it needed to be bigger? Onto the next window where it was all about the installations. These looked pretty interesting, but the window gallery does provide a limitation as you can't get as close as you'd maybe like to study the detail in some of the works. The pile of what looked like green turds for instance (Peter Nelson's 'Extensions of a No Place', pictured above) actually turned out to be 3D printed ceramics when you read the online guide. Gee, I'm not sure that is why we invented 3D printing! The accompanying video is tied into in a way the casual viewer will get but only the art historian will appreciate when they read the artist statement.
Points: You can probably guess this exhibit didn't really grab me like their last one. 3 points will go to Monica's glass collection - let me know if you want to borrow my tiki mugs one day. 2 points to Ramesh, who should probably stop painting himself wacking off, and 1 to Peter Nelson, whose sculptures I think you need to get up closer to rather than being kept at arms length.
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