An Introduction
“…there are in Nature certain scenes, certain classes of objects, certain materials, possessed of the power to transport the beholder's mind in the direction of its antipodes, out of the everyday Here and towards the Other World of vision.
Similarly in the realm of art, we find certain works, even certain classes of works, in which the same transporting power is manifest.
These vision-inducing works may be executed in vision-inducing materials, such as glass, metal, gems or gem-like pigments. In other cases, their power is due to the fact that they render, in some peculiarly expressive way, some transporting scene or object."
Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception/Heaven and Hell Granada 1976, p.86.
IN HIS ILLUMINATING ESSAY on the transfiguring powers of visionary experience, Aldous Huxley remarks on the universal ability of highly decorated religious and iconographic art to conjure "the mind's antipodes” or sense of "otherworldliness”.
The artists included in this exhibition share a common concern for the transporting ability of "vision-inducing” materials. Their sculptures are unashamedly decorative, often sumptuous and always illusionistic.
Polychromy is used to animate form, to render it more seductive, distinctive and emotive. The Baroque sensibility of dynamism and colour is ever-present. Ornamentation is utilised to represent objects which constitute motifs. Such motifs are historical and legendary ones, those representing activities, emblems, fables and those related to the actions and passions of human life.
The golden shrine, the gilded statue, the jewelled and painted symbol or image, the glittering altar, we find these things in present-day Europe as in ancient Egypt, in India and China as among the Greeks, the Aztecs and the Celts. They are the talismans acknowledged by these local contemporary artists.
Louise Neri July 1986
Notes on the Artists
BRETT BALLARD
1957, Born Hamilton, New Zealand. 1980 - 1982, Bachelor of Art (Visual Arts), Sydney College of the Arts. 1983 - 1985, Post Graduate Diploma (Sculpture), Victorian College of the Arts. Lives in Melbourne
During his years at art school, Brett Ballard pursued the ideas of arte povera in his installations and free-standing sculptures, built using found materials and urban detritus. From this, his interests have shifted to explore the illusory properties of painting and from this, methods by which ordinary "non-art" materials and found objects can be transformed to achieve similar effects. The most obvious aid is paint itself, used intuitively throughout the constructive process to alter dramatically the nature of image and of surface. It is often applied with the hands to retain a sculptural quality.
Glint (Cat. No.1) is a literal invention of pictorial space. The coloring, structural formation and massing is directly inspired by Cezanne's Mont. St. Victoire series, a painter's treatise on the non-objectivity of the physical world and the shifting state of visual perception. An accumulation of stacked, tilted rock-like facets tumble from a buckled backdrop, simulating the ready-made frontality of natural shrines/grottoes, waterfalls and mountain faces. The same impacted crystalline solidity is present in The Houris (Cat. No.2), the form and title of which reveals the artist's fascination with antique gadgetry and inventions. The glimmer of gold in both sculptures heightens the impression that there are alchemical processes at work in his three-dimensional interpretations of Cubist painting.
PHILIP FAULKS
1959, Born St. Albans, England. 1978 - 1980, Diploma of Fine Arts (Painting), Victorian College of the Arts. Lives in Melbourne
Philip Faulks embraces the disciplines of sculpture, painting and drawing with equal assiduity. In all three, his work is based on symmetry, precision and simple, but spectacular colour relationships. He appropriates certain Western and Eastern ornamental traditions, combining them with human elements and personalised symbols to create images of potent decorativeness. The sober primitivism of The
Flying Man (Cat. No.3) is tempered by the acknowledgements of Islamic, Aztec and Egyptian art. The cruciform shape, the frontality and the stillness of the image recall the static masterpieces of devotional art – the sculpted figures of Egyptian gods and god-kings, the Pantocrators of Byzantine mosaics, the wooden idols of Africa. The initial impression of stern religiosity conceals an element of underlying humour.
TIM JONES
1962, Born Clwyd, North Wales. 1979 - 1983, Diploma of Fine Arts (Painting). 1984 - 1985, Post Graduate Diploma (Sculpture), Victorian College of the Arts. Lives in Melbourne
The colour of these particular works of Tim Jones is governed by two major concerns - an immediate response to living in the Australian environment, and the persuasive and mesmeric powers of the painterly sublime. Guardian, Kiss Me, Kiss Me (Cat. No.4) draws its colouration primarily from the vernacular suburban environment, however colour is used also as a deliberate decorative element to draw the viewer to the heart of the sentinel-like form. The She-Goddess of Maddest Sadness (Cat. No.5) has the formal and iconic quality of an opulent Egyptian sarcophagus, an abstracted upright human figure. The translucent, pulsating colour of lapis lazuli is captured through the subtle and carefully constructed tonal variations of the repainted building lathes. The lathes form the fabric that clothes the armature in "brushstrokes" of pigment. What we finally see is a sculptural image endowed with the spirtually evocative presence of an Abstract Expressionist painting.
LUANNE NOBLE
1961, Born Melbourne. 1980 - 1982, Bachelor of Art (Sculpture), Victorian College of the Arts. 1985 - 1986, Post Graduate Diploma (Sculpture), Victorian College of the Arts. Lives in Melbourne
The natural affinity that Luanne Noble has always had with painting is manifested in the bold decorativeness of her sculptures. However, colour is more than just a transforming medium or ornamental skin here: it is integral to the meaning and formal quality of the work, lending energy to silhouette and structure to help clarify the object.
The selection of colour, whether it be pigment or ceramic fragment, is meticulous while its application is rough. The final effect is luxuriant. Associations are evoked intentionally, deriving from her love of fantastical objects. The range of influences is as diverse as antique treasures, seventeenth century trompe l'oeil, the mosaic detail of Antonio Gaudi's modernista architecture and funk. (Cat. Nos. 6, 7, 8, 9)
LORETTA QUINN
1956, Born Hobart, Tasmania. 1979, Bachelor of Visual Arts (Sculpture), Tasmanian School of Art, Tasmanian College of Advanced Education, Hobart. 1982 - 1983, Post Graduate Diploma (Sculpture), Victorian College of the Arts. Lives in Melbourne.
Originally for Loretta Quinn, painting was a practical way of reinforcing the fragile armatures of her sculptures. A developing breadth of ideas and sophistication of visual vocabulary has led her increasingly to consider colour as a vital formal quality in her work.
Forgotten Dreams (Cat. No.11), a formation reminiscent of subterranean stalagmites and Baroque candelabra, uses colour symbolically to create an incandescence that charges the conical form with mystery and spirituality. In Where Have All the Flowers Gone? (Cat. No.10), the use of colour is a rather more intuitive process, related closely to the effects of direct personal experiences (her fascination with the ritualistic standing stones of Celtic mythology), and to the principles of found colour relationships (natural materials from her native Tasmanian coastal area; man-made and naturally occurring grottoes). In both sculptures, paint is used to achieve a decadent effect, imbuing the surfaces with a sense of time and history. It is part of a desire to absorb and transform myth and ritual into a personalised language.
GUISEPPE ROMEO
1958, Born Melbourne. 1978 - 1981, Diploma of Fine Art (Sculpture), Victorian College of the Arts. Lives in Melbourne
For Giuseppe Romeo, the use of colour developed simultaneously with figuration as an exuberant release from the impersonal minimalist work that he had made at art school. The Immaculate Consumption (Cat. No.12) is perhaps the most extreme example of this sudden spontaneity. The form and massing of the giant cornucopia are made intuitively, the application of paint to the completed shape is uninhibited and expressionistic, at times even sloppy. There is an overwhelming riotousness and vulgarity in this crudely coloured idol. He attributes this to the influences of the folk art and ritual of Calabria (his place of origin), of funk culture, and of the kitsch excesses of rococco interior decoration. He also acknowledges certain formal devices of ancient Egyptian art - the profile and ornamental use of gold. One cannot help but suspect also the influence of traditional Chinese festival dragons.
RICHARD STRINGER
1959, Born Melbourne. 1979 - 1981, Diploma of Fine Art (Sculpture), Victorian College of the Arts. Lives in Melbourne
Richard Stringer's sculptures are highly decorative, stylised symbols of a perfect world, idealised representations of life as found in ancient mythology and folkloric art. The surface of the sculptures is not painted to suggest realism, but for illusionism. The paint is applied flatly and schematically, denying any physicality, which heightens the iconic and emotive powers of the image. These qualities are enhanced by the strong frontality of his sculptures which forces a single viewing point as for a religious sanctuary or shrine. An empathy with painting as image- making is immediately apparent. Colour is used as a transformative medium, to accentuate the figurative descriptiveness and decorative seductiveness of the basic sculptural support. The monumentality and sinuosity of form, the rich colour and intricate patterning in these sculptures recall devotional altarpieces, Art Nouveau design and tattoos. (Cat. Nos. 14, 15).