Contemporary Australia: Women

114 Finally, let us consider Nolan’s ‘Me Working’ photographs. As photography historian Blair French pointed out recently, photographs of Nolan in her studio have become part of the lexicon of her practice. 9 In these she makes a kind of half-address towards the lens: she is aware of the camera, but is not presenting herself to it. Her body is depicted in the process of making — at work. How could we not see these artfully black and white ‘action shots’ as having a relationship to Hans Namuth’s 1950s photographs of Jackson Pollock painting, but without the heroics? Perhaps, more potently, we can sense something of 1970s self-portrait photographs by Hannah Wilke or Francesca Woodman, but without the confrontational nudity: Nolan documents the performative moment with her clothes on. In her engagement with and displacement of the modernist project, which ranges from homage to satire, Rose Nolan disrupts the trajectory and the proper forms of art. She also subtly and indirectly uncovers the crucial role of women in the creation of the early Russian avant‑garde, Melbourne ’90s abstraction, and contemporary art today — albeit occupied with contingency and contradiction, as she and we all are. Angela Goddard involved in making such works could be seen to mimic female domestic drudgery, parodied to great effect in works such as Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s 1973 performance involving washing the floor at the Wadsworth Atheneum. The text painted on the tunnel declares on one side, ‘OVER AND OVER’ and, on the other, ‘AGAIN AND AGAIN’. Nolan’s ‘cut‑and‑paste productions’ 8 are also resolutely handcrafted, implying her own physicality. Nolan has shunned contemporary art’s increasing emphasis on high production values and polished monumentality; instead, her work’s decidedly handmade character often results in a sense of crudity or rawness, in keeping with an aesthetic of placards, graffiti and personal notes.The large hessian tunnel, within the sleek space of GOMA’s long gallery, reflects Nolan’s recent interest in architectural incursions and spatial experiences in gallery spaces, through the delayed apprehension of its entire form, and its curious anti‑monumentality. Whilst being 28 metres long and just one metre wide — only wide enough for one person at a time, or two people brought together into unexpected intimacy, to pass through — the desiccated surface of holes allows spectatorship from inside and outside. And at the exhibition’s close, like many of Nolan’s ever‑pragmatic works, the entire structure rolls up compactly like a circus tent, to be moved to its next venue. ‘Me Working’, Melbourne 2012 Image courtesy: The artist Opposite Tunnel/Tent Work — HARD BUT FAIR/ POINT LESS (detail) 2009 Synthetic polymer paint, hessian and cotton thread 270 x 2484 x 100cm Image courtesy: The artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery Not So Sure this Works 2005 Hand hooked floor rug 285 x 255cm Photograph: Robert Colvin Image courtesy: The artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery