Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. ART with Daniel Thomas ART THAT NEEDS THE WALL TIM JOHNSON calls his Gallery A exhibition "Off the Wall." Thk doesn't mean he makes I art that's totally liberated from the wall, I ike small, hand-held, old-fashioned etchings or statuettes. On the contrary: he needs the wall more than conventional painting does, and needs more of it; he has incorporated the wall into his works of art. Most are single-color canvases, the sides taper- ing, sometimes downwards, sometimes up, the surface usually sloping out toward the spectator so that a light, hidden behind the bottom edge, can wash the wall. There are also alu- m i nium and perspex pieces. Some are unlimited - edition multiples (only $40; indeed, everything is sub- versively cheap). Others are in progressive series, either of color changes, or size changes or changes in concavity; they are pushed out from the wall, but re- main generally parallel to it, they don't leave It or join at an angle, like the canvas pieces. One response is architec- tural. When so much is being done to or against or for a wall, then you can't help paying the wall a lot of attention. It's good to notice what's around you, really to see the size, the shape, the surface of the walls you live in. (You might eventually decide that an empty wall is as good for contemplation as any work of art.) The more important re- sponse is to realise the un- confined quality of all this art. It has no firmly deter- mined limits. no boundaries to say "here art stops anti something else begins." The series pieces imply infinite extension; the un- limited multiples defy uniqueness. The canvas wedges' reference to var- nishing perspectives is a reminder of endlessness, and their washes of light have no hard shadows, they extend imperceptibly, for ever. And single -color pieces always operate as a color SOURCE; here is red that looks out at you and at inanity, it isn't held down by a relationship with a green or a blue be- side it. The very firm and very gentle assertion is that art (or the experience of art) is everywhere, available to everybody; it is unconfined, unlimited, free. The spectator himself creates one of Tim John- son's art works by inter- rupting a light beam and turning on radio sound. Anyone can create? Mar- cel Duchamp said 90 per- cent of what's in a work of art is put in by the specta- tor. Evidently these arc themes for this year's an- nual Power Lecture, "The Spectator in Contemporary Art." by Professor Charles Mitchell, Tuesday week, July 14. OTHER VOICES, - A new art magazine, publish- ed in Sydney, $1 a copy, or $8 for a one-year subscrip- tion of 10 Issues, has grown out of an art teachers' journal, and it has sub- sidy from Vynol paint. Be subtitle is "a critical journal," which means that is main concern is to tell you interesting and Intel- ligent things about art, not to show you art or to pre- sent illustrations of it. Which is why there. Is no color except an Aspden on the cover, and why it is so inexpensive. The first issue has a very important article by Terry Smith which defines Syd- ney abstract painting in the past five -years. Liter- ature and theatre will be noticed occasionally, start- ing with an excellent An- thony Burgess interview in this first Issue. A very welcome venture: .-..v.nybotly subscribe, Ad- dress Box C198, Clarence Street, Sydney, P.O., N.S.W. 2000. ART STUDENTS. - The National Art Schools' Cell Mock exhibition of stu- dents' work seemed neither better nor worse than in rcent years, but marginally different. Light and move- ment pieces have disap- peared (or were they only produced by the "Design" students? This exhibition is by "Pine Art"). Sculpture now shows Robertson . Swann's in- fluence. Prints have good technical quality, And Prank Littler and Kay Greenhill still look like genuinely promising talent. MARTIN SHARP'S exhi- bition at 59 Macleay Street, is now finished, At _present there's a small exhibition of paintings and construc- tions by the versatile, vet- eran cartoonist, George Piney. The place remains a Martin Sharp art shop ;for his paintings and post- ers), and a Martin Sharp environment until the building is demolished, per- haps a year. LOAN EXHIBITION AT KNOX GRAPTMAR SCHOOL. - From next Thursday to Sunday, "Sev- entry Years of Australian Painting," a large exhibi- tion borrowed from private ocileotions. MACQUARIE GALLER- IES. - A mixed show of paintings has joined the Hans Heysen drawings.The Usual Macquarie artists Kevin Connor, Milgate, Shannon, De Teliga, Rup- ert Bunny, Enid Cam- bridge, etc. Unfamiliar are two paintings by Alice Danciger, a modestly re- spected Sydney painter of the 'forties, long setded in Italy. A dark, pile-up town- scape, not new, has dig- nity and strength. FRANK WEATHER (Arts Council gallery, Crown and Stanley' Streets). -A Melbourne painter, from the Cottles- bridge community that Pugh established and Ol- sen recently joined. Not surprisingly, he shows fes- tive, semi -abstract . nd- scapes, their very attrac- tive color based on loving and excited observation of bush flowers, of semi -des- ert earth and water. ELLIOTT CASALEGNO (Holdsworth).-A texture painter, better with mono- chrome than with color - combinations; better with delicately scratched incis- ions than with uninflected areas. Some woodblock print with well placed forms underline an in- creasing Japanese influ- ence on this young artist, noticed in mixed shows over the past three years. JOHN SANDLER (Holdsworth). - A young Melbourne artist, paintings and aquatints that play with circles: circles overlap and intersect in various formats: circles-in-squares, tondos, rings, Irregularly notched tondos. The paintings have a flatly uniform high key. The prints, being black and tonal, zoom and rotate more effectively, which is what circles are surely for. Emanuel Raft once did some similar dark paint- ings.