Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

It's now a period of re -thinking With the end of the 1970 gallery season in sight, the art scene has never been more di- verse. No one single style has dominated the year. In- stead, it has been a period of re -thinking after the popular success of hard- edge and minimal art: a period of questioning the often absurd and always commercially high values placed upon the art object The year has seen a serious retrospe reval- uing of the art of the six- ties and this has given rise to an outburst of ex- periments! art. Outstanding .nstances of this have been Bill Cle- ments' thought-provoking Xerox prints which won the Transfield Prize and the in- creasing number of ex- ercises in "conceptual art" or art which bypasses the making of a creative object with the direct recording (in rrint or via mathematical calculations) of the artist's idea. A t Plnacotheca Mike Brown is carrying out his own revaluation of Pop Art. His collages, although composed of magazine cut- outs pasted on colored cardboard and sometimes overlaid with paint and print are distinctly different from the earlier style. Where Pop artists tended t o concentrate on the single, obvious image either blown to giant proportions or repeated rd infinitum, Brown overwhelms the viewer with a multiplicity of images, forcing him to respond to the teaming energy of the whole. In his most exciting works Brown destroys the formal order of Pop art and replaces It with a mosaic of faces, figures, animals and words leaving it to the viewer to impose - if he can - his own sense of order. Pinaeotheca, 10 Waltham Place, Richmond). Peter Pirrucchio also at Pinacotheca and Anne Sim pson at the Hawthorn City Gallery present two ver- sions of Op Art. Pirrucchlo'Are closest to Kenneth Noland's target and horizontally striped pictures, but are quite with - o u t the New Yorker's magical sense of color. Anne Simpson's work, generally more tentative, owes its theme of the space -bending effects of shaded grids of spots to Va- sarly. But she adds her own in- ventiveness in the shapes and sizes of the canvasses. The results show pro- mise. Dissappointment of the week is Bob Dickerson's latest showing at Leveson Street Gallery. The melancholy, large eyed figures which attrac- ted such attention in the ART ANN GALBALLY mid -50s have turned to sac- charine. Dickerson has replaced his subtle crepuscuie pinks and greys with harshly decorative greens, oranges and blues, and seems to have entirely thrown away his sense of formal corn - positioning which alone gave his tenuous subject - matter a vital tension and ambiguity. All that remains is a mannered exploitation of earlier themes. (Corner Lev- eson and Victoria streets, North Melboutne). Dramatically displayed jewellery by Tor Schwank demands attention. Worked in gold and silver with a variety of stones - rock crystals, uncut ernes- theysts, green malachite - Schwank's sense of design is extremely fertile ranging from the familiar severity associated with Scandina vian design to flee flowing shapes based on organic growth patterns. The craftsmanship is im- peccable. (Strines Gallery, corner Faraday and Rath - down streets, -Carlton). Also showing are metal sculptures by Pavel Petr Kucesa, and simple attrac- tive stoneware by Rod Knelt! (Gallery 99, 99 Cardi- gan Street, Carlton); and a comprehensive exhibition of work by Seecondary Art and Craft student teachers at the Argus Gallery (cor- ner Latrobe and Elizabeth streets). "AGE" Melbourne, Vie. NMI 19Trl