Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

THE Canada Council is gener- ally agreed to be the world's best official cultural agency. One of its strong points is its ability to keep ar; with what artists want to do. If they want to make certain unfamiliar kinds of aft that cannot be supported in the traditional war', that, is by buying and selling in the traditional art market, then the Canada Council will give a direct grant to the artist. Almost anyone who : reached a certain level of achievement and recog,e- tion is likely to get a $5( 90 grant if he asks for it. Sometimes they get $7500. Occasionally they get an- other grant another year. Right now two Canada Colwell grants are at work in Australia. Bill Vazan, of Montreal, 'has set up a World Line, {which zigzags through Aus- tralia this month. Duane Lunden, of Van- couver and Halifax, is here in person to extend his frame of reference for a piece about Croydon, nig- land, by visiting Croydon, North Queensland. They are both conceptual artists, of a sort. Vazan's World Line is imaginary. It zigzags round the world from Montreal and back, turning corners in various art 'museums and schools. The angles are marked on a floor with black tape. It reaches Sydney from Auckland, then goes to Melb.arne, then to Quezon City In the Philippines, then to Perth, Western Australia, then to Kuala Lumpur, Odd corner in Sydney the corner Is located in the Power Gal- lery of Contempoeary Art. Since this gallery doesn't yet exist, the Sydney corner can't be seen and it is thus extra conceptual. (In fact, it's in a tutorial area on the seventh floor of the Fisher Library, not acces- sible to the public.) Does it matter that it can't be seen? I saw the corner in Perth and I'm glad I did. A very acute angle it was, too, corning between the Philippines and Malay- sia. It was on the floor at, a picture gallery and bore no relation to the rectangu- lar floor or to the cubic space where it was located. Now, actually seeing the corner in Perth worked Much better than just imagining the corner in Oydney. It really did look like arms across the world; It did Intensify one's awareness of other pities existence, out there ift the distance. And the corner, imposed arbitrarily on nature, in- tensified one's memories of those strange corners that aeroplanes turn in mid-air. On the way to Perth you don't go direct, you head 1 towards Darwin, and turn left over Ceduna or some- where Angles across the world ART by daniel thomas On the Moscow -Delhi doesn't want to see all the flight there's a very strange world's Croydons, though right-angled corner over he might glance at 8yd- Tashkent, and another ney's Croydon and Mel - over the Khyber Pass. bourne's. Thank you, Bill Vazan, I presume he thinks of for turning us on to these Croydon, North Queens - things. And the Canada land, as the ultimate Council for paying for -re Croydon, the furthest and tape, and for the su,- most remote from the veyor's fees needed to get original in England. those angles correct. The But when I told him that Canada Council also paid the only person I knew to for the publication of a have visited Croydon, book about his earlier North QuenslanO, was a Cross -Canada Tape Line. person who also made a rabit of visiting ph ces like Would our Federal Gov- t u Cuzco, ls:70ian enunent agency, the Com- r.nd Timbuctoo, he was monwealth Art Advisory ;cry, interested indeed. Board, ever take on some- thing like this? Duane Lunden's Croydon piece, when core 'cried, might end up as ;ome photographs and other documentation for exhibit- ing on a gallery wall, but he doesn't much care. Like Vazan's lines, a book might be the final result. But what happens to the artist and to those who encounter him and his work while it is being made is more inr orient than the final work itself. Lunden's concern Is the frame of reference, the context; of anything. He finds the context more interesting than any object can ever be in its own right. One day he chanced upon a book about Croy- don, England, was amazed that one city knew so much about itself - its history, its botany, its zoology, its architecture, its geology, the lot, Canadian cities had a very thin, meagre knowledge of themselves, Evidently these exotic cities might be the ulti- mate extension of what I think is a very common- place English city. KENNEDY Peter Kennedy's art - noises at Inhibodress are not conceptual art. They don't make you think, or visualise. It's true that you might acknowledge the academic interest of "interference variables," that is the way the sound waves (at Inhibodressi or light waves (at Gallery Al can interfere and produce something different. What happens at Inhibo- dress is ' physical and exciting. You are stirred by the rhythmic sounds, and made aware of the bare loft as a sculptural con- tainer for sound. It's nice to find the speakers and tape -recorders and televi.,-ion sets placed on pedestals to indicate they (or their sounds) ere the art. And it's nice to shout, or whisper, the arblt- i I don't really know what nary phrase yourself e".di Lunden is up to. He add a part to the whole. From "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. MAR 1911