Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

r rpm "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W Trend toward magic realism HIIPIEALISM," a show of ten paintings at the Contemporary Art Society "Gal- lery, is an attempt to indicate a new trend in Australian art. There are ten artists, Tony Bishop shows a common cooking - pot, painted on raw canvas. Robert Boynes shows some bits of a swimming -pool, part real, part painted. Bryan Dunlop a raking view of roofs. Bryan Westwood some street furniture at a kerb. Jeffrey Smart some figures on a Greek roof terrace. Alan Oldfleld a figure and furniture against a high wall. William Kelly a nude model in a room. The three others don't quite be- long: Tony Woods, v'ith a decora- tive leaf-spray. Garry Shead, with a mysteriously hooded nude in a landscape. And Wolfgat g Oraesse, wif$La fantasy drawing. Yet the error, in the context of this exhibition, of incluCing mystery and fantasy is an accurate reflec- tion of a trend that is more wide- spread than the organisers perhaps knew. It is a trend toward magic realism, or realistic surrealism, and it seems to be widespread in Adelaide. I didn't know about it till last week. Several young Adelaide artists showed it in last week's Flotta Lauro Prize at the Commonwealth Savings Bank. Several other Adelaide artists Will show it at Festival time in the Vizard-Wholohan Prize for figure painting. Why should Adelaide be more trendy' than Sydney and Melbourne? (New Zealand is often ahead of us, tod3 Perhaps a small art scene is less repressive, bears down less on young students than the too-numerous senior artists in Sydney and Mel- bourne. In Adelaide the youngsters obviously feel much more free than those in Sydney to follow the new art fashions that are in the inter- national magazines. In any case, the CAS show is a good reminder that subject matter can be important, that the most everyday things, seen plain, hard. and clear, can be as strange as the most abstract fantasy. HOME TOWN - MOLLIE PAXTON (David Jones) is a Sydney artist who has lived In Europe since 1917 and now re- appears in her home town with large sticky pink -and -orange fan- tasie; of Chinese -looking lyrebirds and goddesses, sometimes within a Chagali kind of structure. I suppose they're decorative, but I think they'd be much better decoration If carried out in lacquer. The red chalk drawings, even more Oriental, ate more appropriate to their medium and scale. VARIATIONS iyERBERT FLUGELMAN ters Gallery) shows "Spheres, "'nes, cubes, tetrahedra. pyramids" as variations on a theme. They come as glittering stainless - steel solids, in pairs like dumb -bells. They come as dark, wire -mesh, en -work single pieces, either on the floor or tlte wall: and the wall art (by daniel thomaj versions are further varied by flash- ing spotlights to complicate them with shadows. And they come as screen prints on paper, sometimes represented along with their shaA:ows and projections. It makes an intelligently sys- tematic exhibition, and the show exercises the mind a little. But would you want one of the objects on its own? It would be less inter- esting. Still, if you can't afford the entire exhibition, you can still bring memories of it to accompany a single piece that mlght be pur- chased. SOFTNESS VEORGE BALYCK (Arts Council -1 Gallery) paints pretty fields of soft -edge spots, something like Peart's work of 1967-68. Only Balyck usually has a border around the field, and the softness becomes at a certain distance totally aggressive: that is the relationships of the color -patches act so that the spectator's eyes are quite unfocused and unfocusable. It is the most interesting show held at this gallery since it was set up as a kind of artists' co-operative, intended to by- pass dealers. REPETITION QANDRA LEVESON (1Ioldw.orthi 10 also makes systematic screen - prints, on both -saper and canvas. Her images are always small - diameter circular perforated screens, overprinted for interference, or printed on to perspex held '.:te of the paper. This first image Ls always pretty enough, a soft pastel cloud that turns into Op Art sparkle only at the most intimate close-up encounter. But when several images are repeated within one frame there seems little justification; the images aren't passive enough to be en- hanced by repetition, like Andy Warhol's, and the relationships between them are apparently unsys- tematic. REVISITED pILL WRIGHT (also at the Arts Council Gallery) is not the Sydney painter called Bill Wright who has lived a good while in Lon- don, showed at Rudy Kemon's five years ago, and revisited Australia this summer. The Arts Council Gallery's Bill Wright Ls a young 20 -year -old, and perhaps he should alts,' his name to Bill John Wright or something, as did Michael when he arrived in a country that already had a painter called Michael Taylor. The new Bill Wright paints large square pictures of wayward tiee forms set against a square geometric background. They ate, presumably. statements about life and death equals chaos and order. It's a good, sound, old Idea, not yet very inspiring in its treatment here, but apparently sincerely felt. THIS WEEK The week's most important new exhibition will be Brett Whiteley ;s one-man show at the Bonython Gallery. Others are Mady Daens' oollages at the Macquarie, P. -H. Garman- Vik at the Barefoot, Janet Price at Strawberry Hill, a mixed show at Roseville, and Rod Shaw paintings to accompany Joan Mas poems at the Rocks Gallery.