Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

NI G HERALD" Sydney, N.S.W. 2 0 SE? 1973 Sculpture fit to eat i Now, to follow the guests painted on to walls, have changed from ideal, singing sculpture of Gil- projections on to flam. religious abstraction to though the political and i bert and George, we I ing screens. But unlike ' straightforward, familiar, social targets are a well - have edible sculptures. I most happenings - and in hush landscape, or to the worn subject matter. But 1967 we called such things faces of his friends. although these works ,happenings --: it had an ; But he is still a most reproduce rather well they end. not a valve decline. sensitive colourist and don't have the attractive Silver glitter dust was luxurious surface manipu- qualities of paint, line or distributed for guests to lator. He is totally in- colour that one would also toss. When the glitter set- volved with. painting and wish to sec. tied, all th J dirty plates with hero -painters of the Brad Buckley. Sculpture raves re reinstated defiant attitude in an age the scraps, t e. melted ices. and des past and present. It is a Centre. is a young artist igner (born in the ry 1952), who shows sculp- as beauty, silver -coated. It of ephonieral participato sgcoulespottliirtesto. andhim .one's heart i. tures made of floppy poly - was one of the best art works I've ever been,. goes tubes filled with * * *, ., * * * coloured liquids. Some of Allen Jones, ms 'English Enid Cambridge, Mac- j the art was leaking, but artist whose wont. makes 7quirie Galleries, shows 54 it's the most exuberant the jacket of a recent book watereolgure- and a few i and inventive show the on eroticism in contempo- drawings (1932 to1973) of Sculpture Centre has had. rary prt. has been chosen landscapes and.',everyday * * * to launch a new gallery in life in AustNial and visits Paddington: the Hogarth to Europe,- mar reveal a The Australian' Water - Galleries. true, consistenCart,' con- colour Institute's 50th an - T h e address is fident in ill..intintate lyr- nual exhibition is at Farm- McLaughlan Place, on the icism and imIti!delicticy of err. For the golden anni- corner of Walker Lane. techniques A thily delight- versary a usufill catalogue But since neither appears ful exhibition; $0,, to has been produced, with illustrations and historical On street directory maps $280. - you must look for the first Leslie Wilidnabis,!Eme-. notes. A few exhibits from off Gipps Street, or the ritus Professor of-,Archi- the past have been bor- second 'off Liverpool tecture at Ow University rowed: Harold Herbert, ; Street. In ! fact, it's, only of Sydney, like Most of his Frank Hinder, Norman 100 yards from Gallery A. generation, was pretty ' Lindsay, Eric Thake, Bla- Hours of opening are the good at drawing old bits mire Yound. of Gothic and Renaissance Another 100 or so are architecture. .When he, was new work by members, a young than hi 19(16'ihd and among a fair amount 1907. he did 'a teVen- of commercial slickness , month grand tour of there are strong but deli - Europe, and 63 sensitive cape works by Hector_ Gil - pencil drawings or water- colours are now on view at the War Memorial Galley of Fine Arts, University of Sydney. Weekdays, lunch-time only. t * * * A "Coloured Feast," or ordinary food brilliantly coloured with vegetable dyes and heaped into interesting mounds on a long table, was prepared by Antoni Miralda in Syd- ney on Tuesday. He is a Spanish artist who works in Paris, where, some years ago, the art magazines first noticed him for a "White Feast": an open-air picnic with whitd clothes, white wine, bread, meat, fish. Miralda's feasts have been commissioned by the Kassel Documents, the Paris Biennale, and similar international art exhi- bitions, but it's interesting that most commissions have come from local government, communist mayors in working-class suburbs of Paris, or Mun- ich for the Olympic Games. Miralda prefers long tables, elaborately, set no "like a wedding," and Jte standard Tuesday to clearly feels that the Saturday, with a late night gaiety and ceremony of on Thursdays and Sundays such occasions ate an art- ! from 10.30 to 5.30 chiring experience democratically winter. understood by all levels of !r -Jones lithographs and. society, even though they drawings are priced from don't quite think of it as $175 to $1350, but it is art. the sculptures of "Women But these art feasts are as Furniture" which are clearly a success with wholly orginal and extra - chambers of commerce , ordinarily good: Girl and town hall festival ; Table, Girl Hatstand, Girl committees for exactly Chair. They are sleek -skin - this reason. ' ned, perfectly groomed The Sydney feast was neatly undressed in fibre - commissioned by art . glass flesh, nylon hair and sado masochistic leather underwear; they are for- malized into art by geo- metric, undignified poses, If art objects have always had the approval of society, in spite of their fetishistic aspects, why not reverse the situation, and make the ultimate fetish, the woman as sex-object, into art? Upstairs at the Hogarth is the Decamaron Gallery of Erotica (By Invitation Only). It is mostly home- grown, homespun Austra- lian erotica, and not very .stirrint * * Eric ' Smith's porfiliit paintings at Walters are the other half of the land scape exhibition shown at iftu,dx. Komon last month, IthotIgh a few beach land - capes are at Wattem). Painting steadily since the patron John Kaldor for a business promotion, the launching of his new textile showrooms (interiors by the sculptor Mike Kitching), and it is the first time Miralda has ever had a commercial commission. Which only goes to show that Mr Kal- do 's kind of art patronage must be unique among the world's businessmen. The !geheral public wilt have the opportunity of seeing a Miralda piece. For a week from Saturday, the Art Gallery of NSW will show,table laden with coloured bread. * *' * Miralda's ;"Coloured Feast" gives me the oppor- tunity again to describe "The Silver Dinner" given in Sydney in 1967 by Brian Thomson, who now works in theatre. Dark room, long table covered in late 1940s,, Smith seems to silver, so that vivid dyed have changed his style sev- foods (red, orange, yellow, cral times. for the spring) floated in Now his sumptuous, indeterminate space. There jewelled colour has was by-play of coloured changed to more muted balloons to fill the room naturalism, but probably between courses, extra only because his subjects Graeme Won, Arts Council Gallery, is one of the few really conservative painters in Sydney who is :nevertheless rather good. He is a Meldrum-style ton- alist, and the commis- sioned portraits that one sees regularly in the Archibald are here also accompanied by still lifer and by freshly observed landscapes, urban and rural. Landscapes and still-lifes $150 to $600, * * * Joe Rose's new paint- ings at Holdsworth are very different from the run-of-the-mill abstractions he did when he lived in Sydney. Now, he works in London, shows there at a quite well-thought-of gal- lery, and paints surrealist fantasies. Thike are airborne eggs and heads, symbols of thwarted ' creativity, per- haps; there arc dehuma- nized people, the pop Olympi,4wigimer Mark -Spitz as a clockwork , mechaniim. . bland, am Sparks, Henry' Salkauskas, Guy Warren and others. A dry realistie interior- by Elsie Stewart is a relief among the ex- cesses of liquescence. * * * The Photographers Gal- lery, a new gallery, 30 Ebley Street, Bondi Junc- tion, launches itself with a one-man show by young photographer Bob Rhodes. Straightforward streets and buildings, not too interesting compared with the photographers that have increasingly been shown , at Bonvthbn, Central Street or Univer- sity of NSW, but still, it's very good that a per. I manent shopwindow -for local photographic talent at last exists. Prices $45 to $80. * * * The Broadway Gallery opened on the top floor of the Arts Casa Bay Street, Broadway, the same premises that had the Contemporary Art Society's "Projects Show.l' Four artists show low- priced paintings ($40 to $800.) I am assured that the artists are all young, and all very beautiful people, so even though the paint- ings aren't likely to give ' much pleasure, the bestow- al of charity could. I am Wells oddities are perfectly serious: lots Of always interesting, and art-buyinn is done with these have eh interest this charitable intention. in theif even