Page 24 - Studio International - July August 1971

the workshop and at least two people, Jim groups for her often unwitnessed ceremonies of New art schools in Australia seem likely to
McDonell and David Smith, have radically pyrolatry. She is fond of the seashore, and on emerge rather slowly from within the pattern of
changed their lives in order to carry through the south coast of New South Wales where she the new Colleges of Advanced Education that
projects in the workshop. Both of them, with has a retreat it is said that the natives cross are struggling to find a proper identity and form
others, have joined a cooperative called themselves when she goes by. In the workshop against a background of theoretical unclarity
OPTRONIC KINETICS that is itself a she passes for a quiet American girl. and economic stop-go. The New South Wales
participant in the new INHIBODRESS group, Not everyone is weaned from objects to government, for example, appointed a
mentioned in a previous Sydney Commentary processes. Noel Hutchison, for example, still Committee of Inquiry into Colleges of Art and
(February, 1971). makes metal sculpture, beautifully formed and Design a couple of years ago. It reported last
Jim McDonell has been primarily interested finished with automotive lacquer. He was once year, but the report has not yet been tabled in
in various systems of programmed light, and in a plumber; is now an MA candidate in the Legislative Assembly. There is no way of
the potential of exotic and miniaturized sources Modern History, and has an exhibition due discovering whether its proposals are sensible;
embedded in plastics or conducted by fibre- shortly at WATTERS GALLERY in which whether, if they are, the State Government
optics. He has built sound theremins and he means to have visitors play matches with means to adopt them; and whether, if it does,
hooked them to visual displays, and is currently outsize 3D noughts and crosses in provocative there will be funds available to proceed this
designing for small discharge lamps that glow colours. year or next year or ever.
in electrically charged fields without wired But there is no doubt that in general The education of artists must be the least
connections, and minute solid-state lamps that processes, activities, situations and exigent issue in Australia, and the artists are,
will fit closer than angels on a pin-head. materially ephemeral installations are faute de mieux, educating themselves. Just one
David Smith, an amateur and innocent captivating one imagination after another. There new school, in the College of Advanced
painter of near-Vasarelys a couple of years ago, is less and less unproblematic painting and Education at Gippsland, in Victoria, seems to
has moved rapidly through at least two phases sculpture going forward that is not of the have made a good start by hiring a lively staff
of sophistication. His first luminal kinetic was derivative and consciously 'prentice kind made and granting it unheard-of autonomy.
a work of formidable complexity that is more by students who come to the workshop with Their first act has been to take over a disused
an instrument than an object. Its flexibility well-formed conservative impressions of the factory instead of ordering the usual brick-
under control is so great, and it lies in so many proper nature of art. The sort of proposal for and-lino new building; and if the
distinct ranges of effect, that it might be group action that arises most spontaneously and administrators grit their teeth and stay with it,
counted the universal thing of its kind. It commands the readiest enthusiasm is that which there may well be something interesting to
is certainly comparable with the best to come led to the Feather Environment, 1971. report in a year or two. q
out of Paris in the 'sixties and—as its author The staff of the Power Institute occupy
realizes —it must stand at the end or near the ghastly offices designed as if for organization
end of one cul-de-sac of modern art. Black men trapped in some aspiring way of clerkly
and white stills give a very arrested and anaemic business. One Monday morning I was
impression of it. delighted to find my own room transformed with
More recently, along with others in the chicken feathers — (Where from ? From the
workshop, he has begun to look for comparable chicken feather shop near Central Station, of
or even greater subtlety of effect using simpler course)—set with their quills in an
technical means. To take one example: imagine obsessionally regular grid, as if the room had
a large sheet of polished stainless steel, highly sprouted them, to its own astonishment, out of
reflective but not optically flat. Plug into it a its own naturally tidy follicles.
single naked lightbulb, either clear or coloured. The ideas of order and chaos are especially
Using an electronic dimming device that firmly planted in those who come to the
operates very regularly and very slowly, workshop from the engineering sciences. David
extinguish the light. Smith's present preoccupation is with what he
The fall of colour on the reflective surface of calls Entropic Matrix Kits, that he presents to
the metal, the spread of retinal coronas and, people on impulse.
above all, the piling of after-image on the The Kit, in a file-card box with a hinged lid,
vanishing image, is surprisingly rich in view of comprises one or two gross of small items—
the austerity of means. brass or steel washers, curtain rings, jelly-beans 9 Joan Grounds
Until recently, Herbert Flugelman has been —and a square template to be used for setting Ceramic 1971
making objects, such as his polished carbuncular out the items on a very strict rectangular grid. 10 Optronic Kinetics
tetrahedra that were shown recently in The regularity of this matrix is then disturbed Reflector Installation 1971
Melbourne. But like other members of the as a result of the normal use to which the surfaces Sydney University Fine Arts Students
workshop he has become involved with on which it is laid are put. The gradual collapse Inflated Dome 1971
processes, and he plans to launch some bizarre of the pattern into disorder can be watched over 12 Optronic Kinetics
objects out at sea very soon. If he can get south days or weeks. An outdoor variant using sugar Feather Environment 1971
to the Roaring Forties (so he claims) they should cubes responds not only to mechanical hazards 13 Optronic Kinetics
blow around the world for ever. A pink but to the consequences, as well, of solubility Flashing Boob (Unlimited) 1970
tetrahedron and a green cube are destined to and edibility. 14 Herbert Flugelman
go that way shortly, and so will some fire The future of the workshop is uncertain. Six Tetrahedra 197o
sculptures by Joan Grounds. Its value is obvious, yet for a number of reasons
Some years ago while she was working in it is not likely to be fully adopted in the sense
West Africa, Joan Grounds began making huge that its activities might be incorporated into
`pots' out of paper, and burning them. Now she the University's teaching programme as a
has settled on a regular form for her objects—an qualifying part of a degree course. In short, it
enigmatic humanoid or penis shape—that she will probably not, and perhaps should not, turn
can use alone or dispersed and huddled in into an art school.
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