Page 56 - Studio International - April 1972

outsider. He was something of a mystic, and his furniture leading out through the highway and verbal understanding, about the figure-
work was not at all what people wanted. In the system as far as one chooses to go, both literally ground relationship in the perceived world,
early 'sixties it could not be said that there was and metaphorically. and about the contemplative art-experience
any strong consensus about how sculpture This street has been brought, almost literally and the active architecture-experience.
ought to look; but to the extent that a zeitgeist and certainly metaphorically through the house Arguably, it is all too much. To comprehend
roamed (using names like 'organic semi- to the art behind it by the physical means of a the affair fully would outstrip the patience if not
abstraction') Meadmore kept out of its way. strung frame that plunges inexorably on through the other relevant resources of an ordinary art-
This is why I connect him with Michael walls and obstructive furniture and courtyard, audience. The question 'how does it grab you ?',
Nicholson, who is also in search of a reality stopping at nothing. And around this frame is recently fashionable here, gets no purchase. It
behind appearance, and who is comparably built and arranged a series of contrasting doesn't grab you at all, and it is most unlikely
respected and ignored for seeming to have the (rational/absurd) exercises and enterprises to find a place in those scandalously partial
wrong preoccupations. His work has always deriving from an insight of information theory documents that masquerade as modern art-
been just a little like what was currently popular, that the artist puts, in one of his characteristic history books. But arguably, on the contrary, if
but a crucial degree oblique to it : too stream-of-consciousness monologues to a Fuller all genuine creativity is as (roughly) Koestler
`intellectual', too 'cold' and somehow neither filing card, as follows : claims, a matter of putting things together that
international mainstream nor Australian The more surprising the news event didn't previously seem to belong, then Michael
sentimental. Also, his mysticism is angular and the greater its news value Nicholson is surely one of the most prolifically
difficult. Clement Meadmore says warm round that which most surprises is that creative artists now working in Australia.
things that everyone understands (even when which was least predicted Just one more outsider deserves to be
they are nonsense) such as 'I hope to generate a that which is most unpredictable mentioned because of his ingenuity in vanishing
sense of metaphysical presence thus is the ABSURD without ever having convincingly appeared, and
perpetuating the Pygmalion myth in non- A comprehensive account of all the items thereby scoring a palpable manifestation. I
anthropomorphic terms,' while Michael and of their relation to each other would recently received, as a few other people did, a

Nicholson says gnomic things put together out probably be very boring, and certainly it would letter saying:
of Marcuse and Fuller and information theory be inordinately long. I shall mention just one or I hereby let it be officially known that I
and Wittgenstein, that nobody understands — two things, to try to convey a sense of their have stopped all artistic activity. I wish
even when they are very sensible indeed. characteristic ordering, while emphasizing that no longer to be regarded as an artist.
Mainly, he is interested in a sort of synthesis the connections, at several levels of appreciation, Thank you.
or holism, and would like to integrate art, ideas are so extended that one reaches to alchemy or Neil Evans.
and all of life into a structure with clear astrology for a comparable system. It is not Neil Evans is so far outside that his very
connections. It is recognizably the pale a work of art, or an exhibition of art in the usual existence may be doubted. But if he does not
metaphysical fire, whether one is warmed by sense, but rather a life-size model of the art- exist, then he cannot resign; and if he does
it or not. And to the unsympathetic eye the activity, held in temporary suspension for the exist, and if he is (was ?) an artist, then his
result seems not to reduce complexity but to benefit of visitors. letter may be a work of mail art, in which case
enhance it. Certainly it doesn't look like a nice, There is, for example, in the courtyard it cannot be regarded as a substantive
strong, simple, art-historical winning pattern. between house and studio, a forest of street resignation. Doesn't he know that art critics
Michael Nicholson's recent exhibition was markings, barriers and lights borrowed from are apprehensive enough these days, without
called 'The Rational Hyphen Absurd Burnt the Department of Main Roads, that does a having the paradoxes of self-reference turned
Sienna Live-in Sculpture'. It was in, and in a number of things. For one, it brings the on them like riot hoses ?
sense about, a house with a workshop-studio mundane world into an actual (and by extension Why won't he go overseas and bother
behind it. The house is typical of Sydney metaphorical) space between the home beautiful somebody else ? Have our Australian outsiders
terraces, done up with burnt sienna paint and and the artist's workshop. For another, it shows no ambition ? q
treated timber and built-in amenities to suit the an art-artefact interrelation in the obvious formal
middle-income, middle-executive, well- similarity of street signs and some recent
designed life. Behind it is the artist's studio, painting. Lastly, if not finally, it allows the
containing works in several now superseded artist to illustrate and perhaps to test some
manners. In front is the street with its usual theories he has about perception, about visual