Page 81 - Studio International - March April 1975

the preceding series, but it looks diagrams. The slide projection works, though the parody always
as though it could be any one of illustrates the commentary. The seems whimsical and the
them. result is an incisive, clear and very unconcerned nonchalance
The concern with the identity of well recorded enunciation of the unconvincing, if relevant at all.
subject matter, the suspension mode of representation used in Rosetta Brooks
bridge form, becomes an attempt making historical and theoretical
to develop a photographic links between 'facts' relating to art
abstraction of common form. in particular. It was stimulating as
Blake is clearly concerned with an exploration of the Robert Hunter
physical structure (and balance) diagrammatic form (or sign Lisson Gallery, London.
as it is exhibited in the purely complex) particular to January-February.
John Blake
functional bridge form and his Installation Shot `picturing' in painting, though the
attempts at simplifying the 42x 120 mm 'stone' which Walker has turned Robert Hunter has become an
variables is inextricably linked to tends to shatter the confidence we exceptional figure among the
this subject-matter. The feel in the 'objectivity' of the younger generation of Australian
involvement with a rendering of diagrammatic form and thus in artists by virtue of the recognition
physical balance and structure in the facticity of its object (art). The so recently accorded to him by
the series, has, in the combined effect of slides and that holy of art holies, New York's
contingencies of his chosen means commentary revealed the Museum of Modern Art. In 1974
of blurred photography, rhetorical nature of diagrams Hunter was selected along with
committed him to a number of which enforces belief in the such artists as Vito Acconci,
perhaps more overt connotations. facticity of their objects in much Brice Marden and Daniel Buren,
Blurred photographs have their the same way as the phrase to participate in the exhibition,
own aesthetic history, as does the 'unaccustomed as I am to public 'Eight Contemporary Artists'.
iconographic image of bridges. speaking' operates as a rhetorical Although so few artists were
There are implicit references to device. involved, it was described as
Monet's London bridges. The directors of The Gallery see MoMA's largest exhibition of
If these connotations sometimes their didactic display shows as a new art since 1970, which implies
find themselves at odds with the viable alternative to the dominant its significance as a museum
underlying concern with physical nihilism of current art, whilst statement on art in the mid-1970s.
structure in the bridge series, this simultaneously making implicit That exhibition was organized
was not the case with the other Tim Head judgement on just this situation by by MoMA curator, Jennifer Licht,
series shown. This consists Installation Shot 1975 not showing art works but in who earlier in 1974 had visited
of a set of drawings concerned 42 120 mm returning the gallery to a function Australia with a travelling band of
with mechanical balance (and of display rather than exhibiting mostly New York based artists, all
imbalance) in the convention of the repetitious acrobatics of accompanying a touring survey of
physics text book diagrams (the artists hung up on the problems of recent American art. This visit
fulcrum as a triangle; the pivot as exhibiting. helped precipitate Hunter's rise
a parallel line; masses as It would not be taken as from the anonymity of suburban
rectangles). The drawings are also unusual for a critic like John A. Melbourne into the public,
'realized' as sculptures in cast- .Walker to present his work in museum arena of New York.
iron, not as the situations seminar form, though it is unusual Hunter's recognition in
represented.but as identical for a gallery to do so as an America is readily understandable
representations. The sculptural exhibition; however the formal when one considers his one-man
form does not exhibit the balance William Wegman novelty is not of such concern as exhibition at the Lisson Gallery,
diagrammatically represented but Six Photographs 1973 it is to Ian Wilson, who for some his first show in London. Three
takes on, horizontally, in cast-iron 12x 11 in each years has presented his work as wall-stencilled installations, of
the same configurations drawn the past few years which have in an artist exclusively in seminar silver-lined squares incorporating
vertically in the drawings. This is common the slide projection of form, relying entirely on speech a limited variety of linear
representational sculpture as quite photographic images of real and the intersubjective situation bisections, were of a similar theme
literally representation. The sections of the gallery of conversation to communicate to his American pieces, and
identity of dimensions of drawings surroundings on to approximate his work. The reduction to indeed to his Australian works,
and sculptures further emphasizes sections of the gallery, making use unrecorded speech is clearly to be notably his 'Sydney Wall' at the
this relationship which in the of objects like chairs (in the taken as a formal innovation here Art Gallery of New South Wales
context of a gallery calls forth, present exhibition). Head uses where the content (or context) of in 1973. The installations of
and at once breaks, the expectancy mirrors to reflect the real and the discussion is set by Wilson in a Hunter are completely dependent
of a relationship between picture photographic images and concern with the problematic of on their physical context, being
and fact. maintain the picture/fact things-as-spoken-of. In each architecturally inseparable from
The second series is a much confusion. In the new work he has discussion Wilson poses a paradox, the rarified environment to which
more direct articulation of the used chair and photographic lamp starting with a statement which they attach themselves. Against
relationships of appearance and as objects for this exercise to can be intersubjectively agreed the matt, white walls of the Lisson
implied reality, between picture further develop the trompe l'oeil upon and, by a process of spoken Gallery, Hunter has applied his
and fact with which Blake has effect between the light projected manoeuvres upon which such simple linear geometries, squares
become concerned, though I find in the slide projection and the agreement can be established, of muted silver-grey, elevated
the consistency in the show in the light from the lamp, which arrives at a position which above the opaque whiteness only
thematic link of physical balance silhouettes both itself and the normally cannot be agreed upon. by their thin skin of sharply edged,
between the bridge photographs adjacent chair. The discussion is then addressed glossy paint.
and the diagrams slightly An interesting exploration of to this anomaly. Wilson seems The three squares of the Lisson
extraneous to this concern. The the relationship between picture concerned with propelling us into installation, each with their
show is an exhibition of probings and fact in an entirely different a mire of relativitism in a number particular arrangement of vertical,
into an area of social cognition sphere is the content of a show of dimensions (particularly horizontal or diagonal bisections,
which seems to contain immense at The Gallery by John A. Walker epistemological) which result are symmetrical, whole forms.
possibilities, and if Blake seems who, though a painter, is better from playing spoken versions of And yet Hunter allows for a very
unwilling to enter into a reduction known as a critic, and it is within Wittgenstein's 'language games' subtle, secondary interplay within
of the many interests residing in this capacity that he mounted the and which, in the face of the each work, modulating his muted
this area it is because he is not exhibition 'Art Diagrams'. One precariousness of our beliefs and metallic tones to suggest a degree
looking for the bland non sequitur, might call this a critic's one-man knowledge, act as spoken of spatial illusion in the
the reductio ad absurdum, but is show in that it is not a selection by incantations to silence. interrelationship of adjoining
unafraid of the sort of complexity a critic of works by artists, but a If artists in London at the lines, a suggestion which is
which matches the proportion of didactic representation of the moment seem smitten with silence ultimately denied by the more
his project. critic's ideas on the subject of 'Art or with the indistinction of assertive and real, physical flatness
Tim Head's exhibition Diagrams', consisting of a expression and inexpression, of the pieces when seen as whole
'Displacements' at the Rowan synchronized slide show and tape others, like William Wegman, units.
gallery was another articulation of recording. The tape records a prefer to adopt a more nonchalant Hunter has always adhered to a
the appearance/reality, picture/ spoken commentary on the nature pose. Included in the Mayor rigid aesthetic, purely minimal in
fact dualism using mirrors and and use of diagrams in art, art Gallery exhibition, he is showing spirit, exercising such total
photography as a form of direct criticism, art history and art several series of photos of a person restraint with his chosen
trompe l'oeil illusionism. Head has theory and an explanation of the with a dog. The dog is a humorous vocabulary that his wall-paintings
continued a series of works over boundaries between pictures and element in many of the series of flirtatiously risk cancelling
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