Sunday, August 19, 2012

Churchie Review by Sam Rohweder



The Churchie National Emerging Art Prize and Exhibition presents a peek at Australia’s rising stars in the contemporary arts. Established in 1987 by Brisbane’s Anglican Grammar School, The Churchie has given burgeoning artists that much desired introduction into the mainstream art scene, not to mention a financial reinforcement for the overall winner.
The Churchie is open to all Australian Citizens over the age of 18 who have specialized training in their field and are beginning to establish themselves as a professional artist. This year 41 artists out of the 322 entrants made it to the final exhibition, with a fairly mixed bag of works from the questionable to the insightful.  These include artists like Genevieve Kemarr Loy, with her hypnotic untitled traditional aboriginal painting of an unpronounceable flower that her local bush turkeys love to eat. Genevieve has appeared in numerous exhibitions since 2007, grabbing finalist positions in some of Australia’s most prestigious prize exhibitions. On the other end of the scale is artist Domonic Reidy with his child like sculpture questioning Western Masculinity. Domonic graduated in 2011, has appeared in 2 other prize exhibitions and is a busy co-founder of an artist run space “Addition Gallery” in Brisbane.
However it is the “New Media” works that appeared to dominate this year’s exhibition. Actually the only “New Media” works are in the form of video installations. While video offers a more direct interaction between the viewer and the artwork or the artist’s imagination and the viewer, when you have several in a small space they tend to compete with each other in a way more traditional pieces do not. To my mind nine video works in one small space became a cacophony of noise and movement making it difficult to give yourself up to the work in front of you.
On entering the main area Haley Ive’s “waterfall” is extremely subtle. You need at least 5 minutes listening to the water and the wind chimes while staring at the falling water before you really become aware of the dancing colours.
All the while you can hear this year’s winner of the Churchie Heath Franco’s video installation “Your Door” like a siren pulling in the viewers. Heaths work is displayed on a large TV facing the entry doors. It offers up a quirky and fun montage of welcoming performances in an array of costumes and personalities. His singsong voice resonates around the whole space so that even when you are studying the other works, you cannot forget his presence.
On the far wall there are four more video works presented on flat screen TVs side by side offering headphones  to catch the sound associated with each work. Claire Robins “Emotional Landscape” with empty lonely scenes and Naomi Oliver’s psychedelic “Levitation” relied on the didactic to help this viewer interpret what they were seeing.
Meanwhile Liam O’Brien’s “I am too drunk to tell you” takes the viewer on a roller coaster of empathy and revulsion with a voyeuristic feeling that keeps you mesmerized. Next to that Ray Harris’s “Let me Go” video is an insightful visual evolution that many relationships take. From the heady all consuming new love, to the more comfortable and then sometimes claustrophobic sense of longer relationships. Both presented sharp, articulate video works that easily stood alone without any didactic support.
 In the center of the room a large portrait flat screen has the Brown Council’s feministic collaboration titled “Remembering Barbara” where a large face holds your attention staring you in the eye at eye level and asking you a series of questions while the face changes from one to another. It’s quite confronting really much like Orwell’s Big Brother.
On the opposite wall are two iPads attached to the wall at eye level. One showing Louise Bennet’s “traces” work that was produced on her iPhone and has movies of her finger tracing some very well composed landscapes. It was a little difficult to concentrate on this work after having seen so many others and with Heath Franco’s voice continuously demanding your attention like a petulant child. Bindi Thorogood’s didactic tells of her “Plane drawings” work,  footage she took of planes flying over. Unfortunately I was unable to see her interpretations as someone had decided to rehome the iPad it was being shown on.
Dotted among these nine installations is an array of very strong works, definitely something to appeal to all palettes and mind sets and a few others that will just make you think. It very much looks like The Churchie was spoilt for choice in choosing the finalist. They have outdone themselves bringing together an exhibition with broad range of styles and topics that for the most part work as a whole.

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