Rick Amor: A Single Mind
Rick Amor occupies an odd, canonical position in the art world - it’s as if a Symbolist or Nabi of the 1890s had been plucked out of context, and relieved of his surrounding movement and history. His “timeless” pictures relate to dreams and imagination in the most literal sense - they are landscapes set in deserted cities, or subterranean future-worlds. In terms of mood and mystery, Amor could be compared with the abstract painter Shivalee Lees, but his pictures are less formally innovative than hers; when you look at her canvases, the surfaces seem flat one moment, upright and hazy the next. In addition, Amor’s fondness for hulking, sphinx-like forms reminds me of the English artist Richard Billingham, who also shows beautiful and noble beasts in desolate settings. Yet in Amor, the desiccated tusks are less descriptive of pain than a generalized melancholy: looming heads pasted over a wasteland.
So the question remains: why is this brand of “timelessness” being produced today? Does Amor’s work offer more than the basic premise of space travel? In his most persuasive pictures, Amor manages to evoke a consistent set of myths behind everyday experience. The Call (1998-9) shows a banker in a lofty room, hunkering down to close a deal, while a cityscape of rooftops and figureheads unfolds beneath him. In this case, the mythology works because it feeds into our sense of a world controlled by strange demands from bureaucrats: the exotic and the fabulous are all in line with the executive’s power to summon.
The Ante Room (1993) anticipates the style of the David Lynch films Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. In a dark chamber, three people anxiously await news - perhaps news of ruin, since one man strikes a resigned pose and the other is locked in an attitude of despair. The third character is a blonde woman, who sits forward a little more calmly - expectantly, as if she has a part to play rather than a verdict to hear. The light is minimal, but it falls across her legs and curtain of hair. Despite their predicament, the men must be wondering: do all waiting rooms - and narratives - come equipped with such women? For all we know, she too may be awaiting an audience with a judge, yet her placement suggests that she is not discreetly sexual for nothing.
However, it’s revealing that in his portrait of contemporary novelist Shane Maloney, Amor doesn’t acknowledge that his subject is a creator of hard-boiled, specialist fiction. The Crime Writer (2004) doesn’t touch on Maloney’s own talents, but simply places him in the artist’s house style of mystery. Similarly, Celestial Lane (1989) re-imagines Melbourne’s Chinatown as something close to the set of Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai. Burning Car under the Bridge (1997), though set in a presumably modern city, serves up a daily spectacle in terms of neo-noir.
Amor’s work is unusual because it makes no attempt to question the myths of noir or symbolism. There’s no investigation of why certain objects complicate the eyeline, or how something would attract our gaze, if placed a little differently. He deals in subjects that occupy natural narrative space, things that would invariably stimulate our interest in real life: a lit window, a locked room, a woman with a hidden expression. The one picture in this retrospective that relates to the process of looking is Roman Life (2001). Unlike most of his pictures, this one flushes us with light; we’re in an upscale museum, with white-on-white sculptures. A woman, who appears middle-aged in silhouette, wears a chicly outsize garment: it’s the perfect gallery-going outfit, distinct and Japanese in cut. As she stops to inspect the credits on the wall, a black space opens up beside her. It leads to what might be an older, wood-panelled section of the museum: an area, perhaps, with works that are less pristinely edited - less obviously designed for intellectual attention. Knowing Amor, it’s probably a place where eggs, dinosaurs and frescoes still hold sway. There couldn’t be a clearer marking of an artist’s territory.
Rick Amor: A Single Mind
Heide Museum of Modern Art
22 March - 13 July 2008
Yes
There’s a new theatrical kid on the Melbourne block. OpticNerve Performance Group are revving up to present their first work, Yes, an adaptation for the stage of Sally Potter’s film of the same name at fortyfivedownstairs from Thurs May 29th to Sunday June 8th.
Yes is a tale of cross-cultural love, where erotically charged desire meets politics and faith. Bodies collide in a dance of lust and violence, and in haunting visuals manifest a dreamily surreal timelessness, as the driving energy to understand ‘the other’ propels these lovers to go ‘to war’. Check out the trailer below.
Director, Tanya Gerstle, is the current head of acting at VCA and the new company is bred out of that crucible of exciting talent. OpticNerve is “committed to theatrical research; the investigation of performance-making processes and the re-visioning of non theatrical text”. For a sense of the theatrical research that’s gone into Yes, click here.
“When I saw Yes I was astounded by the breadth of ideas economically conveyed and at the same time the emotional impact of the narrative,” says Director Tanya Gerstle. “The dance of the personal and the political was exquisite as was the integrity of the story that needed to be told. I knew at once that we could do something very exciting with this on stage.”
RealTime critic Matthew Clayfield witnessed the development work done on Yes at the end of last year: “Gerstle and her collaborators not only understood the unique and not entirely complimentary powers of theatre and cinema, but also, rather than hamstringing the former by too strictly applying the forms of the latter, found something new and vital in the text by imagining it theatrically.” Read his whole article here.
YES by Sally Potter (Australian Premiere)
Dates/times: 29 May - 8 June, Tues - Sat 8pm, Sat/Sun 5pm
Cost: $25 Full / $20 Concession
Bookings: 03 9662 9966 or www.fortyfivedownstairs.com
Location: fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne.
Disclaimer: Several contributors to Spark Online are cast members of Yes.
Michael Brennan: Me (at the …)
The “me” of the title is artist Michael Brennan, who has depicted himself standing in front of Tokyo’s leading art institutions: as a tourist, but also as a kind of a test case. The subject in Me (at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo) has no hope of impacting the huge monument behind him, with its perfect geometry and iconic design of floating circles. However, while the protagonist of Me (at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum) stands confidently beside his landmark, the building plays havoc with his identity. A giant, reflective sculpture has taken his image and ballooned it into the distance - so that an active subject in the foreground turns into a slight figure in front of looming architecture. Is this what institutions do? In this show, they tend to be quite mischievous - they grab your self-image and run off with it, installing it somewhere unexpected.
In Me (at the Mori Art Museum), Brennan stands with mock grandeur at a junction of skyscrapers, which soar behind him. We could think of this gallivanting “me” in terms of, say, “Eloise at the Plaza” - in the sense of a miniature protagonist being lost in a series of funhouses. We might envision the same “me” being reconstituted at different times and locations. Or we could share the regret of most tourists who go abroad, hoping to be visibly altered by travel - that “me” is the only constant in these pictures. What do we do to landmarks - and what do they do to us? Not a lot, perhaps.
This exhibition is showing at Shifted, a wonderful space in Richmond which combines a gallery with multiple studio spaces and an artist-run initiative. The results of having all these artistic interests - which are often segregated - grouped together should be interesting to watch.
Michael Brennan: Me (at the …)
30 April - 17 May
Shifted
Ollie and the Minotaur
Plenty of people have already said very nice things about Ollie and the Minotaur, currently playing at fortyfive downstairs, so suffice to say that the team at Spark concur en masse. They’re only on for two more nights, Friday and Saturday (May 9-10), but tickets are still available and they deserve to be seen by hordes.
Click here for tickets, or check out these reviews: theatrenotes, aussietheatre
Next Wave Festival
This year, Next Wave adopts the Newtonian theme of Closer Together. Always one of the year’s most exciting and enticingly lo-fi performing arts events, Next Wave presents a massive program of new dance, music and theatre performances at its Festival this May. Next Wave performances can be experienced in Melbourne’s theatres both traditional and new, including down a phone line; over the internet; in seedy hotel rooms; beneath the Tullamarine Freeway; at the Meat Market; in the Black Box at the Arts Centre; in nightclub toilets; and three light years into outer space.
Dates: 15th – 31st May Venues: Various venues around Melbourne, regional Victoria and beyond Tickets: Most events are free. For the few ticketed shows check the Next Wave website for details. Bookings info, show details and everything else: www.nextwave.org.au