The Brave New World in Art Direction

10th February, 2011.



Beat Streuli -
a Willy Wonka Scholarship winner

Beat Streuli isn’t street really!  And yet this darling of the contemporary art movement includes amongst his body of work, pictures taken candidly in the public domain, pictures not terribly dissimilar to yours: mine, Barry Pascoe’s, or the stuff by that other person hovering just over there. Perhaps it’s the black skivvy, Allen Ginsberg kind of Christian name or maybe he scored one of those gold Wonka passes in his 10am carob fix, a shimmering code revealing the secret, contemporary art handshake … I’m really not too sure … more likely it’s the fact that he prints em up bigger than South Australia – contemporary art is after all the ‘footy mole’ of all art movements, i.e. uncontrollably hot for anything with rippling size, brash arrogance and a vacuous late night loudness.

Whilst remaining clueless to the Beat, I stumble and bloody my nose at what makes contemporary art contemporary whilst other current creativity is mysteriously deemed not contemporary. This conundrum has bounced about the Nowhere Man cranium for many a long age - naivety first giving way to hazy befuddledness, before a more current, snarling kind of animosity took hold, an atmosphere of pro activity setting beyond my left clavicle like an umbrella-less Molotov cocktail fusing in a particularly dirty glass.

Obviously something you find
at a natural history museum.

Turning toward academia I notice that Art dude Terry Smith has written a fairly current book entitled “What is Contemporary Art ?”, and whilst I haven’t read it (big words- ughh), I did browse a review of it in “Art&Australia” by Charles Green.  Now apparently contemporary art began in the 70s with Green/Smith adding, “Post modernism was an intermediate phase blurring the death of modern art in the late 60s, all of which has now subsumed within the capacious, globalised rubric of the contemporary”. This flickered the barest glint of an idea and yet I temporarily suppressed my ‘Eureka’ moment, continuing on with the review in the outside hope of receiving an answer to the book titles all encompassing question – much masturbatory meringue followed and yet predictably, no satisfaction was forthcoming.        

Upon reaching the ultimate dot of this wordy inconsequence I experienced an explosion of pent up frustration, an obstruction suddenly blurting free as I threw the magazine across the Borders sandpit in disgust. With fire in my gaze I eyeballed the fast moving security frenzy to my immediate right, before bounding into the open air like a somewhat arthritic wallaby with a middle ear infection. And just at the very instant I thought I’d made good my escape I garnished the moment by shouting back, “Youse Can All Get Rooted – I’ll Start Me Own Movement – You’ll See!”. The mad smile which accompanied such bravado was impressive, however quickly wiped from my face, as in my next stride I caught a rogue shoe lace in the crack between escalator step and oblivion and was forced to battle manfully over the proceeding ten minutes to ensure I did not end up as shopping mall sausage meat deep within the unrelenting workings of the sleepless staircase.    

 And that ladies and gentleman are the revolutionary origins of Art Vo-Veau, the latest, most all encompassing movement in the history of doing creative stuff. And just to keep those studious, steel rimmed bi focalites happy, I’ll proffer that the movements family tree has trunked, barked and branched from the Dadaists through Breton’s Surrealists and on and upward through the cheeky twigs of the Childish Stuckists. This is an art movement that questions reality, relinquishes structure whilst fully embracing the rapid demise of all that luvee luvee pretentious contemporary art drool. The Vo-Veauists will fight for the removal from galleries and art musuems of the ‘Novelty Meccano Installation’ (you know the flashing light bulb, technology based, oh ain’t that f**king clever kind of boys toys exhibit) as well as the ‘Marginalized Shock Tactic Piece’ (the used tampon on an unmade bed juxtaposing the sheep’s head set in a bath tub of verdantly fluoro jelly – sort of stuff). Basically it’s about a fair go for all non scientists (Einstein was not an Impressionist - although I have heard he was very good at charades).



Breton Girls Dancing -
Paul Gauguin was clearly a Vo-Veauist ahead of his time. 



The movements name is derived from the coupling of the French term for ‘meat of the calf’, with an earthy mimic, the famous Australian morning tea biscuit, the Iced Vo Vo. This pink fondant, coconuty strawberry jam staple is seen as a symbol of understated quality and is held up as a bold and contrasting metaphor to the ‘crass obviousness’ of current art practice - for when served on a plate alongside the chocolaty Tim Tams or Mint Slices the Vo Vo is invariably pushed to the side, ignored, even ridiculed – and yet unlike these flashy brown treats, the ‘symphony in pink’ can be consumed by the half packet without regret. In short Art Vo-Veau embraces a fresh and honest view. New and yet substantive – mains and desert – well rounded – profound.  Flashiness and superficiality need not apply for the latest chapter in art direction is hell bent on wresting back just a smidgen of credibility. Art Vo-Veauists embrace a charter of inclusiveness with an aim to relating emotionally (even spiritually) to as wide a range of socio economic and cultural clusters as individual taste permits. This is not lowest common denominator popularism, it is however an open front door and a welcoming pair of woolly lined slippers. Please let your rest be assured for Art Vo-Veau is the only art movement claiming to be 100% botox free.      



Contemporary Art is really just waiting to be put out of its own misery.



So there you have it – The Vo-Veauists have arrived – and all that is left to do is to spread the word, to grow our numbers and to use our universal inclusiveness (excepting of course, scientists, wowsers and anyone prone to use the word ‘narrative’ when clearly ‘story’ would do) to see off the final, convulsing death throws of those obnoxious and trite decades, an era art historians will remember shame facedly as the great contemporary morass.

PLEASE GROW A SMILE & EMBRACE THE LOVE…

WALK TOWARD THE LIGHT GOOD FOLK &

THROW YOUR LOT IN WITH THE VO-VEAUISTS.

We need a plethora of talented artists to put their names behind our cause – already the list includes a trinity of dedication -The Nowhere Man, L.M.Hemsworth and Andrew Stark – impressive? I agree. So let’s grow that list and shake the very foundations of this disgraceful art world deceit.  

Please feel free to voice your support for Vo-Veauism in the comments section below and please also visit the organization’s official Facebook page at  Art Vo-Veau

Uncovering The Shadowy Art Agenda

31st January, 2011. 



"Please Walk All Over The Art"
Photograph by Andrew Stark



Now there’s this question that has gnawed away at my comprehension like a famished gnome at the Short Stool Steakhouse – it’s hovered just out and above my psyche like a menacing shadow projecting down upon my hapless aura - Specifically, and to be precise,

“Who the hell decides what photographic style is hot and what style is rot at any given point in history?”

I mean who imparts the yeah or the nay on this, our creative, camera pointing caper? 

Louvre, Paris 1975
Photograph by John F Williams

Down here in the ochre dirt and fly colony, a land known in early19^th century atlases as Terra Australis, the Nowhere Man grew up in total awe of local street photographers: Roger Scott, John F Williams, Phil Quirk and Ingeborg Tyssen. Throughout the 1970s these traditional HCB style streeties were the darlings of the gallery set; they sat at the cutting edge of art photography, their work purchased voraciously by all the public collections. And then in the blinking of a conjunctive pupil, it was as if a grand piano had slid catastrophically from the rear of a speeding removalists van.  Inexplicably and without reason it would seem that ‘The Shadowy Figure Who Decides’ (TSFWD) grew restless and smashed street style cred into jagged fragments of splintered firewood, mid intersection carnage interspersed by twisted wire and a forlorn past tense tune. During the early hours of August 17^th, 1983 the decree was executed and Aussies awoke to the hushed, sub textual whisper that, “the conceptual feminists were now ‘it’”. The street photographers of course hadn’t seen any of this coming and reacted initially as one would imagine, with a chuckle and that cocky elevated eyebrow of bushy disbelief that all sidewalk loiterers so ably employ whenever the big bad world places them under any semblance of threat. Sadly however, despite the ‘she’ll be right’ bravado unfurled by our D76 splashers, the Jatz and Cheddar cubed bubble of altered reality had been universally briefed and the streeties quickly found that all the locks had been changed and their head office files had been crudely branded with a dismissive “So Yesterday”, scrawled in the fluoro highlighter ink of a most mockingly verdant hue.



"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs ... you'll be a Man, my son"
Photograph by Andrew Stark



Art & left wing politics had suddenly morphed into one, coupling like a bio degradable Allen-key thrust into a chiaroscuro style hexagonal hole on the head float of the famous Dulwich Hill May Day March. And before the revisionists could settle the choppy swell, buffeting pale and spindly limbs atop their King sized, burgundy tinted watery beds, this IKEA like ideal had very much claimed the decade and extraordinarily, much of the next. Australian history had been hit by two ‘ckkkkk’ sounding days of explosive alliteration and high drama, all inside eight curiously long haired and exceedingly humourless years…

Kerr’s Cur – the sacking of the Whitlam Government, an outrage to democracy on the 11^th November, 1975 was joined in the annals of incredulity by, The Contemporary Coup – the dismissal of street photography on the 17^th August, 1983.

And to fully appreciate the stark ramifications of this overstepped popping crease of change, we need look no further than the public gallery that oversees this countries largest city, Sydney. For the Art Gallery of NSW has not found the need to collect a single street photograph since “The Change”, claiming dismissively that the genre has already been well represented in its vast and diverse collection. A clearly gentrified way of saying that the bloodied and cold body of street photography was found curled up at the end of a no through road on the morning of August 17^th, 1983. (Perhaps someone needs let the AGNSW crew know that Elvis: Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong and Michael Jackson all released chart topping hits - post death). 

Cahill Expressway
Painting by Jeffrey Smart

Heading into the new millennia it didn’t get a whole lot better. We found a further shift as politics became passé and it suddenly fell to sterility and the pristine, almost people-less city scape. Imperfection was eliminated in a Boys from Brazil type pimple purge, and this, the latest TSFWD anointed style mimicked a kind of digitally enhanced Jeffrey Smart retrospective. Size overpowered substance and the photographic experience aped a banal Hollywood flick – awash with monosyllabic scripts and a cursory non-story; all propped up by the endless stream of special effects and blitzkrieg marketing.       

Where we head next is clearly not up to the Nowhere Man, however I do feel a certain ‘Woodward and that other bloke’ kind of vibe taking hold and will strive to saunter wildside to suss the shimmering late night cobblestoned word of my snitches and fences and bootlegging beauties, out there on the extreme edge of those dark avenues, deep in the bowels of East Killara, Pymble Heights, Turrramurra Mews and beyond … and I guess if they don’t know anything, I’ll Google some stuff and get back to you.  

So just who is The Shadowy Figure Who Decides (TSFWD)?  Is he or she an all encompassing autocrat or conversely perhaps nothing more than a figure-headed lackey masking a backroom of megalo-mincers and fattish financiers? But then if he is a mere mannequin, who is he and from whence does this curious entities counsel derive? (i.e. who’s feeding the bugger?). Is it all fostered by the reviewers & critics, or perhaps the art colleges, the academics, or is it driven solely by the auction houses and their exclusive chateau of clinking clientele?

Rest assured good readers - The Nowhere Man will dig. For we, the royal we are hell bent on uncovering this silhouetted puppet master – TSFWD, as our cryptically clever code has labelled him; he on whose flippant whim we all fulminate and furrow like obedient little moped perchers pottering along the hideously expensive tollway to Gore Hill. He, must be exposed.  And if by some stroke of very impressive investigative journalism we actually do manage to uncover him or her … I fully expect a Pulitzer or two, a complimentary case of full strength beer, and the rebel yell kind of notoriety Julian Assange is now being afforded internationally – well, OK, maybe not that last thing!

Stay tuned fellow snappers …

and by way of an early list of possible suspects, here is a quintet of individuals the Nowhere Man feels may be able to help with our most immediate inquiries.  

Parties of Interest 

Charles Saatchi -
he may know a thing or two.

Oprah Winfrey -
 word on the street is that "Girlfriend runs the World".

Stephen Fry -
probably not involved, but he is both highly cultured and nauseatingly connected.

Andy Warhol -
Mortality goes POP! Is Andy really dead???

Arthur Daley -
overheard during the winter of 87, describing art as
"a nice little earner"


Any information regarding this matter should be sent to Nowhere Man at n.man@gmx.com
Rest assured all corespondence will be treated with the utmost confidentiality (unless of course it's funny and/or pertinent, in which case it'll probably end up in a future post with your name plastered all over it) 

Discourse and Cheap Patisserie with L.M. Hemsworth

20th January, 2011

L.M.Hemsworth - from the Daybreak series

Last Tuesday morning, Nowhere Man caught up with acclaimed street photographer Lucas Hemsworth for a quick chat and a pineapple donut down at the Pennant Hills shopping mall. The young photographer’s star is very much on the rise having wowed all comers at the Revesby Biennale last June and has been described in Australian art dispatches most favourably as, “the literal street photographer” – this seemed an appropriate place to start…

N.M …

So Lucas, what do you make of the ‘literal street photographer’ tag ?

 

LMH …

Mate I quite like it. I’m a true street photographer and feel a distinction needs be made between the purity of straight forwardly photographing the streets as opposed to all these photographers flying under the street photography banner who aren’t actually shooting the streets at all, they’re shooting the sidewalks, the parks, the beaches, and more often than not – they’re shooting the people.  

N.M…

So tell us just how a humble road digger suddenly becomes a celebrated street photographer?

LMH…

There was nothing sudden about it mate. I’d left school at 14 and was lucky enough to receive a traineeship with the DMR (Dept of Main Roads) – and for a young kid who knew nothing about anything, hell all that blue stone, bitumen and double yellow lines … I tell you, it was bloody intoxicating.

Anyway after a few years working solely on the shovel I earned the extra responsibility of taking the project photo’s for the gang. And on one particularly wet and windy Wednesday up the

Bobbin Head Road from Asquith, Tran Veganbauer driving a Nissan Bluebird ran right into me. It was my own fault as I’d set the tripod up in the centre of a hairpin bend and Tran actually did brilliantly not to kill me. Anyway, after that we became mates and Tran liked some of my images and suggested I should show them.

N.M…

Yes, for anyone not au fait – Tran Veganbauer’s contribution to Australian photography has been immense. A huge early supporter of the likes of  Bill Henson, Tracy Moffatt, Barry Pascoe and now LM Hemsworth, just to name a few. Tran’s Padstow Gallery is pivotal in the twitching fulcrum of Aussie image making.

LMH…
Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.

L.M.Hemsworth - from the Daybreak series

N.M …

Just think, you might have been run over by Russell Crowe and today your thing could be thespianism.

LMH …

Russell Crowe doesn’t drive a Nissan Bluebird.

N.M…

Fair point.

Now Lucas, would it be overstating the truth if I were to suggest that you had a genuine passion for the streets?

LMH…

The streets don’t lie man: they don’t cheat, they don’t run off with your best mates brother – Nah, the streets stand up. They are totally solid; I respect the streets immensely.     

L.M.Hemsworth - from the Daybreak series

N.M…

I read recently where “Review” described you as one of the great non artists of contemporary art. And let me quote, “Hemsworth’s street photographs strip bare the previously held dictum that art need be arty”.

LMH…

Geez this donuts good: texture, stickiness, full flavour – perfect.  Did we invent the pineapple donut? Seems like a really Aussie concept to me. I’m sure we invented it.

N.M…

No I think that was the Hills Hoist.

LMH …

As well as mate… we’re allowed to have invented two things yeah ?

N.M …

I suppose. But tell me what you think of art, and why your photographs aren’t … art I mean.

L.M.Hemsworth - from the Daybreak series

LMH…

I’m a realist. I photograph the streets for the streets alone. I’m not out there to be some flowery bloody smart assed aesthetic junky …

If I see even the barest hint of artiness through my view finder I pull back, you know recoil – I just won’t release that shutter.

 N.M…

That’s interesting, and I imagine very difficult to achieve – a little like calling misere during a hand of whist. It cuts against the natural instinct.

LMH…

Mmm. Not mine.

N.M…

You were embroiled in some light hearted controversy back in 2009 when it was pointed out that a number of your “literal street photographs” may not have actually been shots of streets, but instead roads. What is your position on all this ?  

LMH…

Nothing f**king light hearted about it mate, I got very upset about all that nonsense. All, and I repeat ALL my photographs are street photographs … no roads, avenues, places, ways or any of the other minor thoroughfare descriptors. This whole beat up came about because of far off cross roads. I mean shit, there is a pigeon in the background of one of Atget’s Paris pictures does that suddenly make him a wildlife photographer?

L.M.Hemsworth - from the Daybreak series

N.M…

No, of course not. I totally agree. Pedantry is a curse and tragically, light hearted tom foolery can sometimes take an eye out …

OK, well, my bus to Hornsby is due shortly so can I just finish up by asking why you’re Web presence is so scant, almost non existent – I mean what’s the big secret why can’t people find your photographs?

LMH…

Ha Ha! - No secret mate. I’m just a bit of a luddite when it comes to that stuff and I wouldn’t be truthful if I didn’t mention that I don’t really trust it that much either. I just feel once an image has been stuck up to float around in them computers memory’s it’s lost much of its soul. And funnily enough that’s exactly why I’ve only given you some of my totally average photo’s to use with this interview.

N.M…

LM Hemsworth – thanks for your time.

LMH …

Nowhere Man - thanks for the pineapple donut.