NOW SHOWİNG: Richard Phillips 'Lindsay Lohan' at IMA

[ref]This is presented for consideration into the level of consent given by celebrity in the creation of parody-, pastiche- or reference-based works, values-neutral as they might appear.[/ref]

A hackneyed phrase: to dot your is and cross your ts. The cross is a cross-stroke, the dot is a tittle. In the Latin Alphabet, the capital letter I has no tittle. The Turkish alphabet features dotted and undotted i's, both upper and lowercase. While the distinction between the two characters is important to Turkish pronunciation, the appearance of İ in Richard Phillips' Lindsay Lohan, now screening at IMA, is an entirely aesthetic decision.

The artist's name, the name of his subject and the artist's gallerist all get the dotted-I treatment[ref]It is almost a bizarre instruction that a typical New Zealander's pronunciation of the names is verboten[/ref]. Taylor Steele co-directed the production, but is not credited in the film's 90 seconds (you could facetiously suggest this is because he doesn't have an I in his name to tittle). Steele's background is in surfing films, and the shots of Lohan against an panoramic seascape are very well composed. In other moments the actress stares into the middle distance, meeting and then avoiding the camera's gaze. In these moments the work most closely resembles Phillips' paintings, close-up portraits which he has been exhibiting since the mid-nineties.



A shot that has received significant attention in the art press is one in which Lohan considers her own image. Johnathan Jones writes in the Guardian that the actress is

contemplating her own outsized image. The image is bigger than she is: the real Lindsay Lohan is dwarfed by the colossus of her fame – but this art film is not rejecting the myths of celebrity, it is fascinated and enraptured by those myths.[ref]Jones, J. (2011, May 30). A love letter to Lindsay Lohan - and the moving image. Retrieved from The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/may/30/richard-phillips-lindsay-lohan[/ref]

This is an easy reading to come to, especially with this image being in such close proximity to a powerful shot in Peter Weir's The Truman Show (1998) of the reality TV mastermind Christof (Ed Harris) touching the oversized image of his sleeping star.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1280" caption="Peter Weir 'The Truman Show' (1998)"][/caption]

However this writer thinks the decision-making surrounding this shot might be closer to self-portrait than social critique - considering the size and facial focus of Phillips' paintings, examining oversized faces in close quarters is the artist's bread and butter. Appearances on SNL (and other comedy platforms, to be discussed later), interviews and commercials notwithstanding, this is the first film Lohan has appeared in as herself - in this shot however, she could well be playing Phillips, or at the very least giving a performance that asks us to consider Phillips' embodied experience of painting[ref]Whether by design, coincidence, or this writers overattentiveness to Phillips' typographic anomaly (or a strange amalgam of the three) the eye sitting above Lohan's almost vertical forearm also takes on the appearance of a dot hanging over an i.[/ref].

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="490" caption="Richard Phillips working on 'Der Bodensee' (2008)"][/caption]

The soundtrack is compelling, but ultimately misleading - shoegaze is a genre that needs an expansive duration to grow and decay, the composition by Tamaryn and Rex John Shelverton feels cramped in the film's 90 seconds[ref]Consider the musicians' unabridged work:

[/ref]. Overall the soundtrack lends the work a complex dynamic. The heavily distorted guitar has an edge of anxiety to it while the tambourine associates the images onscreen with a new-age, psychedelic aesthetic.

The premise of the work is exciting - applying the highly-developed, highly-budgeted techniques of commercial advertising to thin air - but the closing credits complicate the work in unhelpful ways. While graphology is both inapplicable to type and a deeply junk science, it is telling that the letter I when enhanced in scale can mean an overactive ego; when enhanced with embellishments the letter can show immaturity and a desire for attention. After making this film, Phillips went on to work with Sasha Grey in a similarly composed video work. While both actresses are talented and highly photogenic, it would be concerning to this writer if Phillips made a habit of working with women conservative commentators see as needing some kind of 'redemption'. After Rebecca Black was, in some cases viciously, mocked in early 2011, she collaborated with the website Funny or Die in April to lampoon her public image herself (currently the singer Lana Del Ray seems to be caught by a public keen to flex those muscles again, but appears unlikely to have her image be similarly co-opted). Lohan herself worked with Funny or Die in a series of faux dating commercials following her split from Samantha Ronson in 2009. When introducing a news piece on her appearance on the site ABC anchorman Robin Roberts said, "It's not just getting laughs, it may get her career back on track."[ref]Adams, G. (2009, April 20). Lindsay Lohan and the irresistible rise of 'mockumentary'.Retrieved from The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/lindsay-lohan-and-the-irresistible-rise-of-mockumentary-1671340.html[/ref] In an eerie echo of this, Linda Yablonsky wrote for the New York Times that "thanks to the painter Richard Phillips, pop culture’s current tragic heroine is making a cogent leap from the tabloids to the art world"[ref]Yablonsky, L. (2011, May 26). Lindsay Lohan, Art Star. Retrieved from T Magazine: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/artifacts-lindsay-lohan-art-star/[/ref](in the same article the film is labelled a "psychological portrait", but it is also noted that the artist and the actress had never met before the shoot).

Ultimately archetypes of jezabel and saviour aren't helpful to a reading of the work, simply to the press and markets that promote it. A serious question in response to Yablonsky's article is who should be "thanking" who?[ref]Especially given Lindsay Lohan is Phillips' first experience making film, claiming that before the production he had not even shot a video with his iPhone[/ref] Both actresses have given Phillips something many of his paintings' subjects have not: consent. While his technique of appropriating press photos and other images in creating work is one respected by this writer, when given this kind of access to a performers name, image and complicity, much more should be achievable than is actually realised by Phillips' current output.

Richard Phillips
Lindsay Lohan

Institute of Modern Art
18 February — 14 April

The Rookie Device: 'Test Pattern: New Art by New Queensland Artists' at Ryan Renshaw

When a movie or tv show screenwriter wants to speed up exposition, particularly when introducing characters at the start of a series, a well-worn device is the introduction of 'the rookie'. In reality, a group of people in an already established team have no reason to spend time with each other re-introducing themselves and describing their background - by introducing a character new to the environment, the audience get a rollerskate tour of the major players and their origin stories. Popular in sci-fi, school-based dramadies, heist films and police procedurals the device is not always strong writing, but is not always weak; compare Scrubs to Toy Story, or The Devil Wears Prada to Platoon (the device is also not by any means necessary[ref]A really great example of unhampered environmental exposition is The Wire. Whatever David Simon's hypothesis turned out to be, it was clear that his laboratory and materials were institutions, and people. While in later seasons the show would introduce characters and situations very close to the rookie trope, Simon deftly handled McNulty's gargantuan reputation with dialogue, and Kima's "then he dropped the bracelets" anectode is a simple-yet effective twenty seconds.[/ref] nor does it rely exclusively rely on age or hierarchal position[ref][/ref]).

The device's popularity can be attributed to its effectiveness; as an audience we want the bigger picture, but we don't have all day. So when a survey exhibition of recent graduates of Queensland's art schools is billed as "New Art by New Queensland Artists", the two uses of the word 'new' have different applications - this is fresh work to both artist and audience, and the artists are "shinies" (Star Wars), "nuggets" (Battlestar Galactica), "fresh meat for the grinder" (Starship Troopers). As an audience we get to experience this kind of show on this and many more levels - the art should, always, be experienced at face value, but we also get to step outside our own place in the art network and, like a Hollywood audience, be comfortably introduced to the environment as if for the first time, learning the same lessons as the rookie as they are inducted.

Like the fresh-faced rookies of screen narrative, these artists are identifiably eager to present themselves in the very best light, and as a show the works are individually strong and high-impact as a whole. Perhaps due to the intensity of research required by their study programs some of these artists wear their influences on their sleeve. If Lucian Freud's legacy is evident in the reclining life studies of Dana Laurie, his grandad's is positively unavoidable in the photographs of Yavuz Erkan. Tightly composed and neatly presented, the series Unorthodox Aphorisms presents surreal interactions with domestic objects, the volume is turned all the way up on the psychosexual allusions already apparent in gloves, milk, vessels and balloons. Sex and gender are placed in uncertain locations with simple blocking - in one the male subject uncannily evokes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring with the simple application of a bath towel. Erkan's palette contributes equally to the calm seduction of the series and its uncomfortably sexual reading, the fleshy pink and tan tones punctuated with a sole inclusion of a striking orange.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Yavuz Erkan 'Towel' 2011"][/caption]

The audience member's body is implicated in the works of Hannah Piper and Caitlin Franzmann, the former creating a post-pop installation which also serves as a framing device for the lion's share of the show. The latter depends on the viewers body for the work to be complete, the audience member becoming part of a screen-based tableau vivant. The sculptural blocking in Franzmann's work seems like an extension of her work outside the gallery, particularly her music video for McKisco's Silence Slowly[ref][/ref]. In both cases the artists consider the role of embodiment in the experience of art after Warhol et al (CAVEAT: on this writer's first viewing of the show neither work was installed to completion, a return visit will see this post revised).

In 2008 in the United States the financial services firm Lehmann Brothers collapsed, Frannie Mae and Freddie Mac were subject to a federal takeover and Bear Stearns was acquired by JPMorgan Chase in a fire sale. In concert these events would effectively trigger the tipping point of the GFC. Meanwhile, Vampire Weekend seemed to give the holiday aesthetic of the well-educated, well-heeled class responsible for brokering these deals and the problems that pre-empted them a high dose of cool, with popped collars, cardigans and boat shoes featuring in promotional shots and music videos and Louie Vuitton lyrical name-checks. Jared Worthington contributes objects from The Waverly Collection with prints from the series Chuck Greenleaf to Test Pattern, all brightly coloured and slightly caricaturistic[ref]Somewhere between a Wes Anderson good-guy and an early Adam Sandler bad-guy[/ref]. Like Michael Haneke's charismatic/sadistic Peter and Paul in Funny Games (1997, remade 2008) Worthington's simulated narrative interrogates the audience's complicity in the mass appeal of the accoutrements of the 'one percent'.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Jared Worthington - Scarf (2011)"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="733" caption="Dord Burroughs - Summer Fruits"][/caption]

Dord Burrough's works fit neatly into an emerging trend in the output of some young Brisbane artists that seems to blend 'two great tastes that taste great together' - slapstick and threat. That is not to say that Burrough doesn't have her own strong voice: the series of paintings contributed to Test Pattern are relentlessly individual in style and are for this writer a source of real excitement in an already compelling show.

If the rookie device is at play in the audiences reading of this exhibition, it is a mainly positive relationship: the artists want to be considered in the context of wider traditions and audiences want to have their understanding of those traditions stretched. As these six recruits join the ranks of the already active field agents of painting, drawing, sculpture and photography the viewer is present at the first briefing. But it should not be forgotten that the stakes are high - while the rookie narrative often charts the ascendancy of the freshman to hero, sometimes the screen is not so kind. Holly Gribbs, played ably by Chandra West, was introduced in the pilot episode of the immensley successful CSI: Crime Scene Investigation in October of 2000. The character fulfilled all of the rookie device's duties, exposing the audience quickly to a the complex array of characters, professional contexts and emotional and moral themes the show would rely on for at least the next twelve years. The audience connected with the 'CSI Level 1' inductee's uneasy charm and her uncertainty which prompted this attempt at inspiration:



Gribbs, and by extension West, proved to be a disposable lever, applied then summarily discarded - less than twenty screen minutes after this rallying pep talk, the character would be dead, shot by the suspect returning to the scene of the crime. Having fulfilled the duties of the rookie device in the first episode, neither Gribbs or West would continue to be a part of the most watched drama in the world. This writer is glad that the artists in this show will have a good deal more agency in their future visibility.

TEST PATTERN 2012
New Art by New Queensland Artists
Ryan Renshaw
FEBRUARY 17 - MARCH 3, 2012

The Moody Blues, Strange Times: Rebecca Baumann's Automated Monochrome at IMA@Ksubi

Rebecca Baumann: Automated Monochrome

5 February - 18 March, IMA@Ksubi

 

The Pomodoro Technique, developed in the late 1980's by Francesco Cirillo, is a productivity method based on time management. As friends of this writer will attest it has been a topic of impassioned discussion at certain dinner parties[ref]Admittedly this is not the only productivity technique known to have invoked cult- or pyramid scheme-like fanaticism in its users, this writer included[/ref] as the Technique has seen a marked increase in this writer's output [ref]And being part of this very posts writing[/ref]. Named for the Italian word for tomato, or more specifically the kitschy plastic kitchen timers design in the tomato's image, the Technique is basically a commitment to working in uninterrupted blocks of twenty-five minutes.


Pomodoro Kitchen Timer, Wikipedia Commons, 2008

In the extensive manual produced to support the concept Cirillo promotes a lofi approach - the equipment suggested for it use is a mechanical timer, a pencil and a piece of paper. Despite this, some, if not most of the Techniques users (including this writer) employ software installed on their computers or mobile phones. Despite the introduction of the digital, these apps are almost exclusively what J. David Bolter would call 'remediations', each featuring satisfyingly mechanical sound effects of ticking and ringing. These digital simulations of hidden gears and bells are worth attention - what is the appeal of the sounds of analogue clocks, watches and timers?

The Perth-based artist Rebecca Baumann has installed Automated Monochrome(2011), a large installation of 96 modified flip-clocks in IMA's satellite space in Ksubi Store in Fortitude Valley. Distinct from her work Automated Colour Field(also 2011), which features bright colours from across the spectrum, this work sees the devices flip through paper in rich tones of blue, and was created for last year’s Primavera exhibition.

Rebecca Baumann, Automated Monochrome, 2011

The aforementioned manual for the Pomodoro Technique is considered, accessible and idiosyncratic, meshing technical instruction, philosophical inquiry and personal anecdotes. Cirillo's project is founded in an understanding of time as the passing of events, and the less concrete idea of becoming. He sees the former as a cause of much discomfort:

Of these two aspects, it is becoming that generates anxiety – it is, by nature, elusive, indefinite, infinite: time passes, slips away, moves toward the future. If we try to measure ourselves against the passage of time, we feel inadequate, oppressed, enslaved, defeated, more and more with every second that goes by.[ref]Cirillo, Francesco. "The Pomodoro Technique" 2006: http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/resources/ThePomodoroTechnique_v1-3.pdf[/ref]

If Cirillo's Pomodoro Technique is a method to combat these feelings, Baumann's work is most certainly its equal. While the Pomodoro Technique is designed to promote practical and attentive effort,Automated Monochrome is instinctively calming. It contributes a more casually relaxed line of inquiry to Baumann's compelling and often celebration-based body of work. The artist spent her time in residency in 2010 in Berlin focusing on the relationships between colour and emotion. The work's genesis in the home of the immense Weltzeituhr at Alexanderplatz and Dieter Binninger's unique Berlin Clock may not be a coincidence.

The plastic kitchen timer, as an object, has strange properties - a mechanical object in a natural, organic guise. Automated Monochrome is analogous: it is likely some viewers will read it as a landscape, specifically the constantly shifting blue tones of the ocean.

While unlikely to be the artist's intention, there is an interesting element to staging a work, in which the passing of time is marked by changing colours, above a fashion retail outlet. Socially-conscious critics and economically-conscious supporters have noted the fashion industry's uncanny skill in employing 'planned obsolescence' in its market model - while fashion writers announce a 'new black' for each season, Automated Monochrome announces an untold number of 'new blues' with each mechanical flip[ref]The work is also a sizable backdrop for the well-dressed and easily-photographed - Facebook users might recognise it following this afternoon's opening in the background of profile pictures of Brisbane attendees.[/ref].

Simultaneously painting, kinetic sculpture and sound event, Baumann's work at IMA@Ksubi is equally charming and exciting. Opening with an artist talk on the 5th of February, the exhibit continues until the 18th of March.