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
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