240. Jack Frawley | No literature on a dead planet
29 June – 3 August
Jack Frawley is a man. He’s a wise and observant man. A teacher of teachers, who gently reminds us that our first responsibility is to our planet. And he’s a punter, whose totem is the jockey, which doubles as the logo of Muruntani Books. That’s - Whitefeller Books, the publisher of these not so fictitious adaptations of classics drawn from the high school English reading list.
For me these gentle puns, through their elegant precision conceal in plain sight a gravitas that is entirely appropriate to the issue they address. Climate change. And by inference the exceptionalism that permits our politicians, our so-called leaders to avoid addressing, this all to burning issue. That when it isn’t burning, is washing us away in persistent floods.
241. Charlene Walker + Glenn Harrison
3 August – 6 September
“Yes, that’s the title, yet there are moons everywhere” is how Charlene Walker began a short conversation about this show that she shares with her partner, Glenn Harrison. They share a house, a business venture, a studio and a website that markets their art as both “originals” and “art prints”. Speaking of their collaboration Charlene commented ”we are one and the same and share almost everything, for the last 34 years”.
And about the moons? Charlene said they speak of cycles in life and rebirth. An idea dismissed by Glenn in a manner
suggesting that he prefers for the work to be his voice. Here it is tidiness that pervades. A rigid tidiness that proposes isolation.
The common ground of these artists is well documented on their redcactus.com website. It is the landscape. Moreover, the rhythms and abstract patterns that can be extrapolated from a schematic representation of the landscape. As their website states, it is a landscape that Charlene hopes “to imbue…with a reflective intimacy, a deeply personal reaction to (her) environment” while Glenn sees himself “combining abstraction of the observed world while allowing for whatever subtext might emerge spontaneously”.
In a realm of such subjectivity applied narratives quickly fade leaving the compositional ploys of the picture exposed as the subject. Boorishly repetitive or gracefully varied the subject evokes a shared reading of what seems right in the image. What works and what doesn’t, which is of less consequence than the sheared understanding of such judgments. This is the basis of a language construct that is intuitively understood by us all. As to the merit of this work or its lack of merit, your guess is as good as mine but its existence, like its corresponding language construct speaks of humanity. It’s the flickering candle that like the moon may trace the cycles in life to a rebirth.
