86. William Gaudinez | Ode to Lemuria

Christianity arrived in the Philippines with Magellan in 1522. Since then it has been progressively embellished with indigenous and newly invented dogma in a way that satisfies the spiritual needs of Filipino people. In high art and particularly in folk art the Madonna and the infant Jesus have been recast a Filipinos living in a Filipino landscape while local people dress in traditional biblical costumes for religious festivals. In the 

Philippines religion is an elastic concept that is at the service of the people as well as being an instrument of the ruling class.

The artist, William Gaudinez him self a devout Christian has taken this idea to an extreme. He has made his art in a religious form, the 3D tabernacle and 2D icon. Both domestic shrines to religious images or saints that each carry with them the story and religious teaching of a particular saint. William has expanded the narrative of his religious shrines to include pre-Hispanic mythology, history and science. He has welded it on to the story of the Philippine Revolution, the parables of colonial life in the Philippines and ideals of peace love and ecological sustainability drawn from the counter culture.

Visiting one of William’s exhibitions with him is a lesson in another world as he reads his art works aloud - describing the events and truths with absolute sincerity that are presented as the substance of his votive works. The narrative must be told and retold and from some points of view is the equal of the art work. 

The narratives here are from left to right: 

Orasan - an ancient Bisayan calendar recording harvest times, the types of crops planted and patterns of celestial navigation that maintain our synchronicity with nature.

Gintong Binibini - (The Golden Lady of Butuan) the gold figure Tara found in 1917 and acquired by the Americans in 1922, now housed in the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History, laments the loss through colonialist acquisition of the Philippines golden resources.

Miraculous Gene-e / Globalisation Gene-e - considers Stanford University’s Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) that has collected DNA samples from isolated populations as an examination of evolutionary history, William reads it as the loss of an indigenous ownership of self. 

Ang May-i sa Mga mata ni Nostradamus - The predictions of the 16th century prophet that have anticipated many Filipino events: the Spanish occupation, American betrayal of Aguinaldo, Japanese occupation, and in 2012 the start of a calamitous war with China over the contested Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. This war, he wrote, would spread world wide until mankind is almost annihilated. 

SLOT proposed to the local landscape painter, Joe Frost that he paint the opposite side of the road from SLOT, on the wall of SLOT. Painting and subject - subject and painting would then cross-reference each other in a self-referential dialogue.

Joe said of the completed work,  “This painting is a free representation of the stretch of Botany Road immediately surrounding SLOT. The viewer might not recognise specific shops or landmarks, but I hope they recognise a sense of liveliness that is appropriate to the subject, and one that affirms life.

This was not an easy painting to do. Painting rapidly in a narrow working space for seven continuous hours required determined concentration. Also, the window reflections complicate the picture. But I have tried to allow for this. It should work from any vantage point: up close, or from across the street, in the morning and at night. It was my intention that the passing cars and people would complete the picture. The three figures do not represent any particular people or relationship. Their features were formed under the brush, as surprising and mysterious to me as they might be to the viewer.”  

Adopting the current Redfern-Waterloo Authority Built Environment Plan, as their vocabulary, Anwyn Crawford and Emma Davidson have cribbed words and phrases ringing with the feel-good triggers of bureaucratic jargon. Rendered meaningless words such as revitalise, leverage, empowerment, and upward-mobility are paired with graphic collages that posit the modern life. Anwyn commented wryly, “...the plan was plundered for its prose style” and continued, “We like bad puns!”. 

Walking a line between pedantic and serious consideration, Emma and Anwyn have taken on the architecture of the ‘mind map’, charting flows and connectivity in a perpetual circle of buzz that feeds little but itself. Presented as it is here, in a shop window their parody of possible planing priorities speaks to the people of this place rather than other authors of comparative corporate creations.

They have collaborated since 2004 often using the photocopier, their preferred mode of production, to create installation works and zines. 

Growing up in Sydney’s Inner West, both artists have experienced first hand the rhetoric of development and the displacement it discuses that has effectively stolen their place in the city.

Two Generations ( Jiang Weitao and island6’s)

In partnership with another Redfern gallery, Damien Minton Gallery, SLOT is presenting the Sydney leg of a touring exhibition Two Generations from Beijing’s iconic Red Gate Gallery, in celebration of their 20th anniversary. 

Red Gate Gallery, established by the  Australian Brian Wallace in 1992 was the first commercial gallery to open in Beijing in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. Their anniversary is being celebrated with an exhibition that pairs senior Red Gate Gallery with young emerging artist they have nominated. SLOT is delighted to show two of them.

Jiang Weitao - Jiang’s paintings reference Shanghai’s neons in paintings created through multiple coats of thin glaze finished with lacquer. Here the character kou meaning window is abstracted alluding to the opening of China as it enters a new era of economic prosperity. And coincidently resonating with the mission of SLOT as a ‘window facing the world’. 

island6’s - a collective of 10 Chinese and International artists founded by the French 

producer Thomas Charvériat, presents a classical Chinese dance as an LED animation titled Personal Revolution.

The National touring exhibition, Two Generations has been curated by Brian Wallace, Catherine Croll and Liu Life and the remainder of the show can be seen at Damien Minton Gallery 61 - 63 Great Buckingham St, Redfern

Our goal orientated, destination obsessed journey through urban life leads to a landscape bombarded with message meaning and opinion, all delivered as text. All advertising. All by definition, of more benefit to the advertiser than you. Sarah Nolan turns that idea on it’s head with her rainbow installation that hangs on a gossamer thread - NEARLYTHERE - stacked in the window space leading from here to there.

More than from here to there, Sarah’s road leads from where to where? Irrespective or where we are on her journey we are forever nearly there. And considering the apparent vastness of the road she maps we might suspect that THERE may be the point where we are no-longer HERE. That is, at the puff of smoke identifying the end of life, which confirms that the destination is in fact the journey.

This work is meticulously made. Crafted from fragments of fabric that has been sorted into a colour sequence before being applied to the text, repeated in a descending scale that implies vast space. It speaks of a meditative process. Far from being a laborious one, and not unlike embroidery, Sarah found herself consumed by its intricacy. It is an achievement for an artist to engage with an artwork at an intimate or micro level and yet remain alert to its macro spatial engagement at the scale of the street. Such a making is an act of faith.

Pat Hoffie notes that “The term ‘smoke and mirrors’ refers to the kind of trickery originally used by magicians as a way of deceiving the audience. Billowing smoke would be used as a fascinating screen to mesmerise the audience; the multiple reflections of mirrors made it difficult to perceive the differences between the artificial and the real. 

Today the term refers to any kind of trickery masqueraded with jargon and as Pat Hoffie continues “is most often used with reference to political spin – to the ways the public is told to pay attention to one story while more important events are permitted to unfold without critical scrutiny”. 

Like magicians, and spin doctors artists can lure their audience with images manipulated with surfaces that suggest ideas and possibilities that might not seem to be immediately understood as everyday experiences. Pat Hoffie continues “The images in these drawings were taken from photographs of refugee vessels. But they are at the same time simply images of tiny craft being ‘lost at sea’. Or perhaps they are images of floundering afloat on the terror of changing tides. Or perhaps they are images of small groups of people being cast adrift together to face the unknown in a very small, very fragile vessel. The skies seem endless, the seas seem vast, and the mirrors cast our own reflections back at us.

One of the truisms of art is that you see what you bring to the work. That is that we each understand a work with reference to our own experiences, education, culture and interests. In that sense we each carry a puff of smoke and a shiny mirror with us. And that would include the boat loads of people who cast them selves on the the ocean in an effort to reach Australia.

From June - December 2012 Chloe Wolifson will join SLOT to curate her own program of exhibitions: No. 93-98.

Wolifson is an independent arts writer and curator with a strong connection to SLOT’s neighbourhood. In February this year she co-curated Subtext: Art for Literacy at Carriage Works. She is gallery manager at Darren Knight Gallery, Waterloo and her writings have been published in Art&Australia and Heat.

SLOT is excited to be working with Chloe and embraces the prospect of an another voice devising a program that will offer a different view the art around here.