Around the galleries
The Age
Saturday September 19, 2009
WHAT Kathy Temin: My Monument Black CubeWHERE Anna Schwartz Gallery, 185 Flinders Lane, city, 9654 6131, annaschwartzgallery.comRUNNING concurrently with her 20-year survey at Heide, the latest instalment in Kathy Temin's My Monument series, Black Cube, cuts an imposing figure at Anna Schwartz Gallery. Constructed via the same synthetic fur material as her 2008 My Monument: White Forest, the experience of Black Cube is entirely different. Where the 2008 work invited you to wander amid the shadows, Black Cube is huge, impenetrable and mute. We're left to circle the daunting monument, hopelessly searching for a secret way in. Temin, the daughter of a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor, frames much of her practice in terms of loss, and this is one of her most affecting works.Tue to Fri noon6pm, Sat 1pm5pm, until October 3.WHAT Irene Hanenbergh: Laudanum & De BreederWHERE Neon Parc, Level 1, 53 Bourke Street, city, 9663 0911, neonparc.com.auA RESIDENT of Melbourne for the past 11 years, Dutch artist Irene Hanenbergh has become known for her hyper-realist negotiations of fantasy and outsider art. Created while in New York, the new series Laudanum & De Breeder eschews her often colour-drenched aesthetic. Indeed, these tangled, wispy, overgrown black ink drawings are austere and minimalist in comparison with Hanenbergh's more noisy compositions. But they're no less effective. Wispy and fragile, these works hint at organic forms and folk-art-like motifs without ever going so far as to reveal a subject. Flowing and plant-like from afar, Hanenbergh's faint lines take an almost mechanistic quality up close an unlikely but absorbing dichotomy.Wed to Sat noon-6pm, until October 3.WHAT Garry Pumfrey: New WorksWHERE Flinders Lane Gallery, 137 Flinders Lane, city, 9654 3332, flg.com.auIF THEY were photographs, Garry Pumfrey's gritty, industrial scapes would almost be cliches. The nuts, bolts, chain-link fences and factories of the city's industrial fringe have been done to death in contemporary urban photography. That said, the Melbourne-via-Perth artist's surprisingly compact oil-on-linen works which take in the docks, cement factories and ring roads of Melbourne's inner west (not to mention a choice depiction of the Nylex clock on the other side of town) grant these urban spaces new resonance. Their brooding colours, composition and depth of field are thoughtful and evocative. Pumfrey's scenes aren't merely rugged-looking props, but crucial pieces in the puzzle of the working, expanding city.Tue to Fri 11am6pm, Sat 11am4pm, until September 25.WHAT SeppukuWHERE Lindberg Contemporary Art, 48 Cambridge Street, Collingwood, 0403 066 775, lindbergcontemporary.com.auAS IS often the way with shows of its kind, there are a couple of hits among a fair few misses in Seppuku, a group show featuring the Victorian College of the Arts honours class of 2007. Sophia Hewson's vast, resin-coated painting Goodnight Atala is an impressive piece of photo-realism, while Michelle Tran's large-scale portrait Vinh is strikingly unadorned in its representation of its subject a young, beautiful transgender man who might otherwise slip into a mire of exoticism. Elsewhere, Pip Ryan's pair of video works and Kotoe Ishii's oddly sexual Bouncer make for some other points of interest. But unfortunately, much of this work feels underdeveloped and unfinished, stray fingerprints and all.Wed to Sat 11am5pm, until September 26.
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