With our warm climate, plentiful beaches and abundant skate parks, surf and skate cultures are central to the Australian outdoor lifestyle. Indeed summer seems to herald an omnipresence of board-based activities. Taking this a step further is Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery’s latest exhibition which prompts the meeting of board-based subcultures with contemporary art.
Aptly titled BOARD, the exhibition spans installation, video, photography and sound, and includes works by Vernon Ah Kee, Gerry Bobsien, Shaun Gladwell, Nancy Kilgour, Brett McMahon, Tracey Moffatt, Nell and John Turier, as well as emerging artists from Hunter St TAFE.
“Board riding is very much part of our present-day experience of life in Australia, whether you practice or spectate,” explains curator Meryl Ryan. “The artists mine board-based subcultures for their dynamic imagery, contemporary relevance and narrative potential. They reflect on the experience of the board in context, and on the big-picture feelings beyond.”
While many of the works look at challenging stereotypes, the show also considers how board-based pursuits entwine with risk-taking, courage, physical skill and creativity. This is explored in Brett McMahon’s newly commissioned four-part installation. As Ryan says, “McMahon evokes the experience of riding a wave. For him, the conceptual basis of the work derives from surfing’s relationship with fear and mortality.”
Further taking a poetic look at the classic ‘art versus sport’ divide is Shaun Gladwell’s performance and video works, which connect personal experience with contemporary culture and historical references. “Gladwell’s Skateboarders vs Minimalism sees world-class skaters such as Jesus Esteban, Rodney Mullen, Hillary Thompson creatively ‘misusing’ famous minimalist artworks in a gallery setting, while Self Portrait Spinning and Falling in Paris sees Gladwell himself interacting with iconic Parisian landmarks,” says the curator.
As Ryan sums up, “My hope is that viewers will respond to these intentions and to the poetry, humour and complexity of the works; the exhibition may then provoke questions about the creative act and where to discover art in our present-day world.”
BOARD
Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery
9 December – 4 February 2018
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is an extraordinary account of the unique art of this continent, published alongside a landmark exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art. Necessary and urgent, it tells the story of Indigenous Australian art; a new art history unlike anything we’ve seen. For Jane O’Sullivan, it’s a remarkable and must-read book.
In a new series of illustrated postcards available as a free gift with purchase only at the Art Guide Bookstore, Oslo Davis takes on classic and contemporary art terms and genres and reimagines what they could be referring to.
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
Ahead of his major retrospective at Jan Murphy Gallery, Ben Quilty spoke with fellow painter Georgia Spain about wrestling with mythology, the contradictions of joy and suffering, and a belief in art as an antidote to an increasingly volatile world.
Ahead of the National Gallery of Victoria’s major retrospective on singular Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, we invited four artists to respond to the influence of Kusama on their own practice—and meditate on what her work means to them.
rhythm wRites, a new exhibition at QUT Art Museum, spans 30 years of Bigambul artist Leah King-Smith’s manifold art practice, covering painting, photography, sound and animation.
