Title

Hit and miss Boyd Show

Author / Interviewer

Roger Cook

Abstract / Article

Spare a moment to pop into Arthouse in Perth, Western Australia to catch the show by Wellman Street Studio artists Graham Hayes, Alexander Hayes, Diokno Pasilan, and Sofia Scarano. Though sharing the same studio each artist has a unique vision. That said, however, there is a thematic similarity between Hayes works which try to subversively fashion an indigenous landscape out of the format of the colonizer’s landscape tradition with Scarano's that "explore” the “transfer” of colonial notions of land as “real estate” across traditional, Indigenous ways of relating to land. To me Pasilans etchings are less obviously political and more romantically and mysteriously allegorical as we find coats without bodies flying through parks and other, stranger, landscapes. Unlike the hollow men of T.S Elliot’s famous poem, though they are not “stuffed with straw” but are alive and sensitive to the most minute shift to the physical and emotional atmosphere, animating our world with a decidedly otherworldly presence. Occupying the center of the gallery space are Hays ceramic works. Thee enigmatic roughly hewn, circular forms are composed in a circle and seem to speak of the cycles of life within which we unavoidably find ourselves, and which shape our actions and outlooks. Though visually loy key, this is an eminently successful, intelligent, and thought-provoking show. It is open until Christmas.

Keywords

exhibitions, Artshouse, culture, displacement, time, collaboration

Publisher

The West Australian; Arts Today

Publication Date

December 23. 1998

Week

4

Page

13

Citation

Cook, R., 1998. Hit and miss Boyd Show. Arts Today: The West Australian. Perth, Western Australia.

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