On Show at Robertson Park
Title
On Show at Robertson Park
Author / Interviewer
David Bromfield
Abstract / Article
“… The crisis of imagery affects many aspects of art. For instance, most artists no longer have any way of imaging and consequently cannot conceive their work as having a direct social impact. In Robertson Park, however, you can find an artists' collective with some lively ideas about their relationship to the community. They have a five-year lease on Halverson Hall and have opened their studios as a temporary gallery. Vincent Mayor John Hyde opened the show to strains of music by Djiokno Pasilan, an artist/musician member of the group. His panel of wooden framed metal plates bitten and splattered with elegant brown faces cancelled by black crosses epitomises the relationship between humble materials and sophisticated imagery that runs throughout the group. Pasilan is from Negros in the Philippines and his work embodies both the recent radical history of the Philippines and the inescapable imagery of its Christian legacy. Group coordinator Graham Hay's clay forms are generous, excessive, even explosive in their configuration. They cling in diverse clusters, sometimes like intergalactic seed pods, sometimes a soft turbine, a bundle of a exotic fruits, split second angel wings made from plasma, an alien ray gun, the vortex around a black hole. The irregularity of their forms lends itself to all kinds of associations limited only by experience and memory. Alexander Hayes' pieces are not inspired by the elaborate variations on the grid to be seen in galleries all over the world but by the lath and plaster structures, he deals with every day. Variations on presence in the landscape are Carol Rowling's chief concern in her complex colored patterns. The small brightly colored shallow relief panels of Victoria Nadas rely on one's sense that they are made through the determined struggle to maintain the rigid congealed surface qualities of the panels in relation to the intense presence of the image of human action that each present. This show is a very good reason for a stroll through the park.”
Keywords
studio, exhibition, show, Perth, Robertson, park, collaboration
Publisher
The West Australian
Publication Date
7th October, 2000
Week
1
Page
6
Section
Big Weekend
Suggested Citation
Bromfield, D. (2000) On Show At Robertson Park. Arts, edited by Ron Banks. Big Weekend, The West Australian.
