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The aesthetic has numerous spiritual antecedents – Bauhaus design and architecture, oriental art both ancient and contemporary, Japanese design, Scandinavian modernism of the 50s, Mondrian, Suprematism and Constructivism. But the aesthetic is not given a name; does not hit its straps, until the late industrial post war period begins to produce plastics and neon, alloys and epoxy resins, acrylics and masking tape. The availability of these materials and others and their wide spread application to industrial design was also a factor in shaping the aesthetic. The Minimalist tendency which emerged in New York and Los Angeles in the 60s was forged by artists such as Carl Andre (who travelled Australia in the late 70s to work with his friend, the Australian Robert Hunter, on a series of joint exhibitions in public gallery spaces), Dan Flavin (the neon Minimalist), Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Larry Bell and John McCracken. Their work is usually industrially manufactured or fabricated by skilled workers who work from a blueprint of the artist’s design. They tend towards starkness, frankness and the celebration of the plainness and ordinariness of everyday things. It was in total contrast to the Abstract Expressionist movement, which preceded it – Minimalism rejecting raw emotion, the intuitive and the accidental. Since its dominance in the 1960s, Minimalism has been filtered through some 50 years of other major thrusts and counter thrust such as Conceptualism, various Marxist and Post Modern theories and has recently embraced both popular culture and the rapid development of new media. Through each of these phases, it has been transformed again and again. The inclusion of a small selection of work – largely Australian – from the 80s and early 90s, serves to illustrate some of these shifts. Robert Hunter’s immaculately painted surface – apparently white at first sight, reveal complex and subtle shifts in geometry and upon closer and longer inspection, muted colour. John Nixon’s simple cross on rough burlap appropriates Malevitch and repositions him in relation to Marxist and Post Modern theory. The early folded paper piece by Robert jacks is from the period when he was living and working in New York experimenting with a wide range of Minimalist and Constructivist issues. Kerrie Poliness shows a do-it-yourself wall drawing from a boxed series of 6 works based on the circle - each with its own instruction book and accompanying marker and string. |
Ryder is Sydney-based, as are two of the other artists in the exhibition - Andrew Leslie and John Nicholson, each of which in different ways plays with the juxtaposing of simple geometric industrial materials and the subtle suggestion of delicate sfumato colour. From further north comes Brisbane based Minimalist, PJ Hickman, with his serialised, seemingly identical, wall-mounted rectangular pieces. Each has been created using standard hardware store, stock-lengths of timber upon which, closer examination reveals, are occasional serial numbers and other marks and ciphers which are allowed to accumulate forming a kind of history of the work. Each is painted a shade of white - whichever shade was used as wall cover by the gallery where the work was first shown. Mark Galea, who was a student of Robert Jacks, lives and works in Melbourne. He is one of a new generation of Geometric Abstractionists who works with a variety of industrial materials such as linoleum, plexiglass and ply as well as paint on canvas. His principle concern has been to do with complex colour variations and the grid. He is represented here with paintings and a drawing in which he has severely restricted both. A large-scale public survey would reveal that these five artists are representative of a current resurgence of the Minimalists aesthetic both here and overseas as a new generation breathes new live into the genre. John Buckley
* John Nicholson - Courtesy of Sophie Gannon Gallery |
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