Skip to main content

The Melbourne Art Fair

The Melbourne Art Fair

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
Oscar Wilde


With any sort of creative occupation it is imperative that art becomes a part of one's daily existence so as to feed that artistic streak within.  It doesn't matter what that occupation is, writer, poet, filmmaker, painter, dancer, actor and the list can go on.  What is important is the stimulation to further the creations that comes from confronting all art forms.  Inspiration will transpire, and with that in mind I visited the Melbourne Art Fair.



It has been running for 25 years now and it covers a cross section of the region's art.  Galleries from all over the world can participate to show case their artists, and the art fair becomes a glimpse of the current state of the world, even for a moment.

As a filmmaker I wanted to see what artists are creating and why.  For me it is essential to understand the psyche behind these creations for it is a representation of the society as a whole.  What are the themes?  What colours are mainly employed?  What is the preferred medium?  How is light treated in the majority of the art works?  And of course, how does this all relate to my own films?

Above everything else however, what intrigued me the most was a new trend amongst artists to work collaboratively.  This concept struck a chord with me, for filmmaking is a collaborative process, but art traditionally has not been.  Seeing these collaborative pieces, I couldn't help but be overwhelmed by the power of the concepts behind them.  It truly was, as if,  two minds were indeed better than one.  

Art Equity, www.artequity.com.au, showcased Doble and Strong, two artists who work together side by side to create riveting works on the female form; Robert Doble is the painter and Simon Strong, is the photographer who together create works that challenge the viewer to understand the manipulation of beauty whereby it becomes a medically mechanical process to achieve aesthetic perfection.

  

Doble and Strong

"Their latest body of work 'Flesh & Blood' is concerned with highlighting and disrupting traditional notions of beauty; the female form is marked by glutinous paint that transforms the body into a strangely sensuous object of desire".-Art Equity

Galeria Afa, www.galeriaafa.com, a gallery in Santiago, Chile, also showcased artists working collaboratively together.  Very interesting that across the other side of the world the same thing is occurring.  Nicolas Superby and Juan Pablo Langlos-Vicuna, create videos/animations of sculptures made with paper and mixed media that Juan Pablo Langlos-Vicuna creates but then places in various situations, focusing on the human form and the social stigmatisation of the human condition in various unruly settings.  
 


NNi
Nicolas Superby                                 Juan Pablo Langlos-Vicuna

The director, Camila Opazo, stressed that artists had a very difficult time working and practising on their art, due to the military constraints in Chile, but together, and collaboratively they were able to portray works that captured the essence of their culture and mindset.

I always enjoy the Melbourne Art Fair.  The art is varied and it really is a celebration of Australian art and then some wonderful surprises with International galleries also joining the exhibition space.  I eagerly await the next one, but in the interim for me, as a filmmaker I understand that currently there are some dark spaces that humans inhabit, where the physical form of what it means to be human is challenged by the inhabitable space, technology and the medical advances that are occurring, doubled with the inequities throughout our world and at times to be human has become a burden rather than an asset.  I applaud that artists do not see the world as it is, but rather, can see it in far more clearer ways than anyone else can.



Stella Dimadis
August 2014.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.

"Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. "   Corrie Ten Boom Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch watchmaker, who had helped many Jews escape during the Holocaust, was a prisoner and then a writer.  She held many memories, no doubt, fears; images that would stay forever and haunt her, but they were able to unlock a future for her that she would never have imagined.  Her writing and her boldness initiated her knighthood by the Queen of the Netherlands, The King's College in New York City named a new women's house in her honour, her book "The Hiding Place", was  made into a feature film, twice. Locked away in our computer hard drives are examples of our work and lives that we lock away when our computer sleeps, forgetting about their importance because we are always told to focus on the now, forgetting about our past.  Well, perhaps it is time that we also learn to love our past, regardless of what it was like, so that we can understand what our...
  Apocalyptic Art 'This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper." T.S Eliot For centuries, artists and creatives alike have depicted the Apocalypse, which is the fantastical, unimaginable end of the world and all life on it.  At some point it is going to happen, maybe about 5 million years away when the sun burns out, so perhaps it is this truth that has artists thinking of what this end may look like.  Since it will happen, down the track. Recently it has felt like humanity was in the midst of it with the advent of Covid, but also with the devastation that climate change has been and is inflicting on the land and people globally.  It is very easy to start to think of the end, grim as that may sound. When I had created yesterday's art piece, even though I wasn't happy with the art work, I was very much intrigued by the colours in the background which reminded me of an apocalyptic feel, vibe.  So today's challenge I set ...

Silver Linings Playbook-Cinematography

Cinematography "Photography is truth.  The cinema is truth 24 times per second." Jean-Luc Godard. It comes as no surprise that I made a point of watching 'Silver Linings Playbook', directed by David. O Russell for the one and only  reason that Bradley Cooper is the lead.  I admire his ease and fluidity as an actor in front of the camera, coupled with the control that his eyes muster with each line of dialogue that he delivers.  'Silver Linings Playbook' revolves around Bradley Cooper who plays Pat Solitano, a teacher with Bipolar disorder who has been released from the psychiatric hospital, under the care of his mother, Jacki Weaver and his father, played by Robert De Niro.  He is determined to win back his ex wife, but in the interim meets Tiffany Maxwell, played by Jennifer Lawrence, a recently widowed sex addict who tells him that she will help him get his wife back, providing he enters a dance competition with her.  It is a feel good story by ...