06
Art of other years promotes 2017
As
the chairman said, “SWELL is a stayer!” – and so it appears, to
stay forever in its same format, exactly the same year after year. It
sets a very poor example for the artists, a torpor displaying a lack
of interest in ideas. Sadly, the disinterest appears to be catching.
There is no use in repeating previous critiques; everything this year
is as before, was; and as before that too: this is SWELL 2017; SWELL
2016; SWELL 2015; . . . all as seen in previous years.
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04
2017
2016
(with 2017 cover as a sketch)
2017
(with 2016 artwork)
2016
SWELL
appears to have no interest in innovation, in excitement, in things
new and different. It shows no intrigue with the exploration of ideas
and possibilities beyond promoting what happened previously. The
graphics are the same; the tents are the same, in the same position,
selling the same booklet at the same price – a publication dated
2017, but filled with images of other works submitted in previous
years, and with over one quarter of the ‘new’ images being
preliminary sketches of works apparently not yet completed, perhaps
not yet started, at the time of publication. It can hardly be called
a catalogue, and remains a poor record of the event. It is like
having Monet’s rough sketches of his paintings published as a
catalogue of an exhibition of his finished works. Why might this be
acceptable for SWELL when it is likely that a gallery or sales room
would find such a proposal dodgy; unacceptable? A catalogue is
supposed to represent an accurate overview, a precise presentation; a
detailed, explanatory record of the works on display, not just rough
ideas for what appear to be incomplete or envisaged works: what might
be yet to come.
2017
2016
To
be pedantic, the centrefold site plan for 2016 has 52 red dots to
illustrate 48 artworks; at least 2017 has 51 dots for 51 works! The
two diagrams are identical, apart from the one extra dot in 2016. The
2017 image took out one dot and moved another to get the extra text
included: SWELL MEETING POINT. This map shows how SWELL works to a
fixed plan, a diagram of a festival to be repeated forever, maybe.
The 2015 map, with 55 dots for 55 works, seems to have made more of
an effort to represent true locations rather than to merely rehash an
old drawing. One wonders: why do these maps never number the works in
their locations so that, say, one can walk directly to, perhaps,
number 31, without having to wander aimlessly around the whole
esplanade and beach areas reading signs? The map could be much more useful than the
coloured centrefold infill pretends to be.
2017 with art of the past
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45
12
SWELL
seems to look backwards more than forwards. The works are still
scattered in the same way - by same artists? - across the same piece
of land, with the same excessive signage and the same poor lighting:
everything is familiar, apart from the Smalls Gallery that, this
year, was moved two kilometres away – as if getting there might be
no problem at all. Previous years saw the sculptures gathered on the
esplanade and along the beach. This year they stretched to beyond the
motorway, as if to try to connect with the new Smalls Gallery space.
“It has a bar” was the apparent explanation that sought to quell
the swell of dismay at the idea that this Smalls Gallery might be so
distant. It was as if merely walking over the road from the beach
might be too easy, too comfortable; perhaps too much related to the
commercial food outlets managed by others? Why isolate this part of
the exhibition? It was sought out just after 4:00pm on the last day,
Sunday, but it had gone. It seems that the place could not close down
fast enough; or was it that these were the usual commercial hours of
this quizzical DUST TEMPLE? - ‘fearless creativity’: see -
http://www.dusttemple.com.au/
One wonders: what relationship has this enterprise with SWELL and
its promoters? Is there any connection for this extreme dislocation to become
acceptable/desirable?
24
49
Is
SWELL too involved in itself and its inner organisation to take no
notice of critiques; to be concerned with difference; with ideas;
with futures? Why is the chairman so happy with everything as a
‘stayer,’ even with his oddly described, ‘ever-diplomatic duo,’
the curators? What is this strange and subtle nudge about? Is it an inside joke? SWELL will
die a long and struggling death if it merely keeps repeating
everything, year after year: it will stagnate. Why will ‘the
public’ come for the same, time and time again? Such a strategy
does nothing to suggest that the artists should do anything
differently. So we see, if not the same artists, the same techniques,
the same materials, the same themes with varying subjects.
Familiarity does breed contempt, as the saying goes: SWELL needs to
take heed. Seeking and publishing self-praise shields, blinds all
awareness of its own problems; it conceals potentials: it embeds a
lazy satisfaction. Things must change, offer new challenges; ideas
must be pushed to the limit. It will take a concentrated effort. One
wonders if SWELL has reached its limit – the boundary of its dreams
and endurance.
05
11
23
47
10
We
see in the works too many little things lost on the lawn, being
challenged by the odd rock, waste bin, stump or broken branch, or
sign, for ‘arty’ attention. How does SWELL decide to display its
submissions; and where? Just plonking pieces on the grass or in the
sand, willy-nilly, as the ad hoc maps suggests might be the process,
appears to give the current situation, where the effort to fill the
available space seems to have become the real challenge, rather than
revealing the essence of the works, and enhancing their
inter-relationships, both with each other and their contexts so as to
display the very best of everything. In the television show LEGO
Master, the French artist/modeller pointed out to
contestants that when creations are taken outside into a natural
setting, things change significantly. He said that the works need
height to maintain some identity, otherwise they just get lost as
minuscule pieces in nature. The advice can be seen to hold its sense
in the scattering of little pieces and parts that lack boldness and
coherence, offering merely what appear to be mindless objects lost in
space and place: number ‘x’ by artist ‘y’ with a title ‘z’
- next. The trees, the stumps, the seats, the rocks, the posts, even
the rubbish bins and other ‘civic’ paraphernalia are mostly
larger and more prominent than the artworks. Is this why they assume
such an importance; why they frequently confuse the visitor who
arrives with so many expectations? The challenge is to make them
significant everyday!
10
16
41
20
It
is ‘place’ that needs attention. Distributing works willy-nilly with
labels and warning signs that are larger still, does nothing for the
experience of the works or the location. SWELL offers nothing
permanent for Currumbin, when it could and should. Art needs to be
more than the whatever, anywhere: your guess.
10
46
A
small girl was heard to ask her mother: “What’s that?”
The
response was astonishing: “Whatever you want it to be.”
36
43
If
our art is just anything that one wants it to be, be this seen from
the point of view of the artist or the onlooker, then we are in a
spinning world of meaninglessness, lost in a fantasy of explanatory
words and ad hoc interpretations attempting to transform nothing into
substance, like the alchemists of old, trying to turn lead into gold.
One does not have to read the artists’ words to know that, as
usual, they will be full of, well, themselves: blurbs about some
vision, hope or personal experience or intent. We have seen it all
before. SWELL appears to offer no guidance to its exhibitors. Why is
such seeming trash acceptable?
30
The
catalogue is opened randomly: Daniel Clemmett, number 30, has
illustrated a rooster: the text finishes: ‘Busying ourselves with
nothing. “My shopping trolley murdered; my groceries just gone!”
Pauline Pantsdown.’ And this has to do with a rooster? Just above
this, number 29, Manning Daly Art explains: ‘Tidal Intersection
symbolises our invisible connection with the moon as the oceans rise
and fall.’ The associated image is a blue crescent shape arcing
around a sunset: ??? One could go on and on. Consider another random
opening: number 27, Jordan Azcune: ‘White Caps optimises its
position in reference to the sea while parodying the complex nature
of symbols within maritime and surf culture.’ One assumes this
might be so for Jordan, but . . . ? Art must be better than this,
much better. It is not merely any personal whim with some ‘deep’
explanatory text. It is not random hoo-haa rationalised with an essay
on the meaning of life.
27
Curators,
the chairman – everyone involved – need to stimulate matters to
create a new energy, a liveliness, an interest that is missing in
this regurgitation of other times, and the delight in this
self-promotion: ‘look at what we have done! - again!!’ Art must
be more than ‘anything interesting, quirky and different.’ It
needs substance, grit, true meaning to hold the inner self, to engage
and change: it needs necessity. It is not entertainment or a quirky
tourist promotion, even if sponsored by Queensland Tourism &
Events. It requires care, commitment and skill; and roots – depth
and substance. What we see on display this year is the same random
clutter as previously presented. The critiques are the same – just
read the reviews of the previous years:
http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2016/09/swell-sculpture-festival-2016-more-of.html
http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2016/09/swell-sculpture-festival-2016-more-of.html
39
12
One
can only hope that next year there will be something of quality to
review other than the cliché identity and phantom reality that has
become SWELL, a surge that keeps pushing itself forward irrespective
of those who might seek to encourage otherwise. In this conservative
sense, the title is appropriate. One hopes that it might gain meaning
in other senses, perhaps that of an upheaval, an energising push for
change, revolution. Without this, every SWELL will be its sure and
certain 'success,' promoting itself as the same forever, publishing
texts by premiers, ministers, mayors and chairmen that could be
repeated every year and still hold some semblance of relevance, complete
with the centrefold site plan that always looks the same, surrounded
by adverts that are familiar; and numbered artworks that, it
seems, may not even have been yet created beyond some vague sketch
prior to publication, providing confusion rather than clarity with
some scribbled image that one has to link to the final piece on
display. Every year the publication is the same, the same content and
context, all for $5:00. It is the $5:00 payment required to vote for
the People’s Choice! Is this management’s choice? Why not open
opinions to all? Why sell voting rights?
Some sketched visions; some not - a catalogue of hope?
Why
not try a SWELL without any submissions, merely using the built
environment as a basis for numbering and naming? At least this
strategy might surprise and allow folk to envisage their environment
differently. Maybe both strategies might be possible in parallel? Why
not? Just seeing a stack of different ‘artworks’ each year
surrounded by what is the clutter of our normal beach place, only
makes our esplanade appear less than ordinary – not art. When
garden beds get planted with ‘we’ll grow and survive anywhere’
plants, laid out ‘artfully’ as borders and centrepieces, with a
conservative, cliché carefullness in a stone circle, then one
wonders what hope their might be. Why not have a SWELL improvement of
the esplanade rather than a cluttering of it. Just how many signs
were there reminding visitors not to climb on or to touch the
artworks? The great danger was that these signs themselves could trip
folk up, such was their random and plentiful location. Maybe they
needed yet another sign: ‘Mind the signs,’ to warn the visitor of
the danger? One is reminded of the ever-growing ‘civic’ clutter,
of both signs and stripes, that seeks to help Councils avoid
litigation.
26
Read the signs before the art?
50
08
Then
there are the winners, a family choice: the Neumann family. Like
history, those with money and control create the choice that becomes
the story. Number one was the rusty crab, (sculpture 08), $15,000;
number two, the fabric lighthouse, (sculpture 06), $3,000; three was
the ‘white whale,’ a puzzling frame of feathers and fans,
(sculpture 17), $3000; four, for an ‘emerging’ artist, the
monster, (sculpture 39), $1,500; five, a meagre $1000 for a Peer
Award – so much for experience - was the chain hands, (sculpture
51): see http://www.swellsculpture.com.au/awards/
- yes, a chain sculpture again. The first one was excellent; the
second one was interesting; then the others seem to be ‘as seen
previously,’ no matter how much effort went into the clever work.
17
51
Chain hands cap Elephant Rock
What
might one have chosen? It is always difficult, because small pieces
never appear to hold the stature or public prominence required for a
‘big’ prize. The glass tree that looked like jade mesmerised; the
silver leaves in the tree were subtle; the pink noodle structure was
simple and powerful, reminding one of the Pictish brochs of old. The
latter pink plastic structure was certainly big enough to qualify for
a big prize, but its material probably let it down – cheap foam
plastic noodles pushed through a rusty mesh grid does not,
apparently, make ‘great sculpture.’ What might Michelangelo have
thought?
09
There
was some surprise with the military pieces; a certain disquiet. Why a
bomb? Why pencils becoming artillery items; a wall of sandbags suggesting a
bunker? Has our era some sense of imminent war? Then one hears just
this morning, 20 September, Trump’s careless, almost foolish,
unstatesmanlike words at the UN to ‘rocket man,’ that the US will
‘totally destroy’ North Korea if challenged. Maybe the ‘war’
pieces are ‘saying’ something about our time?
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48
A
bus stop to Chile? - WOW: is this not clever? The work puzzled and
worried. Is this why architects now try to create fragmented and
fractured, 'light' works? Is this approach to fabrication now seen to be arty?
33
‘WOW!’
appears to have become the ‘in’ expression. It is heard
repeatedly everywhere on television – WOW! Is it such shows as
Britain’s Got Talent etc. that
seek out the ‘WOW!’ factor in performances that have generated
this outcome in ordinary, everyday speech, an expression that has the
frequency and same nonsensical meaning that ‘COOL!’ has? ‘WOW!
COOL!’ is seen as a useful communication, just as ‘COOL! WOW!’
is: “WOW!! How about that! COOL!” . . . etc.
15
19
It
is really easy to create ‘WOW!’ and ‘COOL!’ - it is extremely
difficult to capture, to hold meaning in substance that can move
spirit and mind. A prancing acrobat can do the former; a quiet
Buddha, the latter. Too many artists are acting like clever acrobats,
not realising they are crashing to the ground. It was not immediately
obvious that any artists at Currumbin were making ‘Buddhas,’
although their texts might be suggesting otherwise.
There
are only challenges remaining. One can always say that SWELL is
better than nothing, that it does engage people, ‘the public,’
with art; but what sense is there when anything can mean anything?
This is the definition of chaos, of Babylon: babble seeking sense but
remaining meaningless, incomprehensible. When might we learn to
attempt something of substance; something truly beautiful? First of
all we need to understand that beauty can resonate only when it
touches reality. Dreams and visions of self-promoted geniuses are not
art, and never will be useful for anything but self-promotion: ‘Look
how clever I am!’
18
Yes,
just look to see how ‘clever’ SWELL is, doing what it always appears to be doing, promoting only itself. The artists seem to have learnt from this strategy. Does money only get
given to the safe and conservative outcomes? Are prizes only given
likewise, or, in the extreme, given to the most outrageous so as to
generate ‘promotional’ material in the press outrage? A few bits
of chicken wire, rope and string on some sticks will be unlikely to win prizes,
although the mask work by Sally Simpson, number 18, is astonishing in
its clarity and transparent simplicity, while it holds the power of
mystery and tradition not seen in anything else.
18
34
Wandering
through the works, it is probably more interesting to look at the
people, their children, and their dogs: children asking questions;
climbing and playing on and around the works; standing looking with
puzzlement; explaining their ideas; asking questions: the dogs doing
likewise in their own way. One lady stood at the Vince Vozzo twisted
head sculpture, number 34, with her head twisted likewise, mirrored
askew, as if successful viewing required this contortion. Many
paused, looked, moved on after clicking the mobile phone, verbally
summing up the piece, or dismissing it, ready to do likewise with the
remainder. The task was to see all the sculptures. Others walked and
talked into their mobile phone, oblivious of the surroundings: “I
have only another two weeks on my contract then . . . ”, more
interested in ‘otherwise,’ anything else, than being there; as
were other talkative, perhaps lonely beings, who love regurgitating
their life stories to strangers, as though they might have been
travelling on public transport. Being at a sculpture festival only
seemed to offer an array of new listeners for these loud folk, little
else.
32
The 'thought of the day' seen in a Dubai restaurant came to mind: Those who
talk all of the time only tell what they know; those who listen
quietly can learn something new. There were just too many distracted
minds wandering along the esplanade, concerned with much more than
the artworks before them. Did this say something about the ‘art’?
47
The
final response has to be on
this year’s commentary is:
see the other years’ reviews and
ponder possibilities missed:
Is
this apparent
inattentive nonchalance why
our everyday environment is becoming such a shambles?
44
Mind the signs
33
2016 chairs and dog in 2017 catalogue:
what will 2018 reveal?
For previous SWELL catalogues, see:
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