Snowman's victory tour

As mentioned here, I purchased Snowman at the Philip Hammial exhibition. Yesterday was time to collect him, and we took the long way home to Sydney - along the Escort Way from Orange to Cudal, then to Canowindra and the bright yellow canola fields to Cowra, and on down the Lachlan Valley Way to Yass; then up the Hume to Sydney (a round trip of about 800 km). Here's the landscape around Cudal on the Escort Way:

And a shot as Snowman and I pass through Yass in the car:

And below is Snowman, happy (I think) to be home and ready for hanging. Despite the name, I'm starting to think Snowman's a girl.

So who is Hammial? Adam Atkin in Cordite has already asked the question, and provided an eloquent answer (in relation to his poetry):

Certainly not the authenticly insane, but the friend and mentor of those who are, and whose art keeps true madness from destroying them. The poet Hammial is also the bete noir of those devils whose madness and mad visions he writes about so compellingly, who’s anti-lives consist in the recruitment of armies of young boys drugged into a frenzy of killing.

Philip Hammial
Snowman
wood, plaster, mixed media, 91 x 30 cm

American & Euopean Outsiders at ORG

I visited Orange Regional Gallery (ORG) today and saw the American & European Outsiders exhibition. This show features works in the private collection of Professor Colin Rhodes, Dean of Sydney College of Arts. This was another energetic show, following on from the recent Philip Hammial extravaganza. Here's a work by Dann Wheldon from the current show:

Dann Wheldon
Untitled
mixed media

Although the small but well-written catalogue has biographical information about most of the artists, in the case of Dann it states enigmatically "No details are available for the artist".

More is written about Anne Grgich (b.1961). Based in Seattle, Anne began to make art at 15, secretly painting in her family's books and making junk constructions. She suffered an illness for a period which seems to have intensified her art making. The exhibition has some lovely books she has made, they seemed to me like a cross between precious illuminated manuscripts and sculptural constructions with the psychic weight of Kiefer's lead books.

Anne Grgich
Untitled
mixed media

And here is a detail of a work on paper (exhibited in a glass case, so hard to photograph) by Roy Wenzel (b. 1959). Wenzel spent the first eleven years of his life in hospital, due to severe eczema. He was also found to be autistic. He began drawing at age 11, and much of his work is self-portrait.

Roy Wenzel
Untitled (detail)
mixed media

House

Here's a little work I made maybe 15 years ago. At the moment it's catching my attention again. It's a model for an intimate place of contemplation. (Imagine it big enough so you could scale it and easily climb inside.)

Now, following my recent Italy trip, it connects for me with contemplative spaces in sanctuaries there - two of which I talked about in recent posts (Abbazia San Pietro in Valle and Monteluco).

Ron Dowd
House
wood, wood oil, shellac, enamel, 1993(?)
24 x 4 x 5 cm

Of course there's also the connection with the rich tradition in Italy of painted wooden icons, and the cross.

Bling versus the vivid

vivid from L vīvidus lively, equiv. to vīv(ere) to live.

There's been some great writing ("vivid", even) on the upcoming Damien Hirst mega-show. The Boston Globe pulls together some of the strands here. A quote from Robert Hughes (originally from The Guardian article here) is worth repeating, in case the link disappears:

The now famous diamond-encrusted skull, lately unveiled to a gawping art world amid deluges of hype, is a letdown unless you believe the unverifiable claims about its cash value, and are mesmerised by mere bling of rather secondary quality; as a spectacle of transformation and terror, the sugar skulls sold on any Mexican street corner on the Day of the Dead are 10 times as vivid and, as a bonus, raise real issues about death and its relation to religious belief in a way that is genuinely democratic, not just a vicarious spectacle for money groupies such as Hirst and his admirers.

Why is any of this important? Because what happens in the "big art" world affects what happens in our own "little art" (intimate) worlds, those places that we can attend to, to discover lost aspects of ourselves. If "big art" becomes limited in our consciousness to shallow insipidity then that potentially limits the possibilities of what we can draw on in our own attempts at internal revivification.

Of course, Damien Hirst has done some great things, he's been innovative. Up to a point, it's all fine, but as Richard Lacayo says here, there are limits:

The actual sale, which may or may not make Hirst infinitely richer than he already is, I plan to skip. I do what I can to talk about art but I don't know what to say about shopping.

Philip Hammial and creature comforts

As mentioned in a recent post, Creature Comforts is the latest exhibition by Philip Hammial (closing today at the Orange Regional Gallery). I visited the show yesterday, and was blown away by the vitality and abundance of the works. Here's a view of part of the jostling exuberance on both walls and floor.

These works for me are what outsider art is about. I quickly and deeply connected with the strange creatures before me, and through this to the artist and his interests. I came away feeling empathy for these creatures - and felt they had evoked a reaction from deep layers of my psyche. Here were fellow travellers, intimates... Below is The Capitalist:

Evidently Hammial works in a state of trance in his art making, and this may be a significant factor in the energy of the works. Here (left to right) are Juan, Hollow Man and Jean Claude:

And here (left to right) Tiger Hunter, Purse Snatcher and Isadora:

And (almost) finally, Omar and Ivan:

I look forward to when I can collect Snowman, a purchase I made at the show. Finally, here's Escape from chain gang, Guardian angel (detail) and Prince Tut:

Two recent paintings

Two of my recent paintings. Land forms are from the Monaro region, which I love. (Both paintings are 40cm x 40cm, acrylic on canvas.)

Janet Frame - another outsider - to stay my own way

Advance reviews have appeared for The Goose Bath, a selection of Janet Frame's poetry that's due out in Australia this month.

On the recent theme of outsiders, Janet Frame was yet another. Here's her niece Pamela Gordon (in a recent Sydney Morning Herald review of the book) on Janet:

...she never called herself a poet. She always used to say "You can't call yourself a poet, only other people can do that".

She felt ambivalent about her poetry, she was always wanting to perfect it. And what she did write, she protected very much with a fierce artistic pride. She knew what she wanted to say, and to say it a certain way, and she stuck with that. Poetry was like breathing to her.

It's a true mark of the determined outsider, unswayed by profit and public opinion. The attitude is encapsulated in this wonderful poem from the book:

I Do Not Want To Listen

I do not want to listen
I refuse to listen
to the geometric noises
of black and white.

My big colourful mouth
has enough to eat thank you
without tasting
a plain triangle or two.

Yes, I know rain-
drops are as heavy
and colourless as stones
and fall tropically

rain-bashing what
scurries
without obvious form
and certainly without hope

to the defining
shelter of a microscope.
And I've heard
of stick insects and figures

and striped beds
in a sky and rows
of disembodied black
and white flowers yet

poor as rainbows are
against the pressure
and purity
of no-colour

I must fight and fight
with my red and yellow head
even after I am dead, to stay
my own way, my own way

Outsiders and an art of the heart

Here's some blistering words from art critic John McDonald that to me are more challenging and subversive than many of the tired strategies found in the mainstream art world. The quote is from his recent Sydney Morning Herald review of two recent outsider art shows near Sydney:

If one had to speculate as to why outsider art is becoming more prominent, one need only look at the upper echelons of the contemporary art world where there now exists a cosy - almost conspiratorial - relationship between the big-name artists and the marketplace. In the 1970s, conceptual artists went to extraordinary lengths to avoid making objects that could be co-opted by the art market. Nowadays the game is to make a piece of glittering kitsch or a contemptuous daub and charge the highest possible price. More often than not, some rich but shallow "investor" will buy it. Selling junk to the super-rich is considered to be not only profitable but "subversive".

Welcome to the modern world, where all forms of greed and corporate barbarity are justified by the "dismal science" of economics. For certain artists and curators, the grotesque spectacle of such a society, in which everything is measured in monetary terms, holds a perverse fascination. This trend has created an audience of "outsiders" who look to art for a more immediate form of experience. They seek an art that is moving or challenging - that appeals to the heart rather than one's fashion sense.

The exhibitions that John McDonald is reviewing are Creature Comforts - a survey of sculptures by Philip Hammial, at the Orange Regional Gallery; and Without Borders: Outsider Art In An Antipodean Context at the Campbelltown Arts Centre. I hope to say more on these after visiting the shows.

Outsider art seems to be in the air at present - here is a great post from Art Blog by Bob on William Hawkins, an Amercian outsider who is now gaining wide recognition. Below is an energetic elephant by Hawkins.

William Hawkins
Jumbo Elephant #3
enamel and mixed media on wood, 1989

To make life matter through death...

As James Hillman said in The Dream and the Underworld:

We work on dreams not to strengthen the ego but to make psychic reality, to make life matter through death, to make soul by coagulating and intensifying the imagination.

We make life matter too by keeping death near to us, something we are often uncomfortable with. Yet here, in Santa Maria Nuova near the Roman Forum, is the saint for whom the church is named, St. Francesca Romana, wrapped in her simple white habit.



Our denial of soul leads only to depression. Hillman again, in an NY Times article:

Depression is the secularization of melancholy. We've lost the gods. We've lost what once was behind it. That's why it's so depressing.

More Pietro in Valle

Here are more images of the interior of Abbazia San Pietro in Valle, showing some of the frescos.

It's the feeling of being in this beautiful place that I want to convey; since I'm rather short on historical information on the place itself and who and what the frescoes depict.

Being in this place was like being in the sacred heart of the last post, in a place that was rich and very grounding. (Here, by the way, is a little more information on the abbey.)