EMIT

C h a p e l o f f C h a p e l

1 4 – 2 4 A u g u s t 2 0 1 4

1 2 a L i t t l e C h a p e l S t , P r a h r a n

c h a p e l o f f c h a p e l . c o m . a u

C u r a t e d b y C a s h B r o w n

An exhibition of contemporary art that emits shines and

glows with distinguished luminaries Adam Cullen,

Howard Arkley, Cara- Ann Simpson, Erica Seccombe, Elvis

Richardson, Yenny Huber, Warren Armstrong, David

Griggs and Joan Ross.

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EMIT

I have always felt that the most interesting art is art that is a verb, an active thing, a thing

that does something. This may seem like a strange value to place on objects that are largely

inanimate. But it is when art does something, in my opinion, it becomes elevated from

plastic, paint, data or ink, into something of value and use beyond its material worth.

The title Emit holds multiple meanings. Artists emit, they produce, and they transform

materials into meaning. They, give out/off, pour out, send forth, throw out, void, effuse, vent

and issue ideas. The artist’s materials themselves are selected for properties, which best

express those emissions, and in turn, emit meaning. Some artists use materials that emit

light, radiation, gas and sound, all rely upon emissions to be seen.

The urban setting for this exhibition, in the heartland of the City of Stonnington, provides a

rich basis for selecting works, which not only fit the curatorial theme, but relate also to the

broader cultural landscape of urban Australia. Themes of privacy, surveillance, privilege,

equality, identity in relation to the built environment run through the selected works.

The young people, whose work has been created especially for this exhibition, worked with

the concept of making material choices in order to express their ideas about identity and

place. Under the guidance of an experienced artist facilitator, they addressed the expanded

thematic relationships presented in unique ways. This provides the participants with new

skills and therefore opportunities to creatively express themselves and develop life tools, which

hopefully contribute to their personal growth.

By mixing the work of young people new to art making practice, with more experienced

practitioners, audiences have the opportunity to engage with new and familiar works in a

different way. Engaging young people, who would not ordinarily access contemporary art,

develops extends and transmits the cultural messages. These messages are then carried and

shared, through the process of viewing and making personal connections or associations

between the artworks and individual memories. This egalitarian approach to curating is

aimed at equalising social, economic and educational disparities.

Aspects of surveillance, individuality, privacy and giving form to the unseen elements of the

landscape, links all of the works in EMIT. However, the associations go much deeper and

further than the texts within this paper permit. By presenting a variety of works, by artists

with radically different practices with common threads, it is hoped EMIT will stimulate

dialogue about what art is, what art does and possibilities about what art can be.

Cash Brown 2014

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ADAM

CULLEN

b. 1965 d. 2012

Adam Cullen Lady Luck

2002 acrylic and spray enamel on canvas

Private Collection, Melbourne

Adam Cullen has been the subject of many texts between the performance artwork of

dragging a pigs head chained to his ankle for days while a student at the City Art Institute,

University of New South Wales, and his death in his Blue Mountains home in 2012.

I knew Adam well, and it was during time spent with him at home and in his studio that we

spoke at length about his practice, the artists he admired, his influences, experiences and

motives. While he eschewed painting during art school and the early part of his career, and

claimed he took it up as a joke in 1997 when he entered the Archibald prize, he was a gifted

painter at an early age, and two small but accomplished impressionistic paintings now in his

father’s collection attest to that.

Adams work appears to be thematically highly varied, however I feel that the current

running through all of his works is a concern with the fallibility of humans. He often claimed

that all society was a ‘veneer’, and that ‘you only need to scratch the surface’ to expose a

dysfunctional core, where everyone is ultimately corrupt.

He combined motifs skilfully, often figurative with text and fluorescent paint, into lurid

dripping paintings. His use of spray paint was borrowed as much from his friend Howard

Arkley, as it was from street culture.

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I feel Cullen’s work emits a concern for the false morality of Western suburban life, and a

frustration in that it is not articulated as freely, as say discussing the weather. This frustration

resulted in a rich body of work including sculptures, films, installations, drawings, prints and

collaborations.

Adam Cullen 2007 Turon carp Acrylic on canvas Private collection, Sydney

Turon Carp is a deliberately ugly painting of a much maligned feral pest, which infects

Australia’s waterways and has a great impact upon native species. Adam loved nature, and

the Australian bush in particular locations held a special fascination for him. One such place

is the Turon River, near Hill End in the Great Dividing Range west of Sydney. Adam often said

that he was happy to help animals, as they have no voice or choice, whereas humans can

help themselves. Turon Carp therefore can be seen as a paradox, something to be killed and

discarded through no fault of its own, or to be respected and preserved as a living thing,

even at the expense of local fauna.

Auto portrait is one of the few literal self-portraits the Cullen ever made. This one, from

2005, was made without referencing a mirror or photograph. It was painted wet into wet, an

almost frenzied application of paint mixed with slower, more deliberate marks, and given to

me as a gesture of friendship. While it is a harsh image, in keeping with harsh aspects of his

character, it also shows a kind of softness, which only those who knew Adam well could

experience.

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Adam Cullen Auto Portrait 2005 Acrylic on canvas Private collection, Melbourne

The motifs in Lady Luck came from tattoo magazines. Tattoos, until quite recently have been

associated with low-brow culture, with bikers, inmates and underdogs and it was with these

types of characters Adam often sought to engage. In retrospect, I wonder if it was about

trying to find authenticity, lives without the veneers and urbane pleasantries he so

passionately disliked? Lady Luck illustrates misogyny as commonplace, but that women can

defend themselves, while pointing out that it is the roll of a dice, a mathematical chance of

what we are born into that determines who we are. It is an authentic work, in that Adam

himself was guilty of harbouring misogynistic traits. In many respects, all of his works can be

seen as self-portraits.

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HowaRd

ARKLEy

b. 1951 d.1999

Howard Arkley Sunshade home 1995 Spray enamel on paper Private collection, Sydney

It is hard to believe that an artist whose visual impact has loomed so large on the Australian art

scene has been gone for so long. The iconic Melbourne based artist Howard Arkley is definitely not

forgotten, and his work maintains a timeless relevance and resonance into the twenty first century.

While the artist often repeated motifs, and indeed there are many works which appear to have little

distinguishing them from one another, we are fortunate to have two fine examples from the 1990’s.

Arkley’s works are conspicuously devoid of figuration, relying upon the imagination of the viewer to

inhabit the world he reflects. It is a world of the mundane. Suburban homes with idiosyncratic

features, like sunshades, which give no information as to the personality of the occupants, and

freeways from angles where cars cannot be seen.

The images are static on one hand, but activated with optical treats of vivid colours and lurid

patterns. The internal domestic patterns of wallpaper on many of his works are often imposed upon

the otherwise bland exteriors. The use of spray paint as a medium reinforces the experience that you

are looking at an artwork, not an illusion, but an idea.

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Howard Arkley Freeway Exit

1997 Spray enamel on paper

Private collection, Sydney

I have included these works as a posthumous dialogue between Arkley and Cullen and between

Melbourne and Sydney where the artists respectively resided. Arkley had a great influence on the

younger artist, and not all of them positive. Both artists had well documented heroin addiction, but

the point is that they both made art from a cultural perspective, which was outside the usual norms

of politeness. In the eighties, Arkley appropriated motifs from old masters and tattoo works,

combined them with graffiti and his obsession with patterns. Cullen was also obsessed with this type

of theme, however he eschewed the pattern for the inverse approach of dead flat featureless

backgrounds. It is interesting to me that these artists appear to have similar concerns, yet their

output feels like polar opposites. Both artists addressed suburbia as a dystopian place, where

surfaces reveal little of the true inner nature of what it is to be a creature of the concrete jungle.

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CaRa- ANN SIMPSON

Cara- Ann Simpson Horace Petty – Gumtree Grove 2014 inkjet on Chromajet metallic pearl paper Collection of the artist

Cara-Ann Simpson is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus on sculpture, sound, space and the

participant. She is concerned with modes of listening/hearing in social situations and how people

interact with sound.

I have selected Cara-Anne’s work as her unique perspective of listening, recording and integrating

audio data into a purely visual form is fascinating. Like Arkley, Simpson’s work here is devoid of

figuration as a theme, yet stamps the Australian urban landscape with an almost post-apocalyptic

feel. The innovative technological aspects to her art-making processes are as fascinating as the

outcomes, which to my mind resonate well from beyond the foundations of their local Melbourne

context.

By recording sound spectra, and employing the device of economic and social diversity to draw

attention to prevailing contemporary urban issues, Simpson’s work also implies a kind of

surveillance.

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Cara- Ann Simpson Melbourne High School 2014 inkjet on Chromajet metallic pearl paper Collection of the artist

In her own words:

‘We surround ourselves in imposing architecture, a culture steeped in material, structure and rituals.

These two works compare and contrast two impressive, monolithic (in the systemic sense) buildings

within a few kilometres of each other – the Horace Petty housing estate (now renamed Gumtree

Grove) and Melbourne High School. The former is reminiscent of Soviet Russia or Stalinist lines and

power with a colourful playground in front seemingly out of place but fading in the shadow of the

structures glory. The latter revels in an almost religious fervour reaching towards the heavens.

Strangely, the sounds that accompany each site are strikingly different to the expected. Horace Petty

is nearly peaceful with rhythmic bouncing balls, playing children and rustling leaves through trees.

Melbourne High School, on the other hand, is surrounded by construction, grating trains and

constant streams of traffic, all of which is amplified by the nearby Yarra River. A visual spectral

analysis of these sounds is overlaid over the photographs. This process often reveals a site’s beauty,

however, these particular images become gothic, foreboding and oppressive’.

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ERICA

SECCOMBE

Erica Seccombe Collective Unconscious (detail)

2013 gypsum powder and inkjet print and resin, multiple

object installation under UV lamp

Erica Seccombe is also interested in making the unseen seen. The humble garden slater, the little

grey insect which inhabits the most inhospitable places in urban environments, holds several places

within this exhibition. The first is that they are largely invisible. We know they are there, but do we

give them a second thought as to their purpose within ecosystems? Secondly, these art objects are

the result of deeply creative thinking processes and critical skills combining art, science and digital

technologies enabling scanning, scaling and replicating of minute details. Seccombe makes the

invisible visible and drawing attention to larger and recurring thematic concerns turning the ordinary

into something extraordinary. It is the transformation of ideas into data, then data into form

appropriate to the artistic aim, which has generated these beautiful little pieces.

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Erica Seccombe Collective Unconscious (detail) 2013 Gypsum powder and inkjet print and resin, multiple object installation under UV lamp

In her own words:

‘Collective unconscious features four objects that replicate the very tip of a garden slater’s leg

printed in various sizes. Slaters are a terrestrial crustacean or Isopoda and only grow up to 17mm in

length so their legs are tiny. Imagine how big the creature would become if the whole body was

printed to the scale of each tip.

I've created this work on a Z-Printer 650 which prints like a colour inkjet over thin layers of powder

that are very slowly built up and bound together. These 3D objects are the enlarged virtual

volumetric data of an actual garden slater, so the inside of the leg tip is printed as well. The

volumetric data is acquired with a 3D Micro-CT X-ray of a real-life slater then visualised in Drishti, a

scientific visualisation program. This work is part of a project I'm undertaking in the ANU Department

of Applied Mathematics and in VizLab to investigate computer microscopy as an extension of vision.

The 3D printing technology allows me to replicate this object as many times and in as many sizes and

colours as I like. However, the organic form becomes increasingly voxelated (3D pixels) as it increases

in scale and pushes beyond the capacity of the data and the technology. Collective unconscious pays

homage to both the possibilities and the limits of technology in Western culture, but it is also a play

on the human drive to visualize and imitate nature in the pursuit to better understand life and,

ultimately the meaning of existence.’

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ELVIS RICHARDSON Housing, architecture, surveillance, privacy, voyeurism and making art through what is essentially

code – in this case, appropriated code are themes Elvis Richardson examines in her work. In The

Invisible Hand, Melbourne based Richardson recontextualises surveillance imagery into an art video

by editing and combining sound overlays by James Hayes. The work can be viewed freely on her

website, and is included here as an example of innovation in the field of digital media art production

within a fine art context. Richardson’s practice also includes installation and the re presentation of

discarded imagery and ephemera, old videos, glass slides, photographs, trophies and the like. These

are things which were once important documentations of milestones in personal lives. The Invisible

Hand provides a contrast, by re-examining the everyday and making visible The Invisible Hand – the

political theory of self-regulating behaviour, visible.

Elvis Richardson The Invisible Hand 2014 digital print on rag paper

In her own words:

‘I have an app on my tablet called World Live Cams Pro where the user can view live streams from

security cameras located around the world. One of my favourite cameras to visit is located in a

Russian village called Beloozerski. The camera is mounted on the side of a tall residential building

with 180 degree views over a high rise housing estate situated in a semi-rural area 80 kms from

Moscow. The app allows the user to control the high definition camera; pan left and right, up, down

as well as zoom controls. Beloozerski is a popular camera and there is often a queue to take over its

controls, which is of course interesting to see what other people are looking at.

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I chose the location because it is residential and I can view people in their local environment. It’s

pretty every day stuff, kids, prams, supermarket, notice board, dogs, waiting, playground, talking,

looking. Does occupation create an emotional relationship to architecture and landscape and fosters

feelings of nostalgia and belonging. This highlighted my thoughts about housing within the context of

Australia's obsession with property/land ownership that have informed previous works.

Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990 housing in Russia was fully state owned and while

rents were very low apartment sizes were very small and based on an allocated sqm per person, also

people didn't have any choice about where they lived. Since the 1990s all Russian's have been given

the title of their rental properties for free. Following this process of individual privatisation, the

private construction/housing/mortgage market has taken hold. Since I have been recording my visits

to Beloozerski at least three new high rise buildings have been built.

My movement and control of the cameras singular heavenly view found another socio-economic

reference in the term ‘The invisible hand’ conceived of by political economist Adam Smith in

1759. The invisible hand is used today by political-economists as a theory of the self regulating

behaviour of the free market where acting in one’s self interest produces socially beneficial results

(the term was most used during the ‘greed is good’ 1980s).

Still capture from The

Invisible Hand

2014

with sound by

James Hayes

HD video 13: 41mins

The self regulating market is the basic precept of the Laissez-faire economy we are familiar with

today. Smith's metaphor proposes that individual efforts for personal profit will positively affect

society as the rich create a trickle down effect through employment and their own consumption

creating demand. And the every day consumer exercising their choices will have the power to

determine the success or failure of a product or service.

Observing Beloozerski Russia from my tablet screen in Melbourne Australia feels distant and

insignificant but I find myself feeling a connection to this place. My research identifies that the

building right below the camera is an art school, and the local Artist Union - organisations that were

established during the Soviet era still operating today. While I can't fully understand the context of

the lives people are living here, my next stage of this project is to establish more methods of

communication.’

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WARREN ARMSTRONG Sydney based artist Warren Armstrong’s practice is based in code. Armstrong was a very early

adopter of Augmented Reality as an artistic medium, creating works and curating virtual exhibitions

in real time and space using layers of imagery through mobile apps.

These image layers can be interactive, and provide artists with the ability to locate their work

anywhere in the world. All you need is a smartphone or tablet and the Layar app.

For EMIT, Warren has created a full-scale map of casualties of the current war in Gaza represented as

virtual stars in the sky above southeastern Melbourne. This map of stars stretches from Coburg in the

north to Cranbourne in the south, with Stonnington nestled beneath the suburbs of Gaza City.

Accompanying each of these stars is the name (where known), age, and brief details about the fate

of the person it memorialises. The work is hidden from the naked eye, but visible to anyone with an

iPhone, iPad, or Android smartphone or tablet, and an app called Layar that can be downloaded free

from the App Store or Google Play Store.

Once the app is downloaded, follow the instructions in the gallery to access and view the work. The

work itself, however, is best viewed not in the gallery but outside with the sky overhead. Because of

its scale, it cannot all be viewed from a single vantage point – the best the app can do is show the

stars within a 20 km radius – so it will be necessary to travel to view this work in entirety.

Once the app is downloaded people can simply open it up, search for “Gaza”, select the layer set up

for the show. Then, then hold up their phones or tablets at the designated locations, and they will

see the map of Gaza in the night sky.

The map and instructions are available on site at the gallery.

Instructions for viewing are currently unavailable

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YENNY HUBER Melbourne based Austrian/Norwegian artist Yenny Huber explores themes of balance, light and

more recently, social engagement.

Huber’s 2009 photographic series There is no light without darkness capture the vastness of

Norwegian vistas diffused with ethereal light from daylight darkness, recorded while on residency

there during the Arctic winter. The images float in transparent Perspex® boxes, often with more than

one photograph in a shallow stack inside the box, and are lit with visible strips of light emitting diode

(LED) lights. The images and chosen format of these works consciously allude to the unique

character and fragility of our environment.

Yenny Huber 3.00 pm 2009 Type C Photograph, Perspex®, LED

Yenny Huber 12.30 pm 2009 Type C Photograph, Perspex®, LED

Yenny Huber 2.30 pm 2009 Type C Photograph, Perspex®, LED

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These works were selected as an illustration of diaspora. They provide a striking contrast with

Australian urban and natural landscapes. They emit light through diodes, and reflect a cool calmness,

of another land, which like Richardson’s The Invisible Hand, highlights the lifestyle chasm between

Australia and far Northern Hemispheric environments.

Yenny Huber is also known for her large-scale photographic work, plus the facilitation and

management of educational creative community arts projects.

Joel 2014 Digital print on paper and phosphorescent paint

For EMIT, Yenny engaged young people from the local community housing estate, also featured in

Cara- Ann Simpson’s work. Over the weeks leading up the exhibition, five leaders of the Adventure

Park Leadership Program were introduced to contemporary art practice through discussions of the

artists included in the exhibition. Inspired by the artists’ methods and techniques, they captured

images of their local surroundings, made drawings and digital collages, which reflect their sense of

place and identity.

This type of artwork is called socially engaged art. In Yenny’s practice, her artwork is less focussed on

the physical outcomes than on the processes, and potential for lasting change in the lives of the

people involved. Most participants are ordinarily dislocated from examining the contribution

contemporary art production makes to society. By engaging them, a two way process occurs with

unpredictable outcomes. The work produced is part of a reflective process from both the artist and

participants and was made possible through the generous support of the City of Stonnington.

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Bree

2014

Digital print on paper

and phosphorescent

paint

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DAVID

GRIGGS

David Griggs The Circus in Barcelona was Fun

2008 Acrylic on canvas

Courtesy Station , Melbourne

David Griggs is an expat Australian artist, residing in Manila after being based in Sydney for most of

his life. Griggs has travelled extensively, making contact with communities that are facing repression,

and who are witnessing the fabric of their societies being stripped of their cultural character due to

increasing external forces.

At the age of 18 he worked for an underground newspaper, photographing poverty in North India

and Nepal. In 1996, while travelling in China, he had a near death experience and has since devoted

his life to producing paintings and photographic installations exploring the darker sides of humanity.

After being awarded the 2003 Freedman Foundation Travelling Art Scholarship, Griggs ventured to

Mae Sot, a town on the border of Thailand and Myanmar (Burma). The town is close to three

Burmese refugee camps policed by the Thai military that have detained Burmese exiles since the

1988 student uprising in Yangon (Rangoon). The artist drew inspiration from younger people in the

camps who were having their creativity quashed by Thai authorities. They reacted by investigating

alternative ways to express themselves and to engage in protest. Their stories formed the basis of

Griggs’ exhibition Destination Disaster, held at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne, in

2004 [1].

Griggs emits a palpable concern for humanity, and his work could be viewed as a kind of activism.

While it would be easy to relate his paintings visually and sometimes thematically to the work of

Cullen, the angles are completely different. Griggs possesses a first-hand sincerity, and indeed faces

poverty and inequality daily. It would be appropriate to align Grigg’s practice more with those of

Yenny Huber, Cara Ann Simpson, Joan Ross and Warren Armstrong, whose works address inequities,

voicelessness and oppression.

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David Griggs Untitled

2008 Acrylic on canvas

Courtesy Station , Melbourne

[1] Text adapted from Gallery Ecosse website viewed 04.08.2014, <http://galleryecosse.com.au/david-griggs/>

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JOAN ROSS

Joan Ross The history of the other world

2013

digital pigment print on cotton rag paper hand painted

Courtesy Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne

Joan Ross is a consummate manipulator. My first encounters with her frankly hilarious yet poignant

works were a figurative series of collage and found objects on paper back in the mid 00s. Her ability

to manipulate materials and meaning has evolved into a fascinating practice including mixed media

installations using found and already made objects, costumes and appropriated paintings. Ross adds

lurid touches of fluoro paint and Perspex® creating psychedelic dystopian Australian dramas. Her

animated paintings in the form of video works, like the rest of her oevre, simultaneously reference a

number of themes. Imperialism, colonialism, diaspora, citizenship, national pride, civic responsibility,

global warming, tagging, consumerism, appropriation and post-colonial hangovers fuel her creative

output.

Interestingly, she often uses the paintings of Joseph Lycett as a point of departure. Lycett was an

Australian painter active during the time that the British government colonized Australia. Ross

disturbs his utopian landscapes, invading the pictorial space with garish motifs and colours

associated with high-viz work-wear and warning signs. These interruptions disrupt Aboriginal

residents and vandalise the landscape as a metaphor for the continuing destruction of Australian

land and indigenous culture.

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In her own words:

‘As a child I was fascinated by the fact that the important colonial painter Joseph Lycett was a forger.

In a sense I am continuing his tradition of taking something and forging something new out of it.

One of the reasons for Lycett’s fame lay in the fact he was one of the first to depict the Aboriginal

population engaged in traditional activities, and much of my work has on some level an element of

the continuing dance of the races.

The mentality behind colonialism can manifest itself in many ways and the ongoing creep, nay,

invasion of high vis yellow and fluoro orange are a modern-day example. I didn’t vote for these

colours, yet they are everywhere!’

The fluoro colours appear to emit light, as they fluoresce when excited by the energy of light. This

effect is fleeting, as oxygen reacts chemically with the dyes in the paint, the fluorescence will

gradually diminish, as the artist hopes the destruction of the land and culture will diminish.

Joan Ross

The VIP lounge

2014

Digital hand painted print on rag paper, hand painted, ed of 5

Courtesy the artist and Michael Reid Gallery Sydney

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EMIT Contemporary art that glows

Chapel off Chapel Gallery

14 – 24 August 2014

Curated by Cash Brown as part of the City of Stonnington | Glow Winter Arts Festival

Artists: Adam Cullen, Howard Arkley, Cara- Ann Simpson, Erica Seccombe, Elvis Richardson,

Yenny Huber, Warren Armstrong, David Griggs and Joan Ross.

Adventure Park Leadership Program participants Bree, Joel, Brianna, Shania and Latisha.

Chapel off Chapel | Box Office 03 8290 7000 | Fax 03 9533 8517

12 Little Chapel Street, Prahran VIC 3181 | www.chapeloffchapel.com.au

10 am – 5 pm daily

Acknowledgements:

The curator greatly acknowledges the support of private lenders Philip Streten and Ken McGgregor.

Thank you to the Melbourne based artist representatives Karen Woodbury Gallery and Station for wonderful support and artist liaison.

Special thanks to Dominik Mersch for alerting me to Erica Seccombe’s practice. Claire Grech professional conservation services.

Natasha Faint for installing

Staff at Chapel off Chapel

Andrew Green from AG Framing, Prahran

Artist Moving Artists and Segue Art for getting everything in and out on time

Catalogue designed and published by Cash Brown | cashbrown.org

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STATION MICHAEL REID GALLERY