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ALEX GAWRONSKI
Abstrakt Attack Kabinett 23 October to 29 November Sydney-based artist and writer, Alex Gawronski, has over the past decade, created a substantial body of work exploring notions of representation, social and cultural power, and mass production. This work explores the covert relationship between art and war. Inspired (infuriated) by recent world events, in this installation the artist attempts to address the conundrum of representing politics in art. In 2000, Alex was in residence at the Australia Council Studio Residency in Rome and was represented in Primavera 2001 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Alex has been involved with the artist run spaces First Draft, Sydney, (co-Director 1996-1998) and Blaugrau (founding member and co-Director) and is a regular contributor to national contemporary visual arts magazines, including the Sydney visual arts editor of RealTime magazine 1998-2002. REVIEW Abstrakt Attack Kabinett was a room/situation within the situation of the gallery: a purpose built three-sided room, the fourth wall left open though the square was psychically completed by a large, easel-mounted picture taking most of that fourth wall's place. Within this small, private, studio environment were some pages opened from art history books discussing Cezanne in reverent and minute detail. These were mounted on one of the side walls. On the other side wall was a framed black and white reproduction of a Cezanne Mont Saint Victoire landscape transmuting into a camouflage pattern and beside that a transcription of art-world hesitation and demurral about the possibility of 'political' art. A diagrammatized account (of a Cezanne landscape?) replete with arrows indicating compositional vectors projected from a central hole in its surface video images taken from TV onto the large easel. The images were coloured explosions in the night sky over Baghdad, possibly from the Gulf War. Abstrakt Attack Kabinett successfully suggested the isolation and hermeticism of 'studio' art - and asked for more. Ken Bolton PUBLICATION Invitation/ Catalogue: A3 full colour poster style with statement and images by the artist. MEDIA Wendy Walker "Cherished off-cuts of family life" The Advertiser, 26 November 2003, p 107 Stephanie Radok, The Adelaide Review, No 243, December 2003 Chris Reid, Broadsheet Vol 33 No 1, 2004, page 59 |
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above: documentation: installation details |
Documentation Photography by Peter Farrow |