SUPERMArt: The Art Supermarket - The Blaxland Gallery, Myer Melbourne - May 14 to June 2 1992

SUPERMart was an exhibition curated by Mikala Dwyer and Shiralee Saul and was part of Melbourne's 'Visual Arts Next Wave Festival'.  

The exhibition was 'an inquiry into the nature of contemporary art practice, the current status of the art object, and the networks of commodification, promotion and market strategy which surrounds it.....a series of industrial shelving units (will be) arranged to create an impression of a conventional supermarket...installed on the shelves will be a series of discrete objects fabricated by approx. 30 emerging artists from Sydney and Melbourne...most of these works will be multiples' (exhibition rationale, Shiralee Saul, 1992).

So my contribution consisted of 5 rolls of toilet paper - I unrolled each one and stencilled a different repeating pattern on to each strip of paper, then rolled them back up. They disintegrated about 5 years ago, when water got through our roof during renovations....

An A3 sized 'supermarket flyer' was produced as the exhibition catalogue.

LINEAGE: Works by Helga Groves, Justin Trendall, Kate Mackay - 200 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy - Friday 1st May to Saturday 30th May 1992

LINEAGE was an exhibition with Helga Groves and Justin Trendall at Gertrude Street in Melbourne.  I exhibited the paintings that I had shown in the "Grammar of Ornament" at First Draft WEST the previous year.

Although I had made the work to fit specifically within the First Draft space - and had managed to sell a couple of pieces - I figured that I could work out a hanging arrangement that would work within the Gertrude St space once I arrived.  Eerily the truncated version fitted exactly onto the two side walls of Gertrude St......do do do do (cue Twilight Zone music....).

Below is the text from the room sheet that we produced.  I think Justin wrote it? (please let me know otherwise...) and why were there no writing credits included?....

Again, I have no images of the exhibition...except in my mind...(I was particularly hard up for cash in those days and couldn't afford frivolities like documentation - it was hard enough getting to Melbourne - thank god the digital camera finally got invented...), but here are some images of separate pieces from the show.

  

oil on canvas, 25cm x  18cm, 1991

oil on canvas, 25cm x 20cm, 1991

oil on canvas, 25cm x 35cm, 1991

oil on canvas, 25cm x 50cm, 1991

FACT: An Installation Publication #6 - Touring Exhibition - April 4th to Dec 20th, 1992

Fact was an exhibition co-ordinated by James Harley and Shiralee Saul.  It travelled to Linden Gallery, Melbourne; Umbrella Studios, Townsville; 24Hours Contemporary Art Centre, Darwin; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide; Photospace, Canberra; Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth; Chameleon Contemporary Art Space, Hobart; Ars Multiplicata, Sydney and A.C.C.A., Melbourne.  Approximately 100 participants were invited to respond to the  'Fact Scenario'

The resulting works were to be displayed on Amiga computers, as well as in a hard-copy publication.

Remember that the internet didn't exist at this time, at least not for ordinary people - and displaying works on a computer was pretty cutting-edge!  The exhibition was sponsored by the Australian Network for Art and Technology and Commodore Business Machines - now it just sounds quaint....

Part of the invitation to exhibit emphasised that 'images which incorporate text may lose resolution-quality when digitized to install in the computer; i.e. they will become less legible, thus becoming more pictorial rather than textual'  Visitors to the exhibition were able to access individual images and texts via a bubble-jet printer.

I hoped that in re-reading all of the exhibition information, that would eventually remember the work that I submitted - unfortunately I haven't and I don't think I've ever seen the resulting publication....

FIRST DRAFT 1985-1991 - First Draft WEST - December 4 to December 22, 1991

This was the final exhibition at First Draft WEST under our directorship.  It contained work by as many of the former directors that we could find - Roger Crawford, Tess Horwitz, Narelle Jubelin, Paul Saint (1986-1987), Adriane Boag, Mikala Dwyer, Astrid Kriening, Joanne McCambridge (1988-1989), Vicente Butron, Helga Groves, Janet Shanks and myself (1990-1991).

We handed on the gallery to Linda Goodman, Simone Patterson, Rod Jacka, Penny Thwaite and Richard Dabek.

I have no idea what I put in the show....

THE GRAMMAR OF ORNAMENT - First Draft WEST, 39 Parramatta Rd Annandale - 23rd October to 10th November 1991

This was my first real major solo exhibition.  It was in the downstairs space at First Draft WEST.  It consisted of two long rows of paintings that were made to fit exactly onto the length of each wall space.  The paintings were all 25cm tall but of varying lengths.  They were hung next to each other without any spaces, so that they made two very long paintings. 

The layered imagery was taken from a book called 'The Grammar of Ornament' by Owen Jones that was originally published in 1856; which was an attempt to catalogue "the innumerable and ever-varying phases of Ornamental Art".  One of Jones's aims was to "arrest... that unfortunate tendency of our time to be content with copying...", so of course I set about not only copying his copies, but layering them so that as many of them as possible could be used. (You have to remember that Post-modernism was all the rage, it was your duty to present as much out-of-context information as possible...). The smaller back wall of the gallery space had one single square painting (50cm x 50cm?) that was made up of all the patterns and colours that had been used throughout the other works.

I remember that it was quite a complicated logistical problem to construct all of the canvases to fit within the wall space, as I had to take into account the bricked-up fire place and electrical meter box - I did have to quickly make one last painting to make it all fit.

Below are some images of separate pieces - I still have plenty of these paintings left - there were so many!  There was also a video made of the exhibition - I have had it transferred to dvd - it's a little blurry, but it is 20 years old!  I have also included a picture of the invite and room sheet which were painstakingly (and a little crookedly...) typed, pasted together and photocopied - thank god the computer got invented...

MICROCOSM -Garry Anderson Gallery, Sydney - 1991

All I remember is that this was a large and diverse exhibition of small works...that's it....

VOLUME I & II - Limited edition artists' pages published by Vicente Butron & Janet Shanks - 1991

Volume I & II was a suite of artists' pages in a limited edition of 50.  Each Volume contained A4 sized prints by 8 artists which were presented in a plain brown envelope...

The prints were curated and published by Vicente Butron and Janet Shanks, with the envelopes printed by Simon Hanly.

Volume I consisted of prints by Vicente Butron, Simon Hanly, Melinda Harper, Stephen Little, John Nixon, Kerrie Poliness, William Seeto and Janet Shanks.

Volume II consisted of prints by Stephen Bram, Graeme Cornwall, Helga Groves, Anne MacDonald & Chris Fortescue, myself, Christopher Snee, Gary Wilson and Constanze Zikos.

My work was created by adding paint to a piece of flocked wallpaper and taking prints from it.

Kate Mackay - Untitled - 1991 

Stephen Bram - Untitled - 1991

Constanze Zikos - #91 - 1991