static
In line with the appeal to the familiar that has enveloped contemporary Australia, perhaps it is not surprising to observe artists returning to the canvas (or its proxy) in droves. Despite suffering from an image crisis during the installation boom of the past decade or so, picture-making is today enjoying an increasing amount of attention from curators, gallery directors and the media. Hand in hand with this renewed interest in the picture surface, is the return to the expressive terrain of high modernism-in particular minimalism. Minimalism represents the high water line for modernism in general and despite the fact that the teleological model of art which spawned it has now been widely discredited, it seems that for many young artists it epitomizes a utopia where art could delight in formal play without being bothered by the complexities of post-modern thought. The fact that it is also one of the last artistic trends to emerge prior to the challenges of second wave feminism is a disturbing aspect of this nostalgia.
While minimalism emerged in the sixties as an attempt to purge art of any intrinsic meaning, with repetition as its chief device, to the contemporary viewer its naive appeals to the sacred and the masculine bravado of such protagonists, as Richard Serra and Donald Judd should be clear. That so many of our new minimalists appear oblivious to the specifics of this history and seem comfortable to substitute formal play for critical enquiry should alarm anybody who expects of art something more than idle decoration.
It is precisely the preponderance of this blasé attitude that makes an encounter with Daniel Templeman's minimalist explorations so refreshing. In Static, his recent solo exhibition