The following is a brief preview - the full content of this page is available to premium users only.
Click here to subscribe...
There have been many criticisms of the postmodern phenomena of pluralism ranging from the suspicion that it caters too readily to market forces through to strictures questioning its supposed political stance. One of the most problematic areas of this field is that while pluralism presents all art as being of equal value, it must then, by rights, see all art as equally valueless. While this smacks of a certain eclecticism it can be argued that the devolution of the art object is not a bad thing. It is questions pertaining to how we value and view art that are at the crux of the exhibition, Real Art.
Real Art was an exercise, which sought not only to explore concepts of pluralism, but also to extend the possibilities of those concepts to their fullest—to probe, what curator Graham CoulterSmith in his catalogue essay describes as 'radical pluralism'. As a delineation of this idea the works selected for the show were widely disparate; the artists chosen, drawn equally from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, were a cartel not commonly exhibited together and their works stressed the importance of a multiplicity of sources and mediums.
The exhibition used works that stretched conventional notions of the two-dimensional and which attempted to broaden the perspective of the artwork in a deliberately nebulous mode. A common persuasion within the grouping was a certain self-awareness, an adoption of definitive strategies if you like, designed to demonstrate their role in the processes of the interpretant. They contrived an inversion of visual languages and metaphors aimed at constantly undermining preconceived notions and traditional boundaries.
The works of John Stafford, complicity..., and receivership: security for the age we live