Recycling modernism
The idea of a curator or scholar selecting a group of works that share some characteristic or which together make an interesting statement has had a rather long legacy. Two such exhibitions that come to mind immediately are Kynaston McShine's exhibition Primary Structure at the Jewish Museum in New York in 1966 and which marked the public emergence of Minimal Art, and Lucy Lippard's Eccentric Abstraction at the Fischbach Gallery, in New York in the same year. Eccentric Abstraction looked at works that were considered anti-formalist, such as the fibre glass and cheesecloth pieces of Eva Hesse and the polyester and wire works of Keith Sonnier. Strange Harmony of Contrasts is in line with this type of exhibition.
Nicholas Baume, curator of the exhibition, has placed together the works of six contemporary Australian artists with the shared characteristic that all display an interest in the history of art, in particular, twentieth century art. To some extent all these artists incorporate elements of formalism plus, in some cases, what Baume refers to as the 'modern obsession with the grid'. Further, the works all call upon an environmental relationship with the architectural space in which they are installed and highlight the viewer's relationship to them.
As the exhibition is being held in a number of different spaces, I would think that its success will depend on how well the space is employed in each venue and the proper balance of work to setting. For example, I saw this exhibition at the Canberra School of Art where the space was just a little too cavernous for the installation. One work by Scott Redford, The Only Human Attribute, a series of minimal looking