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In MCMLXXXIX the surface of the moon has been photographed; the photographs have been xeroxed, enlarged, then re-photographed and developed as slides; the slides have been projected onto large wood surfaces, where Clinton Garofano has painted them, in green blackboard paint and oils.
Garofano has highlighted apparently random sections of these vertical, aerial-view, and almost abstract, lunar landscapes (is the moon land?) with areas of matte or shiny finish, overlain with Estapol or thick paint suggesting rubber. He has also superimposed sections of the background, further enlarged, together with symbols of high-tech surveillance: cinematic framing devices, viewfinders, film sprocket-holes.
These paintings are at once landscapes (that most traditional form), backdrops for new video games, and, perhaps, images which cater for our fascination with the featureless dystopian plains of the transnational information order. As landscapes, they argue that "nature" is a function of the principles by which it is observed, and they refuse any hierarchical ordering of these principles, whether they be of painting and technology, or art and science.
One might have thought these were unexceptional positions, and that Garotano's paintings were to be discussed in terms of their subtleties, or the wit and confidence with which they are displayed. Instead, Peter Fuller's latest antipodean adventure means that the trenches have to be dug, again. This is not, necessarily, a bad thing (or it wouldn't be, it just one interesting, new, argument were brought to bear). Neither is it necessarily all Fuller's fault. The problem is, every time he comes here and pitches his well-appointed tent on the high moral ground, his camp-followers become tiresome.
So in a Sydney Morning Herald review, John McDonald, while he couldn't help but be