Mikala Dwyer, Louise Hearman, Rosemary Laing, Ricky Swallow, Louise Weaver
Ricky Swallow makes very funny art. Model for a Sunken Monument, a huge bust of Darth Vadar, which appeared in Contempora5 on the heels of the merchandising explosion that accompanied The Phantom Menace, seems to melt into the floor, exhausted by the burden of its failed attempt to signify evil. It has been robbed of effective power by a culture willing to slap images of The Dark Side onto t-shirts, calendars and coffee cups, anything-so long as it sells. Furthermore, placement in an art museum, where objects are yanked from the site of their primary effect and held up for cool contemplation, rubs salt into the wound. Poor old Vadar. This is a gracious monument to a failed devil. All of Swallow's pieces are variations on this theme. They suggest the moral contest lies, not in the on-screen battle between good and evil, but in the slippery network of commerce/culture which feeds ravenously on our desires and simultaneously scrambles to make sense of it all via the story-telling mechanisms of the gallery and museum.
Also investigating the spaces of the museum, Mikala Dwyer's installation recalls the minimalist project of involving the viewer in a whole-body type of perception. This project, extended in installation art to the contemplation of relationships between perception and the act of 'reading', is territory Dwyer occupies extremely well. A billowing organza wall-garment delicately weighs towards me, seems to fold me back into the room behind. This room is Iffytown, through which I must bend, curve, pick my way and peer. Outside, on a gravelled terrace, blankets inside slatted wooden cocoons suggest this could be someone's home. The success of the work lies in the way it