Europe & back
Far away, on the lee-side of urban life, the Monash University Gallery inhabits a desolate space. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why it has recently been making spaces to conject about the dreamworld of European culture. In 1987 Elaine Merkus curated a show titled Here & There. It displayed the work of 17 Australian painters influenced by their residencies overseas. This year the gallery has focussed its space more closely on three installation artists, Robert Owen, John Lethbridge and Tony Trembath.
Jennepher Duncan directed the artists to draw on their overseas experience and to present to the visitors of the Clayton gallery what they have generated as a result of their work in Europe. The visitor was given a shining white folder. Its compartment contained a booklet for each of the artists. Like a modern tourist, enticed by the travel agent's promotional material, the visitor had the smooth documentation with which to contrast his or her own subjective impressions.
Echo/Echo by Robert Owen is heralded by John Barbour as an experiment in 'fractal geometry', the natural expression of identical forms at different levels. Owen placed two scenes in a room skirted by a strip of mirror that read continuously, 'I change, I am the same.' One scene was a pile of glass jars, each one seemingly transparent, but as a mass achieving a density that rendered the total in glistening opacity. The other was a rock supporting two small clay jars separated by a square of glass. The shadow of the rock fell on a pool of aquamarine pigment that extended the shape of the shadow. Advised by the catalogue of Owen's experience in Strasbourg, this