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model pictures

Ashley Crawford
Eyeline 74
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I remember some years ago visiting Rob McHaffie’s studio in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. It was a revelatory experience; rotting fruit and vegetables, wilting plants, pieces of material, all sorts of bric-a-brac covered every surface. Some of this ‘rubbish’ was assembled in preparation for McHaffie to work his strange, surrealist magic, bringing this bizarre array of detritus to life in a series of crazed watercolour ‘portraits.’ As a practice it was a kind of Still Life in extremis; the wizened shape of a potato would become the face of a geriatric, while rotting leaves would become questionable evening-wear.

Such visual tactics are at the heart of curator Bala Starr’s intriguing ‘Model Pictures’, a show that presents four artists who experiment with scale via modelling. Featuring McHaffie, Moya McKenna, James Lynch and Amanda Marburg, ‘Model Pictures’ ostensibly explores these artists’ use of constructed tabletop tableaux, plasticine models, mannequins and studio still lifes.

As seems to be often the case in contemporary curating, Starr has bitten off a mouthful when it comes to describing her motivations behind the show: ‘The dominant interpretative model—revolving around repetition and simulation as expressing scepticism towards representation—was established early and elaborated upon little. This exhibition will explore interpretations of the practice from a critical and historical perspective’.1

Visually, it is difficult to see how ‘Model Pictures’ does this. All four of her artists graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts between 1996 and 2002, which most certainly makes for a very narrow ‘historical perspective’ from a highly specialised gene pool.

Creating a ‘fictional’ tableaux from which to paint is hardly a new thing; many of the Surrealists, to cite one example, were masters at this

Amanda Marburg, Happily afloat on the swirl of a sinking ship, 2007. Oil on canvas, 168 x 122cm. Private collection, Sydney. © The artist.

Amanda Marburg, Happily afloat on the swirl of a sinking ship, 2007. Oil on canvas, 168 x 122cm. Private collection, Sydney. © The artist.

Amanda Marburg, Giving the devil his due 6, 2004. Oil on canvas, 30 x 40cm. Private collection, Sydney. © The artist.

Amanda Marburg, Giving the devil his due 6, 2004. Oil on canvas, 30 x 40cm. Private collection, Sydney. © The artist.