The following is a brief preview - the full content of this page is available to premium users only.
Click here to subscribe...
I don’t get Peter Alwast’s title, Working Like a Tiger. I can’t help but think of Rob Sitch in the dgeneration’s The Late Show c.1992 and a particular skit when he impersonated Pakistani cricketer Imran Khan who, when asked directly about about his game, would always end up describing his lovemaking as ‘like a tiger, like a tiger’. Perhaps Alwast is suggesting that he has been working very passionately on the exhibition? It is a complex show comprising a wall drawing continuing around the gallery’s periphery, paintings, photographs, and a series of transparent walls built inside the small space. Like Khan, Alwast has his speciality (painting—Khan’s was bowling) but plays the role of an all-rounder and aims to excel across all facets of the game.
It has been a long time between innings for Alwast who last made a show in Brisbane, his home town, in 1999. In the same year he was awarded a Samstag scholarship and in 2000 headed over to New York to undertake MFA studies at the Parsons School of Design. He stayed in New York until earlier this year and Working Like a Tiger is his first show since returning.
The show includes around twenty works—photographs, silicone and enamel paintings on mylar and a large cut-out—installed on a series of transparent temporary walls built inside the small gallery. The temporary walls are arranged to create two corridor-like spaces and two small enclosed rooms. With a group of people viewing the show simultaneously, as no doubt happened at the opening, I could imagine that an intention of the transparent walls was to allow the viewer’s eyes to shift from focussing on a work in the