Despite the hackneyed claims for this year's Primavera exhibition as being 'inspired by street and youth culture', its attitude is fresh and loose. Curator David Broker has framed the work within the context of popular culture, which foregrounds a readability for the works, and makes conceptuality a subtext.
The playfulness of the show is signalled at the ubiquitously-orange feature entry wall, where the intra text tells us that the background for the work includes 'Pop Art, graffiti writing and "culture jamming'". And right there is one of Tim Silver's skateboards cast from blue Crayola crayon propped against the wall (one of seven scattered throughout the exhibition, several in pieces).
The annual Primavera exhibition, now in its 11th year, is for artists thirty-five years and under. It is generally guest curated, although I cannot recall when, if ever, its determination has been thematic, beyond a signature marketing device. The exhibitions have introduced the work of emerging artists to a Sydney audience, as well as showing work by artists who, at thirty-five, were pretty well up there; and there have been some gems, but nothing I'd call risky. But maybe that's just me. Still, it would have been nice to see something that genuinely jammed the cultural channels, because even the artists with the highest degree of street-cred (James Dodd, Arlene TextaQueen, Roderick Bunter & Ben Frost) all have significant gallery-based exhibition histories. But that's cool.
A quick roundup: Nat & Ali's garden-setting installation with bushrocks, potted palms and trickling waterfall was cute, the birdsong soundtrack from Tropicana wine cooler cask speakers a nice formal touch (with their palm trees and sunset graphics). A pair of garlanded swings was used as a