A SUM AND ITS PARTS
julia gorman, james lynch, andrew mcqualter, ricky swallow
This is Rubik's first Sydney exhibition in a commercial context. Needless to say it is a long way from the group's initial, perhaps more 'underground' origins. In fact Rubik, comprising the Melbourne artists Julia Gorman, James Lynch, Andrew McQualter and Ricky Swallow, began life as a quasi-zine to which other artists were invited to contribute. These publications are on show at Sarah Cattier alongside the individual work of the artists mentioned. It is instructive to consider their collective tone and thematic scope outside of this show. In it are some wryly illuminating works. It would be misguided however to conceive Rubik's latest offering as representing a unified collective. Missing in this instance is the exciting and unpredictable discursiveness of the Rubik publications. It is as if the show's success demanded strategies additional to those offered by the conventional gallery setting.
Upon entering Sarah Cattier the viewer is first confronted by work of Andrew McQualter. His delicately traced images in blues and browns line the facing wall. As a series they depict the artist Lygia Clark known for her paper 'wearables'. McQualter makes analogies between Clark's deft but otherwise absurd endeavour and his own role as a contemporary practitioner. For him this is a role distinguished as much by 'doing' as by doing nothing-in particular. However the artist's impersonal technique deprives the images of their affect. More engaging is McQualter's single large tracing of a figure holding a sheet of slides to the 'light'. The image resonates from its subtle and knowing interplay of contradictions. The figure represented holds the transparent slides against the white light of the gallery's solid wall while we return simply to looking and to surface gazing