David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.


13 September 2013

bLOG post full of holes

           
I read the news today oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
I'd love to turn you on
 
A Day In The Life
Lennon & McCartney (1967)
            
     
 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something ...
 
 LOGOS/HA HA

The image above accompanied Robert Nelson's review ('Monuments to the failure of modernist architecture' : The Age, 4 September 2013) of Monika Sosnowska : Regional Modernities at ACCA.
      
       
The caption The Age placed under this image was : 
Facade, a crumpled metal sculpture, portrays the failure of the curtain wall.

We were talking here about this photograph/ this image/ this image and caption text/ this sculpture/ this installation/ this theatre set/ this performance event/ this Theatre of the Actors of Regard.  One of our team referred us to the Melbourne artist Guy Stuart's Lattice full of holes, exhibited at Harald Szeemann's 1971 Kaldor Project 2 at the National Gallery of Victoria. 

The NGV acquired Lattice full of holes in 1977. Searching for an image of it, we visited the NGV online Collection page for works by Guy Stuart. We found there, instead, a meta-lattice full of holes : a grid of seven word-works, each Image not available and these with three CHANGE VIEW options.

click image to enlarge      
             
Looking elsewhere (here) we found a photo of Lattice full of holes as installed at the NGV in the 1971 exhibition. (The NGV Collection page gives the date of this work, exhibited in 1971, as 1972.) That's it hanging on the back wall, in the image below.


             
 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something ...
 
 LOGOS/HA HA

"Harald Szeemann was the most celebrated and influential curator of the late 20th century. With a career spanning almost 50 years, he invented the modern idea of exhibition making; pioneered the display of conceptual art and performance; created some of the first cross-disciplinary, non-chronological exhibitions; and experimented with non-museum spaces. For Project 2 in 1971, at the launching point of Szeemann’s long career as he prepared for the documenta 5 exhibition in Kassel, John Kaldor invited him to visit Australia and curate an exhibition of the latest contemporary Australian art. The exhibition, I want to leave a nice well-done child here, was shown in Sydney and Melbourne and was the first major exhibition of conceptual art in an Australian museum."

read full article (here)
       
*Note also our recent post (here) about the first Conceptual art exhibition in Australia: Burn / Cutforth / Ramsden at Pinacotheca gallery, Melbourne in 1969


Guy STUART with Lattice full of holes at the 2012 Heide MoMA exhibition Less is More: Minimal and post-Minimal Art in Australia.

Here are a couple more moments from the 1971 NGV installation photo: 
      
1. grid-panelled exhibition wall with an open door (Lattice full of holes) and an Actor of Regard (Lattice full of holes)



 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something ...
 
 LOGOS/HA HA
          
2. exhibition display panel with a grid of articulated projection-spaces (Lattice full of holes) and a grounded semi-in/visible Actor of Regard (Lattice full of holes)
        

      
 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something ...
 
 LOGOS/HA HA