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Probably the most famous statement from an art critic in the past few years is Mathew Collings' comment that Lucian Freud's paintings are 'brown'. Apparently, Collings 'just wanted to say something normal about him'. Mathew Collings is a very fashionable critic because he is so good at bringing everything down to earth.
Sarah Crowest and Akira Akira, debuting at Downtown art space, have put together a cheerfully down-to-earth show. The exhibition comes across as a nicely humoured exercise in self-portraiture. There is no angsty delving into self, just a pastiche of bits and pieces from their domestic lives. Yet, it does give a sense of some confusion between dream time and wake time. Surreal would be too stronger word, but you could get really Freudian here...
Personality leaks from both their work in a parodied, not altogether serious way. Sarah's in how the sense of touch relates to colour. Hand made qualities are emphasised in all her works, as is the feel of her materials, and she consistently invokes a cosy padded place. In contrast, Akira chooses polished surfaces, geometry, bright lights and projection to present himself as a miniature person in a big hard bright world. It is a neat show and it is nice that despite the fact that both artists are obviously highly accomplished at producing slick aesthetic objects that would reproduce well in all the art magazines and get lapped up on Adelaide's hungry art market, they haven't done so. Unpretentiously, both of them have tried to aim at something a little less normal than just good market research and invested a little more in their work than mere consumer desirability.
Look, I am going to say this thing that I feel quite deeply: the shallow superficiality of much of today's successful art is an unctuous manifestation of postmodernity. But that sounds more than a little romantic, and perhaps even pretentious, in these down to earth post-cynical times where it is totally accepted that art is made only for its market.
James Strickland
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