INSIDE MUMBLING RAIN: MAX CALLAGHAN
EXPANSIONISM III: SLIPPAGE
VISITORS OF THE NIGHT: MONIKA MORGENSTERN
OCTOBER 2018
As humans, our understanding of the world is based entirely on our perceptions. Through our unique versions of reality, we form opinions, beliefs, relationships, a sense of our own identity and of how we fit into the world around us. Perceptions are the lenses through which we find meaning. The works of the four artists featured in FELTspace’s October exhibitions deal with notions of perception and the quest to find meaning through our internal, external and spiritual experience.
Max Callaghan’s exhibition, Inside mumbling rain, is an anthology of personal memories, inner speech and emotions. His series of paintings and sculptures comprises elements of figuration and abstraction, looking to the modernist styles of Picasso and Matisse, as well as contemporary artists like James Drinkwater, for inspiration. His interplay of smooth and textured surfaces — combining painted areas with papier mâché and cardboard — gives form and depth to his work, enforcing the notion of a painterly scrapbook in which memories are collected and arranged. On entering the Front Gallery, we notice the array of muted colours and abstract forms that fill Callaghan’s canvases. As we wander around the perimeter of the room, it becomes clear that these enigmatic artworks are anything but muted in nature.
Callaghan’s works seem to talk to one another; a series of voices rattling on ritualistically, one not really listening to the other. Perhaps this feeling is evoked by their meticulously descriptive titles. Many of them read like shopping lists, detailing every element like a train of thoughts passing through one’s mind. Callaghan’s painting, Vitamin C, depicts a shopping list that the artist had written and attempted to remember. Pomelo fruits, rolls of paper towels, a jar of peanut butter and a bottle of detergent are arranged in a grid-like pattern, giving a glimpse into the mundane thoughts that run through the artist’s and, similarly, our minds from day to day. By weaving a kind of symbolistic language through his work - in the form of simple abstract shapes and domestic imagery - Callaghan communicates the thoughts and perceptions that form his inner world.
The work, Me and my mum cry in separate places over the same things, draws on memories and experiences shared by the artist and his mother. Flesh-coloured shapes resembling body parts reference the TV series, 24 Hours in Emergency, which they would watch together; an indigo-coloured square nods to a Joni Mitchell album cover, while a yellow border covered with green Christmas trees alludes to a string of Christmas cards that his mother kept on her mantlepiece. Through this collage of memorabilia, Callaghan demonstrates the human habit of attaching memories and emotions to everyday objects, enriching them with new layers of meaning that go beyond their basic functionality.
The notion of perception is taken further in the painting Upset people, where Callaghan reflects on the negative voices that manifest in our minds when we worry what others think of us. The work depicts a series of beige-coloured figures with “upset” faces, reflecting on our often skewed perceptions of how we are seen by others. Further, in Carpet of not knowing very much, Callaghan has painted all the world flags he could remember, pointing out that we are so often consumed in our inner worlds that we understand very little about other people and their cultures.
As if responding to this very point, SLIPPAGE — a collaborative project by Australian-born, Chinese-Vietnamese artists Phuong Ngo and Hwafern Quach — coaxes us out of the confines of our own minds and into a global setting. Located in the Back Gallery of FELTspace, Expansionism III explores perceptions of the current geopolitical and economic climate in the Asia region. The exhibition comprises of two installations, which examine the current aims of the Chinese government to enhance its economic, military and geographic imperialism.
Upon entering the Back Gallery, we are greeted with a mass of 2664 porcelain sculptures tumbling over piles of sand like the ruins of a monument. Titled Mooncake, the work references the ubiquitous food product of Chinese origin which, in line with the spread of Chinese occupation and influence, is now eaten in many parts of Asia. Each celadon-glazed “mooncake” is beautifully formed and intricate, cast from traditional hand-carved moulds sourced from North Vietnam. In a manner reminiscent of Ai Weiwei’s large-scale installations, Mooncake is an ongoing 10-part work, initially consisting of 888 mooncakes. With each reiteration of the work, a further 888 are added to symbolise the rise of China.
Suspended ominously over the mounds of cascading mooncakes is an oddly shaped form resembling a skull with a large tongue sticking out. The object appears strange, almost alien, and formidable in its grandiose, gold-plated splendour. The sculpture is titled, The Cow’s Tongue, drawing on the vernacular term used throughout Southeast Asia to describe the Chinese-claimed territory in the South China Sea. With China itself seen as “the cow’s head”, The Cow’s Tongue symbolises China’s political, economic and geographic expansion.
The collaboration between the two Melbourne-based artists is seamless — Ngo provides his political and conceptual grounding while Quach lends her technical prowess in ceramics. Together they interpret the current preoccupations of the Asiatic region, translating the vernacular of their countries of heritage into a new visual language that can be perceived by a wider international audience.
On display in the FELTdark window space is Monika Morgenstern’s Visitors of the Night. The 7 minute-long video is hauntingly mesmeric and fascinating to watch. Ghostly silhouettes float in and out of the video frame, obscured behind a soft haze of slowly morphing colour. These elusive beings move, pausing at moments to peer into the beyond, but always separated from us as if behind a veil. As the video loops on repeat, one begins to make out the shadows of figures from inside the gallery, while reflections from across the street play off the screen. The work seems to interact with its surroundings, revealing a curious interplay between the real and the imaginary.
In Visitors of the Night, Morgenstern explores the notion of the “mystical” and attempts to uncover how it exists in our post-modern, Westernised society. Using the city of Adelaide as her setting, the artist questions the possibility of a hidden dimension lurking among the historical buildings of generations past. Having worked across various mediums, Morgenstern’s use of photography and the moving image lends itself beautifully in conveying a sense of the mystical, while making reference to the medium’s historical use as a means of capturing unexplainable phenomena.
Morgenstern’s interest in the mystical experience steps outside the confines of religious institutions, and into the innate human fascination with the unknown and intangible. Through encounters with her work, she provides the viewer with a window into the physical and psychological manifestations of the spiritual experience, prompting them to consider their own connection to the mystical world.
Through unique lenses of perception, the four artists in FELTspace’s October exhibitions take us on a quest to find meaning — in ourselves, in the people, objects and places that surround us, in the socio-cultural paradigms that pervade our experience and in the intangible world of the spiritual and mystical. Their works examine the layered and complex nature of perception, beginning with the artist’s expression of their individual experience and resulting in the viewer’s interpretation and response to the artwork before them.