The Casula Powerhouse is a large luxurious space for viewing and appreciation of artworks and it is the perfect place for the Blake Prize, an exhibition which requires both closeup and distance. The 80 works are spread across the many spaces of the venue and one can easily wander and be lost in reverie.
The Blake Prize engages contemporary artists with ideas of religion and spirituality and there are 80 finalists. This, the 65th Blake Prize Finalist Exhibition, is free and open to the public, running until Sunday 1 July at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre.
One commanding work is by Clache Raong. Re Member. 2017 This is a wall mounted, arresting collection of mobile devices , moving images and electrical cables and power boards . “ Ancestors unknown beckon and are beckoned in return”. There are 18 video loops , simultaneously playing through 18 devices, 3 ipad sized and then 15 split off into phone sized sections. The smaller selections, fade in and out, with varying rapidity so that the glimpse can be fleeting or more in closeup. The modern connections to antecedents is clearly elucidated in the visibility of the wires and cables.
Maree Azzopardi‘s The Year of the Dog . (Charcoal and ink on Hanhemule paper.) Evoking “both religious hypocrisy in our midst and almost mocking it with reference to the Chinese New Year- Year of the Dog”. This entry has a confronting textual imagery. In black and grey permutations, a dog faced prone character is in the lap of a woman wearing a niqab. Historical and artistic experience lead one to believe that the holding is gentle but as the work grows in impact, perhaps not. It also includes crucifixion images which the eye reacts to in the way of Chinese characters.
Deborah Prior. An incomplete family history. 2017. A blanket spills on the floor from a knotty, ruched attachment to the wall. A legacy of her grandmother’s “cache of woollen blankets “ and all they mean, her cutting of small circles and reassembling is described as a “long term meditation on my Grandmother’s lineage”. The search for perfection in a scissored circle, an industrial reflection of a life lived.
Laura Carthew . (무궁화) Has entered a video work of power. Titled and inspired by the Korean National Flower, mugunghwa. A trio of green clad women on a plinth divest themselves of large petals and draw blood like scarves to cover their chest. Moving down from the box on which they stand , they open and climb into the box . All three. Leaving a green 4 tiered sculptural form littered with petals .
Jules Boag. The Space Between. 2016. Face mounted digital print is a large, superbly crafted photo . In the outskirts of Marrakech a man sits and reads the Koran . The dots of the hundreds of satellite dishes reflect cold and white on the warmth of the pale salmon brown houses, green distance and sun dappled rock in the foreground. The quote from Neil Gaiman’s ‘American Gods’ speaks of sacrifice . Beauty, mindfulness and calm evoked.
Patrick Hall. Press Upon Me. 2018. (Pictured) This work was one which took my imagination and held me in contemplation for a very long time. Looking like a raised front painting until you press the button, then the 35mm slide mounts, electric motors , LEDs, glass and plywood slowly whirr into movement behind each slide to evoke the vastness of the night sky . With the natural inclination of humanity to yearn to discern a pattern, one reads the text below the slides searching for meaning. In much the same way as our pre-telescope ancestors searched the sky for meaning .
