3 Exhibitions

Overview

MOP has a lot of possibilities for the thrill-seeking art enthusiast. For one thing, you can walk straight through from the Abercrombie Street entrance to a point where the gallery stops and there's a roughly 4-foot drop into a back-alley, so it's good for getaways. And sure, also, in a less shifty sense, they provide excitement by way of emerging artists and those in mid-career without commercial representation.

But say you do actually want to use MOP as part of a getaway plan, the current hang would be pretty much ideal. Walk in, collect a tiny torch and duck through the black curtains into the dark of Gallery 2, where Wayde Owen's The Shape I'm In offers viewers a set of wall-mounted constructions in which heads and faces are surrounded and surmounted by wooden frames and geometric models that make cool and scary shapes when you play with the aforementioned torch. Your pursuer, already baffled, then has to deal with the confusing content and absorbingly lovely colours and compositions of Emily Portmann's Play Terrain, a series in which the artist has photographed herself acting out parts of children's games in ex-industrial spaces on Cockatoo Island. And then there's Bababa International's New Movement — and what an 'and then' it is! A project exploring the interplay between transport and the occupation of space, it's comprised of noticeboards of diagrams and drawings, of models for future constructions, of photographs, and of cakes(!), and there are going to be interactive shoe-making workshops so you can maybe make yourself some more cushioned and aerodynamic kicks for the big jump and final chase down the alley.

Image: Bababa International, Problem World Publicity Image 2011