MOP vs Pompom

Overview

Artist-run MOP Projects has been lauded since its early days, while Galerie Pompom has just turned up — newly nestled in what was once MOP's tiny front gallery. With some pretty obvious cross-over between them in staff and cement, the competition between the two galleries is unlikely to be too rancourous. But still, as the Art & Australia Collection 2004-2012 and Galerie Pompom's first Group Show inaugurate a new era of synergy and dissonance, a question arises: how do the two spaces stack up?

Galerie Pompom is just big enough for a desk, three walls and glass doors. Within, Isabella Pluta's Untitled #2 (sham ruin) duplicates rustic awe of rural outskirts by drowning a natural arch in ethereal colour, Sarah Mosca applies binoculars to a similar scene and and Rochelle Haley's Diamondback lays out a prostrate turtle, echoing its natural symmetries with an encrusted gem. The space may be small, but there's a huge selection of art here considering its size, boding well for future solo shows.

If Pompom is primarily a best-of, so is MOP's current offering. Its roomier premises are occupied by artworks originally featured on Art and Australia's back cover, having gone on to win the Art & Australia/Credit Suisse Private Banking Contemporary Art Award. Emma White's the Plastic Arts is a surprisingly effective claymation loop, Grant Stevens' the way combines a working car stereo with three glossy panels of forest scene and contemplative music and Archibald winner Del Kathryn Barton draws an eerie, hawk-like girl holding a bird, keen stares whipping back from the canvas. But Christian de Vietri's 2nd Law steals the show. A meditation on basic thermodynamics (in short, things get messy) it is a life-size, melted fridge. Rubber seals stay intact and rear radiator panels stretch, leaving it to ooze away like half a white scoop of vanilla ice cream.

It's an unique front-runner for this gallery face-off, the disfigured fridge winning it for MOP. But despite the overwhelming power of a single whitegood, Pompom remains a new space with plenty of promise.

Galerie Pompom is open Wednesday—Saturday, 11-5, MOP opens 1-5 Sunday & Monday, 1-6 Thursday—Saturday. The Art & Australia show closes March 25, the Pompom's group show on April 1.