Never-Never Land (A Collaboration with Utopian Slumps)

Overview

Ushered in by Whitney Houston's 'I Want to Dance with Somebody' and a low hum of industrial sounds coming from a kitschy suit of armour, it’s a world of repurposed materials at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery. Enlisting a host of inventive young artists, Never-Never-Land (in collaboration with Utopian Slumps) is a meditation on modernism. From the clean lines of Esther Stewart's abstract paintings to Dylan Martorell's whirlwind of bric-a-brac, cultural commodities of the 20th century are dolled up, dressed down and picked apart. (Although, I should clarify that Houston's dance-pop anthem is actually part of Clark Beaumont's show, Heart to Heart, running concurrently.)

Collage and cultural anthropology come together in the practice of both Sarah Contos and Dylan Martorell. Contos's soft sculptures are stitched with sequins and printed with bold graphics and advertising slogans. She digs primitivism out from under postcolonialism, adding to the mix contemporary questions of mass media and woman-as-object. Her screenprint on linen quilts are stamped with sensationalist headlines, while her women wear lavishly jewelled masks and glittery spectacles that bring to mind Salvador Dali's famed eye brooch. With her smaller sculptures saluting the motor industry and ancient artefacts alike, it as if she is building her own mythology of old and new.

Probably the most attention-grabbing work is Martorell’s Negentropicalista, a costume comprising of just about everything. There’s a beaded sugar skull, a foil-covered Buddha and a hockey stick, to name a few. This eclectic mash-up of objects also includes a soundtrack, a kind of low buzzing punctuated with sharp noises. Although it’s a little disconcerting at first, the synaesthetic patterning of colour and sound seems to unify the work.

Moving away from these voodoo-infused practices, Stewart revisits the hard edges of high modernism. Juggling geometric shapes, her abstract paintings are inspired by maps and architecture, seeming to mimic open-plan living spaces. Then there's Sanne Mestrom’s bronze and ceramic sculptures. Working off casts and copies, her ambiguous vessels explore the femininity of form. On their wire frame plinths, there’s an interesting play of light and shadow. And somewhere between high art and creative chaos is Jake Walker. Combining found objects and loose brushwork, he seems to playfully mimic the monochromes of the modern masters and the 'process' aesthetic of abstract expressionism.

From the tribal tenor of Martorell's work to Stewart’s appropriation of maps, there’s a sense of geographical roaming. While it’s a little hard to unify this show aesthetically — leaping, as it does, from the junkyard to the art museum — perhaps it's testament to the densely packed energies of modernism. Also, if you manage to catch Clark Beaumont's live performance In The Dark, you'll be hyper-aware of how this show is curated, as they blindly grope towards fragile sculptures in an attempt to find each other.