Primavera 2010

Overview

Across the first two levels of the MCA things are being re-rendered, repositioned, re-presented and reduced. Banal snapshots from Flickr and Google Image are finely replicated in watercolour by Jackson Slattery who forms new narratives with found images. A soccer ball finds itself made of polyurethane resin and automotive paint in Akira Akira's room of achromatic exercises in form and texture. Agatha Gothe-Snape records days of her life as studies in basic geometry and colour, and turns elemental human emotions into PowerPoint slides.

A highlight of the 2010 Primavera is Sydney artist Emma White who reshapes the real with her polymer clay renderings of stationary, art supplies and other every-day tools of representation. In one new work on display here the structures and layers of representation are further complicated with a clay copy of a Hassleblad camera displayed next to a photo of itself. These simple, self-contained works are not quite trompe d'oil because central to their experience is that we are not completely fooled by them. There is always a moment of revelation when we get close enough for the illusion to collapse.

Video didn't end up killing the radio star but it wasn't very nice to painting, which had terrible trouble being looked at let alone liked during the reign of new media. So it’s nice to see this year's curator Katie Dyer include such out-of-vogue art forms as oil paint and watercolour, as well as a strong overall element of old school craftsmanship.

Image: Agatha Gothe-Snape, 'Wrong Solo 1'