Primavera 2013

Overview

Translated from Italian, Primavera means 'spring'. It makes sense then, that the opening of the MCA's Primavera 2013: Young Australian Artists exhibition traditionally coincides with the commencement of spring: the season of regeneration, growth and beer in the afternoon. It also makes sense that this is an exhibition featuring artists in the 'spring' of their careers — eight Australian artists under 35, on the cusp of becoming majorly recognised.

Now in its 22nd year, Primavera 2013 is curated by Robert Cook (Curator of Modern and Contemporary Photography and Design at the Art Gallery of Western Australia) and presents a mixed bag. Cook approached his task fluidly, choosing artists he admires and works that specifically respond to the MCA's Level 1 North Gallery space.

The works are diverse, ranging from photography to video, sculpture, painting and performance. Some, such as Thomas Jeppe’s Vista Verticals (2013) are intended as "purpose-built gallery interventions", others are more traditional bodies of work. But questions you might expect to find answers to in such a setting, like 'What are young Australian artists doing, and doing well?' 'What are they affected and influenced by on a broader socio-cultural level?' 'What new mediums and visual languages are being explored, challenged and invigorated?' 'What are their politics?' are left largely unarticulated.

Despite initial misgivings at the lack of curatorial cohesion, there's a lot of punch packed into this show. Standout works include Melbourne-based artist Jess Johnson's trippy geometric posters, reminiscent of science-fiction comic book iconography. The exhibited body of work, titled Of course, things go bad (2013), is technically proficient and visually mesmerising, presenting a portal into a disquieting Gregorian-period inspired world. She presents what can be interpreted as visions of an outdated future imagined from a distant past; flat, symmetrical shrines that make you feel like you’re standing on a threshold between reality and fantasy.

There's also Jackson Eaton’s beautifully reflective photographic series Better Half (2007-13), both conceptually and visually affecting. By taking duplicate photos of himself and his partner and then his father and his step-mother in near-identical scenes, Easton tells a unique personal story through a lens that lends itself to a broader questioning of identity and the uniqueness of one’s experiences.

And Heath Franco. WTF. This guy is a 'crazed fucker'! Or at least he is in this trilogy of high-impact video works. ­­­TELEVISIONS (2013), YOUR DOOR (2011) and DREAM HOME (2012) feel on the surface like a mishmash of mumbo-jumbo psycho-babble. But on closer inspection, the explicitly kitsch visual language, with Franco at the centre, reveals itself as a powerful portrait of repressed identity. Putting his subconscious and everything that goes with it — the confronting, the bizarre, the nonsensical — out into the open, not only does Franco present a subversive comment on his own somewhat twisted insides but it feels intrinsically Australian on a disturbingly resonant level.

Kusum Normoyle, meanwhile, presents a series of video performance interventions, mounted to the walls and scattered throughout the gallery. What she is doing, is screaming in public. Her opening night performance, screaming through a horrifically loud, distorted PA in the foyer of the MCA in front of a crowd of well-dressed elderly art appreciators was priceless. The videos are also great.

Image: Jackson Eaton, Untitled (Public Art A) from the series Better Half (2008). Image courtesy and © the artist.