In one of his poems Baudelaire said that there is no beauty without a little bit of sadness.
This artwork, from my personal collection of contemporary art, is both beautiful and painful to me.
Lucas Leo Catalano realized it for the first exhibition of the art/poetry collective Poetry Experience in which I partecipate as well.
This work has been exhibited in The Room Gallery in Rome and at Museo del Viaggio in Positano.
Melbourne. I consider the afternoons devoted to see art exhibitions like a sort of cultural safari.
You need a friend to enjoy it and a location where it is likely to meet dangerous, exotic or fascinating artworks.
In Melbourne some good locations for exhibition safaris are Fitzroy, the CBD and South Yarra.
So a couple of days ago I was in South Yarra with a friend and we had the chance to see the wonderful exhibition of Louise Saxton called “Sanctuary too” at Gould galleries.
No other show could be more suitable for an art safari: the subjects were in fact animals, insects and birds after vintage illustrations from natural history books and colonial painters.
The particularity was that all these artworks were realized in needlework, which means lace and nylon tulle arranged to form the images of animals.
All the pieces of this sort of collage were ties together by needles. Only coming closer to the artworks you can notice the needles, as well as the real nature of the different tulle.
That way the animals look stabbed, and at the same time the illusion of shape formed by the colourful patches is revealed.
My friend was fascinated by this coexistence of beauty and cruelness as well.
I interviewed the artist Tania Ferrier some days ago at her apartment in the grooviest side St.Kilda, Melbourne.
This versatile artist was born in Perth but travelled a lot during her life.
It was a very interesting chat for me, not only because she was able to compare the two art scenes that I’m investigating at the moment (Perth and Melbourne). The most interesting thing was indeed to see how her adventurous life is strictly connected to her artistic practice.
Waiting for her interview to be published, I want to share an aspect of her early production: the “Angry Underwear”.
The story around the Angry Underwear seems to be out a Frank Miller graphic novel.
In the seventies Tania was working as clothed bartender in a Go Go Strip Club in New York.
In that period she started to make outfits for the strippers, motivated by one particular incident.
Extreme case: let’s say you are an art journalist doing a reportage in a remote third world country.
You do all the research, you use all the common sense and you even follow some “how to” on the internet.
Even then, you could find yourself in a difficult situation like: I fixed one month in advance an interview with artist Pinco tomorrow. But I just meet artist Pallino and I can interview him only tomorrow, because he leaves the day after tomorrow. A rapid check to your mailbox and… crap! The artist Pollaiolo wants to anticipate his interview…apparently he is free only tomorrow!
So, let’s make the point. We have three interviews to prepare in one single day.
And you wake up late today too!
Don’t cancel an interview. Don’t even think about it.
To cancel an interview is bad. It’s always bad.
I did that just two times and each time a dire calamity had struck me.
The first time my boyfriend threw me out of our house, the second time a crater suddenly opened in the ground devouring my beloved kitten.
So don’t do that. Seriously.
What you can do is forget about the tan today, ignore the heat and the shining sun and sit in front of your computer.
Now all your efforts will be concentrated on doing an accurate research and at the same time get all the work done as fast as possible.
I usually use the following method.
I just come back to Melbourne after two weeks in Perth. I was there for a reportage on the Perth contemporary art scene.
Through the Turner Galleries I came in contact with the artist Peter Daily, an established and very generous artist who has his studio in Woodbridge.
I meet him at a floor talk for his exhibition at the Fremantle Art Centre and he gives me many precious information about the artistic situation in Western Australia and about his highly imaginative work.
Visiting his studio I notice how much importance Peter gave to the materials in his works. He seem to experiment new techniques all the time, daring to use also unexpected and unorthodox material with great results.
The interview I had with him will be out soon, in the meantime here you are the pictures I took from my visit to the artist’s studio.
I just come back from Perth, Western Australia. I was there for a reportage about the local contemporary art scene.
Before leaving I wrote this list to clarify my own ideas and to see what I learnt from my mistakes.
Maybe someone else could find it useful too.
“To be an art reporter is fun, but if you don’t plan everything in the details it can be very stressing.
If you are lucky someone, maybe the magazine you collaborate with, has sent you in foreign city or country to do an amazing five pages reportage about the local art scene. If you are extra lucky maybe your magazine would be also open to pay you for that.
But you know, even Oriana Fallaci and Martha Gellhorn would have an hard time to find good assignment nowadays.
Times are tougher and tougher, especially in the field of contemporary art.
If you’re an enterprising free lance journalist or art critic you can probably decide to make a project of your own and try to sell it later to magazines and newspaper. Maybe you can even make a book out of it.
Anyways remember to plan every step in advance.
1. Focus your research
The first thing you have to do is to focus your research. Maybe you are interested just in the painting scene of that city, or just in the hipster scene, or the influence of craft on contemporary art.
Or maybe you want to have a general picture, not very specific but quite thorough.
This second kind of macro reportage is the one I personally like the most. However my tips are valid also if you are conducting a more specific research.
2. Make a previous research on the city
Have a quick look of what other people already wrote about the art scene. Don’t exaggerate, it’s better to not build preconceptions based on what other people thinks. The best thing to do is read a novel or two set in the city you are going to visit. Have a look at a very general travel guide that gives you neutral information, like Lonely Planet or something like it.
If you find some catalogues of exhibition about artists from the city that you are going to visit, try to have a look at it.
If you know someone in your own city that has a link with the place you are going to visit, talk with them, either informally or with an interview.
If these people have a link to the art world is better, but don’t undervalue the impressions of friends or acquaintances disconnected from the scene.
The Italian magazine Artribune just published the interview I had in Melbourne with the artist Mark Hilton. The interview is part of my reportage about the Melbournian Art Scene.
Here you are the link to the interview
Here you are the pictures from my visit to the artist’s studio
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The italian web magazine Art a Part of Cult(ure) just published the interview I had in Melbourne with the artist Danius Kesminas, member of the Indonesian Punk-Rock Band/ Art collective Punkasila. The interview is part of my reportage about Indonesian Contemporary Art.
Here you are the link to the interview
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I recently visited the studio of the Australian artist Mark Hilton in Melbourne.
He just moved from his old studio in Fitzroy to a new one in Abbotsford, so unfortunately he did’t have many past works to show me.
Anyways the one he was currently working on was complex enough to monopolize my attention.
The project is a continuation of “Hunting Where The Ducks Are”, a series of high reliefs depicting the darkest issues of contemporary society.
Every piece was shaped like a letter. In the end they will form the sentence:”Don’t Worry”.
In this work there is a striking contrast between appearance and truth, something in which Mark has always been interested.
Some of the scenes represented on the high reliefs are inspired to current affairs, like often happen in the previous production of the artist, other ones are drawn from the artist’s personal memories. There is no narrative connection between the pieces, although we can find a train as recurrent element.
The aesthetic look of the artwork is inspired by the decoration of the doors of the Duomo in Milan, where the artists had a residency in 2007.
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Media Previews, along with the free catalogues of the exhibitions, are among the advantages to be part of the “media”.
I have no idea how the NGV has come to know that I’m a journalist, but you know, I got this mail and the object was “Monet’s Garden Media Preview”. I couldn’t say no.
The ingredients were all there.
The National Gallery of Victoria. One of the most famous modern painters of all the times. Pastels colors Frenchness. I was sure the dynamic NGV would adjust itself to the élégance et finesse required from such event.
So I wore my little back dress with fuchsia stockings and I invited my boyfriend to come with me.
He was not sure he wanted to came. It was too early for him, I mean, nine o’ clock!
“The whole thing would be to classy for me anyways!”, he mumbled curling up in the sheets.
“Come on! Since we are in the City, we can also go do groceries at your favorite Mall after!” I told him.
This convinced him and he finally woke up. He wore his never washed second world war German coat, he grabbed his grannish blue and grey groceries trolley and we were ready to go.
My interview with artist Bindi Cole is the cover story of the Australian magazine Trouble.
The interview is part of my research about contemporary art in Melbourne.
You can read the magazine online at this link
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This is a short essay about the Italian photographer Sara Magni that I wrote some time ago for the catalogue of “Fuori 5”, an exhibition at Galleria Gallerati, Rome:
“Waking up from a nightmare of desolation, discovering to be frightening and completely alone.
Founding themselves in a cruel and frozen night, in a pasolinian lawn. When the concrete buildings are the background, you suddenly realize that your room’s walls are just a fleeting shelter. Is it all just in our own mind, or is it actually a torched dream?
The series “Doppio Incubo” (Double Nightmare) was realized for the Premio Cairo at the Permanente in Milan. In this work the author explores the theme of man’s estrangement in the city. Sara Magni ventures in the human psyche, taking snapshots directly from the subconscious. She enacts characters that seems out of context, but at the same time she forced us to deal with them. No one has the voice to cry his longing for an “elsewhere”, we can read in his photos a frozen shadow of reality. Her research is displaced in the suburbs and non-places loaded with a reflection or anxiety, a sort of alienation in between Antonioni and David Lynch.
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Naima Morelli is an arts writer and journalist specialized in contemporary art from Asia-Pacific and the MENA region.
She has written for the Financial Times, Al-Jazeera, The Art Newspaper, ArtAsiaPacific, Internazionale and Il Manifesto, among others, and she is a regular contributor to Plural Art Mag, Middle East Monitor and Middle East Eye as well as writing curatorial texts for galleries.
She is the author of three books on Southeast Asian contemporary art.
Reach out: contact [at] naimamorelli.com
