Firstdraft Gallery moving on to a bigger, better canvas
|
Version 0 of 1. For 19 years, Firstdraft Gallery has stood on Chalmers Street in Sydney’s Surry Hills. Now it is moving to bigger, better premises at an undisclosed location: Kylie Banyard’s Imagining Alternatives, Josephine Skinner’s The End, and The House Oneiric by Simone Mandl, Esther Chung and Kate Campbell will be the final exhibitions at this inner-city institution. The management committee of this artist-run gallery won’t say where they’re going, or why. But they will, they say, be back in 2014. I hope so. Similar well-loved, volunteer-run galleries exhibiting the work of emerging artists, have announced they’re closing to become “curatorial projects” or “archives” only to disappear completely. It would be a disaster if Firstdraft closed for good. The gallery is one of the oldest artist-run spaces in the country, opening its doors in a converted warehouse in Chippendale in 1986 with seed funding from the Australia Council. Firstdraft, founded by artists including Tess Horwitz, Paul Saint, Narelle Jubelin and Roger Crawford, arrived at a time when there were few opportunities to exhibit in alternative and non-commercial spaces. Of course, artist-initiated exhibition spaces weren’t anything new – the group were continuing a tradition seen in Australia since the 19th century – but Firstdraft’s permanence made it different. When the initial artists moved on the gallery didn't close, but was passed on to a new committee. It moved from Chippendale to Annandale in 1990, and then on to Surry Hills four years later. Such longevity in an artist-run gallery is rare. Rental prices for commercial spaces in inner Sydney long ago banished non-profit galleries – even those with funding from the Australia Council, Arts NSW or other bodies – to the inner west and eastern suburbs. Somehow Firstdraft has hung on and prospered, giving shows to a long roll call of artists who have gone on to bigger things. These final three shows closing out this chapter in the gallery’s long history underline just why Firstdraft has become such an important venue. Imagining Alternatives is a magnificently eccentric show that celebrates the utopian vision of alternative architecture from the 1960s and ’70s. One wall is papered with photocopies of alternative lifestyle bible The Whole Earth Catalogue and there’s a Fuller Dome in the middle of the room inside which one can meditate. Banyard’s show comes into its own when she conflates the idea of forward thinking with alternative ways of seeing, quite literally messing up the way viewers perceive her work – one sculpture is to be viewed through a kaleidoscope while inside the dome is a dream machine; a stationary white light inside a rotating lattice-like skin that produces colours in your eyes. To top it off Banyard has made a suite of paintings to be looked at through a View-Master, that 3D kids toy nostalgically beloved by former children of the ’70s and ’80s. Skinner’s The End features wall texts taken from almost-illiterate online chat groups where the members discuss being dumped by their BFs and GFs. This lovelorn text is interrupted by emoticons and unfinished sentences. Down a wall is a series of video screens on which Skinner has looped YouTube videos in which people destroy TV sets against a mournful loop of what sounds like a fragment of a soap opera soundtrack. So what is this the end of – television? Love itself? The House Oneiric, a group show by Mandl, Chung and Campbell, is an ideal show for an artist-run gallery – concise, visually attractive and almost completely inscrutable: Mandl’s collages of images of soldiers effectively evoke the uncanny, while Campbell’s small sculptures sit on their shelves without attracting undue attention. Chung’s single sculpture looks like a handmade abacus. The room sheet offers no further explanation. These are exhibitions by artists at different stages of their careers, some are successful, others not so much, but they are staged in a professional context. Along with Firstdraft’s artist studios, emerging curator’s program and satellite “depot” gallery, it offers the young and the hopeful a chance to be seen. Let’s hope Firstdraft really is coming back. Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. |