Art Project Management
Russell Storer
 
 
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The Symbol, First Draft,
Sydney 29 July -
16 August 1998

Foreground
Michael Dagostino, symbol

Background from left
Jonathan Wilson,
Inner ear/Balance
Inner ear/Implant

Paul White, Untitled
jigsaw No.3


Michael Lindeman, Homage
to Picasso, (Bull's Head)

Michael and Michael Visual Art Project Management, as unwieldy a moniker as you could hope for, are a loose collective of young artists who exhibit regularly together. They describe themselves as an artist-run space without a space, with all of the freedom and spontaneity that this provides. Despite their not having a regular venue, or a publishing program (such as that of their Melbourne space-without-a-space contemporaries Rubik), or any kind of formal organisational structure, the group have managed to put on four shows in eighteen months, garner regular reviews, and as individual artists also contribute to a number of other exhibitions and projects. The core artists include the two Michaels, Dagostino and Lindeman, as well as David Griggs, Andrew Salter, Paul White and Jonathan Wilson. Other artists who have shown with the group include Julie Fragar, Cassandra Hard and Melody Willis.

Michael & Michael represent an interesting hybrid in the history of the artist-run space in Australia. The proliferation of artist-run spaces, particularly in Melbourne, has enabled the development of a number of versions of the classic white-walled warehouse/shopfront space, staffed by artists and having regular exhibitions, as well as more ephemeral projects. These include Rubik, which publishes artist books and holds short exhibitions and parties; Citylights, with its four light boxes in a Melbourne alley presenting a changing series of artists’ images; and Simon Barney’s Briefcase, full of artists’ works for sale. Such projects provide alternative contexts and exhibition opportunities for the presentation of contemporary art to those of the gallery space. Whilst these may not constitute entirely new or radical exhibition models, they nevertheless infuse the contemporary art scene with an otherwise infrequently encountered ingenuity, energy and confidence. They also express a desire to show work, to create communities and to operate self-sufficiently. While each artist-run space generates its own community of artists and audience, Michael & Michael’s exhibitions, while all held in more or less classic artist-run spaces (First Draft and Herringbone in Sydney; Smith + Stoneley in Brisbane) function as a kind of floating collective, bringing their own networks and formations of community to each particular venue at the time of showing.

This approach to exhibiting also evidences a new attitude to the function of artist-run spaces—a departure from the still widely held view that they operate primarily as a career stepping-stone towards the holy grail of commercial representation. They demonstrate a conception of artist-run spaces as operating in their own manner, parallel to the commercial sector, as a quite particular, valid and vital aspect of the contemporary art landscape.1 Artists are arguably more savvy than ever before about the realities and limitations of the commercial and institutional situation. There are naturally far more practicing artists than could ever be represented by the major commercial galleries, and the need to establish and nurture networks that allow artists to productively bypass this route is clearly viewed as an increasingly important factor for the vitality and viability of any contemporary art scene. As Sandra Bridie, who was involved in Melbourne’s Store 5 and started up Talk Artists’ Initiative, stated in a 1998 interview with Andrew McQualter, a core member of 1st Floor and Rubik, “I think now, artists are seeing that kind of [artist-run] space as less of a necessity and more of a choice, like modes of art making. It's accepted that the art world isn't going to provide for you…Richard Holt speaks about artist run spaces as being a sector of the artworld. Rather than being outside the artworld. If you see an artist run space as a stepping stone towards something else, then you don't usually step back. I think what I have learnt through using artist run spaces is that if you maintain a range of practices, then you can keep moving, too.”2

Michael & Michael, with their mock-corporate title and knowing approach to the art world, are different to other artist collectives that have used a similar strategy, notably London’s Bank. Perhaps they have not had time yet to solidify into something more defined (as is often the case), but they are a more elusive operation, consistently denying any attempt at organisation or fixed structure. This is slightly disingenuous, given the amount of planning that even the smallest exhibition requires, but does provide the collective and the work that they show with a particular identity. Like Bank, Michael & Michael co-opt and parody the established conventions, formats and procedures associated with the presentation of contemporary art, including models of curatorship, the production of press releases, price lists, and one-sided colour invitation cards, and the placement of advertisements in art magazines. However they do so in a much gentler and less rigorous manner than their British counterparts. The apparent attitude is one of casualness and disposability, with the use of exhibition titles such as Hack and Symbol, of found photos as invitation images, and the production of slyly humorous press releases such as that for Al Eisen and Friends which comprised a pile of unrelated words sitting in a heap at the bottom of the page. The intention here is not so much to “challenge” or “subvert” these art-world conventions, as it is to invest them with a greater potency by drawing our attention to their processes of delivery. Press releases, after all, are so often tools for lazy reviewers to quote from, while catalogue essays can be so far from the experience of the actual work to be rendered useless. Hence the lack of text accompanying Michael & Michael exhibitions, with only Symbol including a catalogue essay.

This exhibition, held at First Draft, Sydney, in July and August 1998, featured the work of Dagostino, Griggs, Lindeman, Salter, White and Wilson. The artists, who had either worked together (at Casula Powerhouse) and/or studied together at art school, based the exhibition on nothing more than the male symbol found on toilet doors, to signal “a typical male show, a guy show” as David Griggs put it.3 Lindeman took on the great macho-men of art history—Picasso’s Bull’s Head bicycle seat was transformed by a distinctly suburban floral seat cover, while the chance meeting of two objects à la Man Ray or Duchamp became but a simple cane and trolley wheel. Griggs’ effort included a sleeping bag dotted with cigarette burns, while White’s work included a giant backlit jigsaw. Dagostino encased mattress stuffing in masses of packing tape, creating sticky, lumpy, truly grotesque shapes, one floating near the ceiling, another absorbing an operational television set. While the common thread was initially more attitudinal—“work that was reasonably committed, resolved, real”as David Griggs stated—than aesthetic, the works all tended to involve a re-use of found or discarded materials, the cheap everyday stuff of consumer culture. Not for the last time this apparently haphazard, throwaway approach resulted in a cohesive group of works, coming out of a shared interest in the daily realities (insert artspeak: banalities) of suburban Sydney: fast food, supermarkets, army-disposal stores, television.

This attitude/aesthetic was continued with the next exhibition, Al Eisen and Friends, held at Herringbone Gallery, Sydney, in March/April 1999. This show featured an expanded line-up, adding three women, Fragar, Hard and Willis. This time, with the grinning Al Eisen, Inventor as mascot, the domestic front really got harrowing. Glowering in the corner, Dagostino’s empty oven, covered in a vile crust of coloured spit balls that spread over the walls, produced an indelible if stomach-churning impression. Lindeman framed his Aussie icons in perspex boxes just as they are/were, freezing them with museological purity. These included a Sally Boyden LP, The Littlest Australian; a pair of desert boots (entitled Dessies, though I remember them as DBs); and a can of Cold Gold. Griggs utilised his now signature camouflage motif and disposal-store materials with a painting of a ghetto blaster and a vinyl camouflage T-shirt. Willis’ paintings were large, pastel images of office interiors, creepy and dull, while Fragar painted a series of reproductions from snapshot photographs.

For the following exhibition, titled Qintex, held during July/August 1999 at Smith & Stoneley in Brisbane, the six core artists extended their parody of corporate culture, intending a wry comment on the Skase issue. However, they encountered an even more languid sensibility than their own, the title being met with indifference in sunny Queensland. As Michael Dagostino stated: “It was such a big thing down here, but when we got up there, nobody cared. They were thinking, ‘What are these people trying to do, bring up this old thing that happened before?’”

This leads to another point about Michael & Michael: their distinctly apolitical stance. Their parodies of the art world or of corporate culture are no more than gentle digs. Griggs admits that “I don’t think we are trying to disregard or alienate any establishment.” This could be due to several things. Firstly, so many artists who have attempted to question and/or antagonise the operations, systems and moralities of the art world have become absorbed by that very system. If you are eventually going to end up in the same place, why fight too hard? Secondly, with their strong aversion to any form of identity politics, the work produced by these artists is inscribed or defined more by lack than presence: it would seem that the legacy of the theory-laden, identity-politics obsessed eighties has left a very sour taste indeed. This could account for the will o’ the wisp approach of the collective—now you see them, now you don’t. Statements are easily denied when not committed to writing, while the catch-all of the parodic provides an easy escape-clause from the determinations of closure and meaning. The lack of text surrounding the work, as opposed to the heavily catalogued artists from 1st Floor for example, leaves the viewer reliant on purely visual cues. Exhibitions are curated to visual imperatives, rather than thematically or conceptually. The artists determine placement relation to the spatial and visual characteristics and limitations of the space, dependent fundamentally upon the scale and number of works that turn up on hanging day.

This was true of Hack, the last exhibition so far to feature the six core artists, held at Grey Matter, Sydney, in November/December 1999. The artists each chose a section of the gallery for which to produce work. Grey Matter, which is part of director Ian Geraghty’s apartment, consists of a corridor and a single room, each space within then posing its own particular challenge. Griggs, who chose the corridor, painted a large death-metal skull on the wall, an essentially side-view position that may or may not have been a sly reference to Holbein’s anamorphic skull in The Ambassadors. Salter’s fluffy easy chair repelled the sitter with a protruding doorbell, while Dagostino constructed a pair of interlocked love-hearts out of telephone wires. The attraction/repulsion motif continued with Lindeman’s cute teddy bear, complete with water wings and perched on a tiny platform, ready to dive into a video monitor playing the action. The intention of Hack, with its ‘whatever’ title and slapdash curatorial structure (Dagostino: “Hack was very loose; dump it, throw it together. We trusted everybody. The curatorial thing is not to curate it”) perhaps ironically resulted in what Blair French described in art/text as “one of the tightest, most curatorially coherent and sparky shows I saw all year.”4

Yet again, Michael & Michael came up with an exhibition that defied its anti-curatorial intention, although the seriousness of the artists, and the closeness with which they work (and all of the confidence that this brings) shouldn’t make such success so surprising. What it does demonstrate is one of the key tenets of the artist-run space: it is so much closer to the artistic community it draws from than commercial or institutional venues, enabling work to be presented in close accord with the artist’s intentions and amongst the artist’s peers and social world. It may well be the case that “everyone involved understands it. Nobody else does. That’s it.”5 However for those who want to experience art in a context that brings the artist and audience as close together as possible, there are few better places.

Russell Storer
2000

Endnotes
1. This notion of the hierachical relation of commercial to artist-run space was recently evidenced by the headline in a recent Sydney Morning Herald article about the closure of Gallery 19—“Another CBD stepping-stone goes under.” Sydney Morning Herald, 19 June 2000
2. Discussion between Sandra Bridie and Andrew McQualter, 2 Cents online discussions, The Physics Room http://www.physicsroom.org.nz/log/index/ 17 March 1998
3. Interview with the author, 3 September 2000. All subsequent quotations from Michael & Michael artists are drawn from this interview ibid.
4. French, B., “Hack”, art/text 69 (2000) p.90
5. Matthew Collings, quoted in Stallabrass, J., High Art Lite, London, 1999, p.51

©
Images courtesy of
the artists.

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Qintex, Smith
& Stoneley, Brisbane,
30 July - 18 August 1999

From left
Andrew Salter, Objenamory
of objenamerics

David Griggs, Blurred
vision was a puberty
thing
, 1998

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Hack, Grey Matter
Contemporary Art, Sydney
19 November - 19 December 1999

From left

Paul White,
Demolition

Michael Lindeman,
Taking a dive

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Hack, Grey Matter
Contemporary Art, Sydney
19 November - 19 December 1999

David Griggs, 1975
skull series

 
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Qintex, Smith
& Stoneley, Brisbane,
30 July - 18 August 1999

Clockwise from left

Andrew Salter, Objenamory
of objenamerics

Michael Dagostino, VISA

Michael Lindeman,
Becoming sound

Michael Dagostino,
Mastercard &
American Express

Jonathan Wilson,
Inner ear/Bloom

Paul White, Object from a
blue room, One man's
army/one army man


Floor
Jonathan Wilson
Inner Ear/Bloom

 
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Al Eisen & Friends
Herringbone Gallery Sydney
March 17 - April 3 1999

Michael Dagostino,

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Hack, Grey Matter
Contemporary Art, Sydney
19 November - 19 December 1999

From left
Michael Dagostino,
symbol

Andrew Salter,
Endangered species

 
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Al Eisen & Friends
Herringbone Gallery Sydney
March 17 - April 3 1999,
invitation