Simeon Nelson: Passages
Essay by Benjamin Genocchio
 
 

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Cover, Passages,UNSW
Press, 2000

Passages is a handsome and self-contained work. Lavishly illustrated and hardbound, it details Nelson's art over the past decade or so. Many of the documentary photographs are supplemented by smaller, related diagrammatic illustrations that aim to open up both Benjamin Genocchio's text and Nelson's practice to a potential myriad of theoretical readings. Genocchio's text is lucid, drawing references from contemporary French theory through to Nelson's wide-ranging interests from Islamic mathematics and Platonic geometry through to issues of contemporary ecology. Nevertheless in particular instances the book seems to promise more than it contains. The essay skims from point to point gathering references yet rarely subjecting Nelson's art to any analytical or general critical scrutiny. A critical approach, while perhaps not typical to monographs of this type, would have allowed a more generous understanding of the many issues facing contemporary practitioners such as Nelson. As it is, it is easy to imagine how such a publication might serve to keep an artist's work alive in the eyes of the art buying public, whilst at the same time lending critical weight to the artist's ongoing career. Ultimately this new publication is a mixed bag, a taste of possibilities stretched sometimes rather thinly over its pages.

The visual impact of Passages remains noteworthy. In fact it is difficult to flaw the documentary evidence of Nelson's practice contained in the book. All the photographs within impart a clear and rather luxurious glimpse of the artist's practice to date. However the many images of Nelson's discreet wall works of organic forms verge risk redundancy through repetition, with certain works far outweighing others in their dynamism. On the other hand, given that the publication is dedicated to an overall survey of Nelson's practice, the choice seems justified. Perhaps the most affecting images contained by the publication are those of recent works from 1999 such as Theory of Matter and Effluvium. These seductive and detailed pieces indicate a complex investigation of a kind of illusionist gestalt that relates plastically to the very processes that shape representation. The most obvious references are to media based ink and print practices. It is as if these works were a material coagulation of synthetic matter, suddenly halted in mid-air as part of a method of representing the world up close. Also impressive are Caravan Romance and Polypolyp (both 1996). In these, the artist's ingenious use of found formica and laminex tables results in a kind of proto-formalist pop-illusionism that reads doubly as a wry alteration of domestic kitsch. Despite the reference to kitsch, Nelson's works appear generally elegant and complete in their own right. Perhaps less rigorous or striking are works such as Mode Sauvage, Aquamandala and Wind and Water (all 1996) which verge on the merely decorative.

In his text Genocchio makes various claims for and connections between ideas that apparently shape Nelson's practice. Some of these are certainly convincing, like his references to theories of organic atomism and how these mirror the artist's "fascination with passages between natural and artificial forms." Nevertheless some of the claims that Genocchio makes for the political dimension of Nelson's art seem at times a little far-fetched. Genocchio does make the salient points, however, that "there is no denying that politics is not outside the responsibility of aesthetics", and that "the subjugation of aesthetic concerns to social or political ends is of course problematic, often leading to little more than the production of propaganda."

Yes it is complex and difficult terrain yet it is part of a proposition made in relation to Nelson's art that remains, if not unanswered, at least unfulfilled. For instance, how is it possible to categorically claim within the sophisticated modes of aesthetic production evident today that this is propaganda of a particular type and this not? In this respect, Genocchio's citing of the "social sculptures of Joseph Beuys" as a relevant reference for Nelson's practice seems utterly untenable. Of course Beuys' reputation has undergone some serious revision over the past years, nevertheless his principles of direct public intervention that resulted in the establishment of the International Free University are undeniably components of both his art and the overall political and social ferment of the day. On an aesthetic level, Beuys' dedication to process and to demonstrating the performative dimension of the object as well as its fragmentary and historical impact appears obtuse and overtly difficult and worlds apart from Nelson's more conservative, gallery based practice.

Of course not all of Nelson's practice is gallery-based. His public projects are also represented in Passages. Some of these, such as his Chifley Square work in Sydney, have been fully realised, whilst others such as the collaborative Hellenic Tribute Project remain at proposal or model stage. It is interesting to note that Nelson's impressive Chifley Square sculpture, an eight metre high portrayal of the politician made of laser-cut steel and the artist's most obviously political work, receives so little attention in Passages. And yet the work's political dimension has perhaps garnered additional currency under Australia's current hyper-conservative government. Surely the presence of such a monumental representation of the eminent Labour frontman within Sydney's central business district could only be of embarrassment, or perhaps salient witness, to our current leaders. This particular work is especially notable for its illustrative restraint and its success in portraying the monumental in a humane and benevolent manner. The artist's citing of Islamic geometry in relation to the work, however, appears little grounded within the actual work and threatens to lessen the thoughtful specificity of its strategically localised affect. Nelson's proposed Hellenic Tribute Project for Sydney's Olympic Authority (conceived in collaboration with another Sydney-based artist, Stephen Crane) is quite a different form of public work. The proposed monument is both intriguing and compelling, perhaps in part as a result of its existence as a mere model whereby the viewer can only imagine the experience possibly engendered by the full scale work; one imagines standing at the head of a set of coolly classical stairs and seeing his or her own image reproduced endlessly on either side of the work's central, impersonal and completely non-functioning column. However, given it's proposed siting had the work been realised the experience of the work, which consists essentially of an architectural wedge faced entirely in mirrors, would have remained solely within the elitist scope of the official Olympic performer. Existing as a work of promise, it is fascinating to imagine its success as public sculpture.

Equally public, although less official in register, is Nelson's World Between. This, as far as Genocchio is concerned, is Nelson's seminal, most ambitious work to date, and he devotes more text to a discussion of it than to any other single work. Initially executed for Australian Perspecta 1997: Between Art and Nature at the Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, this installation toured other sites around the globe including India where it was exhibited at the 9th Indian Triennale in New Delhi. Genocchio explains how at each individual venue the artist collected natural and artificial debris needed to fill the installation's shallow pool. Such creative tact is both sensitive and rigorous. Genocchio also points out how the water from the Yamuna River used in the New Delhi variant of the work had to be constantly disinfected with antibiotics to avoid accidentally breeding strains of typhoid and meningitis. Such details contribute an insider's knowledge of Nelson's creative process that hints at its multi-dimensionality and social aspect. However World Between appears overtly tame and self-conscious. The levels of reading Genocchio ascribes to the work perhaps amount to more than the work itself manages to contain or convey. In fact the relationship between the billboard—with its painstakingly sectioned tree branch—and the detritus filled tank, appears tenuous, even disjunctive. Genocchio claims that this jarring relation is in fact the key means by which Nelson comments on the socially and culturally inscribed dissection of natural and organic phenomena at the expense of ecological sanctity. And this certainly remains clearly readable within the work, yet it is the works proclaimed "semantic richness" that ultimately silences it. Here literal meaning seems an external imposition that nevertheless allows the work to read in a multitude of ways. Whilst this surely indicates an artwork's complexity, here meaning actually solidifies in a series of easily identifiable signifiers that ultimately prevent a truly multi-layered reading. In contrast, Seascape (1995) executed for the Art Gallery of New South Wales' Contemporary Project Space and comprising "seawater, sex-doll, and micro-organisms" is less visually intricate yet more engaging even intellectually complex than World Between. Seascape presents a seamless consideration of the complex relations that exist between desire and repulsion, biology and industry, institutional and lived experience, its complexity residing in the very fact that rather than forcing readability, the work's meaning exists almost invisibly as the very substance of the work itself.

Passages is a scholarly though perhaps fittingly incomplete celebration of Simeon Nelson's art. It offers but a brief insight into the complex contemporary world of installation and object-based practice, one which needs supplementing by further encounter with Nelson's actual work if one is to gain a truly rich understanding of its particular breadth and significance. Needless to say for those already enamoured of Nelson's work, Passages is itself a desireable commodity. In the end perhaps monographs like this function in exactly such a manner. For any practicing artist having a publication such as this dedicated to your work seems both an honour and career boost (particularly for younger contemporary artists, and even mores given the limited scope of Australian art publishing). Certainly it is one of the most direct and immediately comprehensible means of promoting contemporary visual work. The hard copy prevails at a time when for some, new technology threatens to make it redundant. At the same time many contemporary visual artists have established professional websites as a means of disseminating visual and documentary representations of their own work around the world. While such practices are becoming increasingly common, dedicated as they are to free and immediate interchange, the fact remains that for many audience sectors, particularly collectors, the published monograph is the most valued proof of career success. On this level, a book such as Passages remains a persuasive visual document. Nevertheless it would have been more illuminating had the text played a greater critical or interrogatory role. This would have opened the work to further debate whilst lending it a more direct relevance to practice, rather than making Nelson's art primarily the object of promotional reverence.

Alex Gawronski
2000

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