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Cover,
Passages,UNSW
Press, 2000
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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 billboardwith its painstakingly
sectioned tree branchand 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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