Tony Clark, Sections from
Tony Clark's Myriorama,
1985 - 1995

Wall Drawings explores the shifting territory of decorative painting and architectural embellishment, as hybrid genres within the official structure of the museum. The curator, Max Delany, has brought together the work of six artists whose practises lend themselves to this dynamic. Most of the artists and many of the works are familiar to the audience of contemporary Melbourne art, but Delany has created new connections and conceptual arrangements within the scene of decorama by drawing out points of convergence between the artists, the art works and the exhibition space.

In the catalogue essay Delany identifies two historical moments which help explain the aesthetic dynamic of Wall Drawings: the late modernist strategy of dramatisation, and the early modernist interest in autonomy.

Autonomy: the first historical instance

In the catalogue essay Delany refers to the technical developments of the eighteenth century which allowed interior decoration and architectural supports to be translated onto canvas and stretchers. This corresponded with a philosophical interest in freeing art from the determinations of social function and enlightenment logic so that "beautiful form" could stand up on its own. In relation to this project, decoration was very important to modern philosophers such as Schiller and Kant because it revealed art's ability to contract the world in abstract motifs and artificial patterns. In other words, ornamentation withdrew from the organic whole of classical representation and emphasised art's autonomy from reason and science.

As modern painting developed in America the autonomy of art become more idealistic. The dynamic contractions of early abstraction were discarded in favour of the static self-referentiality theorised by Greenberg. But art discovered another dynamic and once again decoration provided inspiration. In this second historical instance decoration delineates the movement of an expanding field, unfurling a stage for dramatisation of visual arts.

Dramatisation: the second historical instance

Early modernism dislodged art from the cohesive classical whole and freed it from a need to represent the world, but later developments in modernism reterritorialized abstraction in the hermetically sealed cube of the gallery. As Delany notes in the catalogue essay, conceptual art created an escape route from this white cube by expanding into the structure of the institutional container in a way which often approximated the genre of decoration. Daniel Buren's decor panelling and Sol Le Witt's instructional wall drawings, for example, recede into the backdrop to foreground the activity of viewing and engaging with art. In this instance, architectural embellishment opens up a theatre for audience and art work to invent site specific arrangements. It mobilizes the modern art object with theatrical connections.

Taken together, eighteenth century autonomy and twentieth century dramatisation help us understand the dynamic of embellishment and patterning in contemporary art. I'm calling this elan vital of contracting and dilating rhythms decorama.

Decorama

Decoration appears in the middle of things, contracting the world into abstract motifs and spreading these motifs out onto the surfaces of lived environments. One movement often dominates the other. Sometimes an abstract design is captured by its autonomy, and it becomes incapable of releasing itself into the theatre of life. Such was the closure desired by Greenberg. At other times decorative objects are so enmeshed in the function of their site-specificity that their abstract beauty is effaced. Modernism freed the arts from this utilitarian closure. But things are always shifting. Artists are always finding new ways of combining the contractions with the unravelling panoramas, and there are always new closures on the horizon.

Decorama is a useful concept because it allows us to diagram the movements of abstraction and installation, showing how they function as dynamics. We can approach the works in Wall Drawings by considering how each of the artists plots coordinates within this shifting territory.

Stephen O'Connell
1996

Mutlu çerkez, Untitled, 1994

Kathy Temin, Wall Drawings:
Hairstyles for Round
Faces, 1995

Kerry Poliness, Red Matter
Wall Drawing #2, 1994-95

Constanze Zikos,
Jubilee, 1995

Jacinta Schreuder, Body
and Bounce, 1995