National, cross-generational, indigenous and non-indigenous, men and women, all except two Australian-born - here was a cross-section of contemporary artists brought together not by theme or medium but by career achievements and an invitation to take part in this prestigious exhibition.
But more, here was a group of 12 artists and a collection of works which pushed the fuzzy and increasingly fluid boundaries between that which is defined as art and that as craft.
It is no doubt still useful to seek to define craft as opposed to art, to speak of craft in terms of material and technique, of a maker expressing an idea through mastery of a medium while the contemporary artist as seen is more conceptual, more removed.
But craft art is also craft. There are expectations that in craft function will go hand in hand with form, but with even the most “domestic” of media appropriated in making fine art we no longer assume that all a ceramacist's output will be capable of holding flowers or pouring milk, nor are we surprised by a jeweller who produces uncomfortable, unwearable work as the expression of an idea.
Some of the works in this triennial celebration of contemporary Australian art slotted readily into the pigeon hole labelled “art” - Imants Tiller's paintings on canvas board, grounded in his exploration of displacement and dislocation, or the $40,000 award winner Judy Watson's works on canvas, for instance. But others, such as the ceramic mounds made by Toni Warburton or goldsmith Robert Baines' jewellery and trophies, were clearly the work of highly skilled craftspeople, though with no less a substantial conceptual basis than those we more readily think of as art.
Each of the artists invited by NGV contemporary art curators Kelly Gellatly and Jason Smith to take part in this fifth Clemenger award received a grant to help produce work for it. The quality of the works on show reflected the fact that all were professional, established, recognised artists - in the words of NGV director Dr Gerard Vaughan “some of Australia's most acclaimed and influential”.
As well as Watson, Tiller, Baines and Warburton, those selected were: Janangoo Butcher Cherel, Anne Ferran, Ivan Namirrkki, the late Bronwyn Oliver, Jacky Redgate, Ken Thaiday, Hossein Valamanesh and Judith Wright.
The challenges posed by contemporary art were immediately evident, entering past departing gallery-goers who muttered, “did you get that? I didn't get it.”.
But immediately, too, was evidence of the diversity of media brought together here and of the talents exercised on them. There in the first small room the works of Tehran-born Valamanesh - a real highlight of this show - were displayed with exceptional sensitivity and thought. To the right of the entrance was his cast bronze, Fallen Branch , its empty twigs so realistic and bleak, the work, mounted directly on the while wall and so beautifully lit it simply took one's breath away.
No less striking and moving was his Tough Love , immediately visible from outside the entrance and another bleak work - English letters made from a crown of thorns and set on paper above and below a ribbon horizon. Though able to be read as an urging to touch and love or not to do so, its long and vicious thorns, safely behind glass, made the latter interpretation more feasible.
Valamanesh's two other works were nearby - each artist's body of work was displayed together, most separated from the others by space or, in some cases, partitions. Only in the final large and partition-less room was this not so and it was unfortunate that Watson's powerful, raw-edged canvases could not be viewed without Warburton's five colourful ceramic mounds, displayed on a brown floor sheet in the centre of the room, also catching the eye.
The madmen have seen the moon , a series of increasingly contemporary ladders apparently balanced atop each other by Valamanesh but cleverly interlocking - the first, she oak, then cherry, then resin - reached for the sky. This was even more effective when viewed from outside the room through the internal windows beside which it was displayed - the top of the window made it impossible to see the top of the third ladder furthering the illusion it was reaching for the moon.
It was fascinating, albeit not entirely necessary to know (and there was no hint of this on the wall plaque) that this related to a Persian poem in which Rumi writes: “the madmen have seen / the moon in the window; / they are running to the roof / with ladders”. This and the importance of paradoxes in Valamanesh's work was revealed by the catalogue, as was so much interesting information unavailable to those not willing to make that investment; although each essay was by Smith, Gellatly or a guest writer, with the artist's quoted only when the writers chose to do so.
Aside from brief title plaques with each work (or in Warburton's case so far from them it was impossible to work out which went with what) there was only a single introductory wall panel. The exhibition would have benefited enormously from an artist's statement with each body of work, offering some explanation of his or her background, manner of working and, most importantly, the ideas behind the creation of the works.
Valamanesh's fourth work, Nesting , a digital print in which a man, perhaps the artist himself, stands on his head in a nest on the branch of a gum tree, was chosen for the catalogue cover. Nature is not only a material for him, but his works reflect his interest in humanity's desire to order and control it, Gellatly writes.
For those who prize workmanship and high level craft skills along with inspiration and ideas Robert Baines' The Schatzkammer: A treasury of evidence was another standout body of work.
This incredibly labour intensive project was presented in nine display cases along with their own spiral bound summary catalogue produced by the artist. “People keep taking them,” complained a gallery assistant as she refilled the stand and with this entertaining and highly enlightening volume not for sale it was easy to see why.
Baines' work is not only a marvel of intricate craftsmanship, as evident with the reproduction Phoenician jewellery of The gold hoard from the Phoenician colony settlement at Freshwater Point on the Queensland coast , supposedly dating from the 7th century BC. It also, as he puts it “plays with history” (think about that Phoenician settlement), merging real events and an imaginary past. It can be wickedly playful - look no further than his black phallic trophy with tiny dog atop - a trophy for the 2005 World's Worst Dog Owner, Paris Hilton, or his Leg brace for Lloyd , for the dog singer Courtney Love dumped at the vet's after he had a stroke.
And he is not afraid to make a political point - see Governor Jeb Bush and the family jewels (his summary catalogue quotes commentator Michael Moore on Jeb Bush's wife's attempt to bend the rules); and what could be more pointed than his Love rings: John Howard and the new world order - five silver-gilt (ponder that) rings, each topped with initials: GATT, WTO, IMF, WB, G7.
Set beside Baines' work - not literally, thankfully - Anne Ferrans' is simplicity itself. Yet behind these deceptively simple works lies a wealth of ideas, referenced from a shameful period in Australian history. Thoughtful, moving and informative, one reviewer's dismissal of it with, “photographer Anne Ferran is represented by some wall hangings” is cruelly inadequate.
Ferran, whose work has been closely involved with the lives of women in history, has studied the Tasmanian prison factories and her nine small blankets and accompanying DVDs are a tribute to 700 babies who died their in their first year of life. Their names roll slowly across two screens, while on the wall at right angles are mounted her coarse wool blankets representing their commonly recorded causes of death - one stitched with DI for diarrhoea, another with CO for convulsions; even more disturbingly a plain blanket represents “air” and another, speckled, “ground”. These blankets offer no comfort. They are, the wall plaque warns, “too light for warmth and too harsh to give comfort”.
The Clemenger award this year included four Aboriginal artists - Namirrkki, Janangoo, Thaiday and Watson - and it is significant that Watson and the previous winner, John Mawurndjul, are both indigenous.
“It's recognition that indigenous artists are right up there in Australian contemporary art,” said Watson, when selected by the judging panel, led by Queensland Art Gallery director Doug Hall.
Those four artists alone provided an enlightening glimpse of the broad canvas that is contemporary Aboriginal art. Brisbane-based Watson's works, including those on the theme of groundwater, inspired by a visit to her grandmother's country in north-west Queensland, would mystify those who see Aboriginal art in terms of dots and dreaming. But its contemporary themes - environmental concerns, domestic violence - are inseparable from her sense of place, of the land, time, and memory.
Erub (Darney) island-born Thaiday's single large and complex work is a Torres Strait story: Untitled 2006 is a powerful construction incorporating an intimidating shark, head-dress and dugong, plus, of course, the sea. Noted for his construction of dance objects - paint, plywood, plastic and feathers are transformed here - Thaiday's works are undoubtedly contemporary but, as Judith Ryan says in her essay, “render tangible the spirit of his ancestors”
Namirrkki's magnificent hollow logs reflect the move of this former bark painter away from figurative work to as he says, painting places where there is spirit. From a distance it is the larger patterns on his logs that are most evident - the diamonds, zig zags and rows of dots - but close up the incredibly detailed cross hatching and fine line work is evident. This rewards detailed study.
So, too, the four boldly coloured paintings of Janangoo Butcher Cherel, two hung on a black wall to great effect. His use of colour is dazzling - Tharloo , with dots within circles in black and grey on red is almost psychedelic in its 3D intensity, while the use of colour and shape in Galaroo, with its snakelike lines and borders that are a feature of his work tells stories from his land, he says. They can be read at a distance or in close-up, rewarding lengthy study - but this would have been assisted by more information about both Butcher, a former stockman for whom the landscape of the traditional lands on which he worked is a major source.
This Clemenger is a fabulous cross-section of contemporary art - Judith Wright created intense, personal video art and the painting Relative Conversations ; Jacky Redgate's Straightcut III , is a photographic representation of enlarged domestic objects, her Edgeways those actual domestic objects and several smaller ones, topped with mirrors. Her work, says Michael Desmond's essay, explores tradition and memory. “I had one of those”, exclaimed a viewer on seeing a selection of ‘50s style coffee and sugar canisters. She then launched into a recollection which was, one suspects, exactly what Redgate wold have hoped for.
Finally, no discussion of this award could be complete without mention of the brilliant, complex, mesmeric works of the late Bronwyn Oliver, who died earlier this year. The intricacy and power of these works bears no correlation with their size - on the floor the 2.6 metre high Two rings - two large, entwined rings comprised of an intricate copper mesh - dominates its section of the gallery, but so, too, does the thin, slithering wall-mounted snake of Stroke , just 9cms at its widest. And what could be more beautiful than Oliver's Rose , from the distance a magical shape against the wall, close up a fine, open and light construct of dazzling detail and intricacy described without exaggeration by Smith as “technical virtuosity”.
These three, delicate copper sculptures, all now in private collections, are the works of an artist at her peak and serve to emphasise, were any such emphasis needed, just what a loss she is.
Oliver's work illustrates the intersection between craft and the visual arts, both in this exhibition where the two sit side by side, vying for the same prize, and more generally in contemporary art. Oliver, designer and maker, expressed her ideas through the highest standards of metalwork - no sending out of sketches to the local foundry involved here. She took as her starting point the properties of the material at hand, and, Smith writes, she referred to her early works as fabrications, rather than sculpture.
Thaiday and the Cherel are both expressing their cultural identity through their work, yet while Cherel works with paint on paper, Thaiday uses more traditional craft techniques, constructing objects from raw materials such as bamboo, wire and strong. and, as he does so, imbuing them with a meaning far beyond the sum of their parts.
Baines' jewellery also raises interesting questions. It sits alongside works readily labelled visual art, such as Imants Tillers paintings, but has no less a serious, profound and political rationale. So is it craft if Baines simply makes a pretty ring for someone to wear, but art if that ring is expressing ideas such as those embodied in his John Howard series?
For the craftsperson this Clemenger was a comfort and breath of fresh air - a welcome expression of a time in which leading visual artists such as Fiona Hall appropriate traditional craft techniques such as knitting to make their work and craftspeople such as Toni Warburton use ceramics to create work of no use whatsoever, but laden with meaning.
Here was a dialogue between craft and visual art, with work by visual artists and craftspeople occupying the same room, as did work by multimedia artists such as Anne Ferran, whose entry encompassed the age old - sewing on woollen blankets - and the very new, in the form of DVDs on LCD screens.
Craft is still too often seen as some sort of poor relation - events and awards whose title once included the word craft have now been arbitrarily redefined as the more fashionable “design”. How exciting to see a new generation of acclaimed Australia artists demonstrating a mastery of a wide range of craft techniques to develop and present their ideas and ways of seeing to the broad NGV audience.
