Art Around The Galleries

The Age

Saturday March 1, 2008

Megan Backhouse

WHAT Jeff Martin:

Back of House

WHERE Gould Galleries, 270 Toorak Road, South Yarra. Phone 9827 8482.

These men in white are at work, hunched over lobsters and deep fryers and stacks of steaming pots. What L. S. Lowry did for the industrial districts of northern England last century, Jeff Martin is doing in contemporary restaurant kitchens. There is a naive feel to these paintings with their odd shifts in scale and plays with perspective and lashings of grey paint. Martin provides enough detail, though, to show the marked differences in mood and architecture between back of house at Abla's, Vue de monde and The Press Club, say. Part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, the exhibition runs until March 8.

WHAT Preview 08

WHERE Murray White Room, Sargood Lane (off Exhibition Street), city. Phone 9663 3204.

Smashed glass radiating tiny hair-line fissures evoke luminous trails of stars in the work of Pat Foster and Jen Berean, who make rather formal pieces out of these surely unpredictable imperfections. Because the glass is laid over black enamel, their works are dark and glossy except where the surface has shattered and cracked with crystal-like clarity. A contrasting piece has the pair playing up the fine creamy lines that appear in plaster filler they have smeared over plaster sheet. Foster and Berean are exhibiting alongside Alexander Knox, who is showing a white aluminium horse skull, and Sangeeta Sandrasegar (intricate paper cut-outs) in a preview of what is in store at this space this year. Until March 1.

WHAT Yvette Coppersmith: Blue Series

WHERE Blindside, level 7, Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston Street, city. Phone 9650 0093.

We get the front, back and sides of the same man with his furrowed brow and creased shirt over seven uniformly sized paintings. The realist nature of Yvette Coppersmith's approach is juxtaposed against her raw canvas backgrounds and the rough lines that still surround some of these heads and bodies, and also against two more fantastical paintings that reveal a more constructed way with representation. Until March 8.

WHAT Christopher Koller: Trust

WHERE Upstairs Flinders, 1st floor, 137 Flinders Lane, city. Phone 9654 3332.

Jane Burton has a camera strapped around her neck and Janet Beckhouse-Korakas has one of her wild gothic ceramics behind her but there is nothing of the typical artists-in-their-studios-look about these photographic portraits. The sitters (mostly artists but also one publisher and one filmmaker) are more playful and relaxed than that, somehow collaborating with Koller (bending over a dolls' house (below), splashing in water, patting the dogs, say) in conveying a mood that seems easy and intimate. Until March 8.

WHAT Jacqui Henshaw: Manicured Visions

WHERE Kozminsky, level 1, 421 Bourke Street, city. Phone 9670 1277.

Henshaw photographs melancholy cityscapes, spiky succulents and, in the best works here, manicured hedges with a spooky twist. In the night-time setting the green foliage takes on a supernatural glow and the picture frame is big enough to reveal that as soon as the hedge-clipping stops the bush runs dense and rampant like a big, dark wood. Until March 15.

WHAT Simon Cooper: Anatomy of Transience

WHERE Australian Galleries Works on Paper, 50 Smith Street, Collingwood. Phone 9417 0800.

Simon Cooper's sepia colours work in perfectly with the used manila folders over which he paints, first crossing out the old hand-written labels like /skiing/, /mobile phone/ or /Victorian Solar Energy/. Cooper's imagery (often accompanied by more artful, though less legible, text) centres around carefully rendered single objects with no obvious link - footballs, bowls, boats, blimps. He uses the same imagery and the same quiet palette in his gouaches on board and etchings. Until March 16.

WHAT Kill Pixie: Everything's A-OK

WHERE Until Never, 2nd floor, 3-5 Hosier Lane, city. Phone 9663 0442.

The pile-up of limbs and faces in the pinball machine that takes centre-place in this exhibition is typical of the Sydney street artist's approach. It's a clean, graphic jumble of bodies that is crazy rather than bloody, and the busy patterns within the scene are echoed in the surrounding acrylic, ink and watercolour drawings on paper. The stylised shapes (especially the figures with upraised arms) lend a folk-art flavour but the crowds, conveyor belts and belching smoke suggest something more futuristic. Until March 29.

WHAT W. E. McMillan Collection: Selected Gold and Silversmithing 1961-2007

WHERE RMIT Project Space/Spare Room, 23-27 Cardigan Street, Carlton. Phone 9925 4971.

From the sizeable silver jewellery and Arts and Crafts homewares turned out in the 1960s through to some contemporary couplings of automotive paint and antique teapots, this exhibition traces the changing face of gold and silversmithing over the past 40 years. The collection touches on the different trends coming out of RMIT's studios, with the latest pieces featuring not just automotive paint (C. E. Milbourne) but cream-coloured plastic (K. Way) and steel chain (D. Scully). Until March 7.