Facing East at Ausin Tung Gallery in Melbourne provides further evidence, if any were needed, of China’s shift over the last fifteen years from periphery to centre, from the exotic ‘other’ to a place, as Edward Sanderson says in his catalogue essay, “on a precarious balancing point between the influx and outflow of social and culture tides.” The phrase ‘Facing East’ implies that we are here, in the hegemonic West, looking towards a far distant and exotic culture – the East of Marco Polo, perhaps, or the Forbidden City of the Qing Dynasty Emperors, or indeed the East of ‘The East is Red’. Instead, we might consider that it is we who are on the periphery, looking towards the centre. In Chinese, the word for China, ‘Zhong Guo’, means ‘Middle Earth’, centre of the known world. With the rise and rise of China, this seems to have become rather a statement of fact than a historical oddity.

Pu Jie ,’Feeding’, 2010, oil on canvas, 200 x 250cm, image reproduced courtesy of Ausin Tung Gallery.

What this might mean for people living in such a fluid and shape-shifting place is evoked in subtle ways in many of the works in the exhibition. Ausin Tung Gallery is a relatively new kid on the block, with a stated intention to raise the profile of Chinese art for Melbourne audiences, and to facilitate dialogue between Australian and Chinese artists through residencies and curated shows. In this exhibition the result is an interesting selection of works by artists who at first sight appear to have little in common. What could connect Wu Daxin’s ephemeral ice sculpture installations on the Great Wall with Wu Junyong’s dark and sardonic digital animations; or You Si’s lyrical ink abstractions with Pu Jie’s 21st century reworking of Political Pop? And yet the juxtaposition of these artists’ works, together with others by artists such as Chen Hangfeng, Miao Xiaochun, Gao Weigang, Zhang Bojun and Ren Bo, delivers an intriguing snapshot of life and art in China today. Within China there are many cultures, many histories, and many experiences, despite the tendency of some in the West to oversimplify. Artists today in China, like artists everywhere, engage in transnational and global conversations. As they say on Law and Order: “These are some of their stories”.

Pu Jie’s paintings are perhaps closest to what Western audiences might expect contemporary Chinese art to look like. Informed by the Political Pop and Cynical Realist movements of the 90s, he developed his signature technique of layered glazes and washes of paint, with one image overlaying another which is fainter, more ghostly. The artist’s intention is to represent the past underneath the present reality, stubbornly lingering behind the current world of pop culture glitz and glamour, consumer desire and material wealth. This technique, and the skill with which he manipulates sheer layers of translucent paint, become visual codes signifying the power of the past, and of memory. Sometimes the ghostly images are red-scarved Young Pioneers, or revolutionary soldiers, sometimes they are Shanghai beauties of the 1930s. The artist’s wealthy family lost everything during the Cultural Revolution, and the bitterness lingers. When I spoke with Pu Jie in his Shanghai studio last year he told me that seeing a Rauschenberg exhibition in Beijing in the 1980s was unforgettable and influential, and gave him a way of collaging apparently discontinuous narratives in order to represent the layering of memories. He says, “I want to preserve the past in my work, just like a scientific specimen”.

In works such as ‘Feeding’ and ‘Head and Her No. 2’ he reveals his own response to the juxtapositions of past and present in China today. The works are luscious, with seductive surfaces that at first appear to be slick Pop images of beautiful girls drawn with black outlines recalling calligraphy strokes in ink paintings, on fields of glowing primary colour. Yet behind the blankly beautiful linear face in ‘Feeding’ lies the nostalgic image of a pre-revolutionary Shanghai beauty, and over her, in the same misty red tones, swarm feeding goldfish. The atmosphere evoked is disturbing, suggesting that just beneath the surface of our contemporary lives lie seething darker memories, revealing what he identifies as “the conflict of all Chinese people”: the transition, sometimes painful, from one kind of society to another.

Pu Jie ,photographed in his studio, Shanghai, April 2011, photograph Luise Guest.

Similarly, Beijing-based Wu Junyong works in painting, drawing, sculpture and, most significantly, digital animation in a style based on traditional paper cutting. In this show he is represented by a series of delicate watercolours which feature his trademark dunce-hatted or hooded figures, either naked or in the universal masculine uniform of the business suit. There is also an 8 minute animation, ‘Time of Stomach’, which reveals his capacity for surreal invention, creating memorable and compelling images which are at once beautiful and bleak. It came as no surprise to me, in a conversation with the artist last year, to discover that he loves Goya. ‘Saturn Devouring One of His Sons’ has a dark kinship with many of the scenarios that emerge from Wu’s imagination. We spoke in his Beijing studio, surrounded by works in progress including a table covered in wonderfully detailed black paper cut figures of the creatures which populate his imagination. He was reluctant to concede any influences on his work from contemporary artists, but identified Pieter Breugel’s ‘The Blind Leading the Blind’ as the source of many of his ideas in the most recent works. His animations, in which tiny puppet-like men and hybrid animals drawn from Western and Chinese fairy stories, fables and folk tales are manipulated into grotesque parodies of social rituals, are reminiscent in some respects of the work of William Kentridge. Like Kentridge, Wu’s works also meld a personal visual language with a political and social imperative. His most renowned animation work, 'When We Are Rich', is a savagely satirical indictment of 'new China' with its loss of traditional values and an obsession with the trappings of wealth and success. Living in Beijing, he says, is a constant source of inspiration for his work. He describes the city as a theatre where all the craziness of the world is on show: thieves and counterfeiters, scam artists, scholars and philosophers. In his work this cast of characters are turned into scholar cranes, black crows, spiders, elephants, horses and donkeys, in amongst the humans with all their foibles and frailties.

Wu Junyong, Dragon-boat, 2010, watercolor on Paper, 56.5x76cm, image reproduced courtesy of Ausin Tung Gallery

The purpose of art, Wu believes, is to be a thermometer, taking society’s temperature. If this is so, the diagnosis is bleak. The most frequently recurring figure in his paintings, sculptures, paper-cuts and animations is the little naked man, engaged in pointless, repetitive and often humiliating actions, wearing a tall dunce’s cap. This ‘everyman’ figure represents to the artist the animalistic, greedy and corruptible nature of man, combined with the scholar’s hat representing culture. However there are also the inescapable resonances of the humiliations visited upon ‘intellectuals’ during the Cultural Revolution. Another constant theme in Wu’s work is the ubiquity of surveillance, and in ‘Time of Stomach’ the black crow, a regular inhabitant of his world, has his head replaced by a surveillance camera, swivelling to observe the audience.

Wu Junyong in his studio, Beijing, March 2011, photograph Luise Guest.

In contrast, the abstract forms of You Si’s ink scrolls create a lyrically beautiful universe in which forms swirl and dissolve, suggestive of microscopic biological forms and of the celestial . I had recently seen small coloured works on paper by this artist at NG Art in Sydney, and previously at Art Labor Gallery in Shanghai, and had found them beautiful but somewhat repetitive. The monochromatic large works here at Ausin Tung are stronger and more interesting. Reminiscent of traditional ink paintings on rice paper, yet pushing these techniques into new territory, including the use of unconventional methods such as the use of an eye dropper to create his characteristic rounded pools of ink, You Si has developed a language of form which suggests the vastness of the universe and its infinite complexity and beauty. You’s parents were famous political poster painters during the 1960s, a uniquely Chinese artistic heritage which may have contributed to the strong graphic quality of his paintings. Travelling to live and work in New York and also in Australia during the 1980s, however, allowed him the freedom to experiment and innovate.

Wu Daxin is represented in this show by two large inkjet prints, documentation of his temporal work ‘Great Wall Project’ in which he created structures suggestive of Byzantine or Romanesque domes on the squat watchtowers at a remote area of the Great Wall, and hung them with flat panels of ice in the early morning. It recalls Goldsworthy’s ephemeral works with ice and snow as well as his drywall constructions in remote areas, but also suggests the blurring of cultural boundaries in China past and present. The wall was built to keep the invading barbarians out, and was spectacularly unsuccessful in doing so. The peculiarly evocative image of thin panels of ice slowly melting to reveal the skeletal structure of the domes can be read in many ways, not least as the endurance of Chinese culture in contrast to the transitory dominance of the European structures which were imposed on it. Wu Daxin’s ice sculpture ‘Ashley’s Heart’ is currently showing in ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’ at the White Rabbit Gallery in Sydney. Chen Hangfeng is known in Australia more for his witty ‘Logomania’ series of papercuts than for his video and multimedia works. ‘Logomania’ was the first body of work he created after giving up work as a graphic designer, and reveals his particular interest in ideas about overconsumption, materialism, and the rule of powerful global corporations, and how the use of these corporate images can be subverted to create new meanings. Ausin Tung were showing some of these works at the Affordable Art Fair in Melbourne, ironically just near a stand showing traditional Chinese folk art papercuts selling at vastly inflated prices. In ‘Facing East’ his video work ‘The Last Supper’ shows the artist drawing the KFC logo of Colonel Sanders with chicken feed on the ground, and the process of the chickens pecking away at the logo, eating the corporate image that their lives may ultimately sacrificed to. KFC, by the way, is the most successful fast food chain in China and may well have contributed to the much discussed problem of the obesity of the ‘Little Emperors’ generation of children now emerging from adolescence into adulthood.

Chen Hangfeng, The Last Supper, 2008, digital c print lambda, 73 x 54.5 cm, edition 3 of 5 1, image reproduced courtesy of Ausin Tung Gallery

Gao Weigang’s ‘Nothing Can Go Wrong’, a painting of a tiger skin with a bell attached to its tail, typifies the dark humour of much recent Chinese art. The artist, whose Beijing shows at China Art Archives were curated by Ai Weiwei, won the Art Futures Award at the 2011 Hong Kong Art Fair. It is not surprising, given the recent history of China, to discover that many Chinese artists love Breugel and Bosch: the teeming hordes of tiny figures, the appalling cruelty, the random nature of fate, these are evoked in many works, most particularly in Miao Xiaochun’s inventive and astonishing 3D computer animations, ‘Disillusion’, and ‘Restart’. His work ‘A Limited World’, based on Hieronymus Bosch and the Garden of Earthly Delights, was shown recently in ‘A New Horizon: Contemporary Chinese Art’ at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. Originally a painter, he moved seamlessly into panoramic photographic works and more recently into computer imaging and animation, making works about the social transformation of China that are ambitious allegories of the human condition.

The photographs by Zhang Bojun, such as ‘We No. 2’, at first sight appear to be abstract compositions of tiny shapes like grains of rice or sand, but on closer inspection reveal themselves to be thousands of people whom he has photographed at Beijing’s overcrowded railway station. There are echoes here of Ai Weiwei’s 100 million sunflower seeds, and the continuing dominance of the collective identity rather than the individual. Like other shows of contemporary art from China, ‘Facing East’ deals with all the tensions of contemporary life and the uneasy relationship between past certainties and present ambiguities in a time of flux. It does so with the technical virtuosity and subtlety we have come to expect from Chinese artists.

"Hong Kong is ideally located to take advantage of an Eastern economic boom that keeps defying Western prophets of doom. Although it may sound scarcely believable, that defiant attitude is shared by leading Western art dealers who have begun opening gigantic new spaces in a city long known as a cultural backwater.

"Those bad old days when Hong Kong was all business and no art have been swept away by the realisation that art can be very big business in its own right. The crucial catalyst has been the Hong Kong International Art Fair (ART HK), which has grown exponentially in popularity and turnover since its inception in 2008. At the age of five, it may be said that ART HK is no longer an emerging fair - it is a fully mature operation that ranks alongside Basel and Miami as one of the world's leading showcases for the commercial art trade.
Featuring 266 galleries from 38 countries, ART HK is now almost the same size as its peers in Europe and the US.

"The final list was chosen from more than 700 applications, using a selection process that required applicants to show flair and innovation. This produced a show of exceptional quality and consistency. In Asia, ART HK reigns supreme, with fairs in Singapore, mainland China and Korea offering scant competition.
The mushrooming gallery scene is all the proof that is required. Last year, Gagosian and Ben Brown opened new premises in the Pedder Building, and have now been joined by Pearl Lam and Simon Lee.

"John McDonald travelled to Hong Kong as a guest of ART HK."

John McDonald, The Big Picture, The Sydney Morning Herald.

Next year it will be 40 years since the Aquarius Festival took place in Nimbin, Northern NSW. For those old enough to remember, the Festival was organised by the cultural wing of the Australian Union of Students and many of the attendees were architecture students at the University of Sydney*. Events are currently being planned for 2013 to mark the anniversary and relevant to this week’s exhibition review, Lismore Regional Gallery (LRG) will stage an exhibition entitled ‘Not Quite Square’ tracing the story of Northern Rivers’ architecture since the early 1970s “when radical new ideas were being explored in domestic living spaces”. New Age thinking spawned from this event provided inspiration for the next wave of Australian architects and planners who considered new modes of communal living and helped pioneer reforms to the legal system of property ownership and rigid Council housing requirements. The movement towards this somewhat romantic idea of counter-culturism has, however, not really progressed since the dizzy heights of those days. Some might go so far as to say that it no longer exists – although many multiple occupancy dwellers and alternative lifestyle practitioners still living in the hills behind Lismore and Murwillumbah would definitely beg to differ.

Kylie Banyard, Cosmic Tudor. Oil on canvas, 38x31cms.

Fast forward from 1973 to 2012 to the inner city suburb of Chippendale in Sydney. This tiny inner western suburb is currently enjoying a cultural renaissance – heralded by the construction of the The Chippendale Green’, a brand new city park, and an invasion of cultural spaces including several art galleries – NG Art, Peloton and White Rabbit Gallery have occupied their spots for a while now and the brand new McLemoi Gallery opened in a Chelsea (NY) style warehouse only last week. Around the corner in Abercrombie Street (next door to the MOP artist-run initiative) is the only-slightly-less-new Galerie pompom. Pompom is the new commercial project for Ron and George Adams (founders of MOP), which opened earlier in 2012 and is now on its third show. Apparently this is not to be the last gallery for the suburb as more are due to open soon.

At Galerie pompom, artist and COFA final year PhD student Kylie Banyard is currently exhibiting her solo show ‘Dwelling’. Galerie pompom is a compact and friendly space. It already seems as if it’s already an important part of the neighbourhood with passers by popping in. As you may have already guessed from the title of the show, spaces (and places) are very important to Banyard whose PhD thesis ‘explores the convergence of two figurations of the outmoded within [her] practice-based research, namely, specific optical viewing devices and the alternative social model of the hippy/artist’s commune.’

At first ‘Dwelling’ looks like a smallish show, but Banyard exhibits a diverse array of works that explore varying forms and include a number of watercolours on paper, several oils on canvas & linen, and two geodesic dome sculptures constructed from multi-coloured cardboard. Two found kaleidoscopes placed onto stands also feature and although coupled with two particular works ‘So this is Freetown’ and ‘Andrea and Mike’s Place’ they can be moved around the gallery to view other works as well. The optical device is also referenced in several watercolour works entitled ‘Pattern Thinking’ (1,2 and 3). Here the artist has painted kaleidoscopic patterns bringing together her interest in colour and shape to create harmony. ‘Pattern Thinking 2’ appears almost three dimensional and suspended in space.

The dwellings painted for this exhibition were based on research carried out by the artist on three particular communities dedicated to sustainable alternative living – the Greater World Earthship Community (Taos, New Mexico), Freetown Christiana (Copenhagen, Denmark) and Drop City (Colorado, USA) although some are not unlike those from photographs I’ve previewed for the LRG exhibition. Much comes from Banyard’s imagination because she deliberately hasn’t visited the sites. In the oil paintings, psychedelic skies and vivid landscapes reference hippy themes and colours representative of the era. The artist’s interest in pattern and shape can’t be missed in these pictures and seems to add to her ability to move seamlessly between creating depth and painting flat in ‘Rocky Dome 2012’ and ‘So This is Freetown 2012’.

Like these idealised communities the kaleidoscopes in the show offer a promise to the child in us all. To those who are prepared to come forward and close one eye, a step into alternative reality is the reward. They also provide the link between Banyard’s two thesis subjects as they open up other ways of seeing. Although more recently made with plastic pieces, kaleidoscopes originally contained fragments of glass and brought together disparate objects to form a harmonious whole. Perhaps it could be argued the heydays of 1970s communal living attempted to do something similar – with humans as the pieces of the pattern.

I’m guessing the artist is a too young to have experienced the Aquarius Festival but other experiences in her youth led to her exploring alternative means of living in her artistic practice. In the early 90s she lived for a time in a large share house in Hobart and later spent a year as a young nomad sleeping in the back of a panel van and crossing the deserts of Australia in a convoy of four in a mobile commune of sorts. Banyard admits to being more of an environmental pragmatist these days but the idea of the utopian alternative has never really lost its romance for her. Interestingly, no humans appear in ‘Dwelling’ despite the word being a noun and a verb. This serves to emphasise Banyard’s abandonment thesis while at the same time allowing the romantic notion some hope for survival. What is really intriguing about the ideas stimulated by ‘Dwelling’ is why, only 40 years on from Aquarius the concept of successful alternative lifestyle now seems like old fashioned thinking and unattainable fantasia.

Kylie Banyard
Galerie pompom, Sydney
Until 9 June 2012

*One further fascinating piece of trivia I found when researching this post (if Wikipedia is to be believed) was that the Aquarius Festival was sponsored by Peter Stuyvesant.

I recently received an email about a new exhibition for Sydney painter George Raftopoulos. I knew George hadn’t had a Gallery show for a couple of years so I’d been thinking about speaking to him for The Art Life when he popped up for a online chat one evening last week. Here’s what happened:

GR. Hey stranger, how are you?

SW. Hey George. Pretty good and pretty busy…you have a new show open this week? I was thinking about asking you if you wanted to do a little interview piece for The Art Life. What do you think?

GR. Sure why not! Art Equity did a piece on YouTube and I’m also about to have a film made in conjunction with a major show for the Hellenic Museum in Melbourne which will travel to Chicago and Athens.

SW. That’s great news for you. As well as some info about the show I thought you might like to tell us a bit about your recent experiences in the art world – you’ve never been shy about controversy in that area.

GR. Me? Controversial? I don’t recall that! Sure I think the whole system of the conventional art gallery dealer is dying...the light bulb has gone off that it costs a shit load to run a gallery. I can tell you stories about some gallery owners who everybody out there thinks are rolling in it but are struggling to no end.

GR. BEGIN INTERVIEW NOW...haha.

George Raftopoulos, Heroes and Myths:
The Hunter (diptych), Oil on linen, 122cmx194cm.

SW. Actually we could do that. [Thinking]. Not a bad idea...give me a minute…George, you have a new show coming up at Art Equity. What themes are you currently interested in?

GR. Painting for the sheer joy of Painting. The ability to transport ones mind and to get absorbed in the physicality of mark making is something I relish and enjoy. The story telling seems to be inherent. This is a show with no bullshit about trickery it is the exploration of ones honesty, about being free and having the ability to work outside the boundaries of gallery pressures to have a successful exhibition. The difference here is that I have nothing to prove but a lot to share - wisdom, joy, angst etc. I am just blurting away here. In essence I am celebrating the notion of creative freedom.

SW. So when you say you have the ability to "work outside the boundaries of gallery pressures" you mean what exactly?

GR. Well that you have a show in 18 months time and you must create 25-30 cracking paintings that will satisfy the gallery collector base. I can’t tell you how much my creative life has changed since my departure from the traditional gallery system. I also found doing three shows a year for 17 years got a little stale. It’s truly frustrating, Sharne, as a creator in this country.

SW. What has changed for you now? Was it just the time pressure?

GR. I have actually met collectors and now feel in control of my creative destiny - whom I show with and whom I sell to. It is a liberating feeling. I am now in control and I make more interesting contacts and do interesting projects where otherwise a gallery would perhaps give them to someone else. For example, galleries have 35 artists they show every two years and apparently this the required time for an artist to develop his/her language since the last time they had a show so the artist is supposed to hang in there until the gallery agrees to a show and to make a chunk of money to live on etc. But when an interesting person comes along and says ‘give me 10 paintings and I will fund you’ what is the artist meant to say - no?

SW. So I've had the emails and all but I’m not too sure how Art Equity works?

GR. I am not sure how they work either but I do know that people often criticize their gusto for sales. As an artist we want our works to sell otherwise why the hell are they created and why do we put on exhibitions?

SW. The show is called ‘Myths and Heroes’. I presume the myths are the narratives in the paintings – sourced from the modern day perhaps? What about the heroes?

GR. Heroes are those that inspire me everyday. The snippets of conversation or that crazy lady I saw somewhere with amazing colours, These are the heroes of the everyday that I reference in these works.

SW. Artists are often asked about their cultural identity and how it affects their work. I know you were born in Sydney, the son of Greek parents, although you lived in the NSW countryside while you were growing up. Today I saw a tweet which said ‘Nobody Knows My Suffering – [signed] Everybody’. What I'm trying to ask is whether being the son of Greek migrants has had a profound effect on the work you make or do you think its just something art writers like to write about to make artists seem more authentic? (Sorry - that's a long question...)

GR. The Greekness is inherent. Fortunately for me being the only Greek in Grenfell we had to prove ourselves. Up until that stage we where looked upon as complete exiles. It worked out in the end I try to explain these feelings to my children and they have no concept of racism - but I tell you it makes one stronger. It formed the foundation for me to make pictures. I think about it from time to time and it resonates a lot with me now that it was in fact the best education in my life. We lived in NY for 4 years and we were considered Aussies. However when I would go back to Grenfell we were wogs. It's a funny dichotomy and, yes, it fuels paintings of self and makes me appreciate my Greek heritage more.

SW. Your paintings are hard to categorise as figurative or landscape or abstract because they have all of those elements - perhaps in a similar way to John Olsen's work, for example. Is that deliberate?

GR. They are a pastiche of all the above. I admire the fact that I can't be categorised. The paintings simply touch on the human spirit and that’s why they affect so many people in various ways. I reference all of my experiences and attack the canvas with no predisposed idea, notion or concept - that is why I believe these works can’t be boxed into a category.

SW. Is the work autobiographical? So for example, are the figures in 'Of Greeks and Yeoman' or 'The Dentist' real people?

GR. Absolutely they are autobiographical. That is why they stir up so much emotion and have no veil or trickery in them. They’re raw and alive with pure passionate paintwork – and they take the viewer into a journey into my everyday concerns and dreams. ‘The Dentist’ references this first hand as I am absolutely petrified of the dentist and have been from a young age, although a recent visit changed my perception and this is an ode to that experience.

SW. Do you have a plan before brush hits canvas?

GR. Absolutely NOT. Never. I attack the canvas and it’s like a dance and it takes me where it needs to go. Often these works are made up of layers and layers of paint. Often the joke is that up to three paintings exist in one painting. One must live free of fear and constraint - this is my mantra and also correlates into my arts practice.

SW. I like the way your work tends to mix a strong line with a certain lightness of tone and stroke. The pictures are whimsical but they can also be a bit dark at the same time. This is also apparent in the colors. How do you think that happens - is it in the technique, the way you are thinking? The psychology? What?

GR. This harks back to my days as a printmaker where line is paramount and of sheer importance. It is simply taking the Line for a walk and forming the amazing journey from this. My work has always held, I believe, a sense of irony. For example in ‘The Dentist’ the colour is a hot pink. Here I am turning a frightful situation into a happy evocative experience. Almost each work contains a controlled madness that is balanced by accurate areas of controlled marks - if that makes sense.

…SW. So George, there's been a couple of days since our last conversation and it seems like the work is selling really well. How do you feel?

GR. Seems in this market we are absolutely killing it. Bravo to the art dealer who thought I would simply go away and hide under a rock. I'm back because the brush is always stronger than the sword and I think OZ is about to have its time in the sun like the Russians had and the Chinese have had...and I also think that the traditional gallery artist relationship is about to dramatically change forever.

SW. Good luck with the show George.

GR. Thanks Sharne...be good my love speak soon.

George Raftopoulos
‘Heroes and Myths’
Art Equity
May 2012

"Sutton Gallery is pleased to present Living With Living, a solo exhibition by George Egerton-Warburton. The exhibited works appear as chapters severed from their context, here, in the account of a student that confused social culture with bacterial culture, subsequently becoming a dairy farmer geared toward the production of Greek yoghurt, rather than a disciple of Greek philosophy and poetry of the Roman Empire. Living With Living is the third and final instalment in a trilogy of case studies investigating clandestine autonomy in rural areas. The project is presented as a part of NEXT WAVE Festival 2012, with the support of the Department of Culture and the Arts Western Australia."

In the exhibition Manuwangku – Under the Nuclear Cloud Sri Lankan-born photographer Jagath Dheerasekara presents images of the Muckaty community in the Northern Territory, a place planned as a destination for nuclear waste. Dheerasekara’s images are concise and forceful depictions of a community fighting to preserve its culture and environment while remaining sensitive to its human stories. The exhibition is one of three shows at Customs House staged as part of Sydney’s annual Head On Photo Festival. Alongside Peter Elfe’s The Green Desert – with its images of lush Australian landscapes – and Alexa Sinclair’s Homage - and its baroque panto fashion-world images – the three exhibitions present the breadth and vitality of contemporary photographic practice.

Until June 29, Customs House, 1st Floor, 31 Alfred Street, Circular Quay, 9242 8551.

Last night I attended the opening of the Redlands Westpac Art Prize held at its new and brilliant venue, the National Art School Galleries. The atmosphere was vibrant and upbeat and the speeches left me feeling a warm glow for the sense of camaraderie that the art prize this year is designed to engender but a few nagging doubts left me with mixed feelings.

The truth is that with any prize there can only be one winner and no matter how carefully the judges make their selection there will always be room for speculation. This is particularly so when the winner is the highly acclaimed, highly awarded, super star of the art world, Ben Quilty, and the winning work is destined for the collection of an exclusive private school on the North Shore. You can be sure that the $20,000 prize money secured a very sound investment for the learning institution.

The speech given by the Redlands representative who worked with curator Rachel Kent on the judging addressed these concerns and whether there was a sense of equality in their selection but maintained that the work was simply the best in their opinion, plus it fulfilled the criteria of meeting the teaching aims of their arts program. The public school girl in me wanted to roll her eyes at this point.

So, was it the best work there? I can't truthfully tell you my opinion because openings can be the worst possible time to thoughtfully view work, what with all the networking going on oiling the gears of the art world. I think Quilty's work in this prize is definitely a strong one and I can tell you that in my experience Ben is an incredibly nice guy who is very dedicated to his chunky, fleshy practice, loyal to his supporters and supportive of fellow artists. The gist of his speech along with others given on the night was very much about the sustaining nature of the relationships artists develop with each other and the need for more support for artists. He passionately deplored the fact that sports people apparently don't pay HECS unlike struggling art students saying that most could expect to spend at least 7 years paying off their debt - my thought was sure, if they manage to earn over the threshold.

An ever gracious, very tired Lindy Lee, who is stepping back from her role as curator, ended the speeches with a simple thank you and a heartfelt 'long live art!'

This is what the unique structure of this prize is all about, acknowledging the life-giving connections between artists and perhaps attempting to spread the net a little wider than in a traditional prize where selection is restricted to a small panel of judges who often have dubious authority. Those artists invited to participate were asked to select an emerging artist to also take part. Yes, ultimately the final judging was done by two people, with their own interests, for the mid-career award and one individual for the emerging artists award, but there is great value in just being included in an exhibition amongst respected peers. I appreciate that rather than the arduous task for entrants and judges alike of thousands of unsolicited entries, a diverse show was curated by someone well respected within the community both as an artist and an academic. The show represents works in many media, often cross-disciplinary, and addressing a broad range of concerns and artistic interests. There did seem to be a slight leaning towards work with a post-colonial flavour but I guess it is to be expected that a curator will have their own areas of particular interest and it isn't overwhelmingly weighted towards this type of work.

The verdict? Art prizes aren't fair but you have to deal with any inherent inequalities as best you can. Hopefully in this case the result is a snapshot of the interconnectedness of artists and the art that they themselves find interesting. Last night it was announced that Westpac would no longer be funding the prize which I think is a great shame. I would love to see the prize, in this model, continue in future and hope that there may be someone willing to take on the cause, for the sake of the artists.

Amanda Marburg has an unusual technique for making art. After modelling small-scale figures in plasticine she then carefully copies the works with oils on to canvas. The result is an image that highlights the hand-made nature of the original objects, but it’s also a process that gives her images a distinctly odd feel. Her new exhibition Marking The Pathway to Corporeal Pleasures explores the frankly pervy world of ‘70s skin mags including female and male nudes, erotic poses and real sex. Except in Marburg’s pictures the images have been transformed from pornography into plasticine stand-ins and, like her past work, the paintings explore a particular genre of image making altered and made strange by two stages of transformation. The show is weird and adults only - and utterly compelling.

Until May 26, Rex Irwin Art Dealer, 1st Floor, 38 Queen Street, Woollahra.

"[Avian - of, relating to, or characteristic of birds]. The title of this body of work came to me before I began painting this series. I often find a word or sentence appears strongly in my consciousness, which then plagues me so much, that I must produce a series of paintings about or around that particular word or sentence. It’s as if a seed has presented itself, and my purpose is to plant it. I have been attracted to painting birds for some time, they present for me, a plethora of motif, originating perhaps from my fathers collection and breeding of birds when I was very young. I am drawn to the power, dexterous flight and fragility of birds and can see parallels of these traits within people and the human form. Wings are the epitome of power and fragility, they’re beautiful complex structures, that for many are considered objects of desire. Wings hold a fragile hope, that may bring about freedom, perhaps a higher reach of consciousness, real or imagined. Within this body of work I have aimed to represent a philosophy of the avian being, not only focusing on physical liberation of movement, but investigating movement within a metaphysical context and the flight of the mind." - Margarita Georgiadis.

Avian - Edwina Corlette Gallery, Brisbane 8- 26 May, 2012.

Got new work you'd like to share? Send images no larger than 550x550px and 350k each, plus a short statement about the work, to: the art life at hot mail dot com