Monday 20 April 2015

DAVID MUTCH with JOHN CLARKE - Lakes walk,talk - Sat 9 May @ 2pm




WINDOWSPACE-BEEAC

DAVID MUTCH with JOHN CLARKE
Psychogeography of craters and lakes

Talk and walk - 2 pm on Sat 9 May 2015 - Starts 79 Main St BEEAC 
(Note: this event has been rescheduled from 3 May 2015)











The spirit of place becomes increasingly elusive in an increasingly frantic world. This talk and walk offers an opportunity to hear the response of an artist, Mutch and the insights of local man, Clarke, as they ponder the extraordinary grey salt lakes around BEEAC, an important part of the Lakes and Craters Precinct of the Kanawinka Global Geopark of SW Victoria, an extensive volcanic lake network recognized under the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, Iran, 1971).

Mutch’s work, and the lakes, share some reflection on the issue of climate, and by implication on the state of the contemporary world. Clarke’s indigenous heritage connects to many thousands of years of local culture.

Enquiries: Anna acsande@gmail.com




Below is a tangent readers might like to explore:


REGARDING THE EARTH - 
Ecological vision in word and image    
A conference  2012

ECOPOETICS  Abstract:

Picturesque
The word itself announces the basic political and ecological fallacy of the Romantic category of the ‘picturesque’: it frames the world as a picture. What gets left out of the frame is ‘unscenic nature’ and ‘the dark side of the landscape.’ The picturesque naturalises social exploitation and domesticates the alien otherness of the natural world, securing the satisfactions of the bourgeois self twice over. More decorative than the sublime but more fungible than beauty, the picturesque is the aesthetic at its most ideological. It presents a fantasy of unmediated vision over a world that is unthreatening not least because it is entirely owned.
I want to propose an alternative reading of the picturesque, one that takes its orientation from Steve McCaffery’s reworking in Dark Ladies of William Gilpin’s description of the picturesque as ‘the scenery of vapour’: ‘Imagine a text as a scenery of vapour then say “loss” is one less word between you and your grave.’ There’s something uncanny in the vision of the picturesque, I want to suggest, something clouded, something textual and fragmented, involving a paradoxical loss of loss—that is, something potentially more radically ecopolitical than standard critiques have yet been able to acknowledge.
Tom Ford – ‘The Scenery of Vapour’: The Ecopolitics of the  PicturesqueFor other abstracts:








Saturday 4 April 2015

DAVID MUTCH - WINDOWSPACE-BEEAC 2

SHELTER II, (2014)


David Mutch works with photography, video, sculptural installation and sound. 

Architectural theory, psychogeography and science fiction cinema influence his practice. He performs as one half of the electronic duo Pissypaw.

Mutch graduated in Fine Art at RMIT, Melbourne (2010) and in 2011 exhibited solo at Beam Contemporary Melbourne with Why did aliens build the pyramids,and at Rearview with Inverse Universe. His most recent solo show was From Nowhere to Nowhere (Beam Contemporary, 2013). See review:
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/about-town/your-weekend-in-the-galleries-20130920-2u3mv.html

In 2013 Mutch held an artist residency at Red Gate Gallery, Beijing.


Mutch's work Shelter II, (2014) on show at WINDOWSPACE-BEEAC, (6 April - 3 May, 2015) is a sculptural installation employing concrete, plaster, commercial shelving and polyurethane. It has been described as: 'poignantly reminiscent of the idea of a doomsday bunker' (David Ashley Kerr, from the exhibition essay for Seven Trumpets, Strange Neighbour, Fitzroy, 2015 - strangeneighbour.com). 



Coincidentally the work has an uncanny resonance with the grey salt lakes around BEEAC which together form an integral part of the Lakes and Craters Precinct of the Kanawinka Global Geopark of SW Victoria. The extensive volcanic lake network is recognized under the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, Iran, 1971).

Clearly the work, and the lakes, share some reflection on the issue of climate, and by implication on the state of the contemporary world. It is possibly for this reason that Mutch suggested an artist talk that includes a tour of some of the lakes (Sun 3 May 2 pm).

Although he has long studied and worked in Melbourne, Mutch grew up at Barongarook, in the Otways, an area in close proximity, but in significant contrast to the craters and lakes precinct around BEEAC.

Context for Mutch's work can be found at: www.davidmutch.net






David Mutch, April  2015, with work Shelter II, (2014)



David Mutch, Shelter II, (2014) - image courtesy Strange Neighbour