Reviews on Inside Out Upside Down Gallery Site
Wynne Prize 2010
Entering the Wynne Prize exhibition space after viewing the Archibald exhibition is like being disappointed and then being doubly disappointed.
Landscape is a genre that needs a passionate artist to present in anything but a mind numbing manner. Perhaps these works were produced by passionate artists but collectively they are so placid, so still and so improbable that I just wanted to get out of the exhibition as quickly as possible.
There are good works that stand out . Philip Wolfhagen presents a fine work which is well developed and matches perfectly in execution to its' size, it contains true passion for the subject and true self expression. Juan Ford has a delightful image in "Nobody is Necessary" but it is just too big for the topic, the execution is flawless, perhaps in this instance a few flaws might have helped make it more arresting.
Many people in the exhibition space were commenting on how much better this years paintings were than last year. I can't see it but have included this commentary to counter balance my disappointment in what is on offer.
Sadly the Wynne now has its' own controversy, the winner appears to be a copy of a Dutch painting hanging in Amsterdam. The figures and animals have been removed in the Wynne entry. It appears that the outline is a perfect copy when the two images are overlaid in Photoshop. Lighting effects are almost identical, though colouring does seem to differ (if you have ever tried to copy a master you will understand this is almost impossible to achieve accurately). There is a precedent for this as a winner of the Archibald was a copy of a Dutch painting some years back, though in that case there were substantial differences, not just a few removals from the original. Though it does strike me that the Wynne is an Australian Landscape competition, which means unless we have snuck into the Netherlands and annexed it the painting should be disqualified.
(added 28 April 2010)
The Trustees of the AGNSW have deliberated on the 'appropriation' controversy and concluded that Mr Leach will keep his prize. Pandora has opened yet another box and degraded painting yet again. The simple facts are that a copy such as this takes far less time to create and considerably less skill, as to being an act of self expression it might be but nobody would know that from the image. The real skill in representational landscape is determining colour, value and brush work combinations that create an image of original qualities and expression. This painting displays none of these skills. As to the works that will arrive next year, guess what they will be straight copies with a couple of minor alterations, just to enable the appropriation card to be played.
Perhaps it does not matter to the Trustees but they should consider that artists work very hard to create new original works. To discourage creative artists in this way is to ensure that next years entries will have less excellence about them (it is already hard to find). The purpose of the Wynne is actually to encourage artists to create excellent landscapes, it is not to discourage artists from even being bothered to enter.
I know the theory of Post Modernism and I know that most thinking Philosophers have now moved beyond it as a bad and lazy joke that fails as a framework for social activity. In the case of painting it is an excuse for producing lazy, skill degraded, esoteric drivel. Having recently read a great deal of Post Modernist criticism of late Victorian art I can see that the arguments used against that supposedly static form are in fact the same as can be applied to Post Modernism itself.
Next year we can look forward to a mass of copies on the wall, all excellent copies but still just copies with a tweak or two.
author: Neil Miley