VISUAL ART
A look back at some of the highlights from a remarkable 12 months for some of the state’s most creative talents T he year 2017 was big for visual arts in Hobart. Mona had one of the most fascinating and expansive shows it has featured with the Museum of Everything, a remarkable collection of art that is still on display. The show rewrites the narrative of art, and it is worth the time to take in the huge volume of work. The show haunts me still in the way the best art does.
Nothing competes with Mona for scale, but the most critically vital event for Hobart this year was Hobiennale. I didn’t like everything that was on offer – some pieces felt underdeveloped – but there was some superb, very contemporary material. What was really important was the energy, vision and commitment to community that organisers Grace Herbert and Liam James and their army of tireless volunteers demonstrated. It’s all very well to have initiatives like this, but someone needs to do the work, and the work of making a festival of this scope is monstrous.
Kudos aside, this festival was about Hobart as a site for new art and ideas, and this kind of grassroots festival helps build a strong creative community that will contribute to the state’s cultural growth in a significant way.
Saying what stood out from a huge range of fine work this year is hard; the standard was very high. Milan Milojevic exhibited his work a lot, but his Rosny Barn show, Wunderkammerama, was the wonder he set out to make. The installation of birds, perfectly lit by Jason James, was an alchemic wonder that lifted this established artist’s work to another plane.
Equally marvellous was Raymond Arnold’s art. Arnold remains one of Tasmania’s most treasured artists, and his work becomes richer with time. His show at Bett Gallery earlier in the year demonstrated his great skill, but also his quiet rapture for the landscape of the West Coast; his work really captures the spirit of the land.
There was a lot that was good at the Moonah Arts Centre this year. Indeed this space must be named the most valuable venue for local visual art in 2017. Show after show was a cracker. It’s hard to pick just one, but Victor Manuel Medrano-Bonilla’s curatorial effort Crossroads was a showcase of excellent artists: Lou Conboy, Caz Rodwell, Nancy Mauro-Flude, Nadege Philippe-Janon and Sabio Evans all brought attention-grabbing work, and the show had a strong cohesion.
Michael Schlitz’s light memory, dark ground was almost the best single work I saw during the year, and nothing came near it for sheer ineffable wonder. Schlitz expanded his entire practice with this powerful work, and I noted at the time it was probably the best thing we would see by a Tasmanian artist this year – but I was wrong.
Entirely different from this work was the emotionally powerful Shredding Light, an installation work by Soup Collective. This amalgam of hanging plastic sheets encouraged one to sit and listen to the remarkable stories of some brave women. The display was part of the Artfully Queer exhibition, which took place during the same-sex marriage plebiscite.
At what was without a doubt a challenging moment for Tasmania’s LGBTQI community, this work exemplified quiet but undefeatable defiance, a sense of community and, above all else, the power of love. Rough around the edges, its emotional effectiveness was matched by its political strength. It should exist as more than a memory, for it is deeply unusual to encounter a work that speaks so directly to a historical moment while retaining the timeless quality of the best art.