DONALD KNOWLER

DOUBLE YOLKER!

Mish Meijers

Bett Gallery

Level 1 / 65 Murray St, Hobart Ends October 13

Price range: $950 — $4600

Iexperience sheer joy when encountering the work of Mish Meijers; it is just so filled with exuberant, funky fun. Meijers always has a sense of play as a component of everything she does, but despite the positive qualities, her work is underpinned by a complex conceptual tone. This is the biggest show to date from Meijers, and she has spread her art out; embracing a range of mediums and approaches.

There are some great paintings, but there’s also large soft sculpture, ceramics, installation and some video art. This tactic could be a risk, but with Meijers, diverse approaches reflect the energetic controlled chaos that aesthetically ties her art together.

In Double Yolker, there’s some fairly intense work that clearly addresses the state of Australian politics, looking at it all as unseemly, undignified and embarrassing. To experience this show is like watching a frozen performance where you can quite literally walk behind the scenes and see how things are propped up, and it’s important to do so to really catch the details.

Miejers has used elements of theatrical performance to create cohesion across the exhibition: her paintings are directly titled as scenes from an imaginary opera; while also hinting at the ubiquity of the screen in modern life by painting in oils onto glass and displaying the works so they look flat and reminiscent of a television or smart phone.

There are large plywood structures that resemble theatre flats; and there’s a Greek Chorus of ceramic heads that stare out at everything. Meijers’ chaos turns out to be meticulous in its construction and has layers of subtlety despite how wild and brash it is.

That’s the point though: Miejers is mashing together ideas and techniques to comment on modern life as she’s living and seeing it.

There’s anger here, but there’s also joy and fun: life is not any one thing and Meijers is too smart to either get bogged down in negativity or to vanish into a fake world where everything’s fine. It’s all happening at once, and it’s a bit of a performance but life is something we have to deal with, pay attention to. It’s a serious business, except when it isn’t and this might be why Meijers has included a cat video. It is cute, but as with everything the artist does, there’s more going on: The video is funny, but cat videos are just as much a part of the cultural fabric right now as politics.

Double Yolker showcases the energetic exuberance that Meijers makes her work with, and her complex reflection on the world right now: absurd, terrifying, possibly wonderful, and never exactly what it seems on the surface.