Exhibition opened Thursday 26th March at Metro Arts in Brisbane City.
Runs until 24th April, opening hours: Thursday-Saturday 2-6pm.
For some time Rebecca Ross has had an interest in geometric art. I once said to her that such art is better larger. I meant really big. The decorative, simple elements could easily be magnified, while other aspects would at least remain. Think big rather than looking at bland concrete. At the opening of Ross’s solo exhibition There There I could not help recalling this because Ross retains a heavy geometric influence while There There uses a reasonably-sized room as a canvas. Still, for me, There There was busting to undergo some serious deflation as colourful non-toxic financial waste. To be over-minted and break out of room 3 level 3 out onto Edward Street itself.
No reason why There There shouldn’t be “enlarged” (as certain emails might have it). More freeform than some geometric art, Ross’ bright lines already suggest polychromatic direction. Paths crossed the room for bodies to follow, while the whole space came alive to the music of synesthesia. No glories of work, national tradition or family/motherhood to go public here. The colourful intervals and dots in Ross’ work are already made from industrially-produced and accessible material: adhesive tape. She is a Charlie Parker of electrical insulation. Possibly some of her longer lines could even be laid mechanically to facilitate the growth process into public space.
Ross agrees about scale. She wants to do aircraft fuselages next. Problem is her patron is more likely to be the government departments than R.Branson's metal birds. But that could still hopefully mean town halls and entire streets. Melbourne has those awesome alleys; we got lumped with the Miracle Mile. And, unfortunately, today most public space is commercial. Government themselves prefer this for a number of reasons — most obviously they are paid instead of pay for it. But there is nothing unrealistic about an artist having an eye to social change. Stranger things have happened than people getting sick of non-stop ads and gruesome scare campaigns designed to reduce the health budget. Graff artists already exert real pressure to change the writing on the wall.
One reason to push to have stuff like Ross’s public is that since there is no point in being precious about something in oversupply, her enlarged work could promise a groovy urban dialectic. Here I get speculative, but only in the cause of bringing out the sense of fun latent in Ross’s material. With commercial interests excluded and the scale citywide, others could add lines to indicate further sites of interest: down the road some gay guys are hanging upside down with burning tapers in their backsides (L.Burdet style - whatever happened to stuff like that?). Or, the possible frustrations of geometric art might be offset by radical breaks. Stick some Renoir where it fits, but not with the tapers. OK! — I’m just making this up as I go, I don’t have any concrete proposals beyond that of increased scale. And that artists like Rebecca Ross should be given a chance to explore further possibilities, especially the playful ones. At one stage in Brisbane 1% of the budget of any large building was supposed to go to public art. We could demand an increase and insist it be given to hot up and comings and innovative community groups, not big names who dutifully litter our cities with workerist guff. What about that fretting hands near the Stock Exchange, the ones with the case of varicose veins? Someone should re-title both “October 2008” and put loads of bright pink electrical tape on ‘em.
Gerald Keaney
