"Clouding the Issue"
An Ultimo Project members group exhibition, 23 to 25 July 2010
Words of wisdom from our curator, Geoff Levitus:
It is always a challenge to curate group shows. Inevitably, the work of the members of a group of artists who each have their own practice, in particular a group like the artist-run-initiative, the Ultimo Poject, is diverse and disparate, and related more by accident than by design.
One strategy to achieve a cohesive exhibition is to try to link the attwork by asking the artists to work to a theme. we tosse around a few ideas and came up with "Clouding the Issue" quite quickly. Some of our more intelligent members rose to the challenge and suggested other ideas such as "Clogging the Tissue", "Hommage to Euan McLeod", "Hey, you get off my cloud", "We need some cloud control", "Send in the clouds" and "You're muddying the waters".
In our wisdom, we choose the first, "Clouding the Issue", which is about as nebulous a theme as you could invent. Brilliant! It allows for those who wish to engage with the theme on any number of levels, from the literal to the political to the poetic, and in a language that is anywhere on the spectrum from the figurative to the abstract.
Of course, those working in an abstract mode could really get away with ascribing any meaning to their work anytime, and so could lie through their teeth to suggest they made the work with this theme in mind when they really made the work for the Blake Prize or the Archibald. However, our choice of theme was so brilliant that it also allows the most representational of artists to invent some justification of relevance when there's not a trace of a cloud to be found, because there's an issue instead! Not only that, but it's a clouded issue!! Incredible semantic juggling, what polemical mastery.
And then there's always that small minority of total rebels who'll give you the finger and put in whatever they bloody well like. If you can't do that when you're an artist, then life's really not worth living.
It's up to you to guess which is which. Have fun.
(And if you have not yet guessed, Kristine's work is the one pictured above!)