Art Problems![]()
Art Problems 2017 and 2020
Silk Screen Print on Calico
50x70mm
A number of years ago I agreed to take part in a long term study of gambling practices in Victoria. I would get a phone call every six months or so asking me the same questions. While answering I thinakfully reflected I didn’t have a gambling problem in the way they survey was targeting, but if they had been asking me about the financial risks I take being an artist I am certain I would have been scoring off the charts.
The pervading myths and stereotypes of the artist have always been economic whether they are starving in garrets or selling their work for outlandish prices – art is a con, seducing artists and the public alike with its snake oil charms of access to freedom, self-expression, genius, talent, unconventional lifestyles, beauty, taste, infamy and status.
Art Problems 2017 and 2020Silk Screen Print on Calico
50x70mm
A number of years ago I agreed to take part in a long term study of gambling practices in Victoria. I would get a phone call every six months or so asking me the same questions. While answering I thinakfully reflected I didn’t have a gambling problem in the way they survey was targeting, but if they had been asking me about the financial risks I take being an artist I am certain I would have been scoring off the charts.
The pervading myths and stereotypes of the artist have always been economic whether they are starving in garrets or selling their work for outlandish prices – art is a con, seducing artists and the public alike with its snake oil charms of access to freedom, self-expression, genius, talent, unconventional lifestyles, beauty, taste, infamy and status.
FEMMO Issue 1,2,3 (2014)
4,5,6 (2015)![]()
FEMMO Issue 1, 2, 3 (2014) 4, 5, 6 (2015)
Virginia Fraser and Elvis Richardson
screen print on cotton 1400x1100mm
The artists Virginia Fraser and Elvis Richardson have adopted a curatorial pose to collaborate on a series of magazine covers, combining portraiture with attention-seeking headlines for a so-far fictional publication FEMMO™. Where other curators might select, arrange and present tangible and digital objects in galleries, the editors of FEMMO™ have organised indexical text objects on a (very big) page.
4,5,6 (2015)
FEMMO Issue 1, 2, 3 (2014) 4, 5, 6 (2015)Virginia Fraser and Elvis Richardson
screen print on cotton 1400x1100mm
The artists Virginia Fraser and Elvis Richardson have adopted a curatorial pose to collaborate on a series of magazine covers, combining portraiture with attention-seeking headlines for a so-far fictional publication FEMMO™. Where other curators might select, arrange and present tangible and digital objects in galleries, the editors of FEMMO™ have organised indexical text objects on a (very big) page.
Artist Lifestyle 2018
Artist Lifestyle Enamel paint on alluminium
1200x800mm each
Installation view Counihan Gallery
Photo: Julie Davies
Artist Lifestyle presents machine style, hand painted, enamel on aluminum, for shiny, capitalist marketing promises, both a sales pitch and a word of warning, depending on the target audience. Is the artist lifestyle for you? Anagrams of Artist Lifestyle feature on each panel and together mysteriously unpack a hidden truthfulness, underlying expectations and assumed promises within its self referential reshuffled letters.
Artist Lifestyle installed in front yards as part of Kyneton Contemporary Art Triennale 2018 Photo: Ian HillThe words generated seem to speak directly to the contested social and economic value of art and the role of being an artist today. Artist lifestyle questions how personal, civic and national identity are formulated around artistic acts, objects and events.
Artist Lifestyle installed in front yards as part of Kyneton Contemporary Art Triennale 2018 Photo: Ian HillArtist Lifestyle has been exhibited at
Force Fields 2018 Kyneton Contemporary Art Triennale 2018
True Estate @ Counihan Gallery Moreland Council 2018
True Estate @ Knulp Sydney 2019
Word @ Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide 2019
Women Vs Men
Women vs Men 2016
artmagazines collaged on box board 1200x800 framed
Names of artists cut from Australian contemporary art magazines, Art + Australia and Art + Text, assembled into lists and filling trophy shapes. Womens and mens names are measured against each other from specific issues.
Women vs Men 2017Highlighted Australian Parliament House of Representatives Hansard from 1965 the year I was born exhibted in Boundless Volumes @ Parliament House Gallery 2017
Last Man’s Club
Digital ink jet print on archival paper42x29cm
Photograph of the directors of First Draft Gallery 1996-1997, [Jacqueline Milner, Gianni Wise, Sarah Goffman, Elvis Richardson, Philipa Vietch and {absent} Alex Gawronski]. First Draft is the longest running artist run initiative in Australia. The photograph was taken in 2009. The idea is that the last man standing gets to drink the bottle of wiskey. When the photograph was first exhibited at I.C.A.N. gallery, Sydney in 2010 as part of an exchange exhibition with members of Ocular Lab Melbourne the I.C.A.N. gallery directors drank the whiskey!