What do you affiliate with the time period nonetheless life? Is it extremely detailed, and life like painted photographs of flower bouquets and tables laden with lavish bowls of fruit and sport from a time previous? Sure, the nonetheless life style makes use of inanimate objects resembling flowers, fruit and greens, and manufactured objects to symbolically replicate on nature, wealth, exploration and mortality, nonetheless at current, the nonetheless life is an area for inventive experimentation exploring problems with consumerism, magnificence, energy, postcolonialism and gender politics.
Artists have pushed the boundaries of the style from portray and sculpture into the realms of pictures, efficiency and new media. These works at the moment on show in ‘Still Life Now‘ on the Gallery of Trendy Artwork, Brisbane till 19 February, use methods of repetition, appropriation and transformation to replicate or reject the considerations of conventional nonetheless lifes — such because the memento mori (a stoic visible reminder of the inevitability of dying) and the self-importance nonetheless life (using elaborate spreads to focus on life’s transience) — to rethink the style within the present period of picture manufacturing.
Michael Cook dinner ‘Nature Morte (Blackbird)’
Nature Morte (Blackbird), from Michael Cook dinner’s ‘Natures Mortes’ sequence, attracts on visible methods affiliated with the nonetheless‑life style — significantly the memento moria visible reminder of the inevitability of dying — to focus on the devastating affect of colonisation from an Indigenous perspective. Right here, the black cockatoos symbolise the inhuman practices that had been current within the Australian sugar trade within the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The work’s title refers to ‘blackbirding’, a kind of entrapment used to seize and transport South Sea Islander individuals to Australia as indentured labour to service the burgeoning cane fields and sugar industries. The wilted flowers mourn the cruelty of this observe, with the set of scales resembling a cross-like determine that marks the numerous deaths of First Nations peoples.
Justine Cooper ‘Blue triangle butterflies’
Shifting between the attractive and the macabre, Justine Cooper’s ‘Saved by science’ sequence explores the human fascination with assortment and preservation. Providing a glimpse into the 32 million specimens held within the cupboards and vaults of the American Museum of Pure Historical past, New York, Cooper attracts specific consideration to the a number of, demonstrating how the collected animals are assigned worth en masse throughout the technique of scientific interrogation. In contrast to nonetheless lifes that draw consideration to the cycle of life and the understanding of dying, Cooper’s images display the power of science to defy dying via the superficial suspension of life.
Marian Drew ‘Possum with 5 birds’
The {photograph} Possum with 5 birds echoes the tone of work made within the nonetheless‑life custom to discover up to date relations to native animals killed via the enlargement of urbanisation in Australia. The animals featured — destroyed both by launched predators, land-clearing, city growth or as roadkill — are then collected by Drew and positioned alongside embroidered materials, high quality china, candles, fruit and veggies. By positioning the animals amongst these home objects, the area between the human world and the animal world is decreased; emphasising the moral accountability that people should the animals that share our environments. On this nonetheless life association, they remind us of the price of urbanisation to wild animals and of people’ ever-changing relationship with nature.
Damien Hirst ‘For the love of God, giggle’
Famend for creating artworks that discover the dilemmas of human existence, Damien Hirst’s For the love of God, giggle rebels in opposition to mortality by reworking the human cranium right into a glittering object of want. Coated with diamond mud, the print depicts Hirst’s sculptural work For the Love of God 2007, a platinum forged of an eighteenth‑century cranium encrusted with 8601 diamonds. A well-recognized motif in memento mori nonetheless lifes, the cranium is a haunting image of contemplation and foreboding. Our consideration is drawn to its smile – the true human enamel the one a part of the work not lined by diamonds – bringing a sardonic humour and sense of contempt that means victory over decay.
Emily Kame Kngwarreye ‘Yam dreaming’
Within the ‘Yam dreaming’ sequence of work, Emily Kame Kngwarreye makes use of vibrant colors to hint the meandering root methods of Arlatyeye (pencil yam or bush potato) as they forge their method via the Simpson Desert. Kngwarreye’s work emphasise the importance of Arlateye as an important supplier of meals and sustenance, in addition to the topic of serious ceremonies amongst Jap Anmatyerre individuals. Fairly than merely observing or recording the fabric properties of Arlatyeye, Kngwarreye integrates her personal ancestral data into these work to create vivid compositions.
Deborah Kelly ‘Beastliness’
Deborah Kelly’s vibrant collage animation Beastliness presents a kaleidoscopic imaginative and prescient of the long run. That includes a forged of hybrid creatures created from the pages of out of date encyclopaedias, textbooks and pure historical past magazines, Kelly makes use of the scaffolds of outdated scientific data to create an alternate actuality free from the constraints of heteronormativity. The work, which invokes a wild sense of sexual liberation and hedonism, additionally options symbolic representations of fertility and replica (resembling nests of spinning eggs) that commemorate the corporeal magic of beginning and rebirth.
Robert MacPherson ‘MAYFAIR: 4,4,JOE BIRCH’
In his work, Robert MacPherson usually makes use of appropriated language and pictures encountered in every day life to replicate upon what constitutes a murals. That includes imagery and lettering taken from hand-painted highway signage discovered on regional highways all through Australia, MacPherson’s ‘Mayfair’ sequence of works makes use of the nonetheless life as a platform to raise mundane highway indicators from a place of low to excessive artwork. Referencing pop artwork and the readymade, “MAYFAIR: 4,4JOE BIRCH” 1999 reveals MacPherson’s strategy to the depiction of multiples — sequences of comparable or similar objects – that spotlight the connection of the nonetheless life to cash, manufacture and commerce.
Kimiyo Mishima ‘Work 21 – C4 2021’
Kimiyo Mishima skilfully recreates throwaway objects — resembling newspapers, drink cans and cardboard containers — as extremely life like hand-painted ceramics. Work 21 – C4 (C for ‘cans’) speaks to the custom of the nonetheless life to painstakingly seize the on a regular basis, however attracts consideration to the disposable nature of artifical merchandise. In her work, Mishima makes use of a priceless and fragile ceramic medium to raise the worth and standing of the objects and rally in opposition to wasteful overconsumption.
and iron / 74 x 56 x 56cm / The Kenneth and Yasuko Myer Assortment of Up to date Asian Artwork. Bought 2021 with funds from Michael Sidney Myer via the Queensland Artwork Gallery | Gallery of Trendy Artwork Basis / Assortment: Queensland Artwork Gallery | Gallery of Trendy Artwork / © Kimiyo Mishima / Picture courtesy: MEM, Tokyo
Anne Noble ‘Lifeless Bee Portrait #1’
Lifeless Bee Portrait #1 is from a sequence of images by Anne Noble that spotlight the specter of human growth on the insect world. Created from electron microscope photographs of useless bees, the exaggeration of the bee’s scale nearly reanimates it, creating an ethereal portrait of a species on the point of extinction. The required gilding of the useless bee in gold mud — to permit viewing underneath the microscope – displays the nonetheless‑life custom of utilizing aesthetically seductive supplies and ornamentation to attract consideration to the fragility of life. Noble’s images present that the picture can’t solely seize the bodily composition of as soon as‑dwelling issues, but in addition emphasises the power of the photographic floor to supply experiences of type, time, reminiscence and being.
Edwin Roseno ‘Aster (of New Angels)’
Utilizing cans, bottles, cartons and plastic containers purchased in Indonesian supermarkets, Edwin Roseno’s ‘Inexperienced hypermarket (sequence)’ works seize on a regular basis objects to focus on human connections to industrial merchandise and flowers. The images present a sequence of crops in discarded product containers, collected by Roseno from buddies, neighbours and native nurseries. Though the work attracts consideration to environmental and financial tensions which are prevalent throughout the rising economies of Asia, the photographs are additionally nostalgic, alluding to the native customs misplaced within the face of speedy urbanisation and mass consumerism.
Victoria Wareham is Assistant Curator, Australian Cinémathèque, QAGOMA and Curator of ‘Nonetheless Life Now’.
‘Nonetheless Life Now’ / Gallery of Trendy Artwork (GOMA) / 24 September 2022 till 19 February 2023
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