Lustgarden

Louise Paramour, Australian Centre for Contmporary Art, February 3 - March 11
{Cliff Burtt}

Your average writer of reviews is generally loath to admit to missing the plethora of exhibitions that spring up about the scene. And not just scribes: the most casual chats with other artists suggest to this writer that his own forays into the gallery crawl are woefully sparse. Indeed, it often takes several recommendations pique my interest, as was the case with Louise Paramour's showing at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA). The work Paramour exhibited was the product of a stay at the Oz Council's studio in Berlin; this, and the space at ACCA suggest real grooviness, for these sorts of gigs lend artwork the sort of pedigree most artists would gnaw their grant-writing arms off for.


Lustgarden 2000 Berlin- Louise Paramour. Image courtesy of Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

Unlike too many shows at ACCA, Paramour's roomful of cut-paper sculptures justified most of the hype. It was a handsome display. Paramour's technique is simple but effective. It is basically a rescaling of domestic festive kitsch of the kind that expands into three dimensions for hanging from trees and picture rails, and then stored flat to hibernate for another year. The forms on display were based on sections of Christmas decorations, at least twenty or thirty times their usual scale, and the effect was dramatic.

Moving on from earlier work made from more glitzy materials, Paramour has built the pieces out of light card in saturated colours. In the subdued gallery lighting, the effect was lush, with the honeycomb-like structure of the pieces creating an interplay of light and shade that contributed to a visual effect that would be more commonly associated with velvet. Theorists amongst the viewers would no doubt be pleased by the displacement induced by the combination of this sensation, and their awareness of the means used to gain the effect. And for those that can remember all the way back to the early `80s, there is the comparison with the British sculptor Anish Kapor, who powdered his works with intense pigments.

Paramour's work, however, is most easily compared to that of her contemporaries. There is no shortage of candidates here. Amongst the local talent we might think of Christopher Langton with his giant flowers and inflatables, Kate Benynon with her appropriations from manga cartoons, or Ricky Swallow morphing props from Hollywood movies.

The common element these artists share with so many of their peers is their pursuit of pop culture and kitsch as subject matter. Some forty years after Warhol's Brillo boxes and and Oldenburg's plaster and canvas food, and eighty years after Duchamp's ready-mades, artists are still finding rich pickings in the detritus of consumerism. If anything, the bounty may be greater, as the mountain of products, art history and theory grows ever higher. ( Just think: semiotics was yet to be invented in the era of the famous urinal, and still in its infancy during pop art's glory days.) A single work may be capable of referencing -or, rather, be capable of supporting a thesis referencing- almost any number of art periods or shifts in the sentiment of aesthetics. Just how well work that derives the bulk of its kick from irony and attitude will fare over time will be of great interest. For apart from individual reputations, the art market and the like, the fundamental question remains: what do we expect art to do, and how is it to be relevant to our lives. If the viewer is captured by an allusion or a mood that is triggered by the work, it must be gauged a success. For this viewer, the felicity of Paramour's pieces at ACCA was in their capacity to reconfigure the mystery of the festive season via its thoroughly secular tack.

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