Dispatch Review respectfully acknowledges the Whadjuk people as the traditional owners and custodians of the lands upon which we live and work. We pay deep respect to Elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.
Reviews:
- Jacob Kotzee’s flowerfield, by Scott Price.
- Jeff Gibson: False Gestalt, by Francis Russell.
- Skyward, or Boonji Spaceman and the Giant Kebab, by Nick FitzPatrick.
- Sam Bloor and Jesse Marlow: Street Posters 2020–2025, by Sam Beard.
- Mervyn Street: Stolen Wages, by Darren Jorgensen.
- 100 Sculpture Ideas for Sculptures by the Sea, by Rainy Colbert.
- Kate Mitchell’s Idea Induction, by Amelia Birch.
- Mai Nguyễn-Long’s Doba Nation, by Sam Beard.
- A conversation with Jo Darbyshire, by Stirling Kain.
- Dispatch Review’s 2024 Wrap-up.
- The people yearn..., by Max Vickery and Erin Russell.
- An invitation to dance, by Sam Beard.
- We Talk, We Discuss: An Interview with Taring Padi by Max Vickery.
- AGWA x PrideFEST by Felicity Bean.
- Tim Meakins, Body Mould by Sam Beard.
- Nick FitzPatrick, Hero Image by Francis Russell.
- Jacob Kotzee, Arrangements by Dan Glover.
- Hollow Icons: Desmond Mah at Mossenson by Darren Jorgensen.
- Pilgrimage: An interview with Vedika Rampal.
- The UnAustralian: Doubling Double Nation – An interview with Rex Butler.
- Negative Criticism: A Year of Dispatch Review by Tara Heffernan.
- Custodians as Reverse Monument by Darren Jorgensen.
- End of History – LWAG by Francis Russell.
- Hatched Dispatched 2024 by Dan Glover, Jess van Heerden, Nalinie See & Sam Beard.
- David Bromfield: A critic at large and ‘Where did the artists go?’
- Me, Also Me by Sam Beard.
- Paper Trails Between Lion and Swan by Sam Beard.
- Ceramically Speaking by Ben Yaxley.
- The Strelley Mob by Sam Harper.
- Rone: The Mighty Success by Leslie Thompson.
- Paper Trails: An interview with Yeo Chee Kiong by Sam Beard.
- Power 100 by Dispatch Review.
- Foresight & Fiction by Ben Yaxley.
- Twin Peaks Was 30 by Matthew Taggart.
- Breaking News: It’s Rone! by Sam Beard.
- Look, looking at Anna Park by Amelia Birch.
- The Fan by Francis Russell.
- Follower, Leader by Maraya Takoniatis.
- Wanneroo Warholamania by Sam Beard.
- Death Metal Summer by Sam Beard.
- Players, Places: Reprised, Renewed, Reviewed by Aimee Dodds.
- Scholtz: Two Worlds Apart by Corderoy, Fisher, Flaherty, Wilson, Fletcher, Jorgensen, & Glover.
- Partial Sightings by Sam Beard.
- True! Crime. by Aimee Dodds.
- The Human Condition by Rex Butler.
- Light Event by Sam Beard.
- Rejoinder: Archival / Activism by Max Vickery.
- Access and Denial in The Purple Shall Govern by Jess van Heerden.
- 4Spells by Sam Beard.
- Abstract art, DMT capitalism and the ugliness of David Attwood’s paintings
by Darren Jorgensen. - Unearthing new epistemologies of extraction by Samuel Beilby.
- Seek Wisdom by Max Vickery.
- Something for Everyone by Sam Beard.
- Violent Sludge by Aimee Dodds.
- State of Abstraction by Francis Russell.
- Double Histories: Special Issue, with texts by Ian McLean, Terry Smith, and Darren Jorgensen & Sam Beard.
- Six Missing Shows by Sam Beard.
- What We Memorialise by Max Vickery.
- At the End of the Land by Amelia Birch.
- The beautiful is useful by Sam Beard.
- ām / ammā / mā maram by Zali Morgan.
- Making Ground, Breaking Ground by Maraya Takoniatis.
- Art as Asset by Sam Beard.
- Cactus Malpractice by Aimee Dodds.
- Sweet sweet pea by Sam Beard.
- COBRA by Francis Russell.
- PICA Barn by Sam Beard .
- Gallery Hotel Metro by Aimee Dodds.
- A Stroll Through the Sacred, Profane, and Bizarre by Samuel Beilby.
- Filling in the Gaps at Spacingout by Maraya Takoniatis.
- Disneyland Cosmoplitanism by Sam Beard.
- Discovering Revenue by Anonymous.
- Uncomfortable Borrowing by Jess van Heerden.
- It’s Not That Strange by Stirling Kain.
- Hatched Dispatched 2023 by Sam Beard & Aimee Dodds.
- Fuck the Class System by Jess van Heerden, Jacinta Posik, Darren Jorgensen, et al.
- Wild About Nothing by Sam Beard.
- Paranoiac, Peripatetic: Pet Projects by Aimee Dodds.
- An Odd Moment for Women’s Art by Maraya Takoniatis.
- Transmutations by Sam Beard.
- The Post-Vandal by Sam Beard.
- Art Thugs and Humbugs by Max Vickery.
- Disneyland, Paris, Ardross and the artworld by Darren Jorgensen.
- Bizarrely, A Biennale by Aimee Dodds.
- Venus in Tullamarine by Sam Beard.
- Weird Rituals by Sam Beard.
- Random Cube by Francis Russell.
- Yeah, Nah, Rockpool by Aimee Dodds.
- Towards a Blind Horizon by Kieron Broadhurst.
- Being Realistic by Sam Beard.
All painters, perhaps, in their secret heart, wish for a return to the medieval. To the resacralization of art and the reconstitution of its religious affect—a return to the magic of images, to the image as magic. In Jacob Kotzee’s flowerfield, Current Gallery’s reclamation of the Old Naval Store’s junkspace brick storage shed was remade into a shrine for a single painting ensconced like an altarpiece in the gallery’s north wall. A non-specific painting of a “non-specific field of flowers”[1]; just abstracted enough to avoid falling into accusations of kitsch that might accompany a figurative painting of actual flowers.
Kotzee’s methodology usually involves the selection of photographs or film stills as painting reference, interrogating the construction of cultural and political mythologies through imagery, though here this process is omitted from any discursive statement (or lack thereof) about the work. I assume the painting was painted from reference to some photographic image, and so situated somewhat in the tradition (and aesthetic) of Monet’s water lilies, which he painted from his garden pond, an artificial landscape created to serve as a reference material for painting; a mediated image of an already mediated image of a vague landscape. Or perhaps more in the vein of Rothko’s paintings for the Rothko Chapel in Texas; the work is emptied of content to be filled with affect.
Through darkness and light, Current Gallery is made into a makeshift shrine. The painting is made-to-measure for its north wall recess, like a holy relic illumined in a darkened sepulcher; a cave painting in the rarefied crawlspaces of Lascaux. There is a conscious striving here to achieve a heightened experience of presence, to reconstitute the cult-value of the art-object through isolation and illumination. Unfortunately, the directness of the lighting does not always jibe with the materiality of the paint. In the sunken-in areas, the hard glare washes it out, rendering it flat and lifeless, obscuring detail. I’m reminded of Frank Auerbach’s Looking Towards Mornington Crescent Station, Night currently on display at AGWA; a wonderfully expressive work whose material impact up close is let down by insensitive lighting. Or Melissa Clement’s recent exhibition Flight of the Battery Hens at PS Artspace, in which a penchant for glossy varnish and spotlights obliterates the proficiently rendered faces in her portraits when scrutinised from the wrong position. Such installs are always predicated on an idealised subject, one standing in removed, passive contemplation of the work of art. Stand on your mark and look, no moving around. I’ll refrain from too much judgement of the painting itself, because the painting itself is beside the point, which is the striving for the auratic possibility of the artwork achieved through its staging.
Walter Benjamin locates the aura of an artwork in “its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” which “withers” with its reproduction.[2] But there is no longer any question of the reproduction of the artwork, which always now exists in a multiplicity of states, both physical and digital. Exhibitions now begin before their actual opening, existing not as a discrete experience, but a flow of images that precede and proceed it.[3] Kotzee has resisted the dispersed experience of art in the age of social media by carefully curating the lead up to the exhibition, consciously avoiding the pre-reproduction of the work. The painting was revealed/veiled through cropped sections teased on instagram stories, disappearing after 24 hours, careful not to hint at the form of the exhibition or even the quantity of works. Will Ek-Uvelius, the poster designer, mentions his discussions with the artist being “centred around maintaining an element of surprise when visitors experience the work in person at the gallery”. [4] Aura is diminished through reproduction; the aura of the work is maintained by denying its reproduction before the fact. The cult-value of the art-object rests in its being hidden away, revealed only in its proper time and place; revealed as revelation.
Benjamin elucidates the aura of artworks with reference to the aura of natural things as “the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be”.[5] Distance and proximity is inherent in Kotzee’s painting; the close up image of a flower field is ambiguated through the abstraction of paint; a fuzzy rendering, barely legible as what it is without the titular hint. There is a unique sensation of being within this field but also removed from it, a vacillation which draws us in through the desire to resolve this ambiguity through proximal inspection, to be intimate with the materiality of the paint. But this desire for intimacy is rebuffed by the hard glare of the light up close, by the resistance of the painting to resolve into specificity, and we are sent back to our proper place.[6] The auratic always insists on distance, on the separation of the subject from the object, on which aura depends.
In the week after the close of flowerfield the usual flow of documentation has been uploaded to instagram. Shots of silhouetted viewers in contemplation on Current Gallery’s feed, and finally documentation of the work in isolation on Kotzee’s instagram and website. I have to profess myself disappointed with this regression to the usual formalities of the post-exhibition. If the exhibition is not documented, did it even happen? If it does not at least allow the possibility of its historicisation, can it ever be important? But what remains of the artwork after its acquiescence to the discursive field, and what is lost by not allowing it to remain in its time and space?
Footnotes:
1. https://current.gallery/025-FLOWERFIELD
2. Walter Benjamin. 1935. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
3. fakewhale. April 2, 2025. “Beyond the Real: Art in the Age of Perpetual Reproduction”https://log.fakewhale.xyz/beyond-the-real-art-in-the-age-of-perpetual-reproduction/
4. https://www.instagram.com/p/DHkcl6CJxE1/?img_index=1
5. Walter Benjamin. 1935. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
6. For a discussion of the effect of light as both revealing and concealing/obscuring see Barbara Bolt’s “Shedding Light for the Matter”.
Image credits: Artwork by Jacob Kotzee. Photographs by Scott Burton.
Kotzee’s methodology usually involves the selection of photographs or film stills as painting reference, interrogating the construction of cultural and political mythologies through imagery, though here this process is omitted from any discursive statement (or lack thereof) about the work. I assume the painting was painted from reference to some photographic image, and so situated somewhat in the tradition (and aesthetic) of Monet’s water lilies, which he painted from his garden pond, an artificial landscape created to serve as a reference material for painting; a mediated image of an already mediated image of a vague landscape. Or perhaps more in the vein of Rothko’s paintings for the Rothko Chapel in Texas; the work is emptied of content to be filled with affect.
Through darkness and light, Current Gallery is made into a makeshift shrine. The painting is made-to-measure for its north wall recess, like a holy relic illumined in a darkened sepulcher; a cave painting in the rarefied crawlspaces of Lascaux. There is a conscious striving here to achieve a heightened experience of presence, to reconstitute the cult-value of the art-object through isolation and illumination. Unfortunately, the directness of the lighting does not always jibe with the materiality of the paint. In the sunken-in areas, the hard glare washes it out, rendering it flat and lifeless, obscuring detail. I’m reminded of Frank Auerbach’s Looking Towards Mornington Crescent Station, Night currently on display at AGWA; a wonderfully expressive work whose material impact up close is let down by insensitive lighting. Or Melissa Clement’s recent exhibition Flight of the Battery Hens at PS Artspace, in which a penchant for glossy varnish and spotlights obliterates the proficiently rendered faces in her portraits when scrutinised from the wrong position. Such installs are always predicated on an idealised subject, one standing in removed, passive contemplation of the work of art. Stand on your mark and look, no moving around. I’ll refrain from too much judgement of the painting itself, because the painting itself is beside the point, which is the striving for the auratic possibility of the artwork achieved through its staging.
Walter Benjamin locates the aura of an artwork in “its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” which “withers” with its reproduction.[2] But there is no longer any question of the reproduction of the artwork, which always now exists in a multiplicity of states, both physical and digital. Exhibitions now begin before their actual opening, existing not as a discrete experience, but a flow of images that precede and proceed it.[3] Kotzee has resisted the dispersed experience of art in the age of social media by carefully curating the lead up to the exhibition, consciously avoiding the pre-reproduction of the work. The painting was revealed/veiled through cropped sections teased on instagram stories, disappearing after 24 hours, careful not to hint at the form of the exhibition or even the quantity of works. Will Ek-Uvelius, the poster designer, mentions his discussions with the artist being “centred around maintaining an element of surprise when visitors experience the work in person at the gallery”. [4] Aura is diminished through reproduction; the aura of the work is maintained by denying its reproduction before the fact. The cult-value of the art-object rests in its being hidden away, revealed only in its proper time and place; revealed as revelation.
Benjamin elucidates the aura of artworks with reference to the aura of natural things as “the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be”.[5] Distance and proximity is inherent in Kotzee’s painting; the close up image of a flower field is ambiguated through the abstraction of paint; a fuzzy rendering, barely legible as what it is without the titular hint. There is a unique sensation of being within this field but also removed from it, a vacillation which draws us in through the desire to resolve this ambiguity through proximal inspection, to be intimate with the materiality of the paint. But this desire for intimacy is rebuffed by the hard glare of the light up close, by the resistance of the painting to resolve into specificity, and we are sent back to our proper place.[6] The auratic always insists on distance, on the separation of the subject from the object, on which aura depends.
In the week after the close of flowerfield the usual flow of documentation has been uploaded to instagram. Shots of silhouetted viewers in contemplation on Current Gallery’s feed, and finally documentation of the work in isolation on Kotzee’s instagram and website. I have to profess myself disappointed with this regression to the usual formalities of the post-exhibition. If the exhibition is not documented, did it even happen? If it does not at least allow the possibility of its historicisation, can it ever be important? But what remains of the artwork after its acquiescence to the discursive field, and what is lost by not allowing it to remain in its time and space?
Footnotes:
1. https://current.gallery/025-FLOWERFIELD
2. Walter Benjamin. 1935. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
3. fakewhale. April 2, 2025. “Beyond the Real: Art in the Age of Perpetual Reproduction”https://log.fakewhale.xyz/beyond-the-real-art-in-the-age-of-perpetual-reproduction/
4. https://www.instagram.com/p/DHkcl6CJxE1/?img_index=1
5. Walter Benjamin. 1935. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
6. For a discussion of the effect of light as both revealing and concealing/obscuring see Barbara Bolt’s “Shedding Light for the Matter”.
Image credits: Artwork by Jacob Kotzee. Photographs by Scott Burton.