dispatch review

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	<pubDate>Wed, 28 Oct 2026 03:38:03 +0000</pubDate>
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		<title>Information</title>
				
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		<pubDate>Wed, 05 Apr 2023 15:11:56 +0000</pubDate>

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 Information:

Dispatch Review aims to pin down ideas and stir up conversations about art.
We publish art criticism, opinion pieces, and interviews. Reviews are dispatched spontaneously, often weekly.
      
        
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Editors:


Sam Beard is the head editor and co-founder of Dispatch Review. His writing has appeared in Artlink, un Magazine, and Art Collector.


Amelia Birch holds a PhD in the History of Art from the University of Western Australia, where she teaches art history.

Max Vickery is a Marxist historian and critic based in Whadjuk country. A co-founder of Dispatch Review, Vickery provides copy and line editing for texts before publication.


Contributors:

	
Felicity Bean studies art at Murdoch University.

Samuel Beilby is a contemporary artist and researcher. He currently teaches Fine Art at the University of Western Australia.


Angus Bowskill is an artist based in Perth, WA. Their work explores observation, mediation, and redaction through digital media and printmaking techniques.


Kieron Broadhurst is an artist based in Perth, WA. Through a variety of media he investigates the speculative potential of fiction within contemporary art practice.

William Bromage is an editor of Guan Kan Journal and holds a degree in History and Archaeology from the University of Western Australia. His interests lie in Indigenous archaeology, as well as Chinese history and its contemporary art.

Rex Butler teaches Art History in the Faculty of Art Design and Architecture at Monash University and writes on Australian art.


Rainy Colbert is an art critic and bush poet, primarily interested in the Sublime.


Grace Coppola is a graduate of art history and literary studies from UWA, currently completing honours work on literary mimesis and romantic poetry.Anna Daly is a writer and researcher, and the Managing Editor of the Women's Art Register Bulletin. Her interests span Australian visual cultural history, spatiality, and trompe l’oeil painting. Her most recent work includes co-editing Keeping Things Together: 50 Years of the Women's Art Register, published by MUP; and writing 'A Note About Trompe l'Oeil' for Gagosian Quarterly and ‘Mapping the Interior’ for Space and Culture.
Aimee Dodds is a Perth-based arts writer and co-founder of Dispatch Review. She has written for Memo Review, Art Almanac, un Magazine, and Artist Profile Magazine. Dodds has first class joint honours in the History of Art and English and Cultural Studies from the University of Western Australia.

Kye Fisher holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Western Australia and currently works within UWA’s research portfolio. Kye has a keen interest in contemporary Chinese art and music.


Nick FitzPatrick is an artist and arts worker. He is primarily interested in images and their relationship to systems of power and knowledge.


Dan Glover is a barista and emerging arts writer, currently studying History of Art and Curatorial Studies at the University of Western Australia.

Soph Grey is an emerging creative, Fine Arts graduate and cafe coworker to fellow writer Dan Glover. Based in Walyalup, her practice revolves around an infatuation with the home.


Sam Harper is an archaeologist and rock art specialist based at CRAR+M,
UWA, living and working on Whadjuk country. She works with communities across
the northwest of Australia.

Tara Heffernan is an art historian and critic. Her work concerns modernism and the avant-gardes, conceptual art and the lineage/s of the New Left.Amy Hickman writes occasionally about sex, gender, deconstruction, and biopolitics. 


Chelsea Hopper is a curator and writer whose research focuses on modern and contemporary photography and populism. She is Art Director of Memo Magazine.


Darren Jorgensen lectures in art history at the University of Western Australia. His most recent book is The Dead C’s Clyma Est Mort.


Stirling Kain is an arts administrator with a BA in History of Art and History. She works with various arts organisations in WA.


Riley Landau is an emerging arts writer currently studying art history and curatorial studies at the University of Western Australia.


Marco Marcon is a creative producer, writer, and academic originally from Italy, currently residing between Perth and Viterbo (Italy). He is the founding director of SPACED, previously known as the International Art Space Kellerberrin, Australia (IASKA). Marcon’s writing is also available via his Substack, Minima Aesthetica (click here to view).


Jonathan W. Marshall is head of postgraduate
studies at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan
University. Marshall has published in both scholarly and journalistic contexts,
his writings covering Japanese butoh dance, the influence of fin de siècle
neurology on the history of performance, photography, Australian modernist art,
Mark Rothko’s spiritualism, and the work of Georges Didi-Huberman:&#38;nbsp;click here for more.


Siân McIntyre is a researcher and art worker. www.sianmcintyre.com.


Duncan McKay is an artist, arts researcher and arts writer who since 2014 has worked as a public art administrator with local government and State Government organisations. He has a PhD, an MCA, a BFA (Hons.) and is completing a Master in Curatorial Studies.


Ian McLean is an art historian and the former Hugh Ramsay Chair of Australian Art History at the University of Melbourne. His most recent book is Double Nation: A History of Australian Art.


Zali Morgan is an emerging artist, writer and curator, currently working at The Art Gallery of Western Australia as assistant curator of Indigenous Art. She is of Ballardong, Wilman and Whadjuk descent.


Felicity Ostergaard is an editor of Guan Kan Journal and currently pursuing a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Archaeology, with a minor in Curatorial Studies. Her interest in Chinese Contemporary art stems from her own performance art practice as well as modes of displaying site specific interventions.


Cassandra Otterman-Emmett is an emerging art writer and academic based in Perth. Her work focuses on counterculture and negation as critical practice.


Annette Peterson is a writer and visual artist with a Master’s in Design and Art from Curtin University and a BA in English Literature from the University of Western Australia. A former journalist, she has been a contributing writer for Artists Chronicle for the past five years.


Jacinta Posik studies Fine Arts and History of Art at the University of Western Australia.


Scott Price is an artist based in Perth/Boorloo. He is interested in the interplay between culture and history in the formation of land and place relations, explored through a multidisciplinary practice.


Diego Ramírez is an artist with dreams, a writer with hopes and a facilitator with beliefs. He is represented by MARS Gallery.


Francis Russell is a former academic and trade union official. He researches contemporary art and alienation, drawing on the legacies of Marxism, Freudian psychoanalysis, and phenomenology.


Nalinie See holds a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Fine Arts and Art History from The University of Western Australia. She currently works as an Art Teacher and as a Sales and Wardrobe Planning Co-worker at IKEA.


Terry Smith is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, and Professor in the Division of Philosophy, Art and Critical Thought at the European Graduate School.


Paul Sutherland is a researcher and educator from Western Australia. His work concerns online visual culture, media philosophy, and post-truth.


Maraya Takoniatis studies and conducts research in Philosophy, Fine Arts, and History of Art at the University of Western Australia.
Matthew Taggart is an arts worker, artist and musician. Their work is experimental in its exploration of future sounds and the human experience.

Leslie Thompson is a freelance arts writer.


Jess van Heerden is an emerging arts writer and visual arts technician. They have a BA in History of Artand Fine Art, with a minor in Curatorial Studies, and are almost finishedtheir Art History Honours.


Ben Yaxley is a writer, arts student, and English teacher living in Boorloo.Patrick Zaia is an Australian artist, writer, and occasional musician. 


Note: any conflicts of interest that may arise between editors and the subject and/or topic of a review will see the affected editors forego any and all participation in the editorial process of the related text.


Designer:
Mia Davis is an arts worker and design student based in Boorloo/Perth. Davis is powered by a love of connecting audiences to art and ideas, with inclusive design being key to her practice.

 
Also see:

&#60;img width="1098" height="382" width_o="1098" height_o="382" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/886cff5c2f47940b2cd9388ba0bafb507421f97666b8540cb85f7231ca6635eb/thesis-eleven.png" data-mid="222846414" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/886cff5c2f47940b2cd9388ba0bafb507421f97666b8540cb85f7231ca6635eb/thesis-eleven.png" /&#62;


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	<item>
		<title>Events</title>
				
		<link>https://dispatchreview.info/Events</link>

		<pubDate>Tue, 07 Nov 2023 04:31:46 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>dispatch review</dc:creator>

		<guid isPermaLink="true">https://dispatchreview.info/Events</guid>

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Events:Event
	Time/Date
	Venue/Address

	Ellie Buttrose: Behind the scenes of 'kith and kin'.


	Monday, 10 February, 2025, 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm AWST
	State Library of Western Australia, Great Southern Room, Level 4 25 Francis Street, Perth.


Taring Padi: Organise, Educate, Agitate!


	Saturday, 30 November, 2024, 2:30 pm - 4:30 pm AWST
	

State Library of Western Australia, Great Southern Room, Level 4 25 Francis 

Street, Perth.


The Modern and the Contemporary: A conversation with Rex Butler, Tara Heffernan, Darren Jorgensen and Peter Beilharz.


Saturday, 7 September, 2024, 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm AWST


The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth WA.

	Dispatch Review: Artist Talk at the City of Belmont.
	

Thursday, 18 January, 2024, 
5:30pm – 


6:30pm AWST


Ruth Faulkner Library,

Events Room, 213 Wright Street Cloverdale, WA.

	Memo Magazine Launch and Panel Discussion.
	
	Saturday, 2 December, 2023, 4pm – 5pm AWST
	
	
	Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth Cultural Precinct, WA.

	Artist as Prophet: Intersections of Art and Ritual with Robert Buratti.
	

Friday, 27 October, 2023,


12pm

 – 

12:30pm AWST

	
Hew Roberts Lecture Theatre, School of Design, UWA.

	Dispatch Review Launch Party.
	Saturday, 7 October, 2023,


7pm – 10:00pm AWST


Light Works, 112 Murray St, 
Perth WA.

	Doubled Histories: The Futures of Australian Art with Ian McLean, Terry Smith,

Jessyca Hutchens and Darren Jorgensen.
	Wednesday, 30 August, 2023
6pm

– 7:30pm AWST
	

State Library of Western Australia, Great Southern Room, Level 4 25 Francis Street, Perth WA.


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	<item>
		<title>Reading Group</title>
				
		<link>https://dispatchreview.info/Reading-Group</link>

		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Jul 2025 06:28:49 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>dispatch review</dc:creator>

		<guid isPermaLink="true">https://dispatchreview.info/Reading-Group</guid>

		<description>Virtual Reading Group sessions:

Reading
	Date/Time
	Sign-up


Session 10:

The Whitney Biennial Reader. 
	

Tuesday 28 May, 6:00pm AWST. 


Click here
Session 9: 

‘The Health Goths Are Really Feeling Zip Ties RN For Some Reason’ by ﻿James Payne.
	Tuesday, 7 Apr, 2026, 5:30pm AWST. &#38;nbsp;


Click here

Session 8: ‘The Total Art of Stalinism’ by ﻿Boris Groys
	Tuesday, 3 Mar, 2026, 6pm AWST.&#38;nbsp; 
	

Click hereSession 7: ‘The Expediency of Culture’ by George Yúdice.
	Tuesday, 9 Dec, 2025, 6pm AWST. &#38;nbsp;
	

Click hereSession 6: ‘The Painted Word’ by Tom Wolfe.
	Tuesday, 23 Sept, 2025, 6:00pm AWST
	

Click hereSession 5: ‘On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening’ by Theodor W. Adorno.

	Tuesday, 19 Aug, 2025, 6:00pm AWST
	

Click here


Session 4: ‘
The Herd of Independent Minds’ by 
Harold Rosenberg.
	

Tuesday, 15 Jul, 

 2025, 6:00pm AWST
	

Click here


Session 3: 

Theory of the Avant-Garde’&#38;nbsp; by 

Peter Bürger.


Tuesday, 17 Jun, 2025, 6:00pm AWST
	

Click here

Session 2: ‘The Originality of the Avant-Garde’ by 
Rosalind E. Krauss.
	

Tuesday 20 May, 2025, 6:00pm AWST
	

Click here


	Session 1: ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’ by Clement Greenberg.


	Tuesday, 22 Apr, 2025, 6:00pm AWST
	

Click here


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	<item>
		<title>Shop</title>
				
		<link>https://dispatchreview.info/Shop</link>

		<pubDate>Sat, 07 Oct 2023 04:37:48 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>dispatch review</dc:creator>

		<guid isPermaLink="true">https://dispatchreview.info/Shop</guid>

		<description>Shop:
	&#60;img width="1170" height="1664" width_o="1170" height_o="1664" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/271ce0fb8b7cd86500fd7de86b154a28340614bc94e2a00222b731715fb5c90a/B0105D50-4B99-4B7C-A778-D357CD2E7184.png" data-mid="241394632" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/271ce0fb8b7cd86500fd7de86b154a28340614bc94e2a00222b731715fb5c90a/B0105D50-4B99-4B7C-A778-D357CD2E7184.png" /&#62;


Dispatch Review: 
2023 and 2024 Anthology Bundle
A special deal for the AAANZ Conference 2025!
 Purchase both the 2023 and 2024 Anthology for $50.


&#60;img width="401" height="569" width_o="401" height_o="569" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/16d1e5c9184fd77850a10cae060ed0c6c9ed88940bc3ed0092b678db8b08532a/anth24.png" data-mid="240822942" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/401/i/16d1e5c9184fd77850a10cae060ed0c6c9ed88940bc3ed0092b678db8b08532a/anth24.png" /&#62;


	Dispatch Review: 2024 Anthology
The 2024 Anthology from Dispatch Review is a selection of the best art criticism from the journal's second year of publication. This anthology captures the critical conversations that shaped contemporary art in Boorloo/Perth, Western Australia during 2024. Dispatch Review is a volunteer-run journal, and proceeds from the sale of this publication will support the continuation of future anthologies. Cover design by Scott Burton.
	&#60;img width="978" height="1387" width_o="978" height_o="1387" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2d028b012b93347872eb6032a2ae61238bcb98ee04debdeaa9ad834576f3adc1/455184325_855400656541539_3950715539205821916_n.jpg" data-mid="216937618" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/978/i/2d028b012b93347872eb6032a2ae61238bcb98ee04debdeaa9ad834576f3adc1/455184325_855400656541539_3950715539205821916_n.jpg" /&#62;
	Dispatch Review: 2023 Anthology

The 2023 Anthology from Dispatch Review is a selection of the best art criticism from the journal's first year of publication. Featuring texts by Sam Beard, Amelia Birch, Aimee Dodds, Max Vickery, Samuel Beilby, Tara Heffernan, Darren Jorgensen, Stirling Kain, Ian Mclean, Zali Morgan, Francis Russell, Terry Smith, Maraya Takoniatis, and Jess van Heerden, this anthology captures the critical conversations shaping contemporary art in Boorloo/Perth, Western Australia. Dispatch Review is a volunteer-run journal, and proceeds from the sale of this publication will support the continuation of future anthologies. Cover design by Scott Burton.

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	Wang Qingsong – Catalogue
Wang Qingsong is a leading figure in contemporary Chinese photography.&#38;nbsp;He constructs highly staged photographs that explore the influence of Western consumer culture in China.


	&#60;img width="295" height="295" width_o="295" height_o="295" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2f3f6f80202ed8c39740057c3de67b96001806b7f36fbf47a15307980f76b0e4/384413484_729878058950841_7669105011409563059_n.jpg" data-mid="193461029" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/295/i/2f3f6f80202ed8c39740057c3de67b96001806b7f36fbf47a15307980f76b0e4/384413484_729878058950841_7669105011409563059_n.jpg" /&#62;
	
Critic’s CupThe perfect cup for a critic. This mug will assist you in making critical judgments on art, love and life.

&#38;nbsp;
Click here if&#38;nbsp;you would like to contact us.


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		<title>Articles</title>
				
		<link>https://dispatchreview.info/Articles</link>

		<pubDate>Sun, 25 Jun 2023 17:25:24 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>dispatch review</dc:creator>

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		<title>Tim Burns – The Kinetic Moment by Cassandra Otterman-Emmett</title>
				
		<link>https://dispatchreview.info/Tim-Burns-The-Kinetic-Moment-by-Cassandra-Otterman-Emmett</link>

		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Oct 2026 03:38:03 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>dispatch review</dc:creator>

		<guid isPermaLink="true">https://dispatchreview.info/Tim-Burns-The-Kinetic-Moment-by-Cassandra-Otterman-Emmett</guid>

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Tim Burns – The Kinetic Moment


by Cassandra Otterman-Emmett


Saturday, 7 November 2026


For an artist who ‘seemed to be everywhere in everything and yet elusively was nowhere to be found,’[1] Tim Burns’ retrospective exhibition The Kinetic Moment firmly establishes his canonical figuration in countercultural history. The exhibition, held at &#38;nbsp;Art Gallery of Western Australia, marks two firsts: the first ever solo-show of Burns’ at a state gallery, as well as the first show curated by Aimee Dodds, and proves that both are masters of their crafts.&#38;nbsp;Consisting of fragments from Burns’ entire career, spanning from performance documentation, No-Wave cinema, printed ephemera, collaborative works, to paintings from as recent as 2025, The Kinetic Moment feels much more definitive and comprehensive than many recent survey shows at AGWA. It also offers insights into less “popular” or institutionally accepted works. While the curation of performance-based and post-object artworks tends to fall flat, given the ephemeral nature of the works, Dodds has effectively translated the pieces into entertaining and visually engaging artworks in their own right.
&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; Like Burns himself, The Kinetic Moment understands that comedy is one of the most effective ways to communicate meaning. The exhibition utilises visual puns, like the massive prints of explosions (that which blows up is blown up) and the ascending series of images of people traversing the impossible-to-descend staircase in Art Castle, a series of prints of Burns’ performance Start—Finish Event? (1973). These ephemeral performances are given new life and maintain their original meaning and in-your-face-ness. While it was not a major theme, the comedic aspect definitely enhanced the exhibit (they missed a trick with My 40th Birthday&#38;nbsp;though: a series zooming in on his face at the moment of orgasm is perhaps the most obvious “kinetic moment” in the whole show).
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Installation view of My 40th Birthday, c. 1987, in Tim Burns – The Kinetic Moment, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 17 October 2026 – 28 February 2027. Photography by Aleph.
However, the exhibit faces the eternal downfall of archiving performance and post-object art: how can you properly present an artwork which is so time- and space-specific when you are so far removed from its time and space? The true “kinetic moment” is never properly experienced as a visitor to the gallery; we see only images of it taking place and the aftermath, missing the moment itself. Yet there is no real alternative; as set out by Philip Auslander in The Performativity of Performance Documentation, “it is not the initial presence of an audience that makes an event a work of performance art: it is its framing as performance through the performative act of documenting it as such.”[2] After all, how can the explosions of Mullaloo Beach, January 1974, with four others, just after 7:00AM and Exploding TV, Boya Quarry (1974) be acts of performance art when done without an audience? They exist solely in the realm of their documentation and subsequent transformation into mail art and photographic prints, but the performances themselves are as canonical to Burns’ oeuvre as any other, brought to life through their crystallisation in time. As far as performance documentation goes, The Kinetic Moment is one of the most effective displays of documentation as artwork in itself, especially when they are as imaginatively comedic as Art Castle and the other visual puns and in-your-face as the massive image of an explosion that greets you as you enter the exhibit.
&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; The show falls short only in the way any exhibition of its kind does; such an abrasive, radical, anti-institutional artist can never truly be properly represented in a state-funded, state-run gallery. The radical messaging is watered down by its being assimilated into the institution it attacks; even within the show itself, a story is recounted where Tim Burns, upset by the absence of radicalism in the exhibition Radical Ecologies in which he was included at PICA in 2016, “sprayed his prints with a lurid pink paint and was removed from the premises.”[3] We see the aftermath of this auto-destructive protest, archival silkscreens vandalised with a shock of pink, but that spirit of radicalism above institutionalisation is absent from the series, as well as the rest of the once-provocative pieces. 

&#60;img width="2000" height="1125" width_o="2000" height_o="1125" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/91aac94d0ca5863afe9b73c72d09fd6244cf83a48e465ca95694625bf71758fa/w13.jpg" data-mid="254057675" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/91aac94d0ca5863afe9b73c72d09fd6244cf83a48e465ca95694625bf71758fa/w13.jpg" /&#62;
Installation view of the spray painted prints from Radical Ecologies, in Tim Burns – The Kinetic Moment, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 17 October 2026 – 28 February 2027. Photography by Aleph.

Despite the apparent sublimation of radicalism, institutional critique—a term coined by Andrea Fraser—has, according to Fraser, ‘always been institutionalized. It could only have emerged within and, like all art, can only function within the institution [of] art’.[4] Burns’ kinetic moments are only shocking within an institutional context in which a work like For the Sake of Art (1974) subverts ideas of the barrier between documentation and performance, and in which A Change of Plan (1973) subverts the traditional subject/object relationships in white-box institutions. The controversies and consequences of Minefield (1973; closed down for its potentially hazardous use of explosives) and A Change of Plan (which resulted in an obscenity charge in 1973) only reinforce the institutional critique, as they push the boundaries of what is truly acceptable within the institutions themselves. This critique is still effective in the context of The Kinetic Moment. Yet, it is interesting to consider whether any of these works still be as shocking or influential in today’s artistic landscape—or have institutions evolved past the need for explosives?

Footnotes:

1. Edward Colless quoted by Aimee Dodds in her essay “Time Smoking: A Picture” in the book that accompanies the exhibition.

2. Philip Auslander, “The Performativity of Performance Documentation,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 28, no. 3 (2006): 7.

3. Wall text, Tim Burns – The Kinetic Moment, Art Gallery of Western Australia, 2025; see also Laetitia Wilson, “Radical Ecologies,” Artlink, https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/4520/radical-ecologies/.

4. Andrea Fraser, “FROM THE CRITIQUE OF INSTITUTIONS TO AN INSTITUTION OF CRITIQUE,” Artforum, September 1, 2005, https://www.artforum.com/features/from-the-critique-of-institutions-to-an-institution-of-critique-172201/.


Images: 

Installation view, Tim Burns – The Kinetic Moment, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 17 October 2026 – 28 February 2027. Photography by Aleph. 


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		<title>Picaresque: A Response to Marco Marcon by Francis Russell &#38; Rejoinder by Marco Marcon</title>
				
		<link>https://dispatchreview.info/Picaresque-A-Response-to-Marco-Marcon-by-Francis-Russell-Rejoinder-by</link>

		<pubDate>Tue, 27 Oct 2026 10:52:26 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>dispatch review</dc:creator>

		<guid isPermaLink="true">https://dispatchreview.info/Picaresque-A-Response-to-Marco-Marcon-by-Francis-Russell-Rejoinder-by</guid>

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Picaresque: A Response to Marco Marcon
 by Francis Russell

	Saturday, 31 October 2026


The necessity of losing one’s innocence and naivety, and the tragedy of becoming worldly and cynical, are not only key themes in many of the works collectively grouped under the heading Bildungsroman, they are also central to the difficulties faced by the contemporary art educator.&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp;
&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; Having worked in tertiary arts education for almost fifteen years, I would stake the claim that, regardless of what universities and art schools say about the purpose of an arts education—which is increasingly incoherent and self-defeating—if such an education achieves anything it is to instil an ethics of openness and generosity in the student.&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; 
Arts education aims to make the capacity to notice and appreciate differences both possible and desirable. Putting aside the individual artist’s intention to propose the urinal or filthy bed as a candidate for artistic contemplation, the pedagogical aim of introducing students to such work is typically to foster an appreciation for all that is overlooked both by individuals and by societies. Overlooked materials and objects, excluded voices and perspectives, discarded practices and methods; a capacity to pay attention to and be sympathetic to whatever exists at the margins of everyday life—this is the subject matter of a successful arts education in its contemporary pluralist form. &#38;nbsp; 
&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; And yet, like the protagonist of many a Bildungsroman, such openness and generosity to the world and to others can be easily exploited. Indeed, on leaving art school, many students encounter a hard and cynical world in which patience, tolerance, and hospitality become marks of being, well, a mark. The art world is typically not driven by an ethos of openness and pluralism, but is fad-obsessed, marketised, and deeply competitive. Such is the problem identified by Marcon at the end of his recent essay, the problem of everything being possible but nothing seeming necessary. “Anything can be art,” the recent arts graduate might agree, “but without a successful personal brand who is going to pay a moment’s notice?”
&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; While I’m sympathetic to this concern, I don’t buy the claim that a return to skill or materiality solves the problem for at least two reasons. Firstly, I don’t think the university is the right forum to master technical skills, especially given the difficulty of knowing which artistic skills will ultimately be useful for the individual artist. I’ve heard various claims about the centrality of drawing, or dance, or whatever other artistic technique as a foundation to all others, but I think it would be a disaster to arbitrarily force students to gain competency in skills they’re uninterested in when the option to merely introduce them to such skills is far more achievable. Secondly, real technical mastery requires far more focused attention than is possible during a three-year undergraduate course, especially given the state of the contemporary housing market, the disastrously low purchasing power of young people, and the increasing levels of part time work undertaken by students. 
&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; Beyond the practical question of teaching, far too many influential artists and critics cling on to an outdated labour-theory of artistic value, as if the quantum of time spent producing a work of art is somehow a measure of its aesthetic or artistic value. While I understand my opponents in this debate aren’t absolutists—there is usually an acknowledgement that time worked = value created is a heuristic and not a precise formula or measure—Marcon’s reliance on the kinetic and muscular language of wrestling, resisting, and struggling with the physicality of medium and technique strikes me as missing the point somewhat. In a world so dominated by the atomistic logic of consumerism, the turn away from conceptual dematerialised works towards more intuitive and boisterous material experiments will do no more to provide art with a sense of necessity. The sake for which art is made has to rest with other people, with dialogue, and a shared capacity to think and feel publicly. An audience of slack-jawed gawkers is no better than one filled with furrow-browed ponderers if art remains the province of individual experience. &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; 
&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; Perhaps, then, we should remember the picaresque as a forerunner to the Bildungsroman, one that reveals itself as alive in many of the classic examples of the latter. The picaresque is characterised by its reliance on anti-heroes, roguish side characters, and a satirical mistrust of institutions and social convention. Whether Henry Fielding's Tom Jones or Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore, the picaresque’s central anti-hero moves from misadventure to misadventure, banding together with others (many of whom are of questionable social status), in order to expose the failings of the social order and achieve victory, even if narrowly defined. Unlike a narrative of moral self-development and self-overcoming, of which the Bildungsroman is never purely, the picaresque is a narrative of solidarity and misadventure, in which cynicism and naivety are exchanged continuously in the struggle which is itself necessary—and what could be more necessary than that? &#38;nbsp;&#38;nbsp; 
***

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by Marco Marcon
First, I would like to thank Francis Russell for taking the time to read and comment on my text.
&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; Coming to the issues at hand, I fundamentally agree with most of what Francis writes, but I would like to clarify a few points.&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; 
I don’t think we can still consider plumbing fixtures or dirty beds overlooked or marginalised materials; on the contrary, many leading contemporary artists use them as their medium of choice. Rubbish, as it were, is the mainstream, not the marginalised “other.” &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp;&#38;nbsp; 
I agree that teaching traditional techniques may no longer be viable or realistic, not least given the economic pressures on students that Francis describes; this is why I wrote that ‘Artists don’t have to conform to traditional ways of working; they can choose or develop the processes and materials that suit their aims.’ What counts is the learning process of getting to know your technique, process, modus operandi, or material of choice, whatever it may be.
&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; I describe the dialectical relationship between mind and matter as both struggle (‘Matter resists concepts; you have to struggle with it’) and play (‘artists playfully wrestle with their chosen medium’). Francis too ends by calling struggle “itself necessary”.
&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; I never argued that time spent on a work measures its worth. What matters is what the material teaches you as you push against it.
&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; Creating a tangible object and public dialogue are not in contradiction. An artist makes a statement by making a work; the viewer replies by ‘responding’ to it. An aesthetic ‘response’ is what the word says: a rejoinder in a conversation. Describing the onlooker's experience as ‘gawking’ does it an injustice: looking closely at a work is already a way of answering it.


Images:
&#38;nbsp;1. 
William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress, Plate 8 (detail), 1735, etching and engraving; third state of three,&#38;nbsp;35.4 x 40.9 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
2. William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress, Plate 3&#38;nbsp;(detail), 1735, etching and engraving; third state of three, 35.5 x 40.9 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
3.Salvador Dalí, 
Don Quixote (detail), 1959,&#38;nbsp;colour lithograph.&#38;nbsp;National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.


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		<title>Bildungsroman by Marco Marcon</title>
				
		<link>https://dispatchreview.info/Bildungsroman-by-Marco-Marcon</link>

		<pubDate>Fri, 23 Oct 2026 05:11:44 +0000</pubDate>

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Bildungsroman 
by Marco Marcon

	Saturday, 24 October 2026


I used to interview school leavers applying to enrol in our art school. As expected, most had an interest in and aptitude for traditional aesthetic qualities and 

activities. They could draw, paint, and make things; they had a natural feel for form, colour, texture, materiality and composition. Some were articulate; others’ portfolios spoke more eloquently than they did.

&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; Meeting these young hopefuls stirred conflicting feelings. I was charmed by their optimism, though I knew they were aware they stood a better chance of admission if they came across as eager. But I also felt a twinge of guilt knowing I was about to shatter their world. They arrived with deeply ingrained ideas about art and artmaking, the same common-sense views held by people outside the contemporary art world, and my job was to disabuse them.


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; This was not sadistic nihilism on my part; it was school policy, openly acknowledged and explained to first-year students. We would inflict a little spiritual pain on them, but it was for their own good. This approach assumed that people not yet inducted into the inner sanctum of contemporary art had little or no idea what they would find once the veil of Maya was lifted.


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; Charged with teaching modern art history and theory, my colleagues and I were on the front line of this assault on freshmen’s assumptions. Typically, they were somewhat familiar with Impressionism and Surrealism, knew abstract art existed, and had heard that something called the Renaissance happened sometime between the Stone Age and the Victorian era. To these innocents, we had to break the news that the most important artist of the twentieth century was a guy whose masterpiece was a urinal he had bought from a plumbing shop.


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; Freshmen often knew some of the most notorious high jinks of contemporary artists, the guy who “chopped his arm off” on stage, the gal who presented her unmade bed covered in stained sheets, but they didn’t expect to see them treated with such pedagogical earnestness.


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; And yet, even more disconcerting surprises awaited our fresh-faced, bushy-tailed recruits. For example, I had to tell them not to think of art in terms of visual pleasure but of ‘discourse’ and ‘criticality’, terms that required a fair bit of explanation, not just for students but also for some of the teaching staff. They also had to learn never to praise an artwork as ‘beautiful’ but to call it ‘strong’. We told them skills were optional, especially traditional ones, and that they had to talk about their work. Silent art was a thing of the past; we now wanted talkies.


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; I already had some misgivings about these pedagogical principles, but who was I to swim against the tide of history? Besides, we PoMo theory lecturers had to hold our own against the ‘modernist’ staff members who still believed in the transcendental value of materials and techniques. So, while I was busy dismantling students’ preconceived, common-sense ideas about art, I was also imparting an equally arbitrary perspective: the canonical hierarchies of the latest trends in art theory. I was helping to perpetuate a system of art-historical pseudo-truths that needed questioning, not idealising.


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; As for the students, their responses were mixed. Most pretended to listen, but ignored us, and simply went on making whatever they wanted. It was an exercise in passive resistance that, though laudable, required little courage, since they knew we would not fail them. Some of their classmates, however, saw an unexpected opportunity in what they were discovering about the contemporary art canon. ‘I, too,’ they thought, ‘can buy a plumbing fixture, present it as art, and call it a postmodern homage to Marcel Duchamp. Or I could paint a square canvas in monochrome hot pink and call it a feminist response to Malevich. How can they prove it is not art? I could even ask my bookish partner to write an exegesis citing all the right people.’


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; Moreover, anti-aesthetic, dematerialised art of (mostly) ideas was what the cool kids did, and the savvier students cottoned on. In truth, even they admitted that such works were often hollow, predictable little in-jokes. But the institutions took them seriously, and they were so damn easy to make! This may sound farcical, but it happened.


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; The trouble is that contemporary art notions such as ‘deskilling’ and ‘post-medium’ are sometimes interpreted too literally. We are material beings; our thoughts and experiences are embodied. When an artist has an idea and wants to make it tangible, reality fights back. Matter resists concepts; you have to struggle with it and tame it, without suppressing it. In this, the Modernists were right, though they went too far in building a quasi-metaphysical system around this insight.


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; It is (almost) impossible to create a work of art without some physical medium and the ability to manipulate it. Artists don’t have to conform to traditional ways of working; they can choose or develop the processes and materials that suit their aims. And many do. In fact, developing an original set of expressive tools can be integral to the artwork, not just a means to an end.

&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; Furthermore, ideas and matter are not strictly separate. Ideas often emerge when artists playfully wrestle with their chosen medium. Even architects or designers, who do not handle materials directly, must understand them intimately. When I write, I don’t think first and then put thoughts into words; the two go hand in hand. Some artistic ideas may be nonverbal, but they aren’t immaterial. They concern what to do with form, sound, colour, and texture.


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; The problem with some post-medium and deskilled art is that it doesn’t engage with the phenomenal world; there is no struggle, no resistance, all the doors are open, anything goes. It is an art haunted by arbitrariness, one that never confronts the Other of thought: physical reality.


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; I feel for young aspiring artists. They look at what is exhibited and collected around the world, and everything seems possible, but nothing feels necessary.


 &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp;


Header image: Vincenzo Foppa,&#38;nbsp;The Young Cicero Reading (detail), c.1464, fresco, 101.6×143.7 cm, Wallace Collection, London.
	

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		<title>There is nothing you need to do here by Riley Landau</title>
				
		<link>https://dispatchreview.info/There-is-nothing-you-need-to-do-here-by-Riley-Landau</link>

		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Oct 2026 02:39:01 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>dispatch review</dc:creator>

		<guid isPermaLink="true">https://dispatchreview.info/There-is-nothing-you-need-to-do-here-by-Riley-Landau</guid>

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There is nothing you need to do here

by Riley Landau

	
Saturday, 17 October 2026


There is nothing you need to do here, more colloquially known as ‘that wheat
field everyone and their mother is posting on insta,’ has certainly taken Perth
by storm. From the Yagan Square tower, Simone McGurk’s Instagram, and The West
Australian, Wonghan Hills Arts Co. (WHAC) clearly knows how to run a marketing
campaign. Their inaugural show has attained almost Time Rone level popularity,
or at the very least just as much virality. 


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; The exhibition is simple;
a fair few thousand wheat stalks transposed into an empty office space on Mill Street.
The result is an admittedly stunning and liminal space, where the warm toned wheat
stands in stark contrast against the cool white tones of its corporatised interior.
The wheat field interior is complimented by a somewhat lacklustre artificial soundtrack
of birds, mechanised rumblings and a few other sounds that attempt to transport
the viewer into the wheat field. 


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; “Weird shit happening in an
office” is not a new genre. It has been plaguing 21st century visual culture for
a long time: from Apple TV’s Severance, A24’s Backrooms and FKA Twigs’&#38;nbsp;Eusexua music video, the office space seems to be ripe for hermeneutic experimentation.
At a time where the average person’s life is spent toiling away in a cubicle, or
god forbid an open concept workspace, it is no wonder that artistic engagements
frequently turn to capturing the odd and alienating atmosphere of an office. Wheat
fields in odd places is also not a particularly new concept, with the most noteworthy
being executed by Agnes Denes, who spent four months in 1982 growing an entire field
in the middle of downtown Manhattan. 


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; Despite its somewhat unoriginal conception,
WHAC has managed to execute it excellently. The space is genuinely enchanting, leaves
a lasting impression and offers its viewers a truly unique visual encounter. &#38;nbsp;But despite this masterful execution, the exhibition
still feels like a letdown. Its biggest issue is the overbearing Instagramisation
of the show. At the end of the day, the wheatfield is nothing but a set piece for
an aesthetic social media post. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with an exhibition
being photographable, but there simply comes a point. On my visit, most visitors
seemed to spend their twenty-minute time slot photographing or being photographed
by their friends. The worst offender was a content shoot for a Christian themed
streetwear brand taking place, closely followed by a mother berating her child,
no older than 12, for not getting the right angles. 


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; Again, there isn’t anything
wrong about wanting to have a cool photo in the wheat field—but it becomes an issue
when the space is reduced to no more than that. I did not feel like I was transported
to a wheat field and yet somehow still shackled into an office, I felt like I’d
accidentally walked into a content shoot and would get yelled at for being in the
back of an otherwise perfect photo. Furthermore, WHAC leans into its virality, plastering
‘tag us’ signs on the outer edge of the show, thus encouraging the viewer to take
out their phones and pose with the wheat. This is complimented by a massive effort
to include the WHAC title or branding wherever possible. When walking into the show,
it felt more like a corporate brand activation than any art show that I’ve encountered
before. 


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; The bigger issue with this influencer-breeding
ground is that it becomes utterly at odds with what WHAC purports to achieve. If
there is truly “nothing you need to do here,” as the title suggests, then perhaps
more people would spend time in the space meditatively. Asking viewers to check
their phones in on entry would actually utilise the site to push boundaries, fostering
the idle disconnect stressed by the exhibition title and therefore encouraging its
audience to grapple with its supposed curatorial intention. But that would require
WHAC to sacrifice its most sacred metric: virality. At the end of the day, the social
media popularity of this show was not just a means to an end—it was wholly the end
product as intended. Hidden behind the branding, there really was something you
needed to do here: whip out your phone and remember to tag WHAC. 


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; Despite being the most obvious
issue, the brand-focused marketability is not in fact the biggest issue with the
show. The far larger, far greater concern is its betrayal of regional Australia.
Wongan Hills Arts Co. purports dedication “to developing an ecosystem and focal
point for contemporary art, public art and cultural projects in regional Western
Australia.”[1]&#38;nbsp;You would think then, its art would help achieve something for regional communities.
The didactic for the show describes regional towns as holding “extraordinary landscapes,
stories and character” while also observing that they are “places we pass through,
rather than destinations we travel to.”[2] This of course
results in their grand vision to build a cultural destination that draws people
beyond the city and gives people a “new reason to visit.”[3] This didactic
is placed as afterthought on the way in, I did not witness a single visitor read
it. On the same printout, WHAC advertises itself for new partners. 


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; Even if no one reads it, the
goal seems nice enough. Promoting regional art is relatively universally a good
thing to do for the art world. The issue is that the exhibition doesn’t even pretend
to achieve this. People walk in, see a room full of wheat—maybe pay enough attention
to hear the tractor sound—take some pictures and leave. The average visitor walks
out with not a single ounce more of connection to the country than when they walked
in. If I wanted to learn about Wongan Hills, I’d be hard pressed to find a sliver
of any real information in the exhibition. But hey, that totally makes me want to
visit, right?
&#60;img width="1200" height="800" width_o="1200" height_o="800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/55ba1ce49ed6c5f4880fe4246694833a39e4ad563163fda8d77fbfdcf7390ce9/99c13bd27ed2391a42871ec0636b888b3aa4f6a0.jpg" data-mid="253402960" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/55ba1ce49ed6c5f4880fe4246694833a39e4ad563163fda8d77fbfdcf7390ce9/99c13bd27ed2391a42871ec0636b888b3aa4f6a0.jpg" /&#62;
Image Credit: Courtesy of WHAC.


The biggest betrayal of regional
Australia comes in the most fundamental element of the show yet: it’s wheat. Supposedly,
“There is nothing you need to do here,” which is ironic because wheat is the embodiment
of human labour. Go back to Mesopotamia, or any early civilisation and you will
see that agriculture is the foundation of organised labour. Moreover, talk to any
farmer who actually works with crops. Wheat is labour intensive. Its planting, cultivation
and harvesting results in intensely long workdays, backbreaking physical exertion,
and massive financial gambles. But there’s nothing you need to do here, because
you are not the farmer. You are just the consumer—consuming the exhibition in an
entirely uncritical way, in the same way we eat and cook with the products of what
without so much of a consideration of the labour that produced it. Australia’s regions
are plagued with issues because of the intense labour of agriculture, but WHAC would
have you come in and see wheat as nothing but a cute photo op. Rather than blurring
the space between agricultural and office labour, as you might expect with the spaces
merging, WHAC’s show does nothing except reify the division between agricultural
producer and urban consumer. 


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; This lacking impetus to go
into any detail about labour is made even funnier by WHAC’s own marketing, which
draws attention to the huge effort it was to transpose individual wheat stalks.
A 7 News feature describes how the set up took a painstaking 29 days of 10-hour
long shifts to install the exhibition, while also drawing attention to the sheer
scale of half a million wheat stems. It finishes on an optimistic statement that
the show is a “timely reminder” of the work of agriculture, dropping Australia’s
export statistics and cutting to an interview with a wheat farmer.[4]&#38;nbsp;The feature left me feeling that we had seen different exhibitions, because any
trace of this labour felt intentionally hidden, save the occasional soundtracked
drone of what might be a tractor. My thirst to learn anything about wheat was left
unquenched by the work. 


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; For a collective that “believe[s]
culture can change the way people see a place,” WHAC makes no effort to do so.[5] They simply don’t portray Wongan Hills as anything, it’s a convenient name drop
to appear more regional than it actually is. The show is nothing more than an
urban exercise in voyeurism—where the actual labour of agriculture is metastasised
into a trendy liminal office space. 


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; The comparison to Agnes Denes’&#38;nbsp;Wheatfield—A Confrontation is ripe for obvious criticism. Placing the wheat-works
side by side, the gaping discrepancy in artistic ambition and impact manifests clearly.
Denes’ work was used as a springboard for conversations about wealth inequality
and the environment, and seeking to directly “call attention to our misplaced priorities
and deteriorating human values.”[6]&#38;nbsp;It functioned by “wasting valuable real estate and obstructing the ‘machinery’ by
going against the system, was an effrontery that made it the powerful paradox I
had sought for the calling to account.”[7] It is also
important to situate the work in its broader New York context, where artistic discussion
and critical culture flourished far more than it does in the current arts landscape
of Western Australia. 


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; This effort to question values
and draw attention to the obstruction of capitalistic machinery are all things you
could say about WHAC’s installation, but they clearly don’t suggest that themselves.
In fact, the curatorial messaging seems to obscure any criticality. Instead, the
exhibition by-line simply states “A field arrives where it shouldn't.”[8]&#38;nbsp;In this, the field functions as an entity in and of itself. By granting the wheat
a pseudo-mystical status devoid of labour and intention— simply appearing in the
office space—WHAC sacrifices any capital to discuss the act of obfuscating the corporate
function of the space. 


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; This isn’t to say the Denes
is perfect and WHAC is bad. There is a more complicated relationship present. Denes
has faced criticism for the way in which her wheatfield simply served to reify capitalistic
notions of land and failed to acknowledge the question of Indigeneity.[9]&#38;nbsp;These are all criticisms that could broadly be given to There is nothing you
need to do here. But the most obvious difference between the two shows is the
question of what happens to the wheat. Denes’ wheat was harvested and used to feed
NYPD horses (an act not with its own set of problems) and the seeds were distributed
in The International Art Show to End World Hunger. At the very least, the wheat
and labour of Denes’ urban intervention was acknowledged and propagated. What will
the afterlife of WHAC’s first project be? How long will the ephemeral image of an
office filled with wheat linger in our zeitgeist? My gut feeling says it will disappear
rather quickly, living on through the strange archival function of the internet.
You might stalk someone’s feed enough to see a post of them surrounded by wheat,
or see it as the backdrop on a Hinge profile—but that is where it dies. There
is nothing you need to do here, I do not think, will live on in the minds of
its viewers. It would have had to offer something more than mere aesthetics if it
were to do so. The fact that the show is so easily compressed into a series of cute
aesthetic pics is perhaps the greatest evidence in showing the utter shallowness
of the installation. 


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; At the end of this, There
is nothing you need to do here encapsulates the increasingly shallow landscape
of Perth’s art scene, where our exhibitions are more about branding than anything
meaningfully creative. It sells itself as a transformative encounter with regional
Australia but manifests merely as a fun photo op that puts in some tractor sounds
and didactics to distract from its hollowness. It is a project spiritually aligned
with private equity, appealing to as much of the mass as possible and in doing so,
losing any actual power to do much of anything.


&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; But the future isn’t so grim.
This is only the first installation of WHAC, who will undoubtedly be making more
art after the resounding popularity of their first show. In this, they’ve played
to their strengths—creating a visually appealing installation that captures the
market with its on-trend play on an office space. The hope is that they can learn
from this experience, and that their next show will turn that same prowess with
marketing into something that does Wongan Hills, and regional Australia more broadly,
some real justice. 


Footnotes:


[1] See https://whac.net.au/


[2] As noted in the wall text for There is nothing you need
to do here, 2026, exhibition by WHAC (11 September – October 11)


[3] Ibid. 


[4] This interview has been recorded via WHAC’s Instagram
profile (@whac.ltd),
https://www.instagram.com/p/DdWCzybM2izxrBgbaVIf3mECIQNWhEBuRlJOgg0/


[5] Wall text for There is nothing you need to do here. 


[6] Cited in Hessel, Katy. 2022. ‘A Field of Wheat on a $4.5bn
Patch of New York: The Prophetic Eco Art of Agnes Denes’. The Guardian,
July 18.


[7] Ibid. 

[8] See WHAC Events, https://whac.net.au/projects

[9] See, as examples, Husain, Amber, 2025.You’re Missing
the Point of Agnes Denes’s ‘Wheatfield’. March 5. https://artreview.com/youre-missing-the-point-of-agnes-denes-wheatfield-feature-amber-husain/; and Rina, Amelia. 2021. ‘Seeds, Sharing,
Manifestos: On Agnes Denes’s Wheatfield—A Confrontation and “Manifesto”’. Brooklyn
Rail, March. https://brooklynrail.org/2021/03/criticspage/Seeds-Sharing-Manifestos/.


Header images:&#38;nbsp;Courtesy of WHAC.
	

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		<title>All alone in the dark: After Elvira Madigan (1967), Salon dans l’obscurité by Amy Hickman</title>
				
		<link>https://dispatchreview.info/All-alone-in-the-dark-After-Elvira-Madigan-1967-Salon-dans-l</link>

		<pubDate>Sat, 10 Oct 2026 01:48:42 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>dispatch review</dc:creator>

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All alone in the dark: After Elvira Madigan (1967), Salon dans l’obscurité

by Amy Hickman 


Saturday, 10 October 2026


It seems somehow completely without irony that Salon dans l’obscurité presents its first show, After Elvira Madigan (1967), a one-night-only display of one unnamed artist’s paintings, exclusively produced from scenes of Bo Widerberg’s impossibly saccharine film about real-life nineteenth-century slackline dancer, Hedvig Jensen, best known as Elvira Madigan. Hedvig’s story is a sort of Nordic Bonnie and Clyde; she runs away with (or is maybe abducted by) married nobleman and cavalry deserter Sixten Sparre, and a couple of months later, he shoots her dead and then kills himself. In the film, this is played as a suicide pact, and she’s delighted to run off with him in the first instance, rather than, as her mother alleged, only doing so because he threatened to kill himself otherwise. Pia Degermark and Thommy Berggren, as Hedvig and Sixten, prance about in the verdant Swedish countryside, catch butterflies, have picnics and engage in petty theft as they learn how to live apart from society, before they eventually run out of money and food, and finally, in desperation, turn to suicide. The film is famously beautiful; every scene could have come from an impressionist painting, not just in content (it’s all boating and wine in the grass) but in its cinematic aesthetics. Supposedly, Widerberg loved Renoir, and many scenes are intentional homages.[1] The paintings that make up the show, then, are also generally impressionistic, and look to be done by the same hand with varying levels of attention and care. One of the most interesting looks rushed compared to the others, but the flat quality of the paint makes Hedvig and Sixten’s faces, in a moment of passion, look totally lifeless, like rubber masks; this makes it, in its own way, one of the most attractive paintings of the bunch. 
&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; The show, as all of Salon dans l’obscurité’s shows promise to be, is one-night-only and anonymous.[2] This means there’s not much in the way of framing; the show has its title and a floor sheet that is more or less a description of the film and its reception. There are also two projections of scenes of the film, one of which seems to be cut together into something like a trailer. In lieu of an artist name or images of the work, all that’s really brought me and presumably anyone else here is the sheer novelty of it, based on the gallery’s call for artists (and, admittedly, a weird personalised email invitation—flattery will get you anywhere, I guess). Their information pack for artists considering submitting an expression of interest is really the exciting part. It reads like a challenge: no name, no biography, no meanings, themes, significance, or really anything else allowed. “Any reference to these will automatically disqualify your application.”[3]&#38;nbsp;To the anticipated horror, or at least derision, of the Perth art scene, it dares to claim that all applications will be judged on the quality of the work. Cue gasps. “According,” that is, “to the subjective taste and biases of the curators.”[4] Crisis averted; of course no one would dare to think that an artwork (well, really, an EOI) could be judged on its objective quality. 
&#60;img width="5289" height="2974" width_o="5289" height_o="2974" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/09969422af532558fb9051aa1317e599a62312b680c1254e0d8e542392173dc5/IMG_2412.png" data-mid="253105861" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/09969422af532558fb9051aa1317e599a62312b680c1254e0d8e542392173dc5/IMG_2412.png" /&#62;Image: Installation view of After Elvira Madigan (1967) at Salon dans l’obscurité, courtesy of the author.

How and why have we come to think like this? Blame the critics. No, wait—blame deconstruction, postmodernism, the university, and the critics. All these, it would seem, have conspired to produce a world of relativism gone wild, where anything means anything. In the face of such a world, apparently, we can only desperately retreat to that last unassailable bastion that can’t be diminished or distorted by its relation to so many competing truths: the personal opinion. Broadly, though, the curators (are there really more than one?) of Salon dans l’obscurité have sniffed out something that does, in fact, piss people off: that art seems to be judged on the basis of a whole range of things that are not, strictly speaking, the art object “itself.” That list of things might include the artist’s own biography, the place or time in which the artwork was made, the place or time in which you are viewing it, its distribution through various media, any movements—aesthetic, political or both—that the artwork or artist can be said to be part of, what the artist says about it, what other people say about it… in other words, context matters. Taking a stand against context, the curators of Salon dans l’obscurité want to know and want you to know as little as possible, and to thereby encounter the artwork in the dark, as it were. &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; The information pack is therefore comprised, for the most part, of a series of prohibitions: the aforementioned ban on naming yourself, but also, “no claims about what your art does or achieves or dismantles or critiques or researches or enquires-into or problematises or any other such thing,” and “no reference to meanings, themes, significance, or contemporary relevance.”[5] There are also the usual instructions—describe the work, add pictures, etc.—accompanied by further baffling prohibitions (“do not explain your work”). It’s not clear that the curators realise how reactionary this all sounds—as in, why can’t we have quality anymore? why does everything need to be about who you are? why can’t we just have pretty paintings of pastoral bliss like we used to?—but I think, on the whole, it would be unfair to assume that they are trying to press some kind of half-baked political agenda. That is, it’s easy enough to recognise that there is a kind of juvenile authoritarianism here, and it doesn’t require us to speculate on their feelings about woke.&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; 
Reading it generously, it seems fair to say that the curators are interested in the idea of the art object itself, and particularly in the idea, or really the question, of whether they can actually facilitate an unmediated experience of the artwork. I also think that it is fair to say that this particular exhibition of works has been delivered as the inaugural one because of the way it complements, by problematising, the posing of that question. Salon dans l’obscurité doesn’t want its artists to distort or diminish the actual presence of the work of art in advance through, for example, the common practice of distributing photos of it on social media. Instead it seems to aim, through the anonymous, unphotographed, one-night-only-event, to stage an encounter with “the here and now of the work of art—its unique existence in the place where it is at this moment,” that one thing that Walter Benjamin says survives “even the most perfect reproduction.”[6]&#38;nbsp;It makes for an interesting twist, then, that the paintings here are essentially reproductions of scenes from a film that itself cinematographically sought to reproduce yet more paintings. The question of the “here and now” of the work, that is, despite all these closures, is as difficult to address here as it would be in the case of, say, its reproduction across social media—as Peter Osborne writes about the analogue photograph, “insofar as the question can be meaningfully addressed,” &#38;nbsp;it can only be said to be “distributed across the sites of its process, which it permeates as an image… albeit in a peculiar ontological state of dependency upon the processes that it transcends.”[7] In other words, this problem isn’t exactly a new one; or if it is, it’s only insofar as digital media has unlocked or brought to the fore a possibility that has lain dormant in much of what we call modernism. Duchamp’s Fountain, arguably the most famous “work” of modernism, is perhaps no work at all, having never been exhibited. Insofar as it can be said to “exist” now, it is only through the reproductions and re-presentations of a fundamentally hidden origin: “even Alfred Stieglitz’s famous photograph of the work is no more than the first in a long and seemingly never ending line of copies, each one at some remove from the thing itself without ever being entirely independent of it.”[8] The Salon’s staging of this show, in this way, certainly makes for an interesting practical experiment in the idea of the “thing itself,” not just insofar as it tries to limit the show’s visibility to its three-hour window and disregard the usual conventions of soliciting an audience in pre- and post-show documentation, but also because it presents us with reproductions and reproductions of reproductions of some fundamentally obscured origin—maybe that’s the unobserved real deaths of Hedvig and Sixten, all alone on Tåsinge. On the other hand, insisting on such a high degree of obfuscation, to the extent that no information about the work makes its way to the public before the show, means that the Salon has nothing much more than its ability to generate gossip to get people out there. 
&#60;img width="1200" height="713" width_o="1200" height_o="713" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/edc089539379a42001805556b9ba23648e83b8367ca812da62a5aed0dcc9e1f4/fcs8brnwqaizkqa.jpeg" data-mid="253105864" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/edc089539379a42001805556b9ba23648e83b8367ca812da62a5aed0dcc9e1f4/fcs8brnwqaizkqa.jpeg" /&#62;Image: Still from Elvira Madigan, directed by Bo Widerberg (Europa Film, 1967).

Above all, there is one particular way in which the content of the show speaks to its framing in a way that, I think, exceeds the artist and curators’ intentions. The tremendous beauty and romance of Elvira Madigan in many ways disguised—although Criterion says only “barely” [9]—its measured critique of ’60s hippie counterculture. Some parallels are obvious, like Sixten’s desertion from the army. The pair’s utopianism, though, is perhaps more easily misinterpreted. That is, Widerberg meant for the film to warn against the dangers of that kind of hippie individualism, but the result was a film so visually charming that it served to romanticise the very thing he sought to steer people away from. Widerberg later said, in no uncertain terms, that he “wanted to prove that their idea was insane, that you can’t cut off relations with the rest of society and get along in the grass, alone.”[10] The sheer atmospherics of the thing ended up letting it be reducible to a sensuous mood study about abstractly doomed lovers. It’s not smuggled into the film; Hedvig insists, for example: “Don’t talk to me about love, Sixten. Can we butter our bread with it?” But it was, for audiences, so easily lost in the dreamy, sensual naturalism of the thing. It’s much easier to see when the film is taken in the context of, for example, Widerberg’s oeuvre; perhaps surprisingly, he followed it with a tennis documentary that covered a Swedish student protest of then-Rhodesia’s racial policies (he recalls it being his first time seeing someone “beaten with a stick,” but also “the power of the students when they came together”), then Ådalen ‘31, the story of a Swedish workers’ strike in which five workers were killed by troops, but which ultimately led to the fall from power of the Conservative government. In other words, movies about collective power, and the importance of being part of a world with others in it. 
&#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; &#38;nbsp; If what you’re looking for is some kind of judgement about the quality of the Salon’s first show, “according to the subjective taste and biases” of one critic: it sucks! But a bunch of paintings in a vacuum are, well, just paint. You can’t butter your bread with it. The problem is that all those other things outside of the artwork that always risk diminishing it, and which Salon dans l’obscurité would rather do without—the frame, the gallery, the Instagram post, the textual explanation, the audience, the critics, whatever—are also, in another sense, the sustaining environment for this kind of thing to happen at all. In this light, to do away with context can really be understood only as a deprivation. What I’m trying to suggest, in other words, is that the curators and inaugural artist behind Salon dans l’obscurité’s first show could themselves stand to take a lesson from Elvira Madigan: suffering from the same insanity as Hedvig and Sixten, they think that you can get along in the grass (or indeed the dark), alone. But there’s no chance for life out there, without everything else that stands to sustain and enliven it. 
Footnotes:

1. Peter Cowie, “Bo Widerberg’s New Swedish Cinema: Another Sweden,” Criterion, August 22, 2023. https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/8234-bo-widerberg-s-new-swedish-cinema-another-sweden.

2. The possibility of any future exhibitions remains in question: since the time of writing, Salon dans l’obscurité has announced its closure for the foreseeable future.

3. Salon dans l’obscurité, “Information Pack,” 2, https://drive.google.com/file/d/11FHzMK-8CxrGrTAkpEQGLya_u9HDcSy8/view.

4. Salon dans l’obscurité, “Information Pack,” 2.

5. Salon dans l’obscurité, “Information Pack,” 2. 

6. Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, translated by J. A. Underwood (Penguin, 2008), 5. 

7. Peter Osborne, Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art, (Verso, 2013), 124.

8. Robert Briggs and Niall Lucy, “Frame #1: Ones &#38;amp; Zeroes, Light &#38;amp; Shade (Dimensions: 4, Easter Eggs: 3),” Ctrl-Z: New Media Philosophy(1): n.p., https://www.ctrl-z.net.au/articles/issue-1/briggs-lucy-frame/. 

9. Cowie, “Bo Widerberg’s New Swedish Cinema.” 

10. Robert Berkvist, “Where Does a Man Go After ‘Elvira Madigan’?,” New York Times, October 26, 1969, 12.


Header image: Installation view of After Elvira Madigan (1967) at Salon dans l’obscurité, courtesy of the author.
	

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