CONCEPTUAL ART
Daily Telegraph - March 2008

THE news that working class institution Penrith Panthers is to employ French multi-media artist Sylvie Blocher to transform their club has inspired similar projects throughout the city, including some you may not have heard of:

• IS painting dead? The question has vexed the art world for decades, but in an unassuming part of suburban Sydney there's proof it remains very much alive. Typical of works in what critics are calling the “Kogarah Train Station School” is one small but bold piece sprayed on a bench and titled “Rockdale Boyz r commin to getchya Kogarah fuckers”. Beside it, an erect phallus rendered in black permanent marker returns us to the dawn of creation, recalling fertility images in the Lascaux Caves while ironically deconstructing the modernist myth of the artist as heroic creator.

• RENOWNED performance artist Steve “Meths” Perkins will be giving a free showing of his most recent work today outside the Wayside Chapel, Kings Cross. The piece, titled Homeless Man in the Gutter (Smelling of Wee) builds on many of Meths' previous performances, including the critically praised Crazy Man Talking to Himself About Jesus and Charlie's Coming! Get in the Chopper!, all of which deal with issues of anguish, memory and the difficulty of finding a shopping trolley with decent wheels.

• DEAR Sir/Madam, You and a guest are cordially invited to the unveiling of a major new public artwork. Found Objects Installation -- the Parramatta River, is designed to challenge traditional notions of “art” by recontextualisating various “readymades” found floating in one of the city's most polluted waterways. Old tyres and syringes are given new meaning when displayed next to several dead eagles. A humble plastic bag acquires added poignancy when pulled from the stomach of a dead fish. Barrels of industrial waste pose the question: “If a company dumps and doesn't get caught, did it happen?”

• THE Coogee Bay Hotel might seem like an unlikely setting for a revolution in contemporary dance, but that's exactly what's happening every Friday night at this venerable east Sydney institution. The most recent work, Pissed Backpackers Fighting, 3am, has critics swooning, one noting its “savage masculinity tempered by gentle comedy” and another, “This pub is full of dickheads”.

• THE Rooty Hill RSL is the venue for what many are calling the greatest breakthrough in video installation art since the invention of the genre. The piece, titled Queen of the Nile Pays Out, Pensioner Takes Free Spins, is broadcast on 5000 screens simultaneously and has been described as “spellbinding”, with thousands of art lovers apparently unable to tear their eyes from the work for days at a time. Now with complimentary beverages, there's never been a better way to fill the void at the centre of your being for a few, depressing seconds.

© Brendan Shanahan 2008