![]() ![]() A flapping gauze strip can be a surrogate blur for Spong herself darting through a linear rectangle, just as with Maddox many paintings are a lot more than just the obsessively repeated crosses that writers tend to focus on. They have links to the contribution of Allen Maddox in this show - specifically in regard to the role of nature (or laws of physics) within the bodily action of the artist. Spong has two powder-coated linear steel forms that support fabric banners that are gently disturbed by breezes blowing down over Albert Park. Other Made Active artists continue the theme of sculptural items being props for the viewer to bodily interact with in empathy with the artist - mentally not physically - though I guess you could (if you wished) gingerly walk through Alicia Frankovich’s steel-framed portal and not topple her carefully balanced eggs, or on the rooftop of Sriwhana Spong’s ‘sculpture garden’, climb up her oddly proportioned cement steps and hold a pose as dancer Yahna Fookes did - in Spong’s performance Actions and Remains. Malone’s sprawling work is a major exhibition in itself, packed with unusual juxtapositions, peculiar objects not often seen in this part of the world, and his very individual interests. It is a monument to Malone’s absent body (but very present mind) as well as a global metaphor for an avaricious capitalist economy - a theme extended by Ian Burns and (maybe) Paul Cullen in their contributions around the corner, with globally roaming Hummers and roving inverted buckets. This extraordinary plethora - as a paean to consumerism (‘I shop therefore I am’) - seems a satire on the notion of the Self being constructed by accummulated possessions, as well as a smirk about the capitalist truism that everything (anything at all - even waste) has a market. It is like a claustrophobic, walk-in cathedral with posters, maps, Ziploc bags of flat objects and branded shopping bags pinned to the walls all going up to the ceiling. Not just obvious items like crates of long player records, racks of clothing, piles of books, stacks of computers etc, but also obsessively hoarded (but carefully sorted) ‘rubbish’ like cardboard toilet-roll cores, bottle tops, champagne corks, eggshells, cigarette packets and used straws. The ‘living spaces’ make up a sort of museum into which Malone has crammed all the worldly possessions he acquired before moving to Poland in 2007. The most conspicuous work (as a provider of sheer spectacle) in the show is performance artist Daniel Malone’s installation, Black Market Next to My Name, a specially constructed ‘dwelling’ with high walls and five densely packed rooms - viewable from a bare corridor along which the visitor moves. Are they inert until ‘energised’ within the context of live art-action, in a manner similar perhaps to central African ‘fetish’ or ‘power’ objects where the sleeping gods within are allegedly activated by hammered-in nails and incantations? Or do they have other properties that are more subtle, where the link between artefact and action is not so pronounced? Up on the top floor of the new AAG building, Made Active, a selection by Natasha Conland of thirteen works acquired by the Chartwell Collection, examines the nature of props or sculptures operating within or around performance - ways of thinking about their role or function.
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