AMILTON D E S I G N G L A S S The artwork of Jeffrey Hamilton

The Australian Designers and Creators exhibition, which grew out of the Australian Craft Show at Fox Studios in Sydney has morphed into Australian Designers on Show. The exhibnition at the Masonic Hall in Turramurra over the weekend of 23rd, 24th and 25th March 2012 was the fourth exhibition of it's kind and the first time I have taken part.

The fine timber craftsman Dave Jones had to pull out of this year's Designers on Show so I was very pleased to have been invited as his replacement. While the number of visitors wasn't huge it was a good show for me. I sold several of my abstract leadlight mirrors and had many worthwhile conversations and some very positive leads for future commissions. It's been quite a few years since I have exhibited on the Northside (was a member of the North Shore Craft Group for many years when I lived at Lane Cove) and I'll definitely have a presence at Turramurra in 2013.

At a wedding reception many years ago I was asked what I do for a living, the usual wedding party conversation with strangers. My reply elicited a disparaging response: "So you're a religious artist?! That's old hat, religion is dead!"

One need only spend an hour wandering through the 2011 Blake Prize to realise how wrong that statement is and how relevant religious art can be to today's society. Such a diverse range of artistic expression, some of it somewhat obscure and impenetrable to be sure but most of the work extremely thought provoking.

In an exhibition such as the Blake I tend to feel that using Untitled for the title of a work is disappointing, particualrly if there is no accompanying text in the room sheet; a title provides the veiwer with at least a hint of the artist's intent, an access to the work. Nevertheless one of my favourite artworks in the show is "Untitled", an unapologetic abstract expressionist painting by Linzie Joanne Ellis. As an essay on the ineffable this works supremely well.

Equally successful for entirely different reasons is another Untitled, the black and white painting of a large crowd under intense light by Ernest Aaron. As you approach this work the crowd disappears and the daubs of paint vibrate against each other. It is indeed a most successful metaphor for the transient nature of our existence, as the artist states in the catalogue.

I was struck by the aesthetic integrity of Simon Blau's "The relocation of the horizotal on an instrument of torture": such a strong sculptural statement, conceptually profound yet profoundly simple. And who could not be moved by a crumbling portrait looking suspiciously like Mother Teresa made of wood filler by Tim Silver?

Embodying profound meaning within an object of beauty, Anne Sheffer's printed ceramic vessel has a quietly commanding presence. There were many pieces in this show that impressed me, too many to mention here. And some are clearly addressing the more open brief of social justice rather than religion per se. A very clever and engaging work in this field is "Not in her Mother's Footsteps, New China Doll" by Fang Min Wu. I think I laughed out loud when I saw this beautifully executed work.

Certainly Religion has a lot to answer for. Religious wars are seldom about religion at all and even when they are, how misguided is that very concept? In truth the phrase "Religious War' is an oxymoron. One of my favourite art jokes is Beware of the God

Australian author and Nobel Prize winner Patrick White's comments are pertinent here. In a passage from The Solid Mandala his character Waldo, speaking of Religion and the Church, declaims that:
"Myths, evil enough in themselves, threatened one's sanity when further abstracted by incense and Latin, and became downright obscene if allowed to take shape in oleograph or plaster"

But Religion is by no means dead and nor is Religious Art, no matter what religion or lack of you or I may profess to. The 2011 Blake Prize closed today and begins its tour around the country shortly. There is an online version here.

Nov. last year a friend named Steve McLaren curated an exhibition at TAP Gallery in Darlinghurst entitled Not Only Black and White. It was an interesting theme to work to and I got excited and began a new collage/mixed media work on a black background, working with shades of black and all the various grades of white. The meta-meaning of gradations of black and white in a moral sense came to the fore as I was working with the piece. The exhibition came and went (I hung several pencil and charcoal drawings) and the new work languished for a time, until Brendan Penzer's call out a month ago for submissions in ATVP's annual `show of the year', entitled Sign of the Times.

The image below is the result. Quite rich in content it engaged members of the audience for long periods, which is about as much as you can ask of an artwork at an exhibition where there is much going on; ATVP's shows generally comprise a substantial performance component and are quite significant events.

It constantly amazes me the diverse ways in which artists will interpret a particular theme. I was very taken with the two posters of an atomic explosion over Marshall Island, by Jason Wing vs Mini Graf, superimposed with the words "REFUGE ISLAND".

Ganbeld Lunaa presented a wonderful mixed media work entitled "Endless Bullshit Cassette Series" comprising a series of cassette tapes bound wildly in wire and screwed to painted canvases. I recognised a sympathetic sensibility of materials here, combined with a very Dada aesthetic. Each tape was labelled in various modes of bullshit.

The main gallery contained three sets of sculpted busts on plinths; the most prominent being, of course, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott in painted reinforced latex by Kassandra Bossell (below): an impressive likeness and eerily disturbing. Shown above is a wonderfully lighthearted installation that appeared on the awning of the gallery over King St. creating new meaning from truncated signage. And just inside the gallery door, down on the floor, was a delightful altar piece by Coris Evans set up on an amplifier and two speakers with looped chanting filling the gallery space.

ATVP (At The Vanishing Point) is definitily one of the most interesting of the current crop of contemporary ARIs, always presenting challenging and dynamic exhibitions. It deserves your attention.