Mission impossible: Melbourne in a day (NGV 'n all that art)

OK, so aside from the fashion and textile exhibitions I also took in some excellent art while visiting the NGV. Luminous Cities: photographs of the built environment provided a photographic entree while Unnerved: the New Zealand project was a delicious mains. I was glad to stumble into Endless Present, the Robert Rooney and conceptual art show, which I hadn't planned on seeing due to limited time, but did, and was mighty glad I did as there were so many incidental humble thrills to be had for a 60s junkie like myself. Last but not least I also checked out Stormy Weather: contemporary landscape photography while over at the Ian Potter Centre but as that show has about much relevance to a vintage blog as a Kmart bra I'll leave it at that.

Unnerved: the New Zealand project

   Above: Unnerved exhibition views featuring Michael Parekowhai's McMurty inflatable 

rabbit, The horn of Africa seal balancing a piano and tool-kit for colonisation.

 

  Yvonne Todd riffs a thwarted and distorted take on 1960s-70s Americana beauty.

Luminous Cities: photographs of the built environment

 Lee Friedlander

Endless Present: Robert Rooney and conceptual art

 

Above: Robert Rooney photographs Fenced-off service station, Hawthorn July 1977 & April 1978 (top) and Holden Park 1 & 2 "bonus" photo version 1970. 

Below: An artist who obviously offered a great deal of inspiration to Rooney, Ed Ruscha. Pictured is the installation of Ruscha's book series which if you ever get a chance to look through offer a wry cruise through L.A.'s visual spectacle of the mundane. I love Ruscha. He the man.

Below: Joe Goode's Los Angeles artists and their cars calendar 1969.

The Man. Ed Ruscha.

Billy Bengston

Peter Alexander

LA artist. Not the pajamas dude.

Larry Bell

 Allan Kaprow's Days Off: a calendar of happenings 1970

"Jazz Man Blows"

That he does.

Allan Kaprow from Assemblage, Environments and Happenings 1966

 Above: Robert Rooney's N.E.W.S. (top & detail) and Meals (bottom, detail).

N.E.W.S. takes its title from the four compass points - the direction the artist's camera faced as it sat on the floor to take these non-news worthy images. I think there's a dry and absurdist humour to conceptual art that art historians for too long have failed to convey to the masses.

 YANG Yongliang
On a different bent Chinese artist YANG Yongliang's DVD Phantom landscape 2010, displayed opposite the upstairs restaurant offered a breathtaking and clever take on traditional Chinese watercolour landscapes. This contemporary version's mountains are subtly constructed from rising skyscrapers as traffic flows below the classic falling waterfall. An aeroplane dwarfs the final scene for good measure. I was particularly excited to see the DVD as I'd first seen the artist's photographic works last year while on holiday in Beijing at Galerie Paris-Beijing and had been really impressed. So it brought back that joy and the holiday vibes.