Noel McKenna :: 2% Collective :: Format

Big was well, quite big actually, commodious, capacious and slightly chaotic. A kind of suitcase compendium of a show it had the feel of being put together quickly and vanishing by night. The largest foray yet for local collectives 2% and Format (who kicked in solidly alongside with a zine show and workshops), Big not only showed off the work of more than 30 artists; it brought together an entire undercurrent of local scenes and creative makers. It was cold, the venue cavernous, the crowd stylin’ and there were haircuts I hadn’t seen since 1987 gleefully resurrected. The appropriated and put together stylings of the attendees reflecting a certain fluidity of form and intention also present in the works. Specifically, that debated delineations between art, advertising, commercial and fine art work, simply don’t seem to exist for many of the artists here, with work presented without these imposed definitions rather as a freewheeling, egalitarian show and tell.

The central hall contained what seemed to be an installation of kombi van, signpost and mountain range that was in fact three separate pieces working beautifully together in a paean to travel in differing scales. The Naysayers Kombi Van Project (with real van) travelled towards Louise Vodic’s evocative and delicatePocket Mountain, a printed and cut out fold up mountain range, with light snowfall of glitter on certain peaks, as Jessie Lumb’s official looking signpost pointed the true path to San Diego. Actual mobility was later supplied by the Hoon Haiku Project, a rudimentary corrugated cardboard and texta inscribed van. A mobile poetry project of Lou Smith and Arlene Texta Queen, the Hoon Haiku van roamed about carried by its occupants who engaged in some random shouting (and I think poetry) generally more inventive than the usual Hindley street variety. Nearby, Anna Horne’s wood grain vinyl box showed an exploded side as if something nasty had just burst out and gone a-wandering, a similarly busted out hole sat on the floor suggesting a lurking uncertainty below these smooth artificial surfaces.

Laura Haigh’s paper balloon forms clustered in a corner like bacilli and spread out finding themselves ledges and corners to quietly colonise, a breath held in each one. Nick Moran’s oversized finches, collaged from wallpapers and card have a substantial and appealing presence and Joshua Searson’s pop arty photomontage prints recall most things from Rauschenberg to Heartfield but have a clean sensibility of their own. There were many video works and short films (showing not only that the kids are alright, they’re in their rooms playing with the telly) but these, unfortunately weren’t well served by the competition from surrounding works and ambient noise. Mark Neihus’ simple theatrical presentation of his poem 20-01-07, with a portable Olympia typewriter set on a spot lit wooden desk, had the poem scrolling out of the typewriter in a long, long sheet towards the ceiling where it was caught and suspended, setting up a small isolated space to come into the work of the poem, itself a near frantic, shuddering vociferation.

]Big’s energy was infectious and the mutliplictous array of work engaging but a closer attention to housekeeping details such as didactic panels would do credit to those showing, as the lack of panels on some works and that the works pictured in the program were often not those on show meant that sometimes I didn’t know whose work I was seeing. In a show this size, a map too, however rudimentary would have been useful.