Emerging Curators Program, Sydney, 2010. Peter Adsett, Gail Hastings, Laresa Kosloff, Pat Macan, Elizabeth Newman, Patricia Todarello
Writers: Margaret Farmer, Andrew Frost, Shane Haseman, Michele Helmrich, Ewen McDonald, John von Sturmer
Taint observed the continued currency of minimalism through the work of six contemporary Australian artists. Formal and conceptual links can be made between their work and the Minimal project of the 1960s; their art is spare with an emphasis on geometric form, their works articulate space and in doing so acknowledge the audience and their role in creating meaning. These tendencies are shared with Minimalism, and yet these works are ever conscious of the archive. This awareness at times creates a cynicism in the works, but also forces the aesthetic developments of the 60s into a dialogue with the present. These artworks are alive. They either meddle with or reactivate the systems proposed during the 60s. The ‘vacancy’ of Minimalism is interrupted and inhabited in many of these works, infused with pollutants: humour, domesticity, the performing body, the by products of life and the living. The exhibition posed the question: what happens when aesthetics are revisited and ideas are subjected to mimicry, re-enactment and extension?
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