"Ryan Gander: READ ONLY" (ACCA)

'Conceptual art' I guess, but unusually elegant and lucid both aesthetically/design-wise and in its balance between surface and deeper (nested, referential, implicit, viewer-produced) meaning.

Macarons in the customised flavours of Foie Gras, burning libraries and Evian mineral water prepared at the behest of the artist.

"Ampersand" (2012) is the centrepiece - you sit in an Eames chair and view a series of objects each placed on a plain white plinth as they rotate one after another behind a square window a couple of metres away. On a side table beside you, a printed and bound book - a catalogue of sorts - which elaborates on each of the, it turns out, 66 in all with short descriptions and more extended explanations of sorts as to what, why, how, and in revealing so much serve equally to highlight how much remains unsaid.[*]

A circular convex security mirror with protective visor intended for outdoor use, manufactured in Japan, viewed from behind.

In the far room, very top right corner, "Porthole to Culturefield Revisited" (2010), including a Miles Davis song playing softly:

Which recalled "Two hundred and sixty eight degrees below every kind of zero" (2014), which looks like a black helium-filled balloon that has reached the ceiling of an earlier room but is, in fact, a fibreglass facsimile.

A stack of fifty-four toilet rolls, six each of black, red, green, blue, fuchsia, orange, yellow, purple and brown produced by the Portuguese company Renova.

On two adjoining walls, "It's a Hang! (The things you make they mock you, the things you make they mimic you)" and "The things you make they mock you, the things you make they mimic you (It's a Hang!)", 2012, collectively what seems to be an almost complete, riddling, choose your own adventure series with a series of framed facing pages arranged in a series...the 'almost' being because there's one missing, and also the narrative text is missing, leaving only the choices, instructions and illustrations.

 
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[*] A friendly ACCA person opened up a back wall to show me how it works (at least on the mechanical level - a custom-built conveyor belt, the objects going slowly round each in turn past the viewing window.

Heartless Bastards - Restless Ones

Modern stadium rock wearing the blues on its sleeve, with a dash of power pop and a romantic rootsy streak. There are a couple of stirring moments (eg "Eastern Wind") and the median is decent, but nothing special.

Ryan Trecartin - "Re'Search Wait'S" (NGV)

Four extended, luridly cacophonous and embeddedly queer videos - they feel like an assault somehow without being specifically aggressive, which figures seeing as they play as reflected, refracted, reconfigured and stylised renditions of contemporary (visual/internet) culture and identity.

Torres - Sprinter

I can't help it - this sounds like the 90s to me. In fact, first song "Strange Hellos" reminds me of that first epochal (at least for me) Garbage album. Of course, none of that's a bad thing...jagged, elliptical, soft-loud (sometimes just buzzingly soft), convincingly emotive, guitars sounding like guitars, good songs that frequently sound like suites or soundscapes in miniature. Yes to this one.

The Newsroom season 3

Like seasons 1 and 2, really very enjoyable despite its irritating elements (in this season, the most jarring are the moments when extremely capable and put-together people - almost invariably women, notably Sloan and MacKenzie - behave ridiculously in conducting their personal lives). It never hurts to be reminded - via neatly packaged scenarios and action and absurdly intelligent, articulate and attractive tv stand ins - that we're all right to care so much about principle and making the world better!

Centre for Contemporary Photography

Quick browse through the current exhibitions. Including Sara Oscar's "From Here To Eternity" ("a series of photographic stills taken from the censored love scenes of classic films and projected on an old-fashioned slide projector. They are, in effect, placeholders for sex scenes, replete with innuendo and suggestion.") and Dave Jones' eye catching photographs in which seeds and sprouts are rendered through light paintings (actually light extrusions - using a screen rather than an ordinary light source).

(w/ Yee Fui)

"Love and Information" (Malthouse)

Extremely good, its many mini-scenes building a cumulative effect in a way only possible through the theatrical form - eight actors playing a succession of characters in an array of configurations and sometimes as briefly as only a few moments and half a dozen words of speech.

Love and information - and especially information - are woven through and in dialogue with a great deal of the everything else that shapes and concerns us as individuals in society (the focus is more on immediate human relationships and the self, and somewhat on questions of knowledge, than on wider issues of politics, society, culture and religion), and it's thought provoking and affecting, snappily written and executed but broad and open in its interests and ideas. Also, has a sense of humour.

Very strong cast including a number of familiar faces, some of which I could place and others needing some googling afterwards (the familiar-for-various-reasons included Zahra Newman, Alison Whyte and Anita Hegh). Must be a lot of fun, given the multiplicity of roles assumed by all of them throughout and the dynamically modular but simple set.

(w/ Meribah)

"Exploration 15" (Flinders Lane Gallery)

Ten or so emerging artists being exhibited - this was the opening. High quality all round. There may have been a bit of bias but if so it would only have been very small, but my favourites actually were the Harley Manifold oils (especially the larger ones); also Thomas Bowman's tiny figurines.

(w/ Meribah; Erandathie)

"The Kaleidoscopic Turn" (NGV)

A selection of pieces from the NGV's collection unified by an interest in light, colour and movement, and broadly spanning from Bridget Riley and Op Art through to today, drawing on both international and Australian artists. Given its theme, it was unsurprising that I enjoyed it!

I'd seen a few of these before, but that didn't detract in the slightest, say, from the experience of Olafur Eliasson's beautiful, transfixing, planetary "Limbo lamp" (2005) room (* - amongst other previous visits) or Tomaslav Nikolic's green-framed pink study "3: We all have a dream of a place we belong" (2003) (*).

Also, Sandra Selig's "Heart of the air you can hear" (2011) - a piece which somewhat reverses expectation (or does it? A contemporary art version of the Sicilian's dilemma in The Princess Bride maybe) in appearing from a distance as if it is line drawn on to the wall (a la Sol LeWitt) and only on inspection from close up (or the right angle) reveals itself as a crafty and engagingly dynamic thread installation.

Ben Ambridge - Psy-Q

It's packaged as a series of interactive quizzes to enable the reader/taker to test their 'psychological intelligence', but actually it's a guided tour of contemporary insights into the way our minds work, taking in the suite of cognitive biases, Thinking, Fast and Slow etc. Much of it familiar but breezily digestible (mixed metaphor) and the reinforcement doesn't hurt.

China Mieville - The Scar

Ok - this is the last of the recent stream of genre fiction that I've been reading...time to focus. But - what a pleasure The Scar still is - my favourite of the Bas-Lag three. In Bellis Coldwine, an appealingly sulky central character; in Armada a vivid and endlessly intriguing setting; and all around them a host of monsters, wonders and memorable ancillary characters (the Brucolac has always stuck in my mind).

(last time)

The Very Best of the Mavericks

There's a pretty decent correlation between the extent to which crooning lead singer Raul Malo sounds like Roy Orbison and how much I like these songs ... frequently, that would be: 'a lot'. (Most Orbison-like: "I Should Have Been True".) Smoothly country with classic pop overtones staying always on the right side of lounge, and often quite delightful.

Hugh Howey - Wool

More escapist fiction - post apocalyptic community living in a 144-level class-segregated silo connected only by a spiral staircase. Shades of Snowpiercer. Made me want to find out what would happen next - especially once it showed its hand in terms of twists and seemingly main character killing-off.

Kelly Clarkson - Piece By Piece

Nice enough, with some catchy moments, but the problem is that this album's in no way surprising, which means that it's missing an element essential to even the most straight-up of pop music. Clarkson has been impressively enduring, but this one's not a stayer.

Lorrie Moore - "How to Become a Writer"

However the next few weeks play out, it's about time to give the novel writing another big push, which makes this an apt time to have read this story, a Faber 'single' from Moore's collection Self-Help ... because it's a spikily acute (post-)modernist piece with a distinctive voice of the kind that I admire rather than because of its title and subject which, given the path it takes, are actually rather more on the dispiriting side.

Sooner or later you have a finished manuscript more or less. People look at it in a vaguely troubled sort of way and say, "I'll bet becoming a writer was always a fantasy of yours, wasn't it?" Your lips dry to salt. Say that of all the fantasies possible in the world, you can't imagine being a writer even making the top twenty. Tell them you were going to be a child psychology major. "I bet," they always sigh, "you'd be great with kids." Scowl fiercely. Tell them you're a walking blade.

Lauren Beukes - The Shining Girls

Time travelling serial killer pursued by the one girl who got away; predictably page-turning. Chicago back and forth through the decades also good, and likewise the care taken to ensure that all of the titular girls are not only victims but rather vivid subjects in their own right.

Parks and Recreation season 6

Still charming, if at times leaning a bit heavily on sentiment and beginning to show its age with more of a reliance on formula - both its own and that of sitcoms at large. But, importantly to its appeal, also still ultimately good hearted even if it leans a bit heavily on the ignorance and self-interestedness of the residents of Pawnee throughout, both for comedy purposes and to generate conflict with Leslie's do-gooding.

(1-3, 4, 5)