“InSideOut”
Athonk, Maria Bjorklund, Neale Blanden, Susan Butcher, Bernard Caleo, Amber Carvan, Lachlan Conn, Dakanavar, Micheal Fikaris, Adam Ford, Nicki Greenberg, Nicola Hardy, Peter Jetnikoff, Daniel Mckeown, Gregory Mackay, Kieran Mangan, Troy Mingramm, Napartheid Collective, Mandy Ord, Picnick, Q-ray, Linzee R-Nold, Peter Savieri, Kirrily Schell, Bernie Slater, Glenn Smith, Stratu, Ross Tesoriero, Tolley, Cassandra Tytler, Johnson+Thwaites, John Weeks, Carol Wood, Marc Van Elburg and Zombo Vertov
3 Oct → 26 Oct 2002

Coordinated by Tim Danko.
Australian artists: Neale Blanden, Susan Butcher, Bernard Caleo, Amber Carvan, Lachlan Conn, Dakanavar, Micheal Fikaris, Adam Ford, Nicki Greenberg, Nicola Hardy, Peter Jetnikoff, Daniel Mckeown, Gregory Mackay, Kieran Mangan, Troy Mingramm, Mandy Ord, Picnick, Q-ray, Linzee R-Nold, Peter Savieri, Kirrily Schell, Bernie Slater, Glenn Smith, Stratu, Ross Tesoriero, Tolley, Cassandra Tytler, Jo Waite, John Weeks, Carol Wood, Zombo Vertov.
International artists: Marc Van Elburg (Netherlands), Napartheid Collective (Basque Region, Spain), Maria Bjorklund (Finland), Athonk (Indonesia).

InSideOut was an exhibition of comic work and other related activity produced by comic makers (music, film and video, animation, web design and interactive media) held at West Space Inc, Melbourne, Australia and supported through its Projects Program for 2002. The exhibition ran from July 4th to July 27th 2002. It included 31 comic makers from around Australia and 4 international ‘guests’.

The main body of the exhibition consisted of an A4 page submitted by participating artists enlarge to A1 or A0 and printed on tracing paper. These sheets were then suspended from the ceiling of the gallery at various distances from the walls, in staggered positions so as to break up the viewing experience as well as hopefully encouraging the person visiting the exhibition explore their way around the room, rather than feel that had to move left to right, from one piece to the next. On the gallery walls behind the tracing paper sheets were placed a continuing strip of industrial landscape silhouette, cut from coarse newsprint and off white heavy etching paper, acting as a subtle unifying element for the visitor viewing the work. Sporadicly positioned through out this paper strip were shelves of ephemera provided by the participating artists, giving the viewer some idea of the raw material the comic makers draw on in producing their work.

Placed in unobtrusive areas of the gallery space were two computer monitors displaying interactive and ‘new media’ work, a video monitor displaying film, video and animation, and several headphones playing music, all created by the participating comic makers. It was hoped that by displaying the work by comic makers in other mediums it would provide visitors to the exhibition unfamiliar to the comic medium an entry point into the participants main comic work through more familiar mediums.

Although this exhibition was intended to incorporate the launch of the new Dead Xerox Press interactive cd-rom comic project, the project was not completed in time. Still, a prototype version was on display and the exhibition did manage to generate awareness of the project and hopefully some level of interest in a launch at a later date.

One of the more pleasing results of the exhibition was the amount of people who visited the exhibition who were unaware of the comic medium or uninterested in comics in their regular format, who found their opinion of the medium changed by the way the work was presented. People who find the reading of comics ‘problematic’ were able to approach the enlarged work at a familiar ‘fine art’ observable distance, and slowly engage with the work. Hopefully this experience will enable the visitors to the exhibition to find the commitment to read a comic in its regular format when next they encounter the medium.

With this exhibition, along with other associated events organised by Braddock Coalition / Dead Xerox Press in 2002 (the ‘Comic Book Lifestyle’ exhibition at Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, the launches of ‘Pure Evil’ and ‘Silent Army’ books, and the ‘Silent Army Represents:’ series of events in conjunction with the Citylights project ), it is hoped that there has been a broadening of the context for comic work within this country. Without the funds for any real publicity or media exposure this establishing of context for contemporary comic work in this country is still essentially a ‘war of attrition’, working from person to person, exhibition visitor to exhibition visitor. And without this context any opportunity for ‘free’ mass media exposure (through exhibition reviews, print media articles, or television is severely limited. A catch-22 situation of the mainstream media not having a context in which to approach the work because there is no mainstream exposure to create the context for this work because the media has no context in which to…..

Comics are still considered as a juvenile form in the wider culture, despite the medium in its modern state being over a century old, and cases being put for comics being seen as a primal form of human expression (Aboriginal rock paintings, Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Bayeux Tapestry, and 18th-century Japanese Ukiyo-e prints among many examples of prime sequential narrative expression). So the medium itself could be said to be in a constant state of ‘emerging’ and by association, artists working in the medium would be seen as constantly ‘emerging’ by the wider cultural community, no matter their stature within the comics field or length of practice.

Tim Danko, December 2002