“Ode to form”
Jeremy Bakker, Belle Bassin, David Capra, Helen Johnson, Veronica Kent, Sanné Mestrom and Jake Walker
24 Aug → 15 Sept 2012

Ode to Form will be an exhibition of works that encapsulate the tension between the “tragic fate and comic misfortune” of Romantic Conceptualism as described by Jörg Heiser. It will work against the notion of the “‘conceptual’ as a closed system controlled by intellectual heroes, but at the same time spoil the sublime of Romanticism itself.” Ode to Form will explore the tension between two opposing but prevalent assertions in contemporary art; that a conceptual, cool, depersonalization is a precondition of an art that makes itself checkable and revisable, whilst celebrating the repositioning of the “artist’s hand” within the conceptual framework of contemporary art itself.

The exhibition will also attempt to position itself within a broader discussion of the communal and the idea of community in art through the accompanying catalogue focusing on the somewhat conflicting notion of an artist as a “single individual creator”. Ode to Form will light-heartedly acknowledge and be aware of the pitfalls of romanticising – in that sense, rendering sublime – that single individuality, the “artist’s soul”, itself, aiming to strip away any pretension that the artist’s soul is a medium of the otherworldly or godly (while allowing a sense of tragicomic mourning for that secularization to linger on).

While each artist’s practice is distinct, amongst the works there is a strong material synergy, through which an elegant post-minimalist aesthetic presides. The exhibition is intended to investigate the connections between the simple beauty of the artists post-minimalist aesthetic and the absurdity and humour of the romantic subjects which Ode to Form embrace. Post-minimalism, in this instance, describes artists who use minimalism either as an aesthetic or conceptual reference point, using everyday objects, simple materials, reflecting upon “pure” formalistic aesthetics and quite frequently rejecting them. In Ode to Form the simple beauty of post-minimalism is paired with absurdity and humour of romanticism – mocking the conceptual and minimal fixed art object, its plasticity and its concreteness. Each artist participating in Ode to Form recognizes human faults in perception and explores themes of uncertainty and crisis that are mirrored within post-minimalisms challenge of minimalism itself.

The exhibition will be later accompanied by a publication that will have a contextualising essay by Kelly on the themes of Romantic and Conceptual art and feature seven texts on each of the artists by Nicholas Croggon, Simon Maidment, Oliver Watts, Adrian Martin, Anusha Kenny, Zara Stanhope and Helen Hughes. The publication will be printed after the exhibition and have images of the installation at West Space and images of past work by each artist.

Ode to form has been generously supported by the City of Melbourne through the Arts Grants Program.

All installation photography by Matthew Stanton.