In response to A Gallery’s other group show, Girlz, this all-male exhibition presents three voguish but incisive artists who are, over a three-week period, responding to their designated titles (draw, paint, and destroy).
In week one, Brisbane agitated the passivity of drawing with his moody collection of heavily worked, attitudinal portraits. Unframed and hugely expressive, the graphic renderings portray underground rogues donning tattoos, cigarettes and scars like rusty, hard-earned honours.
In week two, Ovens presented three triangular works which juxtapose graphic printed imagery with subverted icons on flamboyantly painted canvases. They are gutsy because they demonstrate not only intellectual alertness and a dissection of civic values but also the backbone to stridently declare malcontent. He conveys ideological irony while underscoring absurdity in his typically sardonic, but equally humorous style.
The final and much-awaited instalment of prints and spray-paint by Jones is to be revealed at the gallery tonight. Such a week-by-week structure compounds the conceptual dynamism of a display which is already politically loaded and culturally responsive, and while the exhibition is deliberately gender-biased, the overall communication thus far utterly derides archaic righteousness and mainstream masculinity.
a gallery presents 