philthosophy

2 (f) arts are possible tonight, perhaps 3…

5-8pm George Paton Gallery – level 2, union building@melbum uni:  Hans Guggenheim: Recent Drawings Opening Night: Tuesday 3 June, 5-8pm Exhibition will be launched by The Chancellor of The University of Melbourne, Mr. Ian Renard, at 6pm. This collection of drawings presents a diagrammatic travelogue, ornamented with cultural artifacts, ceremonies, and conversations that cross continents and time, as reminiscences and future recollections. Highly personalized renderings of cities, relics and memorials are presented through familiar and encrypted hieroglyphs. Hans Guggenheim (b. Germany 1924, resides in New York), is an anthropologist, arts educator and humanist. He was the Associate Professor of Anthropology at MIT and visiting scholar at The Center for International Affairs at Harvard, where he worked on an evaluation of the contributions of UNESCO to the art and culture of traditional societies. He is the founder of Project Guggenheim, an international organization that establishes art school and programs in remote areas, promoting the continuation of traditional artistic practice as well as introducing modern technologies. This exhibition is proudly sponsored by the UNESCO Observatory and the Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning at The University of Melbourne

Gallery 1 – Labyrinth (curated by Rifky Effendy) A collaborative installation by Hamad Khalaf and Iswanto Hartono. Both artists have been drawn to the contemporary issue of war through different means and have harnessed unique sets of arsenals to wage and engage dialog. Khalaf’s signature has been the combination of found military objects and Greek mythology. Khalaf perverts violence with decorative beauty to lay bare our fixation on war. Iswanto more straightforwardly depicts war and global political linkages through spatial arrangements and symbolic play.In their collaboration, the artists present a spatial juxtaposition of neon lights and objects. An atmosphere of twilight is created with blue throughout an entire room transformed into a labyrinth. The labyrinth created is a metaphor of spatial experience that represent a search for humane cultural values within the culture of war.(text by Rifky Effendy, Curator based in Jakarta). Gallery 2 Remote Nation – Cyrus, Wai-kuen Tang. Human kind has always been fascinated with “another world”. Is the magical city really existed or only in fairy tale? This mixed media Installation represents an emotional place that emblematises a view of ‘home’ that is fabricated by fantasy and nostalgia.

Maybe also an opening at 45 Downstairs (45 lil collins st)…dunno what time. Maybe 6? Opening June 3: painter Dena Kahan returns to fortyfivedownstairs with her exquisitely luminous paintings dealing with glass and optical illusions of perspective.