Gap Year: New Sydney Art

By Sharne Wolff

Australia doesn’t yet have a prize for contemporary art equivalent to Britain’s Turner Prize but if we did, this group of young artists might be in the running very soon. Artspace is committed to fostering contemporary art and this year nine artists have been selected for their Gap Year exhibition. The artists, Peter Blamey, Mitchel Cumming, Francesca Heinz, Jesse Hogan, Kusum Normoyle, Baden Pailthorpe, Zoe Robertson, Marilyn Schneider and Paul Williams are all still in the early stages of their career and were selected for this show by progressive curators Carla Cescon, Susan Gibb and Tom Polo.

There’s a range of media, a variety of experimental art and some diverse themes on show: Kusum Normoyle completed her Honours degree majoring in Sound. Her performance work and installation work explores ‘the idea of intervention, displacing normal expectations of female body and voice’, often through brief but ear-splitting episodes of screaming in public places.

Marilyn Schneider presents three works that expose the gallery audience to the secrets of commercial branding on television shows set in ‘real life’ Hollywood mansions. ‘Airquake, Landscape (Libya) 2012’ is the title of media artist Baden Pailthorpe’s video work. Pailthorpe is interested in the politics and aesthetics of military technologies – including the influence and [mis]use of simulators and video games. And this is just the beginning: watch this space.

Artspace, Woolloomooloo

Until 14 October 2012.