Exhibition review - The Rennie Ellis Show and New Photography from the Footpath (Catherine Bell, Glenn Sloggett, Ian Tippett)

I ventured out to Wheelers Hill today to visit the Monash Gallery of Art. The trip in and of itself was a decadence for a stay at home mother to a 3 year old and an 18 month old. An hour drive across town, a gallery visit, plus the return trip was asking a lot of restraint from my young ones.

To placate them, upon arrival I dosed them up on treats from the MGA cafe. Coconut water is a favourite for my youngest and a hot chocolate for miss 3, accompanied by smiley face cookies and gingerbread men. The cafe is not overtly child friendly but it wasn’t hostile. So far so good.

The current exhibitions are The Rennie Ellis Show and New Photography from the Footpath (Catherine Bell, Glenn Sloggett, Ian Tippett) both showing until 8 June. New Photography from the Footpath is billed as a contemporary adjunct to the Rennie Ellis retrospective, highlighting the ongoing relevance of the genre through the work of 3 Melbourne-based artists.

Viewing any exhibition with very young children forces you to distill the experience down to it’s essence in record time. Our first encounter was with New Photography from the Footpath, where each artist’s imagery is presented projected onto the wall in a looped sequence. My daughter was captured most immediately by Glenn Sloggett’s work which had the necessary mix of tangible reality and the absurd to capture the imagination of a 3 year old. As with all of Sloggett’s work the decadence was to be found in the decay of contemporary life.

Bell’s images capture African-American nannies pushing strollers inhabited by white children around the ‘affluent mid-town streets of Manhattan’. To someone attempting a gallery visit with her own children in tow the decadence represented in Street Strollers of New York is only too obvious.

The faceless selfies of Tippet’s series I want you back are a reflection upon the culture of decadence embodying the online era. Self-absorbtion, self-adulation, self-promotion and the individualisation of public space. ‘Nuff said really.

The Rennie Ellis Show reveals a different era of decadence in Australia. In complete contrast to the age of the selfie, Ellis operated in an era where social interaction is strongly embedded in experience and belonging. The images on display capture families, party goers and subcultures, but the human interaction is very real. Ellis’ talent for capturing the human element is writ large in this exhibition, its expression perhaps most obvious in Girl’s Night Out, Prahran (1980) or At the Pub, Brisbane (1982). As for the decadence, well the word first entered my consciousness in this exhibition, about the time I was viewing Fully Equipped, Albert Park Beach (c. 1981) but certainly not before viewing numerous other instances, not least significant of which was Berlin Party, Inflation, Melbourne (c.1981). Upon reentering New Photography from the Footpath the decadence of these contemporary scenes became apparent when viewed through the lens of Ellis.

Hustling my children out of the exhibition space I hoped to linger in the bookshop, a hope that my youngest’s decadent manner of displaying his objection quickly put to rest. Had I lingered even a moment I may have noticed the title of the book on display was in fact ‘Decadent 1980-2000′, as it was, my own current decadence, an overwhelming focus on my young family obscured this fact, which was only discovered when I began searching online for images to accompany this write up. So here I am, left with an exceptionally unoriginal yet surprisingly fitting blog title as proof that even under pressure from my overwrought children I can distill an exhibition (or two) down to it’s core in under 10 minutes actual viewing time, not counting child wrangling…

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Reflections on decadence at MGA