Dal East & Faith47 “Antenna Garden” @ Rtist Gallery
Well here we go, over the past 4 days, I’ve found myself going to 5 shows, yes count ‘em 5! It’s gonna take me a bit of time to get through them all, but we’ll get there, all are of a pretty high quality and well worth a visit if you’re in town. The first one we’ll visit was at Rtist Gallery in Prahran on Thursday night, hailing from China and South Africa, Dal East and Faith47 have presented a show in which I wasn’t really a fan of at first, but have grown to like the more I’ve thought about it.
Walking into this show I wasn’t sure what to expect, I had heard of both the artists involved through a bunch of books, but decided to not do any further research, as I don’t mind surprises. When first setting foot into Rtist, I wasn’t excited or hyped, I was definately impressed, such a talent can’t be ignored, but I guess I had still expected something else. Most of the galleries shows are bursting with colour and less tradition artistic aesthetics, but this [at first glance] felt a bit bland, brown and black are predominant throughout and as I’ve said before, most of my “artistic training” in life comes from graffiti. So… what do I think of this show? I got home and went through my images and, it’s a bit silly, saw more as I went through them, I saw natural beings in unnatural forms, barbed wire matched with colonial observers. It made me think of man’s control over the environment, our land, its original owners and the creatures that live on it. What I saw through these street artists works is similar to what I see in street art today, artists trapped in their landscapes, wanting to colour their world, but higher forces preventing so.
Visually as you can probably tell, the work on display is pretty amazing, within all this each of the pieces you’ll find an incredible depth in layers of the imagery. Each of Dal East’s barb wired native animals have great touches of the Australian countryside through out it, I’d really like to know if these guys visited out outer regions during their trip down here, because there is some great authenticity throughout. Seeing the pieces in person is a real visual treat, Faith47′s side of the show is layered with some fantastic pieces, with [what looks like] discarded canvas’. All pieces are ridiculously hand painted consistantly, with some given an extra touches of carvings and scratches for extra texture. While the show isn’t packed full of colour, it incredibly grabs the essence of where they are currently situated in, while I haven’t travelled that deep into Australia’s dessert, the lack of colour could be used to match the heat and effects of the land most of us avoid.
This is only a small batch of work that’s on display at the gallery, if you like what you see and wanna see more, head on down to Rtist before May 27, it’s one not to be missed, these two will not be back in town any time soon.
