Stuckism in Australia - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...

is an art movement

Art movement

An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a restricted period of time, or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined within a number of years...

that began in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, in 1999. In 2000, Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

artist Regan Tamanui

Regan Tamanui

Regan Tamanui is a self-taught artist based in Melbourne, Australia. In October 2000, he founded the Melbourne Stuckists, the fourth Stuckist group to be started and the first outside of the United Kingdom...

started the first international branch of the movement. As of 2010, there are seven Australian Stuckist groups, who have held shows—sometimes concurrently with UK activities—received coverage in the Australian press and on TV, and also been represented in UK shows. The Stuckists take a strong pro-painting and anti-conceptual art stance, and were co-founded by Charles Thomson

Charles Thomson (artist)

Charles Thomson is an English artist, painter, poet and photographer. In the early 1980s he was a member of The Medway Poets. In 1999 he named and co-founded the Stuckists art movement with Billy Childish. He has curated Stuckist shows, organised demonstrations against the Turner Prize, run an art...

and Billy Childish

Billy Childish

Billy Childish is an English artist, painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist...

Chronology

In October 2000, Regan Tamanui founded the Melbourne Stuckists, the fourth Stuckist group to be started and the first one outside the UK (there are now 127 groups in 32 countries). On 27 October, he staged the Real Turner Prize Show at the Dead End Gallery in his home, concurrent with three shows with the same title in England (London

London

, Falmouth

Falmouth, Cornwall

Falmouth is a town, civil parish and port on the River Fal on the south coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It has a total resident population of 21,635.Falmouth is the terminus of the A39, which begins some 200 miles away in Bath, Somerset....

and Dartington

Dartington

Dartington is a village in Devon, England. Its population is 1,917. It is located west of the River Dart, south of Dartington Hall and about two miles from Totnes...

), and one in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, in protest against the Tate Gallery

Tate Gallery

The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...

's Turner Prize

Turner Prize

The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...

.

Besides Tamanui, the other initial members were Justin Grub, Ben Blanchette, Malcome Mmackie and Dave Freeman Rose. A subsequent line-up was Basil Kouvelis, Justin Grubb, Ben Frost, Nigel Stein, Daniel Gorzadek, Stephen Sperling and Dennis Roper. Stein, an RMIT art student, was prompted to join the group after Karen Ward was given the inaugural $105,000 Helen Lempriere Award for her minimal sculpture The Hut, derided by him as a "Wendy House". Tamanui said, "There are some people who shit in a tin. Is that really art?"

In May 2001 Tamanui, Stein, Grubb and Kouvelis were represented with 24 international groups in the London show Vote Stuckist, so named because Thomson was standing as a candidate in the United Kingdom general election, 2001

United Kingdom general election, 2001

The United Kingdom general election, 2001 was held on Thursday 7 June 2001 to elect 659 members to the British House of Commons. It was dubbed "the quiet landslide" by the media, as the Labour Party was re-elected with another landslide result and only suffered a net loss of 6 seats...

, as a Stuckist candidate against the then-Culture Secretary

Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport

The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport is a United Kingdom cabinet position with responsibility for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The role was created in 1992 by John Major as Secretary of State for National Heritage...

, Chris Smith

Chris Smith, Baron Smith of Finsbury

Christopher "Chris" Robert Smith, Baron Smith of Finsbury PC is a British Labour Party politician, and a former Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister...

.

In November the Melbourne Stuckists staged a show Houdini to Hofmann at the Chiara Goya Gallery, which included some UK Stuckist work for the first time.

Kaye Blum made a short documentary on the group, Art Gets Unstuck-Up. The film is structured around the artists reading lines from the Stuckists Manifesto written by Thomson and Childish. It was first shown at the Jaffas Down the Aisle film festival in Melbourne in October 2001, then in 2002 at the International Film Festival of Fine Art in Hungary and the Asolo Arts Film Festival in Italy, where it was nominated for best student short.

In 2001, Graham Wilson, born and bred in Gunnedah, New South Wales

New South Wales

New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

, founded the second Australian group (and the first Stuckist sculpture group), the Newcastle Stuckist Stonecarvers.

In December 2001, The Stuckist demonstration outside the Turner Prize

Turner Prize

at Tate Britain

Tate Britain

Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...

, London, was broadcast on Australian national TV news.

In 2002, Godfrey Blow

Godfrey Blow

Godfrey Blow is an artist based in Kalamunda, Western Australia. He is the founder of the Perth Stuckists.-Life and art:Godfrey Blow was born in Lincolnshire, England on the same day as fellow Stuckist artist, Eamon Everall...

started the Perth Stuckists (Western Australia). In July, along with Melbourne Stuckists he was shown at The First Stuckist International, which opened in the Stuckism Gallery, Shoreditch

Shoreditch

Shoreditch is an area of London within the London Borough of Hackney in England. It is a built-up part of the inner city immediately to the north of the City of London, located east-northeast of Charing Cross.-Etymology:...

, London.

In March 2003, Tamanui was exhibited in Stuck in Wednesbury, the Stuckists' first show in a public gallery, held in Wednesbury

Wednesbury

Wednesbury is a market town in England's Black Country, part of the Sandwell metropolitan borough in West Midlands, near the source of the River Tame. Similarly to the word Wednesday, it is pronounced .-Pre-Medieval and Medieval times:...

Museum and Art Gallery, England.

In October 2002, Tamanui opened the Stuckism International Centre (Australia) with an ongoing exhibition of work, as well as the first international Stuckist show in Australia, Stuck Down South, at the FAD Gallery. This included founding Stuckists, Charles Thomson, Ella Guru

Ella Guru

Ella Guru is an American painter and musician living in London. She was a member of Mambo Taxi and the Voodoo Queens. In 1999, she became one of the founding members of the Stuckist art movement.-Life:Ella Guru was born in Ohio, USA...

and Sexton Ming

Sexton Ming

Sexton Ming is a British artist, poet and musician who was a founding member of The Medway Poets and the Stuckists art group .-Life and career:...

. (Like the London gallery it has now ceased operating.)

In September 2004, Blow exhibited in the movement's first major show in a national museum, The Stuckists Punk Victorian
The Stuckists Punk Victorian
The Stuckists Punk Victorian was the first national gallery exhibition of Stuckist art. It was held at the Walker Art Gallery and Lady Lever Art Gallery in Liverpool from 18 September 2004 to 20 February 2005, and was part of the 2004 Liverpool Biennial....

at the Walker Art Gallery

Walker Art Gallery

The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England, outside of London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group, and is promoted as "the National Gallery of the North" because it is not a local or regional gallery but is part...

during the Liverpool Biennial

Liverpool Biennial

Liverpool Biennial is a British international festival of contemporary art held in Liverpool. The festival comprises the International Exhibition, the John Moores Painting Prize, the Bloomberg New Contemporaries Exhibition and the Independents Biennial....

. He returned for the next Biennial there in 2006 to participate in The Triumph of Stuckism show and symposium at 68 Hope Street Gallery.

Media coverage

The Australian presence was first noted in an article on the Stuckists in the UK Observer Sunday newspaper in May 2000.

The participation of the Australian Stuckists in the London Vote Stuckist show occasioned a double page spread by Gabriella Coslovich in the leading Melbourne paper The Age

The Age

The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...

. http://www.stuckism.com/melbarticle.html It revealed a similar range of reactions to the ones the UK group had received in Britain. Melbourne painter David Larwill said, "It's the best thing I've heard in ages." Max Delaney, director of public gallery 200 Gertrude Street, accused the group of "revisionism" and "publicity and marketing". Su Baker, head of the School of Art, Victorian College of the Arts

Victorian College of the Arts

The Faculty of the VCA and Music is a faculty of the University of Melbourne, in Victoria . VCAM is located near the Melbourne central business district, on two campuses, one - the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - on the Parkville campus of the University of Melbourne, and the other - the...

, wrote it off as "a cheap shot" (the same accusation which Sir Nicholas Serota

Nicholas Serota

Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota is a British art curator. Serota was director of the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, before becoming director of the Tate, the United Kingdom's national gallery of modern and British art in 1988. He was awarded a knighthood in 1999. He...

had levelled at Thomson in London

London

. http://www.stuckism.com/news.html#sir In July Stein repeated the same debate on "Coast to Coast", Channel 2 (ABC TV).

In February 2003, Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin

Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....

was interviewed in The Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald is a daily broadsheet newspaper published by Fairfax Media in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1831 as the Sydney Herald, the SMH is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Australia. The newspaper is published six days a week. The newspaper's Sunday counterpart, The...

while in Australia:

Of the chief YBA critics, the Stuckists, Emin cannot even speak.

"I don't like it at all," she spat. "I don't really want to talk about it. If your wife was stalked and hounded through the media by someone she'd had a relationship with when she was 18, would you like it? That's what happened to me. I don't find it funny, I find it a bit sick, and I find it very cruel, and I just wish people would get on with their own lives and let me get on with mine." http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/02/1044122263222.html?oneclick=true

In August 2003, Australian performance art

Performance art

In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...

ist Stelarc

Stelarc

Stelarc is a Cypriot-Australian performance artist whose works focuses heavily on extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his pieces are centred around his concept that the human body is obsolete...

's plan to have a human ear grafted onto his forearm drew virulent criticism from UK Stuckists. Melbourne Stuckist, Nigel Stein, said, "Personally, I have been an admirer of Stelarc's work for about 10 years. I would be really interested in seeing the outcome."

The same month, Kouvelis and Thomson were interviewed on ABC Radio National Australia by Francis Leach.http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/deepend/stories/s930236.htm http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/deepend/stories/s942397.htm In June 2004 Childish (who left the group in 2002) was interviewed on ABC Radio National Australia http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/deepend/stories/s1133404.htm.

In October 2004 an article, "Breaking New Ground", appeared in the Hills Gazette, Kalamunda, Western Australia, outlining Blow's involvement in the Stuckist movement and representation at the "Stuckist Punk Victorian" exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

In April 2005 The Age ran a reprise of Stuckism and observed:
In July 2005, State of the Arts Australian art magazine gave a survey on the UK and Australian Stuckists, and found:

Newcastle stone-carver Graham Wilson says he became a Stuckist because he was tired of being ignored by the main arbiters of taste and wanted to embrace the insult that he was not a real sculptor as did Childish when Emin declared he was "stuck".

In December 2005, the Stuckists demonstrated about the Tate Gallery's purchase of their trustee Chris Ofili

Chris Ofili

Chris Ofili is a Turner Prize winning British painter best known for artworks referencing aspects of his Nigerian heritage, particularly his incorporation of elephant dung. He was one of the Young British Artists, and is now based in Trinidad.-Early life:Ofilli was born in Manchester. He had a...

's work, The Upper Room
The Upper Room (paintings)
The Upper Room is an installation of 13 paintings of rhesus macaque monkeys by English artist Chris Ofili in a specially-designed room. It was bought by the Tate gallery in 2005 from the Victoria Miro Gallery and was the cause of a media furore after a campaign initiated by the Stuckist art group...

, wearing monkey and elephant masks, outside the Turner Prize at Tate Britain

Tate Britain

in London. A syndicated report covered the demonstration in The Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/shed-wins-58000-art-prize/2005/12/06/1133631231483.html, The Age, Yahoo Australia, ABC News Online, SBS, Seven and The Australian. In June 2006 Blow supported the campaign with message board posts. http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=317349

Groups in Australia

The Melbourne Stuckists founded in 2000 by Regan Tamanui
Regan Tamanui
Regan Tamanui is a self-taught artist based in Melbourne, Australia. In October 2000, he founded the Melbourne Stuckists, the fourth Stuckist group to be started and the first outside of the United Kingdom...
The Newcastle Stuckist Stonecarvers founded in 2001 by Graham Wilson
The Perth Stuckists founded in 2003 by Godfrey Blow
Godfrey Blow
Godfrey Blow is an artist based in Kalamunda, Western Australia. He is the founder of the Perth Stuckists.-Life and art:Godfrey Blow was born in Lincolnshire, England on the same day as fellow Stuckist artist, Eamon Everall...
The Adelaide Stuckists founded in 2008 by Kay Bridge
The Sydney Stuckists founded in 2008 by Rone Waugh
The Brisbane Stuckists founded in 2010 by Krisstie Byrnne
The Canberra Stuckists founded in 2010 by Nasser Palangi

UK origin

The Stuckists were founded in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

by Charles Thomson and Billy Childish with ten other artists in 1999 to oppose conceptual art and champion painting as the radical medium of self-discovery. The name was derived by Thomson from an insult by Tracey Emin to her ex-boyfriend Childish that he was "stuck", which he had recorded in a poem. The Stuckists have since become an accepted part of the UK art scene and are studied in the educational system, but still remain largely ostracised by the art establishment for their stringent criticisms of it, particularly of the Britart

Young British Artists

Young British Artists or YBAs is the name given to a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London, in 1988...

, the Saatchi Gallery

Saatchi Gallery

The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art, opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985 in order to exhibit his collection to the public. It has occupied different premises, first in North London, then the South Bank by the River Thames and currently in Chelsea. Saatchi's collection, and...

and the Turner Prize. They have also launched the period of
Remodernism

Remodernism

Remodernism revives aspects of modernism, particularly in its early form, and follows postmodernism, to which it contrasts. Adherents of remodernism advocate it as a forward and radical, not reactionary, impetus....

—"A renewal of spirituality and meaning in art, culture and society".

Antipodeans Group

An earlier group of seven artists in Australia (six of them Melbourne based) called the Antipodeans Group

Antipodeans Group

-History:The Antipodeans group consisted of seven modern painters and the art historian Bernard Smith, who compiled The Antipodean Manifesto, a declaration fashioned from the artists' comments as a catalogue essay to accompany their exhibit....

also issued a manifesto to promote modern figurative painting in opposition to the prevailing orthodoxy, which at that time was Abstract Expressionism

Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...

. This was launched in a show of the artists in Melbourne in August 1959. They stated that figurative art "communicates because it has the capacity to refer to experiences that the artist shares with his audience", and that "the image, the recognizable shape, the meaningful symbol, is the basic unit of the artists' language". Like the Stuckists they were accused of conservatism and reaction.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Chronology

Media coverage

Groups in Australia

UK origin

Antipodeans Group

See also

External links