"Hetero Camp: Works of Guy Benfield, Nat Paton, Peter Robertson, Daniel Wallwork and Paul Wrigley"
2002-11-30 until 2003-01-25
Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
Brisbane, QL, AU

The final exhibition at the Institute of Modern Art for the year promises to be one to look forward to. The mood is fast, fun, energetic and set to open on Saturday 30th November. Featured are the works of Guy Benfield, Nat Paton, Peter Robertson, Daniel Wallwork and Paul Wrigley. The exhibition’s opening also coincides with IMA’s annual cocktail party, bringing the excessive nature of the exhibition to fever pitch.

Subtitled "Hetero Camp", the work of all of the artists explores activities that are pursued to such excess in the "straight" world that they approach the status of gay camp. Lush, colourful images overstimulate the senses, taking the viewer through cultural terrain that traverses from the divine to the audacious.

French Pup, Live Action C.C.P Melbourne based artist Benfield raises the kind of hell one might expect from either Guns ‘n’ Roses or Jackson Pollock. His work is an excruciating, funny, post modern and intelligent view of contemporary ‘rock art’. Benfield’s exhibition features video footage of his performance at Melbourne’s Centre for Contemporary Photography in September 2001, where he played artist as rock star.

Punt is Nat Paton’s latest series in which she draws parallels between the dieting and gambling industries. Based in Brisbane Paton’s past work has been dominated by investigations into society’s obsession with the body beautiful. Her alter egos play the weighing game, agonising over their weight and looking for love in all the wrong places. Bold and brash Paton’s work takes a look beyond the glitz to see the punters’/dieters desperation and hope that fuels both the gambling and dieting industries.

Peter Robertson:  Sharpies. This exhibition is comprised of a series of photographs produced from snapshots that he and his friends took in Melbourne from 1974-78. During this period, Robertson and his male friends formed a gang known as the ‘Blackburn South Sharps’. ‘Sharpies was a subculture that valued dressing up and looking tough in rebellion against suburban conformity, acting as a precursor to the evolution of the punk movement within Australia. The images document the period of transition from boyhood to manhood and are compelling, sexy, strange and humorous. Peter Robertson would like to thank Larry Jenkins for the use of his original photographs. This work has been curated by the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Russell Storer, Sharpies is organised and toured by the MCA, Sydney, Australia. The MCA acknowledges financial support from the NSW Ministry of the Arts and annual grant funding from the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its’ arts funding and advisory body.

Muscle Car is Daniel Wallwork’s creation of industrial auto art through the use of cutting edge car paints, metals and custom spray techniques. A Cairns based artist his work explores the aesthetics of the finished surface and the cultures developed as a result of their accessibility. In the accompanying exhibition essay David Broker explores the evolution of Australian Muscle Car culture, and its wider implications in contemporary culture.

MONSTER, the latest body of work from Brisbane artist Paul Wrigley, takes the schlock-horror spectacle of painting's repeated resurrection and demise and smashes it straight into Stadium Monster Truck racing.  Abstraction, photopainting, formalism's end-point of wall drawing, all are crushed by the GRAVE DIGGER. By necessity a painting show, the exhibition focuses on the topics of power, industry, art as spectacle, and how painting can continue.

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