Rhys Lee
Catalogue essay
GAGGEDFIX
July 27 – August 19, 2006
written by Hannah Mathews
It is a common criticism that curators only work with a small selection of artists throughout their professional careers. Artists with whom they have formed working relationships through a shared interest in conceptual concerns, aesthetic languages, networks and sometimes simply because the conversation is ongoing and good. Such relationships are often considered elitist, contributing to a hierarchy of the curated and un-curated, represented and unrepresented. This type of criticism has been directed at just about every gallery director and career curator I know. As a young curator myself, I am aware of this and have taken jobs in both the festival and CAOs networks to ensure that I work with a range of artists at varying stages of their career and from a variety of backgrounds, generations, disciplines in a range of exhibiting environments. I wanted to be a curator motivated by ideas rather than artists.
But as I progress in my career I find that in order to realise projects that are rewarding, both to my own interests and those of the artists involved, and of value to current discourses, I have to focus my intellectual and time investments. I have to be selective and prioritise whom I want to work with. Who would have thought it would get this rational? Certainly not me.
I first came across the work of Rhys Lee in 2002 after a return to Melbourne from the Biennale life of Sydney. Some how his Thoop Boort (2002) catalogue made its way into my waiting mail and I clearly remember viewing the images with a growing sense of excitement and inspiration. This ambitious exhibition comprised works on canvas and a 100 mixed media works created on wood, street signs and other found objects, along with an impromptu wall piece captured in spray paint. The work invoked a sense of urgency, vitality and immediacy with its minimal figurative style, strong gestural use of line and implicit understanding of colour. There were obvious references to the graffiti, street and fashion culture that had been of interest to the artist but there was also a genuine interest in the act of painting itself.
Rhys and I went on to work together over the next few years. In 2002 I curated a major painting installation by him in RMIT University’s front gallery space. He covered every vertical surface of the gallery, from floor to ceiling, with a mind-altering array of haunted figures captured in kool-aid colours. The experience of entering the room was overwhelming and raw; like occupying the centre of a three-ring circus on pause. In 2004 we worked together again, this time on a project for the Next Wave Festival. This work drew on Rhys’ design background, resulting in an image for the Visible Art Foundation’s Hero billboard on Russel Street, Melbourne. This large scale work presented another character drawn from what is aptly described by long term supporter, Ted Colless, as the artist’s ‘emotionally nuanced bestiary of contemporary life’; a hot pink dude staring down at the city’s human ant formations.
In addition, Rhys has exhibited regularly at Helen Gory Galerie in Melbourne, Tim Olsen Gallery in Sydney, Art Galleries Schubert on the Gold Coast, several group exhibitions in Australia, and has been invited on more than one occasion to complete large-scale installations in New York. His work has continued to be occupied with colour and scale as it moves through a menagerie of characters drawn from the fringes of contemporary life – slackers, clowns, beasts, invaders. His canvases have moved from the strongly figuratively to evocatively abstract and back again with confidence. Rhys enjoys painting and allowing the paint to appeal to all our senses; from screaming patches of fluorescent spray paint to washed surfaces so deftly achieved their translucence oozes a grieving sensuality. His use of line has become less gestural and more instinctual – not random but relaxed and open to unknown ends. Motifs, such as the arrowhead, also continue to feature in his work alongside bodily outlines focusing on the nose, mouth and hands. Increasingly, however, there is a humour and contentment injected into his figures. Clown noses, protruding tongues and triangulated heads all suggest a comfort zone where the absurdity of our emotions can flow and ebb. His new work at Helen Gory Galerie in July 2006 will take this direction a step further, inviting viewers to enter the gallery through a small hole before being enveloped 360 degrees in a sideshow of human condition.
Rhys Lee is an artist I am interested in. His work sustains and feeds my interests not only in painting but perspectives on life itself. Whether it’s in his VW listening to Bowie, sharing a meal or writing a catalogue essay, we have begun a conversation. It is ongoing and one that moves forward each time. If such an investment means that I have become the ‘type’ of curator I once feared, I am comfortable with this. Artist, curator, writer, gallerist – we are all essential to each other’s progression and development. We are a community, no matter how small, and it is essential we make our connections as we see fit. I’m glad I found Rhys Lee amongst it all.
*A great film that also celebrates the perversity of the human condition while hitting the art world with a big stick.
Written by Hannah Mathews
Curator
Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA)
