Griffith University Art Museum: Enter The Abyss exhibition at your own risk

With one piece depicting the mother of Christ cradling a giant male organ, arts editor Phil Brown agrees that this Brisbane exhibition should come with a warning. It will titillate some, horrify others and even revolt a few. WARNING: GRAPHIC

An art exhibition that comes with a warning always adds a bit of extra interest.

But then again I guess an exhibition that explores the push and pull of “seductive and repellent images” is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea and there are signs to that effect.

So if you’re offended by certain orifices or appendages The Abyss, which is now showing at Griffith University Art Museum, may not be for you.

Having said that it’s not too in-your-face and there is a lot to like.

Exhibition curator Naomi Evans has assembled a pretty starry list of artists including some leading Queenslanders.

There’s Tony Albert, Gordon Hookey, the late Gordon Bennett, Jemima Wyman and a string of other notables including Swiss-German subversive conceptual artist Dieter Roth and Juan Davila, who is known for his confronting work.

Griffith University Art Museum: Happy are Ye Poor by Paul Yore

His defilement of Mary in Holy Family will titillate some viewers and horrify others.

To have the mother of Christ cradling a giant male organ is a bridge too far for me but hey, I’m Catholic and I don’t happen to care for porn in my art and there are a few works in this show that veer into that territory.

Better, for me at least, to concentrate on what I like and Gordon Hookey is top of my hit parade in that regard.

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Hookey is a member of the influential indigenous art collective ProppaNOW and he is adept at creating engaging images that always have some sort of strong social commentary. Sure he pushes the envelope at times but why not?

In this exhibition his Payback Painting features two stories of retribution.

The star of the painting is an anthropomorphised crocodile as artist in a studio reminiscent of van Gogh’s bedroom at Arles.

A man lies dead on the floor and he appears to have been speared (by the crocodile?) and I’m guessing this is some kind of payback for colonialism.

Griffith University Art Museum: Playback Painting by Gordon Hookey

Hookey explains that “in our traditions, or some of our traditions, if you do wrong by someone you have to pay consequences”.

The work was created during John Howard’s prime ministership but we can’t be quite sure if that’s him lying speared on the floor.

Like I said, some of the art in this show is confronting.

Anasyrma by Anastasia Booth

In her catalogue essay, Evans says that it “gathers a polyphony of artistic approaches that privilege ways of working that lead us into spaces of the unresolved and unreconciled”.

“The artists in this exhibition all employ strategies to generate schisms in the psyche” she writes and goes on to say that “they draw us close to reveal ideas from which we might want to recoil.”

The full picture is too graphic to show readers. Juan Davila, Holy Family, 1985 Oil on canvas. Collection of Alex and Kitty Mackay, Brisbane. Courtesy of the artist and Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Photo: Carl Warner

I didn’t do that much recoiling and besides, sometimes even the macabre can be interesting.

Like the severed hand in a glove by Karl Fritsch and Francis Upritchard.

Griffith University Art Museum: Give me four by Karl Fritsch and Francis Upritchard

The fingers are bejewelled and it made me think of Michael Jackson’s gloved mitt.

It’s called Give me four and is quite intriguing.

But some works are more on the revolting side frankly.

Give me intriguing any day.

The Abyss, until Sep 28, free,

Griffith University Art Museum,

Queensland College of Art, South Bank

griffith.edu.au/art-museum