Lanterns, Moon Jellies and a time-warped Shepherdess – Brisbane Vibrant Laneways re-illuminated

Brisbane City Council’s CBD 2014 Vibrant Laneways Art Program was recently re-illuminated with the final instalment of artworks curated by CREATIVEMOVE for Hutton, Eagle and Burnett Lanes and in the lead up to Christmas now is a perfect time to segue from our inner-city shopping meccas to our most recent outdoor galleries.

Continuing Brisbane’s visual arts legacy of practice characterised by strengths in photography and performance art, these three laneways have been refreshed with the works of Jackie Ryan, Hiromi Tango and Lincoln Austin respectively. These new works continue the theme that we no longer ‘use’ a camera – we ‘conspire’ with it to make our own story/ies of the world and share them with others in formal gallery spaces as well as on social media. The images use the inner-city urban fabric as a stage to explore parallel and intersecting narratives of varying levels of veracity and to engage audiences in slightly unfamiliar or unexpected places.

HIROMI TANGO, Moon Jellies​ 2013

Hiromi Tango’s artworks develop organically from one project to the next, evolving according to site requirements and possibilities of audience engagement. Her installations and performances are often based on collaborations between herself and others. Her work for Eagle Lane juxtaposes two specific explorations in her practice. The first, Hiromi Hotel: Moon Jellies, was commissioned by Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre in response to the region’s connection with the beach and the ocean. The work explores the mysterious therapeutic power of art engagement using the ocean ecosystem as a metaphor for the brain. The second group of works show her neon and textile works which explore psychological healing in an artistic form. Tango’s works create a critical dialogue that explores artist-public engagement, exploring how, by intervening in a particular space, the artist can generate unexpected moments of intimacy and evasion. Through these interventions, Tango seeks to blur and re-integrate the boundaries between conventional ways of relating. Her works address the paradoxical and unstable nature of social engagement – the entwinement of anxiety and embracement of intimacy – through collaboration, co-authorship and co-existence. As Dr Patricia Jungfer Consultant Psychiatrist suggests:

“Art has the capacity to change self-orientation in the artist and the viewer. Inevitably in the creation of art the artist will interact with their internalised objects, the external manifestation of these objects becomes realised in the art form. “Promised” reflects the development of Hiromi’s art practice within the context of a personal journey of emotional pain and the interchange between artist and therapist, the “magic “of the talking cure and the “promised” change, but, within the process and journey of the therapy “tears” and the amputation of the negative parts of self (the “lizard tail”) become manifest. Within the process of the psychological contact, emotions, demons and experiences were magically transformed and this transformation becomes expressed in the exquisite and intricate works of art”.

Hiromi Tango is represented by Sullivan + Strumpf.

JACKIE RYAN, Little Girl Lost

What would a person from yesteryear make of Brisbane city today? Would they feel like a little girl lost? In this recent Jackie Ryan series installed in Hutton Lane, the past collides with the present when a shepherdess of old finds herself separated from her sheep in the modern Brisbane CBD. The series is produced in black and white as a nod to early photography and to more fully delineate the past from its full-colour surrounds. The images have been selected with a view to complementing the Hutton Lane environment which includes building patterns, the hosting light-box structures, and nearby grills. So what does our shepherdess make of the present? It’s a little daunting at first, and will there be a happy ending in store? Will she and her sheep be reunited in Hutton Lane? Pop on your bonnet, pick up your umbrella and take a stroll down the lane and find out.

And find out more about Jackie Ryan

or see Available Works

Lincoln Austin, Do you see what I see?

Austin’s lanterns for Burnett Lane take their cue from its more mundane history, a forgotten service laneway offering access to loading bays and rear entrances, rather than focussing on its ‘grand’ history. On arriving in Brisbane in 2000, Austin sought out art material suppliers, suddenly finding himself searching for a non-descript doorway on Burnett Lane. The door led him into a ‘nowhere’ space with an elevator which took him up to Australian Jewellery Supplies and a treasure trove of tools and materials. Back then, Burnett Lane was lined with delivery vehicles and garbage bins, a world of products and packaging and for this reason Austin chose to employ a packaging material, hundreds of layers of cut corflute plastic, to create these lanterns. Despite the apparent simplicity of this arrangement of repeating modules an almost limitless number of subtle variations were possible but Austin settled on a simple hexagonal component cut from 5mm white coreflute plastic layered up the length of the lights. At night the materials translucency and openness refract, conceal and reveal the light source, providing an ever changing appearance while the viewer changes their position in relation to the object.

Lincoln Austin is represented by Andrew Baker Art Dealer

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