Oom marks the beginning of an ongoing project, that will tie together strands of my practice which have previously been undertaken separately. Whilst at first glance the works may seem disparate, Oom is a conscious attempt to carve away at divisions; not merely between media, but also between roles (such as artist, curator and collaborator) and more broadly between art and life. Later modes of Oom will progressively make these suggestions more manifest.
In drawing, painting, and photography there can be an almost instantaneous, limitless freedom at our disposal. Oom seeks to explore these possibilities using the people, social networks and economic structures that surround us. The works in this exhibition infect the highly affected aesthetics of geometric abstraction, fashion photography and advertising imagery with very personal and specific narratives. In an equally intimate way, the different works give birth to each other (the paintings generate sculptural forms, whilst the photographs suggested future drawings and collages).
These works are, also, a personal response to returning home after a period abroad. The locations, objects and visual references stem largely from my own early and late childhood, in the late 1970's to the early 1990's. It is hoped that the works suggest both an intensely familiar, and also of a new and unknowable reality.
Andy Best
April 2009
images (top row) left: We See Further I, 75 x 75cm; centre: We See Further III, 75 x 112cm; right: We See Further V, 75 x 75cm
(centre row) left: XO, 112 x 75cm; centre: Returning, 75 x 112cm; right: Final Path, 112 x 75cm
(bottom row) left: Soggy Indo, 112 x 75cm; centre: Alex Park, 75 x 112cm; right: Sun Child, 75 x 75cm.
All works are lightjet prints in an edition of 8 + 2 A/P
below: Gallery installation views, 2009
Oom is an all-encompassing, conceptual project, quietly referential of Warhol and Ginsberg. Richly multiplicitous, it is utopian yet post-universalist, serious yet humourous, amorphous yet carefully signified. Its name has connections with other similarly constructed histories. Such as The Mighty Oom, the eccentric magician hermit of a 1990's cartoon, or The Omnipotent Oom, an American tantric sex pioneer, businessman, and cult leader from the early 20th Century. Oom is also a character from a Stephen Leacock satire of the archetypal utopian novel, Edward Bellamy’s “Looking Backward” (1888); as well as a monster from the planet Yzgartyl in a 1940’s comic book, who hides as a bronze sculpture in New York. Untranslatable and almost meaningless, it most obviously relates to the Hindu sound/concept 'Om', but this relationship is necessarily indistinct. Oom's sources are generative and specific, whilst multilayered and intermingled.
Large photographic prints with a mobile-phone-meets-fashion-magazine feel tell of the Rock and Roll, Adam and Eve beginnings of Best's Oom. They document the incidental actions of personal friends. Their tone echoes to their geographic location: 'Hans Heysen country', and also where Bon Scott, 'the Wild Man of the Hills', and an early hippy incarnation of ACDC made the transition from dope smoking ramblers to hard drinking rockers. Oom also includes drawings, objects and paintings which are also important symbols of, and artifacts from, the Oom society. These works take the grids, cones and geometry of Modernism to a psychedelic 1970's (or 1990's) fin de siècle - spliffs, tubes and pseudo-religious pyramids. Oom also implies a communal, curatorial or collective element, involving artists, writers and musicians as collaborators, models and commercial partners, and a website expands this ambitiously interdisciplinary project. Yet the peculiar, carefully aestheticised artworks at the heart of this utopian collectivity, while emblemising its narrative, simultaneously disrupt its integrity.
For Best, Oom is an important step in an ongoing investigation into authenticity. Building on previous works such as the horrendously inspired, painted concrete 'giant squid attacks motorbike in Egypt' (Isis, Isis, Ra Ra Ra, 2007), or the grandly successful, giant, sculptural manifestation of Donkey Kong (Pauline, 2004), this current project shifts to incorporate elements of the social aspect of art practice. Best sees this collective element as vital to his work; without it it would be artificially succinct. Oom is a vehicle which endorses and embodies this social involvement, exploring it and pursuing its implications, as well as facilitating further unpredictable growth from it.
- Jon Fawcett, London-based artist, in conversation with Andy Best, 2009
ANDY BEST
Biography
1975
Born Adelaide, Australia
2001
BVA (Hons, 1st Class), South Australian School of Art, University of South Australia
2004
MVA, South Australian School of Art, University of South Australia
2007
MFA, Chelsea School of Art and Design, London
Lives in Adelaide, SA and London, UK
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2009
Oom, Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide
2006
The Fall Series, Stills Gallery, Sydney
2004
Flesh Eaters, University of South Australia Gallery
Crimes Against Wisdom, 24HR Art, Darwin
2003
Paradise, Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide
I’ve Been Busy, Artspace, Adelaide
2000
3 x 0, 220 Hindley Street, Adelaide
Gallery Spain, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia
Selected Group Exhibitions
2009
Roadmovies, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia
2007
Perfect for Every Occasion: Photography Today, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Victoria, Australia
How We May Be, Late at the Tate, Tate Britain
Rite of Passage, Michael West Gallery, UK
2006
New Acquisitions, Art Gallery of South Australia
Snapshot: Survey of Contemporary South Australian Art, Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide
Low, MOP Projects, Sydney
Taking the Cure, Downtown Art Space
2005
You Must Have Been in Strange Places, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne
Mentor Mentored, The Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia
New Painting Heroes, Downtown Art Space, Adelaide
Art Year Zero, South Australian School of Art Gallery
2004
2004: Australian Culture Now, The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia and The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne
Project for a Revolution, West Space, Melbourne
The Containers Project, Federation Square, Melbourne
Breadbox Gallery, Perth
2003
Mirage, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts
2002
Hatched, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts
Money Shot, Hindley Street, Adelaide
Plans and Disasters, Downtown Art Space, Adelaide
2001
Move 4, Rundle Mall, Adelaide
Girls, Top Floor Gallery, Adelaide
Selected Awards
2005
Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship
Absolut Vodka Artist Promotion
Australia Council/Arts SA Emerging Curator Initiative, Venice Biennale
2004
Adelaide Critics’ Circle Visual Artist of the Year
2001
SAYAB Experimental Art Foundation Studio
Australian Postgraduate Award Scholarship
2000
Chancellor’s Letters of Commendation, Dean’s Merit List, University of South Australia
1999
Dean’s Merit List, University of South Australia
Collections
Art Gallery of South Australia; Brett Whiteley Studio Museum; Absolut Vodka Sweden; private collections in Australia, the United States, United Kingdom, Norway and the United Arab Emirates
