Art / Domenic Mico’s “The Cosmos”, at m16artspace.com.au
until April 5. Reviewed by PHILLIP MACKENZIE.
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| 'Eye of God,' 2019, oil on canvas. |
BEING a complacent,
if not complicit, citizen, I was unable to attend the opening of Domenic Mico’s
exhibition “The Cosmos” at M16 Artspace in Griffith.
As it turned out, thanks to COVID-19, the exhibition was
never officially “launched”, but in those relatively liberal couple of days,
the show was billed as being accessible to the public. In a stir-crazy
demonstration of independence, therefore, a few days later I broke my
self-imposed parole and went to M16.
There was an ominous sense of emptiness as I entered the
lobby, and found the gallery closed against intruders. I was, however, able to
peer through the mesh roller doors and get some impression of the impressive
display of abstract bursts of cosmic splendour which, I knew, Mico had been
building up since his 2018 exhibition at FORM Gallery in Queanbeyan.
While that collection can now be seen as a colourful and
expressionist precursor to the works, its theme had been more terrestrial. Now,
Mico is joyously swanning off among the nebulae.
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| 'Pillars of Creation,' 2018, oil on canvas |
On returning home, I was relieved to find that M16 had
up-loaded the entire offering at m16artspace.com.au and I had all the time I
could want to browse, visit and revisit these phantasmagorical images at my
leisure.
The I-version did nothing to diminish my admiration for
Mico, and for his sake I can only hope that the two sales noted therein are an
indication only of the fear and caution with which we are all living in the
time of COVID-19.
I would happily put red stickers on “Pillars of Creation”
and “Emissions” – in both of these I swear there is the vestige of the
theatrical comedy mask lurking in the cosmic dust – a sly joke from Mico’s past
life in theatre? Elsewhere, I might fantasise about vestigial images of the
ubiquitous COVID-19 – but I doubt that even Mico’s imagination could have
foreseen our present predicament.
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| 'Blue Planet,' 2018, oil on canvas. |
I would also happily put red stickers on “Blue Planet”,
which put me in mind of “Whale Nation”, a long poem by Heathcote Williams which
Phil Roberts and later Neil Roach and I adapted for solo performance in the
1990s. It begins, “From space, the planet is blue. From space the planet is the
territory not of humans but of the whale” and on my shelves I have a deep blue
glass sphere by local artist Alan Aston which, for me, conjures up the same
meme.
And, I would also put a red sticker on “Eye of God”– because,
well, I just liked it.
Now that art galleries are off-limits for “the duration”, I
hope they will follow M16’s example and upload their offerings for house-bound
art lovers to regain some sense of the real world we have been forced to leave
behind.
This review was first published at citynews.com.au
