Clouds in my coffee?
The title-phrase above, from Carly Simon's pop song You're so Vain, came to mind when I viewed this series of paired photographs by artist Robert Lee who presents a certain aspect of his private world in this exhibition, in photo-documentary style.
The lower photograph in each pair is of a tray of airline food, all too recognisable by anyone who has travelled by air long enough to be served an in-flight meal or 'refreshment'. Edible items are neatly and conveniently packaged and put into an arrangement that, when the tray is considered the 'frame', often makes for an interesting visual composition in its own right. But when each of these recipe-book 'scenes' is juxtaposed with another photograph, the meaning shifts.
The subject matter of this second set of photographs, which are placed above the ones of food, vary considerably. Mostly, they are of clouds (one of my favourite photographic and painterly subjects I confess), in all their wondrous and delicate variety of form, but others are of aerial landscapes, a swarm of bats in flight, the aircraft themselves, and scenes taken at airports. Titles suggest a whimsical (if not humorous) approach, as in Red sky with croissant; Evening sky with Penne chicken; Red clouds with warm chicken salad; Pink morning with sultana bran; Fluffy clouds & barossa tart; Evening sky with chocolate chip macaroon; Blue sky & finished breakfast; Over the outback with boxed breakfast; Fluffy clouds & Danish. We all know that a good Danish pastry if light and fluffy, don't we?
In Uluru & boxed breakfast, the emblematic Rock far below is paired with a photo featuring a breakfast-box adorned with a logo echoing aboriginal dot-paintings (reminding us the Rock's traditional owners). Somehow the cracks in the concrete tarmac in Tarmac & bikkies make it look like a giant slab of shortbread! In Cancelled with turkey and noodles, we are reminded of the uncertainties of air travel by a flight cancellation notice in one photo and the words safety instructions just visible behind a tray of food in the other. The final self-portrait with sky (the only one of the series without food) shows a travel-weary artist waiting at an airport, poignantly bringing home the ennui and regimentation that we all know can be part of air travel.
On reflection, and as a result of some conversations with the artist, it becomes apparent that Lee does have serious intentions with these works, especially in contrasting the 'squashed in' and (for some) claustrophobic aspects of air travel with the wonderfully expansive and liberating nature of the sky (and by implication the cosmos itself). Another dichotomy brought out in Lee's 'photo-dyptich' compositions is that of disposability and impermanence of man-made objects versus the timelessness of the natural world. And the artist perhaps points to some other concerns when he uses the expressions like 'the commercialisation of life' and 'sample-ization' in relation to his idiosyncratic, yet strangely compelling pictures. Of undoubted relevance to the subject matter of this exhibition is of a quite personal nature. The artist spent much of his childhood living with his family on the grounds of a small country airport - his father was the manager there. He particularly recalls playing on the wheel-out boarding stairs there as a kid.
Perhaps the Vanity in song's title above could be seen in the light of humankind's 'vanity' in 'conquering' nature, no better realised than in the brilliant invention of aircraft! And the Clouds in my Coffee?... well that's what I see when I'm flying 'free-as-a-bird'!
- Fred Fair
(Extracted from the
Contemporary Art Society Newsletter Nov - Dec
2004)
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updated 19 Nov 2004
