Hello, my name is Chloe Black. I’m a stand up comedian, screenwriter, DJ and transgender woman. If you’re confused then that’s ok…I haven’t heard of me either. But the lovely people at Contemporary Art Tasmania have asked me to contribute my thoughts to their Journal for this month.
Am I qualified to do this? I don’t know. I did do a Diploma of Visual Art at NASA over thirty years ago, so maybe that will suffice?
Oh wait. Sorry? Oops, my bad, not at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, I meant North Adelaide School of Art. Not entirely the same — although I have to confess, I was “spaced out” a lot of the time. It was the 90s, Cypress Hill was in the charts — it was a whole thing.
But I digress. The people at CAT would like me to write about the art they have on display at the moment.
One of them is an installation piece. MoTH-eRR by Sarah Contos. I’ll get to that in a bit.
Installation art was having a bit of a boost in popularity when I started at art school. and on my first day our class was invited to hear a talk from an artist who had an installation work in the school gallery space.
In the centre of the gallery space sat a baby grand piano. There was a neon sign behind it that flashed some words in French (what exactly I can’t recall) and a few feet away on the floor was a tall pasta jar which we were told was full of reconstituted ghee (an ancient method of making clarified butter).
I sat wide-eyed and frothing with curiosity about how the three objects related to each other. This work felt like a scene from the game Cluedo. Was it Baroness Butter in the Paris Salon with the Piano?
The artist then went on to tell us the work was a reflection of her experience of travelling through Thailand.
My voice cracked the air with a loud “Ha!” I seriously thought she was joking. As far as non-sequiturs go, that was a pretty choice one — but by the heat of the radiant death stares I was getting from everyone present I realised she was very serious. I was immediately mortified, and perhaps rightly so. I then had a thought. Shit, maybe I’m not cut out for this art thing?
In my defence, over the next three years my tastes and understanding of art matured quite a bit. My relationship to art has become a deeper and more nuanced one, and I owe most of that to that singular jar of ghee. In a way, I’ve carried that jar with me for over thirty years. It lives rent-free in the pantry in my head. That jar taught me that all art is an expression of the very human need to connect and communicate, to engage in dialogue. No matter whether you can or cannot play the grand piano, or know the first thing about eight thousand-year-old recipes for clarified butter, the artist is asking you to hear what they have to say.
When I got to see Sarah Contos’ work, I was immediately impressed. And a tad sad, no ghee in sight. But her work — displayed on multiple screens suspended through the gallery space — cuts to the core of its central message with great clarity. Using a mixture of found and digital images, her work speaks volumes about broader elements of feminine beauty standards, the make-up industry, fashion and Lepidoptera (more commonly known as moths) to explore a fictional and fantastical invention: the lifecycle of a human-moth hybrid. Incorporating elements of German Expressionist Cinema, digital art, images of motherhood, eggs and, of course, the aforementioned moths, Contos’ builds a space that invites us to explore their connections and confluences.
Side note — does anyone else, like me, think of moths as just Bogan Butterflies? Congregating under street lamps, collecting nectar (apparently this practice is not confined to a butterfly’s remit), laying eggs and causing trouble. One moth says to his buddy, “yo bruz. This lamp is bright as! This party is lit!”
Sorry I got sidetracked. We listened to a lot of Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre at art school as well. Not that you can tell. That reminds me — I need to get more Doritos. They’re clearly not going to munch on themselves. Ahh the follies of youth.
Which brings me to George Kennedy’s work currently in the Project Space at CAT. Their work, titled The first and last trip, is fantastic. While reflecting on his coming of age in Clarendon Vale as a young tearaway trans kid — and miles away from the trans man he would eventually become — George’s work is like a braying air horn, an echoing klaxon call to the memories of his unique upbringing, but also our own collective teenagehood. George’s paintings evoke a poignant revery for discarded junk and burnt out cars. Like Basquiat, Kennedy’s paintings burst with a controlled chaos. They invite us to walk through the sunlit fields of Clarendon Vale (your dose of LSD is optional) and explore the discarded metal and junk strewn within.
But the cherry on top for me was the ornate frames around each work. At first, striking and regal, but at a closer look you can see words etched in the gold painted wood. The etchings remind me of when you would scratch your name or a tasty swear word with a rusty compass onto your desk at school. A practice as old as time. What George’s words are you will have to see for yourself but I guarantee you they hit different when you’re a grown up. Contos’ and Kennedy’s works are worlds apart but they’re both powerful and fierce. And you won’t need a piano or some ghee to teach you that.
Chloe Black is a stand up comedian, screenwriter and DJ. She has performed at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Adelaide Fringe and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She is the writer and creator of the Web series TRANSFERRED and JENNIFER ERIC IS CANCELLED as well as her animated series LETTER CLUB with animation studio Turbo Chook. Coming out nearly 10 years ago to friends and family has freed her up to not only find her true self but has given her work a unique point of view and a voice with which to tell it.