Tacit Gallery has been around for quite a while – in at least three addresses in Melbourne’s inner north, all of which have been slick, professional arenas that attracted consistently quality work. Its current home, a two-storey space on Johnston Street, Abbotsford, continues this trend.
The exhibition, which opened last week, showcases the works of Vietta Korren-Steele, Merrin Eirth and a handful of others in a Works on Paper Salon section, all of which are so different from each other in style, composition and mediums that together they complement each other quite serendipitously well to form a solid exhibition.
Korren-Steele’s large-scale atmosphere pieces can quite possibly remind one of the artwork from the Nine Inch Nails album The Downward Spiral. Static, vertical waterfalls of rust-coloured streaks, these large-scale works would look ideal in the foyer of an art production company or a recording studio. Paintings such as Korren-Steele’s activate subconscious levels of the mind – perhaps not expressing things that can’t be said in words, but certainly exploring them.
Merrin Eirth’s works upstairs are an amazing contrast and, like Korren-Steele’s paintings downstairs, could remind the viewer of the art from another album, this time that of Mr Bungle’s self-titled album, which shows circus clowns on a drunken rampage. Not all of her paintings feature clowns, but the tone is fairly consistent – that of a funfair in which the fun has gone somewhat awry.
An inflated dog sits near cactus spikes, puns are had with π, and one of the works is presumably a nod to Adam Stone’s public sculpture Fallen Fruit, which caused a stir during its brief stay in the streets of Fitzroy. She toys with painting, drawing and collage, creating worlds that mix realism and abstraction, laid out as compositional puzzles for the viewer to solve.
The third part of this exhibition is a Works on Paper Salon, and if you thought this last part of the gallery would be an afterthought, you’d be very much mistaken. In fact some of the highlights of the show are here. Two of them are from Linda Weil, whose piece Voyage of the Maelstrom is simply extraordinary – it’s like an old treasure map of the world, some parts of it still undiscovered, which is adorned with sea creatures made of real-life mechanical components to form a simply delightful menagerie, the kind that comic books and cartoons are made from. Going through her available works online, it’s clear this is a universe she visits often.
Other highlights in this section are Merrian Dennis’ bonsai-esque potted landscapes, and Chris Lawry’s Clouds Over Cooma, which can best be described with the word ‘drenched’. For a black and white, two-dimensional artwork, it does an extremely convincing job of giving the feeling of being out in the open during a pelting shower.
Read: Exhibition review: The Outsiders Melbourne, Flinders Lane
All in all, this is an exhibition that features some incredibly accomplished talent, coming together to form a dynamic, vibrant, kinetic whole, filled with characters and images that you may just want to take home.
Merrin Eirth: I Swallowed a Fly (Comedy of the Humours), Vietta Korren-Steele: Dissolving Shifts and Works on Paper Salon will be exhibited at Tacit Gallery until 22 December 2024.
