Exhibition review: Devoted To You, Arts Project Australia

Exhibitions at Arts Project Australia (APA) are like no others in Melbourne. A major reason for this is that the artists here are, to use the wording from the gallery’s website, people with an ‘intellectual disability’. After being in Clifton Hill for many years, the organisation’s current home is in the Collingwood Yards precinct.

This show, Devoted To You, is curated by James Dawes, Carolyn Hawkins and Danielle Hakimd. It features artworks of musical heroes, all created with heartfelt devotion, hence the title. Easily the King of the gallery – all puns intended – is Elvis. Artistic interpretations and reinterpretations of the singer cover an entire wall, complete with a backing of Elvis wallpaper.

This wallpaper, being black and white, is an excellent backdrop for the contrasting colours of the artworks themselves, filled as they are with primary colours: blue, red and yellow. Artists Cathy Staughton and Dionne Canzano give highlights here, especially the latter’s character-filled, multi-technique King that is being used on the promotional flyers for the show. 

Second in frequency is the Beatles, whose likenesses are put into, among other mediums, paint (Steven Ajzenberg and Anthony Romagnano), ceramic (Valerio Ciccone) and clipping-filled collages (Peter Ben).

Other musicians featured include Cheap Trick, the Spice Girls, Silverchair, Public Enemy, David Bowie, Madonna, AC/DC (including on the T-shirts for sale at the gallery) and Rammstein (on the badges).

Launching the exhibition on Saturday was longtime supporter of APA Janet English – bassist, songwriter, singer and co-founder of legendary Australian art/fuzz/thrash punk trio Spiderbait (she also has a Bachelor’s degree in psychology). In the past this writer had always seen her from within one of Spiderbait’s mosh pits, so it was good to see her in a more conventional setting, and hearing her very supportive words for the gallery. 

Perhaps the aspect that makes the APA’s shows so artistically unique and borderline unpredictable is the fact that the artists have intellectual so-called ‘disabilities’. Most ‘conventional’ artists work within parameters, consciously or unconsciously, using trained techniques and/or self-taught systems.

Of course such training, parameters and limitations serve certain purposes, but the APA’s artists appear free of such rigidity, seemingly unshackled by artistic conventions or maybe even audience expectations. They are seemingly unburdened by such restrictions, including laws of perspective, scale, evenness and straightness, and the results often seem to come from a different plane of reality; a different view of the same world with individuality turned up to eleven. 

Read: Musical review: Follies, Palais Theatre

These works could be interpreted as ‘child-like’, but is learning rigid frameworks to work within, then doing so for a lifetime, really worth all the hype it gets?

In all, Devoted To You is a wonderful tribute to highly distinctive artists, an excellent artistic organisation and the boundary-free universality of music. 

Devoted To You will be on display at Arts Project Australia until 8 March 2025.
Free entry.