TV Moore: A Night on the Tiles; ACCA

Posted by Natalie Thomas on August 18, 2015 in Australian Art, Melbourne Art | 1 Comment

Timothy Vernon Moore seems to love nothing more than a night on the tiles. He convinced ACCA to invest in his hedonism too and it’s undergone an expansive floor to ceiling refurb for his show, With Love and Squalor. TV has literally rolled out the red carpet for himself and ACCA’s Dulux Paint sponsorship deal has also copped a beating. TV’s palette is Katie Perry liquorice All-Sort; gallery spaces pimped and preened to resemble a Romance Was Born flagship store at a Clearance Sale. Think feature walls and a blushing pink welcoming arch.

At least one local Master tiler has had Xmas arrive early this year. There’s more tiles been laid for this show, than in the men’s loo at Crown Casino. I was looking for the little old man handing out refresher towels at the exit, but there was no money left in the budget for his wages.

TV has constructed more feature walls and surface treatments than you see in an episode of The Block. Each gallery space is carpeted, painted and/or tiled, the transformations bringing to mind the current Home Renovation preoccupation of middle Australia. The one that goes hand in hand with its flip side, the housing affordability crisis. The one that has rapidly conspired to deny many, their shot at the Australian Dream of Home Ownership. The economic divide transformed into a gaping ravine faster than you can say Negative Gearing: “Negativegearing!”

Dumpster divers looking to update their own bathrooms and kitchen splashbacks after de-install, should note that the skips at ACCA are private property. Just ask Ash Keating about that. Some years back, Ash and a camera crew ran afoul of former Director Julianna Engber  whilst rummaging though the binned remains of some Barbara Kruger slogan vinyl. ‘I shop, therefore I am’ said the slogan, but Kruger’s de-installed vinyl was destined for a smelly landfill grave. Julianna was outside, guarding the skip to make sure her expensive art rubbish was not reused to make more art. Ash did OK though; the clash of ideologies was captured on film and became his break out work.

TV Moore sure knows his way round a digital file. Compressed, condensed, flattened, then printed, projected or screened. Cues from an array of Pop culture references: fashion, design, abstract expressionism, they all become backdrops for selfies, hoovered up and put through the ringer. Hung against a splashback of Royal blue tiles.

 Part of ACCA’s Influential Australian Artist program, the website says TV Moore is:

‘One of the first Australian artists to work with video, Moore has maintained an unwavering commitment to creating a body of work that engages with the moving image in all its forms.’

Being amongst the first Australian artists to work with video sounds cool, but is there a whiff of exaggeration to the claim? Either TV is 30 years older than he appears, or someone is going to tell him, or whoever wrote this blurb, that they’re dreamin’. Well and truly dreamin’. I hope for TV’s sake that experts on the history of video art in Australia don’t arc up. Video art historians are a viscous bunch.

Your price back home still goes up when you leave. It’s the cost of our cultural cringe, the one the experts say doesn’t exist anymore: New York based Australian Artist TV Moore. Oh yeah…

A highlight of the show is the animated guy crying, Vin-ish. It’s not good for men to hide their emotions. That’s how wars start.

https://www.accaonline.org.au

http://stationgallery.com.au