This is a truly airborne show which seductively presents us with the essentials of colour photography and the "frozen" cinematic moment. Besides perceptual and theoretic references, it is quite simply a photographic record of the many unusual collaborations which Laing the photographer and art director arranged with emergency services personnel, Quantas Air Freight, airports, stuntpersons, pilots, and abseilers, in pursuit of her chance to record the results of these carefully planned and patiently awaited moments!

A few years back, I saw the first workings of the abseiler in the aircraft hold and that image still impresses, as does  the concept embodied in that of the woman juggling a red ball on the Sydney Airport tarmac. She plays, as does the artist, with suspense and with the air as volume in itself, the formal compositional key to these works.

The feeling embodied by the jumping/tumbling/falling bride purely sings! Simple, strong and romantic all at once, the bride's billowing skirt becomes her parachute, and she becomes a metaphor for abutilons, and airborne seeds like those released from dandelion clocks, full but white and clear, apparently at the mercy of the winds. Yet in reality, as stunt woman, she is almost completely in control of her trajectory. I noticed that people could not resist a long engagement with this series of images. Besides the fact that they are seductively beautiful, one gets caught up in conjecture. How were they made? How was she there?

Other ideas of Flight, of the domain of air and clouds, of a weightless transit through volumes without solidity form the subject of the video, from the wing of a stunt plane. I could not sustain watching this for too long, - a bit too sea-cam for me, but then I'm bad on carnival rides as well. Flight afficianados used to Digital Flight Simulators would not have this problem but I must say I prefer these "real" images to those computer-generated ones. Delicious lines of clouds on hilltop ridges and creeping into gullies; amazing clarity of light, - there is something sensuous in all this.

To my mind and eye the God's eye view of the girl on the treetop ladder is a wonderful green statement, more potent than the office lobby large green squares on the same "environmental" theme which were the only disappointing notes in this show. Please don't surrender your true vision too often Rosemary.

The high-toned, and highly-textured directness of Michelle Theunissen's two screen video work "Skinned", which not so gently in voice and image probes the parameters of racism, makes an interestiing contrast to Bill Viola's restrained and cerebral video work, "Beneath the Surface". We look plane on at Michelle's side-by-side two-screen work, because she wants to present information requiring an analysis of our responses, but are immersed on two sides by Bill's, making it a bi-polar and subdued experience, a pessimistic study of male fragility in fin de siecle mode. I will go back and spend more time with this one, but his other piece,"The Messenger" did not resonate with me on the day I saw it. It may be, that after the passage of time between reading about it and seeing it, I had constructed a set of expectations which has superseded the actuality, and I had trouble bearing with the real. Or perhaps it was just too hot.

Neil Emmerson, "Surrender", or "Print the Desktop" whilst it's still covered. A print-maker's parable indeed! Accidents elevated to art or Happy Accidents perhaps! mmmm! Certainly we are taught never to despoil the press blanket, - but in truth, that urge is always there!

This show is impressive in its simplicity, in its dramatic visual economy fusing an unlikely compound of smart poetics and post-colonial references without any romanticism whatsoever. These pared down graphic images are heightened by being embossed (mostly) from laser-etched plates. Their scale creates the solid sculptural illusion of bas-relief yet their base is a humble and soft material and the technique of embossing is generally small and decoratively applied. One must surrender any preconceptions about anally-retentive print-makers with this one! But Emmerson has also presented another small, more conventional suite of photo-lithographic prints taking a view which continues references to the scenic "exotic views" of the colonial gaze just to show he can do "real" prints for the marketplace.

As for the penants of "penance", I did not choose to read into these much beyond further references to the printmaking process, enjoying simply the way in which they delineated space above the blankets. They reminded me of solidified plugs of shiny, viscous printing ink, remnant infills of tearing burrs at the edges of marks on plate surfaces. Or strings of thorns and
sharks teeth, remnants of the narrative below.   ( Read Another Opinion of this Exhbition )

I also enjoyed the installation of the bright room of "White Craft". The first thing I noted was its effect on dark skin. The disjunction of Pearl Rasmussen's hobo fashion, complete with whiter than white sandshoes, Jane Whiteley's minimal, gently stitched and faded gauzes and the shock of Dunovits' charred remains of "White Trash" in the hearth with the pure and pristine fine craft and experimental pieces by other exhibitors revealing an interesting curatorial perspective. I relished the opportunity to see Sandra Black's exquisite porcelain again, - WOW!, - but this show needs much more room to spread, - and possibly some paint touch-ups as it progresses. The excellent work shines and the rest disappears into the whited crowd, which may not be exactly fair in these circumstances, unless that is the point of the show?

I visited the wildly vibrant "Durbs to Freo Wire Act" at the Moore's Building down the road with the Kwa Zulu take on art/craft work produced as part of job creation schemes. One sees zinging pattern first and then the decorative narrative details. This work has certainly got attitude, - and sales!