Michael Lindeman
Michael Lindeman - Percival Portrait Painting Prize Winner 2022
Michael Lindeman has been announced as the winner of the 2022 Percival Portrait Prize with his self-portrait ‘I…’, 2020. The Percival Portrait Prize is a major acquisitive award for $40,000. The artwork will be on view in ‘The Percivals’, 2022 exhibition at Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville, from 23rd April to 3rd July 2022.
" ‘I…’ is my manifesto and therapy at once, both image and text confronting my position as an artist and mortality. Stream of consciousness self-analysis meets jarring institutional critique, I have found my zone of contemplation. My portrait uses a self-reflexive humour as a strategic tool with which to analyse cultural production and entertain myself," explains Lindeman, "The brand of humour I use, an externalising of my doubts and fears, satisfies a misguided urge to be vulnerable and sincere. ‘I…’ is an insight into my psyche, relying on a parallel, removed mode of presenting one’s bodily self."
- Michael Lindeman
A huge congratulations to Michael from all at Sullivan+Strumpf.
2022 Annual Summer Group Show
Our much anticipated annual Summer group show is now open. Featuring a curated selection of recent works by our artists, this exhibition is on now in the gallery and in our online Viewing Room.
Until January 29.
July-August Issue Out Now
Taking risks is something that artists do every single day of their lives. For Lynda Draper, who creates impossibly large and elaborate sculptures from intricately woven strands of clay – risk seems ever present. A master ceramicist for over three decades, these brilliant works seem to teeter on the edge, defying the limits of the medium with each sculpture taller and more complex than the last. Up close, it is their interconnectedness that gives them their inherent strength, allowing Draper to dare risk taking them to ever greater heights.
Risk is also an inherent part of Michael Lindeman’s work – shining a light on the contemporary artworld and examining his own place within it. Even though he relies on humour to soften the blow, he doesn’t shy away from the big questions – questions about class, taste, and power that are confronting and, at times, uncomfortable.
In this issue, we enter the ever-changing inner world of Yvette Coppersmith, who recently joined the S+S family; we preview Seth Birchall’s latest exhibition Health and Happiness, for the University of Sydney’s Verge Gallery – a stunning meditation on nature; we go home with Kirsten Coelho to learn a little more about her collecting habits; and travel, if only in these pages, to Downtown LA, to the studio of Jemima Wyman where she is busy chronicling images of smoke relating to protests for our September exhibition.
Last Word goes to Dr Paul Donnelly, on the University of Sydney’s exquisite, newly minted Chau Chak Wing Museum, and on their first exhibition Object/Art/ Specimen – which braves six complex themes with over 300 objects pulled from the three very different collections that now make up the new museum.
Risk has never been so clearly apparent in our lives. While we understand the necessary constraints required for the health and safety of all, we still feel the desire to live intently, deeply and connect with others. It’s a precarious balancing act, but one for which we can look to artists for inspiration.
May-June Issue Out Now
MAY/JUNE ISSUE OUT NOW
In this issue we feature artists who continue the grand tradition of drawing upon nature, landscape and the environment including Maria Fernanda Cardoso’s new sculptures celebrating the complexity and beauty of gumnuts, Darren Sylvester’s recreation of a New York City streetscape and Yang Yongliang’s larger than life digital landscapes based on Song Dynasty paintings.
We welcome painter Seth Birchall to the gallery, chat to Jeremy Sharma, browse Michael Lindeman’s cabinet of curiosities, take a spin around Paris with Greg Hodge, visit Lynda Draper’s idyllic Thirroul home and visit Sam Jinks in the studio. Last word goes to Luke Sales, from the iconic fashion label Romance was Born on his collaboration with ceramicist Glenn Barkley.
- Enjoy!
Michael Lindeman: The Portrait as Anti-Selfie
The Portrait as Anti-Selfie: An Interview with Michael Lindeman
By Chloé Wolifson
Sydney-based artist Michael Lindeman makes paintings, drawings and sculptures that challenge existing power structures around contemporary art with humour and self-deprecation. Lindeman has been a finalist in the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes five times, and in 2010 he was awarded the Sulman Prize for his work Paintings, prints & wall hangings. Lindeman’s new self-portrait I… inverts the conventions of the genre, combining a masked image with a stream of consciousness that contemplates his own role as an artist.
CW: You’ve long employed various strategies to engage in art ‘world’ institutional critique. What led you to explore these themes and have the issues changed over time?
ML: I’ve always been guided by a wayward urge to rail against something I find irritating and inequitable. My work considers how financial and cultural value is attached to various branches of creative activity. The art ‘world’ is the space I participate in, so it just seems like the logical zone to explore.
The issues haven’t really changed. Some works such as The Source of Magic and Problems 2015 and Implicit Memory System 2018 feature a wider range of targets…alongside of a self-deprecating analysis of myself and position as an artist.
I think I’ve been searching for ways of pulling apart canons all along. A canon is often authority disguised as a consensus. I enjoy critiquing, not worshiping self-reinforcing sites of authority.
What attracts you to humour as a strategy? What are your thoughts on the art ‘world’s’ attitude to humour?
I’m compelled to make art that entertains myself. I want to be able to sit in the studio late at night and laugh at the absurdity of my works in relation to their intended viewing context: the gallery, audience and market. I’m having fun.
I find humour to be a liberating and disarming tool. It can also be a defence mechanism, both protection and weapon. Humour can be strange and difficult to analyse, which suits me because I want the audience to actively engage with the work. I think humour in art can attract us and is an important means of connection. The art ‘world’s’ attitude to humour is probably no different than the broader community, some like to be amused, others are just boring.
How do you undertake the writing and research that underpins the text components of your work?
I’m always taking notes and trying to extract as much content from every source I encounter, ranging from conversations, literature, film, travel, music and art. Some works are simply large-scale replica paintings of appropriated objects and documents that I’ve collected and archived, such as my Sizzler name badge from my first casual job, and my treasured “Certificate for Certification for Dishwasher Attendant”.
Other works such as the series of drawings that replicate ‘Obituary Notices’, ‘Missing’ and ‘Seeking Same’ classifieds rely on a mix of knowledge and experience combined with deeper research into a specific genre. The comical yet critical text drawings in the series announce the passing of various art movements and other absurd considerations of the art world. I compile pages of notes in preparation for each drawing, then carry out a process of editing and formatting to arrive at a piece of writing to be translated into a newspaper classified drawing.
You’ve described your new self-portrait I… as an “anti-selfie”, and “manifesto and therapy at once.” What was the process of developing this work?
My work is often a type of conceptual self-portraiture, with humour of course. I… was a challenge that ironically sets out to present yours truly at a distance, through a filter that enabled a certain degree of anonymity or disguise. The portrait is an anti-selfie, I feel uncomfortable with self-promotion and choose not to be drawn into the social media realm. Presenting my work in a tangible public forum is enough for my anxieties.
The text for I… was accumulated and archived in notebooks over some time. Satisfying an impulse to be vulnerable and sincere while externalising my doubts and fears, I… is an insight to my psyche and perhaps more revealing than a traditional portrait can be. It feels like therapy.
What’s been the most unusual reaction to your work that you’re aware of?
My work definitely divides the audience. When I won the Sulman Prize someone called the AGNSW threatening legal action because my column of large-scale classified paintings appropriated from the Trading Post, listed the actual phone numbers and locations of the sellers. He just had a real issue with it and actually called the advertisers to inform them and rile them up.
On the other end of the spectrum, I once received a hand-written letter from a woman residing in Isle of Man. She was touched by and found humour in one of my paintings.
What have you been looking at, reading, listening to, drawn to lately?
On a trip across Europe late last year and early this year I was excited by the mosaics of the Cologne Cathedral, the micromosaics at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and loved seeing more of the Cubist works, particularly Braque. It was interesting to read that Picasso would borrow works from Braque, placing them in his studio to decode or steal from.
I’m currently reading a lot about the first-generation Californian Conceptual artists, a memoir by Tom Marioni, a book about the ‘Ant Farm’ collective…a book on Joseph Beuys and have just started on a Magritte publication. My reading habits are erratic and all about art.
I listen to vinyl mostly, a steady diet of Zappa, Beefheart, Ween, Silver Jews, Mogwai, Kurt Vile and my 11 year-old boy with his Stratocaster.
I’m drawn to anything that aims to push at the edge of its field of inquiry, I respect creative people who take the risky route, an antidote to those who chase the heat and contribute to mediocrity.
What does a Dishwasher Attendant do?
He regularly fills tumblers with spirit mixers at the drinks station conveniently located metres away from his pile of grubby plates. As the shift wears on, the Dishwasher Attendant’s banter with waitstaff and pranks on co-workers become more audacious due to boredom and bourbon. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all leisure, he takes great pride in a spotless dish pit with remarkable efficiency, eagerly loading the conveyor style industrial dishwasher. Without a care for the next day’s school exam, he’s the entertainment and loyal clean freak at a popular buffet chain.
Chloé Wolifson is a Sydney-based arts writer, researcher and curator whose work includes reviews, catalogue essays, and reports on exhibitions and art fairs across the Asia-Pacific. She is a regular contributor to Art Monthly Australasia and the Sydney Morning Herald and is published in mastheads and magazines across the region.
SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY 2019
AT THE BOOTH
SULLIVAN+STRUMPF ARTIST TALKS
Saturday 14 September
12.00PM – 12.30PM
Booth E20, Sydney Contemporary
Join us for at our booth on Saturday to hear artists Karen Black, Gregory Hodge, Michael Lindeman, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Sanné Mestrom, Alex Seton, and Darren Sylvester discuss their works.
SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY 2019
INSTALLATION CONTEMPORARY
GREGORY HODGE
Suspension Painting, 2019
Gregory Hodge's large-scale installation Suspension Painting incorporates a number of elements and motifs that Hodge has used in previous paintings, bringing them into a three-dimensional space. Large painted cut-outs on aluminium composite panel of gestural marks, folded drapery, painted textiles and sculptural geological forms are clustered together, suspended from the ceiling, appearing to hover in space. Suspension Painting will be located near the entrance to the fair.
MICHAEL LINDEMAN
Thanks, 2018
In the large text-based sculpture titled and forming the word Thanks, Lindeman focuses on the repackaging of bad debt. Crafted from clear vinyl material hand cut into a disquieting, deflating three-dimensional font, the sculpture is filled with crumpled copies of rejection letters that Lindeman has collected for the past 20 years.
ALEX SETON
Winners are Grinners, 2018
Alex Seton's carved marble skull, Winners are Grinners is concerned with how we chose to deal with legacy. Despite living with the vast inheritance of 20th century ideas purported by philosophers, thinkers, politicians, dictators and influencers, it is we the living who get to decide the values we filter, represent and pass to the next generation.
JOIN US
Booth E20
12 – 15 September
Opening Night: Thursday, 12 September 2019
Visit us at Booth E20 to see a diverse range of works by 17 Australian and international artists from our Sydney and Singapore galleries, including:
Tony Albert | Glenn Barkley | Karen Black | Kirsten Coelho | Ry David Bradley | Maria Fernanda Cardoso | Gregory Hodge | Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran | Sam Leach | Richard Lewer | Michael Lindeman | Sanné Mestrom | Alex Seton | Jeremy Sharma | Tim Silver | Darren Sylvester | Yang Yongliang
Large-scale works by Gregory Hodge, Michael Lindeman and Alex Seton will also be featured in Installation Contemporary throughout the fair; Tony Albert will deliver his first performance piece in Sydney with Confessions as part of Performance Contemporary on opening night; and many of our artists will be speaking as part of Talks Contemporary.
GO SEE
MICHAEL LINDEMAN, EX DE MEDICI & ALEX SETON
Love
Tweed Regional Gallery
6 September - 17 November 2019
Michael Lindeman, eX de Medici and Alex Seton are featured in Love at Tweed Regional Gallery in northern NSW. Opening today and on show until 17 November, the Love exhibition is an exploration of love in its multiple forms featuring works by a range of contemporary artists.
Where would we be without love? It’s no wonder they say that love makes the world go round! Artists, writers and musicians have referenced love in their work for centuries. Just think about all the images, words and lyrics about love we all know and have responded to.
BOOK NOW
POOR IMAGINATION
Exhibition Tour with Rafi Abdullah
Sullivan+Strumpf | Singapore
Sunday, 25 August 2019, 3pm
The artists and curator will be sharing about the works in the exhibition and will touch on themes that surround the premise of the exhibition such as the conditions and environments of image distribution, images as signifiers, and the agency of the ‘poor image’.
ANNOUNCEMENT
POOR IMAGINATION
Sullivan+Strumpf | Singapore
Until 1 September 2019
In a bit of bittersweet news, we'd like to announce that Poor Imagination showing at our Singapore gallery will now be closing one week early, on Sunday, 1 September 2019.
ON VIEW NOW
POOR IMAGINATION
Sullivan+Strumpf | Singapore
Until 8 September 2019
Group exhibition curated by Rafi Abdullah, featuring the work of Stephanie Comilang, Fyerool Darma, Agan Harahap, Takuji Kogo, Tristan Lim, Michael Lindeman and Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran
Poor Imagination borrows its title from artist and writer Hito Steyerl's term: the 'poor image'. The 'poor image' is characterised as having an atrocious quality which deteriorates as it is distributed, an image readily and easily accessible. It is dormant debris in the landscape of excessive image production. Comprised of ceramics, paintings, prints and new-media works, the exhibition features seven artists whose work - whether overtly or covertly - employ the 'poor image' or embody its characteristics. The exhibition is an allusion to the autonomy and agency that the 'poor image' offers, mediating the plausible imaginations that they propose.
COMING UP
POOR IMAGINATION
Sullivan+Strumpf | Singapore
27 July - 8 September 2019
Group exhibition curated by Rafi Abdullah, featuring the work of Stephanie Comilang, Fyerool Darma, Agan Harahap, Takuji Kogo, Tristan Lim, Michael Lindeman and Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran
Poor Imagination borrows its title from artist and writer Hito Steyerl's term: the 'poor image'. The 'poor image' is characterised as having an atrocious quality which deteriorates as it is distributed, an image readily and easily accessible. It is dormant debris in the landscape of excessive image production. Comprised of ceramics, paintings, prints and new-media works, the exhibition features seven artists whose work - whether overtly or covertly - employ the 'poor image' or embody its characteristics. The exhibition is an allusion to the autonomy and agency that the 'poor image' offers, mediating the plausible imaginations that they propose.
INVITATION
ANNUAL SUMMER GROUP SHOW
Sullivan+Strumpf | Sydney
8 - 16 February 2019
Opening Friday, 8 February 2019, 6 - 8pm
To celebrate the first exhibition of our exciting 2019 program, join for the S+S Sydney Annual Summer Group Show next Friday, 8th February from 6pm.
FINAL WEEKEND
MICHAEL LINDEMAN
2018 Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award
Grafton Regional Gallery
Until this Sunday, 9 December 2018
The Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award seeks the innovation in contemporary drawing in Australia, its aesthetic freedoms and ability to crystallise a nascent idea. It platforms the central importance of drawing, as an endeavour in its own right as well as in the further development of artworks and it celebrates the significant freedom brought to contemporary drawing.
ATTEND
MICHAEL LINDEMAN
The Creative Act
The Delaware Contemporary, Delaware, USA
3 August - 24 October 2018
The Creative Act presents Lindeman's video work, Unit, and a series of large-scale text works designed specifically for a U.S. audience. The exhibition references Marcel Duchamp's lecture (also titled The Creative Act) in Houston at the meeting of the American Federation of the Arts in April of 1957. "The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act."
VISIT
MICHAEL LINDEMAN
An Awkward Dance
Sullivan+Strumpf | Sydney
Until 4 August 2018
ATTEND
MICHAEL LINDEMAN
An Awkward Dance
Sullivan+Strumpf | Sydney
29 June - 4 August 2018
Opening tomorrow, Friday 29 June, 6-8pm
Artist Talk from 6.30-7pm
Michael Lindeman’s, An Awkward Dance is a complex exploration into his own identity, a burrowing into the realm of institutional critique, and an exercise in bypassing culturally sanctioned principles.
An Awkward Dance is a presentation of paintings, drawings and sculpture that invert structures of power and authority with wit and sarcasm. Lindeman is compelled to make art that entertains himself, art that does something other than sitting on its arse in a gallery space. His conceptual practice calls for a dynamic engagement from the viewer by way of a shared experience.
INVITATION
MICHAEL LINDEMAN
An Awkward Dance
Sullivan+Strumpf | Sydney
29 June - 4 August 2018
Opening and Artist Talk: Friday, 29 June 2018, 6 - 8pm
Michael Lindeman’s, An Awkward Dance is a complex exploration into his own identity, a burrowing into the realm of institutional critique, and an exercise in bypassing culturally sanctioned principles.
An Awkward Dance is a presentation of paintings, drawings and sculpture that invert structures of power and authority with wit and sarcasm. Lindeman is compelled to make art that entertains himself, art that does something other than sitting on its arse in a gallery space. His conceptual practice calls for a dynamic engagement from the viewer by way of a shared experience.
An Awkward Dance sets out to activate repressed impulses, embody alienation, disrupt convention and invert structures of power, with a certain self-deprecating humour. In direct contrast to the notion of artist as genius, Lindeman’s wilful idiocy goes out on a limb, he risks his neck to propose a body of works that are a mismatch with any current fashionable aesthetics, it is an awkward dance.
UP NEXT
MICHAEL LINDEMAN
An Awkward Dance
Sullivan+Strumpf | Sydney
29 June - 4 August 2018
ATTEND
2018 GROUP SHOW
10 - 24 February 2018
Opening tomorrow, 3 - 5pm
Sullivan+Strumpf | Sydney
Join us for the annual S+S Group Show in Sydney, offering a glimpse of our forthcoming 2018 exhibition programme and advance previews of exciting new works by S+S artists.
CONGRATULATIONS
MICHAEL LINDEMAN
Black Swan Portrait Prize 2017 | Finalist
Art Gallery of Western Australia
1 - 27 November
> VIEW ARTIST PAGE
> MORE INFORMATION
COMING UP
DANE LOVETT + MICHAEL LINDEMAN
Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize Finalists
Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria
17 June - 17 September
> MORE INFORMATION
> VIEW ARTISTS PAGES
> ENQUIRE
COMING UP
2017
Group Exhibition
4 - 21 Feb
Opens 4 Feb | 3-5 pm
Sullivan+Strumpf Sydney
> VIEW EXHIBITION
Congratulations
MICHAEL LINDEMAN
2016 Recipient
Arts & Cultural Development Fund
Arts NSW
ATTEND
MICHAEL LINDEMAN
Studio Chatter
Opening today
Sullivan+Strumpf
3-5pm
Michael Lindeman’s new exhibition titled Studio Chatter takes form as the next step in a practice that follows an unwritten rule of misregistration, a type of idiosyncratic disruption that is out of sync with any fashionable genres. The exhibition gives voice to the conflicting thoughts of an artist, mapping an inner dialogue. The works presented in Lindeman’s Studio Chatter act as objects arranged on his mental mantelpiece in a mode grounded in conceptual processes.
COMING UP
MICHAEL LINDEMAN
Studio Chatter
5-23 December, 2015
Opening 5th December 3-5pm
Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney
GO SEE
Mug Shot: A Still Life Show
Gallery Ecosse
11 July - 20 August
INCLUDING:
MICHAEL LINDEMAN
> VIEW EXHIBITION
CONGRATULATIONS
Gregory Hodge & Michael Lindeman
Fisher's Ghost Art Award
Finalists
Campbelltown Arts Centre
25 October - 14 December