Spencer Lai
Modes
Neon Parc South Yarra
8 June - 6 July 2024
I’m miserable, but I’m wearing a thrifted YSL dinner shirt, a grey Nike sweater, and an orange, red and brown cross-body bag by Mandarina Duck. I’m on my way to Spencer Lai’s show, Modes, at Neon Parc South Yarra. My girlfriend tells me that Mandarina Duck is a “very Spencer brand,” and this is why I choose not only to wear it for this occasion, but to own it altogether. In 2007, Mandarina Duck designed a special edition of the Nissan Micra and, even from within my blatant heterosexual subjectivity, I experience a kind of homosexual longing for this vehicle.
Thankfully, Spencer notices the bag immediately upon my arrival. Alexis Kanatsios, who Spencer collaborated with on several parts of Modes, comes from halfway down the alley to register his acknowledgement of the bag also. He addresses all questions relating to the bag to my girlfriend. I notice aloud that Spencer is wearing those Balenciaga pretend motorbike boots. He becomes sheepish, and so do I, so we decide to part ways for the moment so I can look at the show and so he can sort of weather the feeling of being the centre of attention.
I’ve decided I’m going to get drunk today. It’s friend and painter Tori Stolz who is being paid to give me wines. There’s chunky homemade Tzatziki on a trestle table, which is probably the chunkiest Tzatziki I’ve ever had, and I ponder that sometimes a thing’s chunkiness can indicate its authenticity. It’s a thought that aspires to a kind of Spencer-like quality.
Inside, the first thing I notice is the home-cinema setup. Because I’ve recently become a member of the CRT Collective on Facebook, I have a heightened sensitivity to seeing CRT monitors in the wild — especially if they’re unique or unusual looking and have been obtained at an impressively low price. I tell some people nearby that I can see a torn-off sticker mark on the back of the monitor, and for some reason I have total confidence that this mark is the remnants of a Cash Converters price tag. They don’t think they can see the sticker mark. It appears they don’t believe that there’s any way I could know such a thing; that my guess about the TV’s origins is baseless conjecture, which, I suppose, is totally fair for them to think. Later, Spencer confirms that Alexis purchased the monitor from Cash Converters for $300, noting his skill for sourcing a bargain. I feel vindicated, as though I possess some form of mysterious, hidden knowledge that enables me to identify the secret syntax permeating all of Spencer’s work. I feel like… what? – an ally? Is it the language of Gay Consumerism in Australia to which I have an uncanny attunement? Help me understand. I imagine Bang and Olufsen as Danish boyfriends now. They sit cross-legged on the floor of a log cabin, sharing old vinyl dance classics through a headphone splitter; big toes touching ever-so-slightly through patterned-sock feet.
For some reason, author Christos Tsolkias comes to mind. I think, firstly, of a scene from The Slap (2007) that I find really vivid and awe inspiring, even though it’s sort of innocuous and fleeting in the scheme of the entire novel. It’s a scene describing some very mid-to-late 2000s Australian phenomena: a young family man, first generation Greek-Australian, recently wealthy, with a brand new, over-zealous home cinema setup. He smokes bongs with a Vietnamese migrant who is selling bootlegged DVDs of recently released movies that he’s imported. A copy of Finding Nemo is purchased for the kids. I think that there is something in what Tsolkias points to, something in the portrayal of a familiar kind of living – something terrifying, like the notion of a shared Australian identity lying dormant within the collective unconscious – that is alive, too, here in Spencer’s work. It’s as though what is being described is an aspirational urge that verges on the ridiculous, that tips the scales of embarrassment back into the realm of shyness. Or it’s something like the comedic quality of overcompensation that both Spencer and Christos artfully distil – an acknowledgement of the rupture of an ideal, a hoped-for vision of the self, of us, of something. I can’t quite name it, but it’s there, I’m sure of it.
Back at the bar, somebody doesn’t want to finish their own wine so they tip it into my glass. This is in line with what I had hoped for my day. A friend and I re-enter, making a beeline for the oddly shaped, mid-century looking table with an orange-y-red top. Spencer’s works here contrast textiles with patinated metal; a perfect red omelette of foam next to some tiny rusted bells, a weird doll with a sheer ribbon offcut veil, a drawing of two faces that leans on a rusted metal frame, and an ancient object that resembles a handbag — plus a few other tidbits and accoutrements. My friend tells me he thinks this table of works is the best part of the show, and I emphatically assure him that I was literally just saying this to someone else.
One thing that Spencer manages to do really well is to not surrender the bitsy-ness of his work, even from within the confines of a commercial gallery affair where discrete-ness and saleability take precedence over more introverted and exploratory material encounters. Call me a romantic, but I prefer these details that are a waste of time. I’m enamoured by these offerings, these intricate little reminders that our purpose as artists is poetry first, secure the bag second. For most of us, art will never be a primary source of income anyway, so why not just get an ‘ok job’ and make whatever feels good to make? It occurs to me that I’m miserable for reasons that feel external to me. I decide to just let it go and shuffle on to the framed wall works.
The thing that always strikes me about these works is that they present such varied modes of intentionality. Some of the more harried, kind of stabby mark-making on the foam sheets seem to have been automatic, without any traceable reason or inferable meaning. But then a mark in this fashion will later be decorated with the head of a pin, or a little bead or bauble. It’s a doubling down on what is initially an act of instinct. It needs to be decorated, it needs to be elevated, to be justified, to be remembered. I see it again; impulsive mark making is later refined through some other, more considered action; an action whose purpose is to situate this anonymous signifier of human consciousness within a broader frame of self, of era, of context – whatever it may be. A picture may be embedded, too, showing a warped minimalist architectural space, the perspective morphing into some sort of dance-party scene; space and use-case darting in and out of awareness as though different sides of a Rubik’s Cube. From one image I may infer a child’s yearning for adulthood, of dream homes and future scenarios, then from another I may infer something about new-age spirituality, or early 2000s subjectivity, or something.
Then there are the actual frames. Powder coated steel; fabrication presumably outsourced. A final decision made with the intention of elevating something that originated, perhaps, as impulsive and unmeasured, to the higher status of something more contained, more considered, more worthy of attention. There is real artistry here too. Maintaining some semblance of fidelity to the initial scratch — the initial impulse that drives the entire process before any meaning can be inferred — is perhaps the true nature of our work as artists. To be able to do this successfully is to have chanced upon some sort of ineffable balance that must be struck between creativity, community, and whatever it is that the market is doing. I’m not sure many of us will ever achieve this. I’m certainly hopeful for Spencer, though — more so than most.
Well on my way to being sloshed, I wonder about the little cups with resin ice cubes holding sprigs of mint in suspended animation, looking like so many abandoned drinks at a hotel kick-ons. Alexis later informs me that the idea for these works was formed in the aftermath of Reception, an offsite show in the Docklands that Spencer had put on as a part of his Bossy’s Gallery project. From memory, because the show took place in a community centre, no alcohol was allowed, so they served soda waters with mint. There was a significant turnout, and, as a result, the aftermath of the opening left hundreds of discarded cups with ice and mint remnants artfully placed with careless abandon. I can imagine the joy that Spencer and Alexis felt in investigating the aftermath of this affair because I feel it too, now, as I attempt to make sense of things. Here is a form of observational comedy, except with particular emphasis on objects, as opposed to other instances of human affairs. It’s as though what I’m looking at is a room made in the likeness of an art show; one that is happening at some other gallery, in some other time period. This show looks as though it is a Show at Neon Parc South Yarra, even though that is irrefutably what it is. I try to remember what I learned in art school about New Sincerity, and I recall a YouTube video on meta-humour, but neither explanation helps, really. I imagine, then, that there is a word for this sort of thing that Deleuze and Guattari probably invented in, like, the 1990’s, and it comforts me to know that I don’t have to try and blaze this trail thirty-five years later, all on my own.
All that aside, I’m wondering now how to understand Modes as a whole. Standing in such a way that I can view the show almost in its entirety, I squint a little bit and attempt a form of psychological abstraction whereby I’m no longer looking at an exhibition but just a room with some people and some things in it. I’m not sure why this feels necessary, I suppose it’s just interesting to decontextualise things a little sometimes, to understand it all from a more reduced perspective.
I stop by the chunky Tzatziki table for some more chunky Tzatziki and a dried date. I mutter about how I just learned that a date is not a prune, because a prune is a dried plum, and a date is just a date; but nobody is listening anyway. Another wine. One more loop of the gallery. I guess I’ll continue being an artist.
Chris Madden continues to be an artist in Melbourne. He is also currently completing his Masters of Counselling.
Supported by Creative Victoria, City of Melbourne and City of Yarra.
This piece is commissioned by one of our 2024 un Extended editor-in-residents: Ella Howells.