Pestorius Sweeney House

Pestorius Sweeney House, vintage photograph, 1965.

History
The Pestorius Sweeney House was designed in 1965 by the Brisbane architect Geoffrey Pestorius (1930-1968), for his brother-in-law Robert Sweeney. The two-level brick construction is a fine example of post-war domestic architecture in the International Style, its blocky 'minimal' form a unique synthesis of influences including the Bauhaus teachings of Mies van der Rohe, the Californian modernism of Neutra and Eames, traditional Japanese house and garden design, and the pioneering local architecture of Hayes & Scott. The house received a commendation for lighting from the Queensland Chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. Since 1999 it has been the site for a wide variety of art, architecture and music projects initiated by David Pestorius, the architect's son.

Location
The Pestorius Sweeney House is located in the inner Brisbane suburb of Hamilton, on the corner of Crescent Road and Eblin Drive. To get there by public transport, catch Bus No. 300 from stop No. 24 in the city (cnr. Adelaide/Edward St), or stop 229 in Fortitude Valley (cnr. Wickham/Brunswick St), alighting at stop No. 16 (cnr. Crescent Rd/Kingsford-Smith Drv). The bus ride should take about 15 minutes. Alternatively, catch a CityCat ferry to Bretts Wharf. The ride on the CityCat from the Southbank takes about 40 minutes, but it's well worth it if you have the time. Once at Bretts Wharf walk back along Kingsford-Smith Drive to Crescent Road, then up to the house. This should take another 5—10 minutes.

Current Project






Some Recent New York Video
16 December - 18 December, 2011
Opening: Friday December 16th, 6-9pm
Pestorius Sweeney House, Brisbane

Curated by Robert McKenzie and in its title connected to the twin exhibitions of American and Australian art that toured this country in 1973, Some Recent New York Video presents the work of Ellen Cantor (Detroit, born 1965), Danny McDonald (Los Angeles, born 1971), and Ken Okiishi (Ames, Iowa, born 1978).

Each a participant in the New York art scene, these artists and film makers work in an experimental tradition, inheritors of a pedigreed history that stretches from Andy Warhol and Jack Smith through to No Wave cinema, Charles Atlas, and Laura Cottingham/Leslie Singer, to name just a few of their forbears. Their immediate social and geographic scenario is the art worlds of New York, London and Berlin, and this is used as a ground against which narratives are constructed. Necessarily improvising, they conflate real stories with an hallucinatory allegorical other world. The use of friends and associates as actors amplifies this confusion, which carries with it ghosts of a "scene".

For each of the artists that essential cinematic term "location" is key. Cantor, whose video takes as its subject the lives of five children growing up under the rule of Chilean dictator Pinochet, deliberately recasts her story by shooting it in London and New York. These other cities, we become aware (one of the film's recurring themes is,“is tragedy a choice?”), are standing in for Pinochet's Chile and are themselves imprinted with this history.

McDonald’s video was filmed in the space of the Isabella Bortolozzi Gallery in Berlin. The premise, a fictitious one, was that McDonald was unable to travel to Berlin to produce the exhibition. Sent in his place is the elderly drag acid casualty Mindy Vale. From another time and head-space, Vale must try in vain to get together a satisfactory exhibition for the Berlin audience. Failure, in its conventional sense, is brought into sharp relief and the concept of a 'frame of reference' is elegantly relativised.

In Okiishi’s video, location is also paramount. Riffing on the reciprocal fascination between the art worlds of New York and Berlin, he uses his friends, his own biographical engagement with the cities (he is often described as living and working in both places), and famous representations of these places (in the form of Woody Allen's Manhattan) to understand and experience how it is; as he has said, that “Manhattan is translated through Berlin and back again.”

The exhibition will take place at the Pestorius Sweeney House over the weekend of 16 December.

Friday 16 December, 6–9pm, Opening

Saturday 17 December, 11am—5pm, Gallery hours extended

Sunday 18 December, 11am—5pm, Gallery hours extended

Sunday, 18 December, 5—7pm, Robert McKenzie, Catherine Chevalier, and A.D.S. Donaldson in conversation. As an adjunct to this exhibition, curator Robert McKenzie will be joined by Catherine Chevalier, founding editor of the Paris-based May Revue, to discuss some of the themes that emerge from the exhibition. As well, the Sydney artist A.D.S. Donaldson who will present 'The Provincialism Solution', a paper co-authored with Brisbane art historian Rex Butler. Attendance is free, however booking is essential.

Robert McKenzie is an artist, writer and curator who has lived in New York since 2008. As well as producing exhibitions, McKenzie has published the art fanzines Slave and Sandwich, while in 2009, with Paul Foss, Rex Butler and others, he co-authored The Ampersand Files: Art & Text 1981–2002. McKenzie's last curated project in Brisbane was the Slave exhibition Freedom for Prosperity at the Pestorius Sweeney House in 2005.

For further information, please contact David Pestorius on (07) 3262 4870.