 |
| Match Details |
| Round |
Round 4 |
| Opposition |
Archers |
| Date |
13-Oct-2001 & 20-Oct-2001 |
| Ground |
Moore Park 23 |
| Match Summary |
| Result |
|
| Archers 1st innings |
all out, 121 runs
|
| Kurrajong Gypsies 1st innings |
8 wickets declared, 230 runs
|
| Archers 2nd innings |
6 wickets, 150 runs
|
| Match Report |
Volume 9, Round 4
Glebe Gypsies v Archers
The art world was abuzz this week after the sensational new performance work by the artists’ collective colloquially known as ‘The Gypsies.’ The eclectic group premiered an installation entitled Floppy Stumps, No.2 at their Moore Park Gallery to a freeloading art crowd that included Edmund Capon, Leo Schofield, and two boys from Knox College confiscated from Capon’s trousers. Originally working in grass stains and browned jocks, the Gypsies burst onto the art scene in the early 1990’s with If You Loved Me You Would Let Me Throw Up In This Gutter (1994), a work that vividly portrayed the agony of being barred from the Courthouse Hotel and influenced Trevor Jesty’s penetrating Jobby Please (1992). Their first experiment with bodily fluids Everybody Loves Mrs. Palmer (1995) was described by a horrified Robert Hughes as “a gripping account of my sex life, post-accident.”
Floppy Stumps, No.2 pays homage to the great landscape artists of the nineteenth century through its Turneresque depiction of Gypsies gamboling in the meadow and in its Tony masterful use of line and length. The viewer is drawn into noticing how the toiling Archers in the top right-hand corner are unable to cope with Chung and Cohen’s use of light, seam and texture. Although the batsmen lack technique, this is likely due to the sort of self-referential portraiture that was swept away by Manet and others at the Salon des Refuses in 1867 – an exhibition described by a young Charlie Bannerman as “as heady as Bardsley’s armpits.” Also noteworthy is the sledging, with the close-in Gypsy fieldsmen evoking the Hell panel from Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (1510), while the handsome Bradley figure, taking a slips catch with his stomach, adds a touch of fleshy homoeroticism. Archers’ total of 121 was well short of the critics’ expectations, with Richard Wilkins comparing their batting to “wandering in a maze with a Jeffrey Smart on every wall.”
Prominent critic, TV hostess and part-time nuclear physicist Kim Kilbey expressed disappointment at the Archers’ total of 121, suggesting that the artists who worked on the front panels were either too intoxicated or “candidates for the One Nation leadership.” At last Saturday’s opening, Angry Penguin Ben Futon-Smythe called for an aggressive attack on myopic boundaries, however Associate Professor T Hollywood, a veteran of the Heidelberg school, disagreed with his contention that figurative painting had no place in Modernism and sent him back to the open bar for only 9 glasses of chardonnay. Barnett the Elder and then Hollywood himself were both victims of the Umpire’s rigid interpretation of neo-classicism and the exhibition was precariously placed at 3/27. At this point, a discussion ensued about the light. Barnett the Younger argued that Fauvism could not have existed without Cézanne. The Umpire, betraying his preference for the Dutch Masters, countered that the situation was far better than in Rembrandt’s Nightwatch (1642), where play continued right up until the death of the Duke some months later in Prague. The matter was settled when an enraged Captain Cutlet stormed onto the podium dressed as a sardine and quoted the relevant passage from Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto (1924) while wearing gumboots full of spaghetti. He was later arrested for impersonating a dissecting table.
The central panels show Chung and Senior Constable Miller giving the archers’ bowling the Mapplethorpe treatment. In a homage to Bruegel’s Date Inferno (1541), Chung can be seen administering 115 lashes to Mr. Shoosh by the Lake of Fiery Excrement. At the post-match ICAC inquiry, Miller admitted that his poor catching was a result of a childhood trauma involving a bullwhip and a dwarf. We can note touches here of the great Cubist fast bowler Rodney Hogg, who spent time at the Greg Chappell Academy of Art, where he rebelled after being forced to make 10,000 drawings of Whistler’s Mother and was eventually expelled for refusing to bowl underarm. These images tend to obscure the inclusion of local performance artist Ray Briggs, whose endless supply of bad jokes eventually forces the declaration in the penultimate canvas, in turn overshadowing Junior’s suicidal batting flirtation with abstract expressionist running between the wickets. A feature only later brought out by restorers using linseed oil and KY jelly was an uninspiring second innings from the Archers where the Gypsies attempt to consummate their victory through a mixture of Cohen’s religious iconography and Dadaist trash by slow bowler Kitty Vanstead. Understandably, this was painted over.
Captain Cutlet stunned critics after the match by revealing that the Gypsies had abandoned plans to enter this year’s Archibald prize with a sausage meat and marmalade portrait of Kim Beazley, opting instead to premiere a new work, Cop That You Losers at the Association delegates’ meeting this week. He added “we feel an obligation to the Australian cultural landscape to pursue our artistic freedom, and if people are offended by that – great!” |
|
|
| Archers 1st innings |
| Cohen, Nathan |
17 overs, 4 for 42 |
| Chung, Ewen |
16 overs, 4 for 36 |
| Bradley, Steve |
5 overs, 0 for 25 |
| Barnett, Tim |
6 overs, 0 for 9 |
|
| Kurrajong Gypsies 1st innings |
| Fenton-Smith, Ben |
9 |
| Masters, Tony |
9 |
| Barnett, Tim |
5 |
| Chung, Ewen |
115 |
| Barnett, Steve |
22 |
| Miller, Alan |
29 |
| Davies, Andrew |
4 |
| Gray, James |
0 |
| Fenton-Smith, Will |
3* |
| Cohen, Nathan |
1* |
|
| Archers 2nd innings |
| Cohen, Nathan |
10 overs, 3 for 37 |
| Barnett, Tim |
9 overs, 1 for 25 |
| Chung, Ewen |
4 overs, 0 for 17 |
| Barnett, Steve |
4 overs, 1 for 25 |
| Fenton-Smith, Will |
3 overs, 1 for 21 |
| Masters, Tony |
3 overs, 0 for 17 |
|
|
