American Apparel tennis skirts, Lana Del Rey, washed-out digital images à la Terry Richardson, and blogging. The aesthetic markers of the first generation to grow up online are having a renaissance. As younger millennials and older zoomers lean in further to their puer aeternus tendencies and relive their teenage years, the web is awash with nostalgia for the 2010s. In 2006, around the same era, the term “post-internet” was coined by artist Maria Olsson. Post-internet described the internet slipping away from its status as a futuristic and foreign invention, instead becoming both a ubiquitous banality and ever-present spectral force. For this generation, online became a new locus of being, no longer a contained or separate technology. The artists of this era, like any before them, used whatever materials were at their disposal. Thus post-internet art was born.
One of the first notable alumni of this epoch is Petra Cortright (b. 1986, California). Her debut exhibition at 1301SW, haunted lemon hunted spirit, comprises a suite of digital paintings displayed over two rooms, each room clearly differentiated by subject matter and material. The gallery is a collaboration between Los Angeles’ 1301PE and New Zealand’s Stark White. In contrast to most of Melbourne’s other commercial offerings, it presents the work of both local and international contemporary artists, oftentimes alongside one another. (A recent group show, for example, included Joshua Petherick and Lewis Fiddock alongside sanctified artist’s artists such as Isa Genzken and Jessica Stockholder.)
Gemma Topliss is a writer and artist from Naarm/Melbourne.
