A Pompeiian Fancy

BACKGROUND A Pompeiian Fancy was an invitation to respond to two separate but convergent exhibitions both under the signature of the 'Centre for Style'. The first exhibition is a curated work entitled Atrophy Amphitheatre and is an invited inclusion in the Lurid Beauty exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria that examined the influence of Surrealism on Australian art. The second exhibition collects a number of works by local and international artists in the backyard of Linde's studio and residence in Fitzroy entitled Cabin Fever Creature. SIGNIFICANCE Centre for Style is a contemporary avant-garde fashion collective based in Melbourne operating as fashion retail store, exhibition space, curatorial team and incubator for the critical examination of fashion practices. Under the guidance of Matthew Linde, the loosely formed group has been exhibited in Melbourne, Sydney, Los Angeles, New York and the Berlin Art Biennale. A Pompeiian fancy was featured in the Centre for Style digital Rag and via ArtViewer an online portal dedicated to the promotion of emerging contemporary art practices internationally. CONTRIBUTION A Pompeiian Fancy offered a review in the form of three acts that drew Lucien Freud's figure of Gradiva, the muse of the Surrealists, across the two very different and divergent exhibitions: one at a gallery of international significance and another in a backyard in Fitzroy, Melbourne. It also addressed the need to attend to the experience of the exhibition output by way of a autobiographical approach; offering both a critical framing of the collected works and a novel textual approach that could collect the various parts and many contributors, and cast a shadow of its own beyond the contributions already made.