Rodney Graham Band - ABC - April 25

Canadian ‘photoconceptualist’ Rodney Graham can’t, in his own words, “paint his way out of a paper bag”. He has, however, forged a successful career out of fusing such disparate artistic strands as sculpture, photography, film and music. Constant in his framing of such work have been the themes of staging and repetition. For his live music shows, the staging is centrepieced by the Rotary Psycho-Opticon, a giant kinetic sculpture with a very retrospective inspiration. The repetition is provided by the inspipid country and western strumming employed to couch Graham’s rather wry observations (prime example: closing the set suggesting the whole experience has not been “my finest hour”). In all, Graham tends to draw impish delight in juxtaposing the achingly pretentious with the crashingly dull. With one deft manoeuvre, Graham, 59, manages to transform the entire audience into the focal point of his artistic endeavours with the wryly humorous song Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30. They’re old and they’re fucking mean, apparently.