Art review: Footy Fever at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Gorman House Arts Centre

Footy Fever is an idiosyncratic exhibition that, according to the CCAS media release, "seeks to represent the wildly varying connections that artists have with Aussie rules, rugby league, rugby union, soccer, and wheelchair rugby".

It is an ambitious premise and given that the exhibition also, purportedly, "explores the way artists engage with the sport through themes of sexuality, belief, belonging, nostalgia, religion, war, dedication and fandom" as well as declaring "football's enduring relevance in the world of art", a big ask of the curator.

That said, the curator, Alexander Boynes, who has indeed asked these questions of himself, has delivered a compelling collection of 34 works dating from 1989 to 2015.

The works, drawn from 15 artists, are said to hold connections with football in its various manifestations in an Australian context. Some of them manifestly do, and are loudly current, as, for example, Alex Asch's F--- the Haters (2015), a pertinent social and political statement – a certainly less potent aesthetic one.

Boynes has attempted a wide sweep in the range of artists he has included in Footy Fever. Some, such as Meta Rothery – Plugger 1 (1996) and Plugger 2 (1997) – despite her works having a quaintly naive attraction, have little claim to professional status in the art world. Others, notably Jon Cattapan – Home Game 1. The Peanut Farm (2008) – hold serious national reputations. These selective extremes add to the overall visual interest of the exhibition while their inclusion reinforces the curator's idiosyncratic eclecticism.

The aesthetic democracy mirrored in Boynes' choice of artists and accompanying works provides a number of ways for viewers to embrace (or not) his ambitious thematic thesis. There is a lot that is visually captivating that might seem to hold tenuous connections with the curator's professed theme. Other works clearly are concerned with football, at least in the imaginations of the artists who created them.

Dinni Kunoth Kemarre's five wooden sculptures (all from 2008) of Indigenous football stars are compelling exemplars of the elision of contemporary Australian culture with traditional ways of representation. The possibilities of cultural coexistence are quietly played off against the overt racism articulated in Asch's F--- the Haters, a reference to the recent slurs thrown at Aboriginal footballer Adam Goodes.

While Kemarre's works (and others – notably Glenn Morgan and Richard Lewer) clearly pictorialise aspects of (various) football codes (with accompanying interrogative ironies), others adopt art historical and cultural poses with essentially vestigial references to football and rather more to their own visual languages.

Mariana Del Castillo's Confessions of a Footy Head (2015) is a characteristically clever and sophisticated work overlaid with subtle cultural allusions and a not too distant take on Salvador Dali's L'homme fleur.

In her use of found and familiar objects Del Castillo is able to imbue her art with layered cultural reverberations that speak at once of her South American past, her Australian present and her acknowledgement and concomitant understanding of the value of art history and its ongoing pertinence in her practice.

Her two pieces in Footy Fever reinforce for me the incisive aesthetic intelligence of this artist. Louise Paramor's Punters Club (2015) speaks of the poetry of the everyday. Her use of found objects offers a very different vision to that of Del Castillo.

Paramor is interested in surface, in veneer, in referencing and commenting through her unique combinations the world of fashion, media and mass communications, and thus by connection the visualising of popular entertainment and here viz. football. Her almost surreal composite is both comment and question.

One of the most conspicuous pieces in Footy Fever is David Spooner's esoterically lavish installation Electronic Football League (2007-ongoing). His teams of 12 players and four captains are suspended from the ceiling in a loosely circular configuration.

Each player is constructed from fabric, stitched, knitted, quilted and stuffed. The manner of production essentially speaks of women's work and in that femininity subverts the assumed masculinity of the players.

Spooner's suspended dolls ask in their material softness and in their carefully articulated but nevertheless unexplained physical relationships to one another, telling questions about gender and sexuality and society's expectations of these as operating in the world of football.

More elemental questions are raised in Daniel Savage's The Rugby Creed (2015), a video and audio installation in MIDDLEspace. This is a poignant yet compellingly frank piece whose directness insists on viewer involvement.

It is about the impact of disability on an individual's life (here, four individuals) and the liberation provided through participation in wheelchair rugby. Each of the protagonists individually verbalises a text (the same for each) that celebrates the intimate and symbiotic relationship between him and his wheelchair.

Finally all four recite the text in unison. The gallery is darkened. The video of the four protagonists (almost life-size) occupies the wall opposite the entry. To the left of the entry a wheelchair sits, lightly illuminated, a mute commentator yet an essential and real partner to the images and voices on the wall. The Rugby Creed is a powerful inclusion, a serious foil to much of the rest of the work; its physical isolation an appropriate acknowledgment of its content and message.

Footy Fever is an ambitious exhibition with a thematic premise difficult to deliver. Boynes has selected a diverse and engaging group of works to elucidate his thesis and his selection is both engaging and intelligent.