hobART

The Museum as Art: site-specific art in Australia's public museums

2012-09-17T20:44:00.000+10:00

I'm finally at the pointy end of my PhD - the bit where you're trying to decipher the doorstop Chicago Manual of Style, work out how to resize images, and battle Microsoft Word's tendency to switch back to US English spelling half way through a spell check. I know it's not my usual blog writing style, but here's my abstract anyway:

This thesis critically examines site-specific art projects in Australian museums from the late 1960s onwards. Despite the fact that site-specific art practice is relatively widespread, there have been few in-depth or systematic studies published on this subject, particularly in terms of its historical and theoretical foundations. More importantly, there have been no in-depth studies explicitly on Australian site-specific art, and so my research aims to extend the existing knowledge on this art form while applying it to an Australian context.

Because the site-specific field is vast, I narrowed my research to focus on artworks located in museums, including art, natural history, cultural history museums, historic houses and sites, and botanic gardens. The inclusion of such a wide range of museums is in part due to the fact that the artistic projects in these institutions vary greatly. Additionally, the comparisons between art museums, and those in which art is a (usually) temporary visitor reveal certain aspects of Australian culture, values and colonial history, than discussing art museums alone. The title, ‘the museum as art’, refers to the role of the museum as site, subject and medium in the site-specific works of art under examination. It reinforces the significant relationship and dialogue with the museum in question - the museum is an integral part of the artwork.

The key aim of this thesis is to identify and critically analyse significant site-specific art projects undertaken in Australian museums by both local and international artists. I also critique existing theoretical writings about site-specific art, particularly the paradigms established by Miwon Kwon and James Meyer and devise my own working models as applicable to museum-based site-specific art. The aim is not to replace these paradigms, but to expand on existing models using local and more recent examples. Although this thesis focuses on Australian site-specific art practice, and the way in which Australian museums construct knowledge and reflect national values, my models are equally relevant to international museums.

The chapters in this thesis are arranged thematically, centred around significant art examples which are in turn used to illustrate wider issues relating to site-specific art practice. In analysing a large number of art projects, I have observed a range of strategies used by artists working in museums. Firstly, an artwork may respond to the physical or spatial aspects of the museum. Artworks also frequently interact with a museum’s collection or archives, or question the institution’s representation of history or social constructions of nature. Others mimic museum classification strategies or highlight ingrained display methods that have become normalised, almost invisible, to the average visitor. More functionally, the work might be used by curators to enliven tired museum spaces or communicate aspects of history poetically, allowing for speculative histories or subjective responses – methods unavailable to regular historians. Lastly, an artwork may seek to preserve intangible heritage or highlight gaps in knowledge or history, particularly when it comes to the representation of Aboriginal Australians or women.

I argue that current site-specific art practice reflects a move away from the Modernist frame, illustrated by the growing popularity of non-art museum sites and converted ex-industrial ‘raw’ spaces, particularly since the mid-1990s. Theorists such as Kwon and Meyer tend to ignore the pre-Modernist philosophy towards art, where art frequently sat in dialogue with the site. However, contemporary site-specific art practice, although distinctly different to the pre-Modern site/art relationship, indicates an acknowledgment and celebration of the unavoidable influence of exhibition environments on works of art.

At the start of this research, I questioned the notion of an ‘Australian art’; however, I can now demonstrate that site-specific art, more than any other art form, has the ability to address distinctly Australian concerns. It can reveal how a nation’s museums not only reflect, but also develop and promote particular values and knowledge. The very marginality of art practice makes it an ideal method in which to critically examine cultural assumptions and norms, and despite the risk of site-specific art projects becoming a form of institutionalised institutional critique, I have demonstrated how artworks can question institutional authority and highlight gaps in knowledge in a way that curators, historians and museum directors simply cannot. By recording a range of artistic interventions in Australia’s public museums, and analysing them in relation to both existing site-specific theories as well as my new extended models, this thesis demonstrates not only the complexities of site-specific art practice, but also the role that art can play in interpreting, challenging and re-presenting existing knowledge as mediated by the museum.

18th Biennale of Sydney: a walk on the island

2012-07-05T00:42:00.003+10:00

My contribution to Ewa Partum's courtyard installation

I spent last week traipsing around the Sydney Biennale – an exhibition that seems to be growing larger every year. The popular Cockatoo Island is used as a site for the 3^rd event running, as is Pier 2/3, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), and a new addition: Carriageworks. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the botanic gardens, which is disappointing because many of my favourite works from the last biennales were sited there.

Ricardo Lanzarini, Cockatoo Island

The artworks on Cockatoo Island this year are, on the whole, far more in dialogue with the site than previous years. We’re so used to viewing art against ‘neutral’ white walls that the constructed environment of the Modern museum has almost become invisible. Comparatively, when art is placed in complex semiotic sites where the surrounding environment is very obvious and at risk of overwhelming the art, it’s important that artists and curators take this into account. Four years ago, I commented on the Biennale’s promotion of ‘more than 30 site-specific’ artworks supposedly on Cockatoo Island. As a buzzword, site-specific art makes for good press releases, however punters are confused when the works don’t actually relate to the site. This year’s Cockatoo Island artworks include some site-specific artworks, but far more that are suitably installed in dialogue with the site without being strictly site-specific. For instance, Ricardo Lanzarini’s drawings in a utilitarian-looking room on the top of the island are clustered near the pipes, doorways and other existing features (The artist also has a series of intricately drawn books made from cigarette papers displayed at the AGNSW).

The roofless structure that houses Tiffany Singh's installation

Also notable is Tiffany Singh’s colourful wind chime artwork installed in an oddly-shaped roofless structure on the western end of the island. From the outside, the bamboo chimes are barely audible, yet within the sandstone walled structure, accessed by a small opening that requires the viewers to crouch on entry, the hundreds of chimes clatter loudly with the movement of the wind. On a sunny day, the dark shadows cast by the grid of coloured chimes and reverberating sound completely surrounds and involves the viewer

Tiffany Singh, Knock on the Sky Listen to the Sound

In keeping with my obsession with artworks that construct the lives of fictional people within exhibition spaces, I appreciate Iris Haussler’s He Dreamed Overtime, sited in a cracked sandstone house on the top island. However, when I challenge the invigilators on the story of the mysterious island caretaker, it is obvious they needed a bit more lying practice.

Iris Haussler's He Dreamed Overtime (installation shot)

Nicholas Hlobo, Ingubo Yesizwe

Peter Robinson, Gravitas Lite

I also enjoy Nicholas Hlobo’s kelp-like installation, Ingubo Yesizwe in the Docks Precinct, where it’s initially unclear whether the mound of sewn black rubber, slumped on a boat ramp, is an artwork. There’s no fancy lighting or plinths here.

Peter Robinson’s epic mound of carved polystyrene chains, which sit on, around, and within the rusty machinery in the Industrial Precinct, also relates nicely to the site, the (for now) white plastic contrasting with the darkened waste. Once I get over my initial ‘yeah, so, you can carve a chain, so what?’ (yes, I’m petty), it’s clear that in its scale and material, the installation is very successful. Nearby are Philip Beesley’s Avatar-like hanging objects, Hylozoic Series, which react to the viewers’ touch and movement.

Philip Beezley, Hylozoic Series (detail)

As one of my friends remarked, the island is populated with ‘floaty’ artworks. Adjacent to Beesley’s work are Ed Pien and Tanya Tagaq’s hanging fabric and rope mazes (supposedly representing rain), and Monika Grzymala’s installation completed with the Euraba Artists and Papermakers, which looks like seedpods being blown away in the wind in suspended animation. While these three installations aren’t site-specific, they sit comfortably in the tall warehouse spaces

Erin Manning, Stitch in Time - A Collective Fashioning, installation shot

Li Hongbo, Ocean of Flowers

The ‘floaty’ artwork by Erin Manning, on the other hand, looks like something unfortunate washed up from Byron Bay, where scraps of hanging fabric and tulle surround a project table set up with thread and needles. The work on the warehouse floor below – Li Hongbo’s Ocean of Flowers - is more considered. The clusters of colourful accordion paper sculptures form a cartoon-like landscape though which viewers are allowed to walk. Later, we are shown the shapes that form the basis of these happy looking objects: guns and bullets. To be honest, I’m disappointed that the work can’t just be about the objects, that it had to be made out of war-associated objects. Like Pien and Tagaq’s artwork, the installation is made more complex than it needs to be.


The basis of Li Hongbo's paper sculptures

Jonathan Jones, Untitled (Oysters and Teacups)

As with the 2008 biennale, the iconic island tunnels are used for site-specific artworks. Clustered around the bend in the Dog-Leg tunnel, Daan Roosegaarde’s light poles interact with the viewers’ movement. Jonathan Jones’ ubiquitous geometrically arranged fluorescent lights are also triggered by our passage through the shorter Tunnel 1 (his other artwork is pictured left). Jon Pylypchuk’s Esky miner creatures digging away at the northern end of the Dog-Leg are a humorous addition to the cave-like annex.

Jon Pylypchuk, Spend the Rest of Your Life Mining this Death and it Will Only Bring You Dispair

Near the entrance to the tunnel is part of Fujiko Nakaya’s moody fog sculpture, which follows a similar work by the artist exhibited in the 1976 Sydney Biennale. (Now for some trivia:) The 1976 work was renamed and installed site-specifically in the sculpture garden at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra – a place that, unlike Cockatoo Island, probably doesn’t need any more fog.

Looking out of the warehouse towards Fujiko Nakaya's fog sculpture (clouds extra)

Pinaree Sanpitak, Anything Can Break, MCA

As I wrote earlier, the Biennale includes a substantial number of works, and while the island’s scale to an extent relieves the perception of overcrowding, the MCA is not so lucky. Crowding aside, the MCA’s exhibition is pretty disappointing. The comparison between the excellent exhibition of the museum’s acquisitions on level 2, and the underwhelming and congested biennale installation on 1 and 3, is pretty indicative.

The Biennale exhibition at the AGNSW is separately titled In Finite Blue Planet, complying with the art world’s current love of separ at ing wo rds (and its rarely for obvious reasons). Evidently, the exhibition’s focus is on environmental concerns, however, there seems to be far stronger threads relating to craft, labour and work. Gao Rong’s trompe l'oeil life-sized domestic interior diorama is painstakingly hand embroidered, Hassan Sharif’s installation consists colourful piles (each a separate artwork) of obsessively wrapped found objects, and Nipan Oranniwesna’s fragile City of Ghost is an intricate map formed with scented baby powder (I witness a child write his name in it on the biennale’s second day. Good luck, invigilators). Then there are the delicate cut-outs: Yuken Teuya’s Notice-Forest: Six Jewels carved out of branded paper shopping bags, and Jorge’s Macchi’s altered world map.

Hassan Sharif, various works (1985-2007)

The star of the biennale is Cockatoo Island, which has been the case for the last three events. Then again, perhaps it’s as much to do with the spectacular machinery and nostalgic industrial fetish as the art itself.

...and maybe the Island Bar.

The Glover Prize, The Mercury and a massive beat up

2012-03-13T22:49:00.000+11:00

On Friday evening, the Glover Prize - a landscape art competition initiated by the community of Evandale, Tasmania - was awarded to Rodney Pople, who painted the Port Arthur historic site in the state’s south. In this landscape stands the figure of Martin Bryant, who in 1996 went on a mass shooting spree, killing 35 people and injuring 21, thereby adding another layer of brutal history to the already notorious ex-penal settlement.

This post is not exploring the merits of Rodney Pople’s painting per se. Instead, I want to examine the media beat up by Hobart’s local paper, the Mercury. The newspaper has framed this story in a way that misleads readers and incites anger.

The morning after the Glover Prize announcement, the paper led with the story ‘Bryant Painting Prize Outrage.’ This headline is misleading, simply because at the time that the story was uploaded to the Mercury website, 12.01 am, there was little outrage; no outrage in Evandale, at least. In fact, there was no time for outrage, because it was uploaded only hours after the announcement. Nick Clark does quote two people who were unhappy with the subject of Pople’s painting, writing that John Warren, ex-police inspector, is ‘outraged’. Warren is then quoted as saying he’s “outraged.” Warren also thinks that others should be ‘outraged’. Anyway, you get the point.

The Mercury wanted their paper-selling story on the Glover Prize, and by selling ‘outrage’ they got it (slight digression: in the Glover Prize’s nine years, this is the first time that the Mercury has really reported on it). In the comments section under the online story, readers tell us they’re ‘outraged’ (funny that), furious, offended, and horrified that a painting that includes Martin Bryant could even be painted, let alone win a prize. What was most worrying, however, was that people expressed their concern that Bryant’s figure took up the height of the painting. Why would they think that his figure takes up the entire canvas, despite the fact that it’s barely visible on the actual painting until examined close-up? Well, it’s because the Mercury cropped the image so that Bryant’s figure is far more prominent than it actually is. Additionally, they have photoshopped the image to increase the contrast and brighten the colours. The readers, therefore, are basing their judgement of the work on a photoshopped image and incendiary article. To be fair, another smaller image is included with the online story – a photo of the artist and his painting in the background. However, the painting is angled and hard to view.

The cropped and photoshopped image on the Mercury website

Pople's painting as it appears on the Sydney Morning Herald website

Comparatively, other news outlets were less hysterical. The Sydney Morning Herald (Martin Bryant Painting Causes Controversy; Landscape art prize for seeming idyll harbouring sinister side) and the ABC websites used the word ‘controversial’ to describe Pople’s painting, but both used the full image to illustrate the story, and neither of them used the same incendiary language that the Mercury did. Significantly, The Examiner, which is Northern Tasmania’s main paper (and therefore Evandale’s local paper), noted the painting’s notorious subject in their Saturday article (State's Darkest Hour Wins Glover Prize), but described the work relatively intelligently and quoted the judges and artist fairly.

On the Sunday, two days after the prize announcement, the Mercury (seeing it was on to something) printed yet another inflammatory article, this time by Brandt Teale: “Prize artist defiant onBryant”. Not only did it give weight to ridiculous suggestions that the artist donate his winnings to a charity, but it also printed comments from the previous day’s online article. Now, everyone knows that for optimum mental health you shouldn’t read online news comments, let alone take them seriously. The Mercury is notorious for its ill-informed and trolling comments, and as far as I know, has never reprinted comments in news articles. So why did the paper give these people column space? With the exception of one (questionably) supportive comment, the reporter quotes their most ‘outraged’ readers. Oh, and they again accompany the story with the cropped, photoshopped version of Pople’s painting. In the comments section, the more subtle readers placed inverted commas around the word ‘artist’; others called for the painting to be burned, that what Pople had made was not art, that the judges were unqualified fools, and that it wasn’t a landscape painting because it had a person in it. Yesterday (Monday), they found another ‘horrified’ person to interview, and ran with the headline “Killing ‘should never’ be art.” Like the other stories, they paint the artist as heartless, intent on causing unparalleled pain to the community. Again, the Mercury accompanied it with the cropped image.

What the Mercury has done is frame the story and public knowledge of this painting in a way that encourages controversy, anger, and what is looking like Australia’s favourite pastime: artist bashing. We saw this same media beat-up in 2008 over an exhibition by well-known Australian photographer, Bill Henson. It should have been a non-story, an exhibition by an excellent artist who has exhibited unchallenged in galleries around Australia and overseas, including a large survey show at the National Gallery Victoria and Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2005. However, after a vocal activist complained about the works (without even viewing them), Henson’s photographs were confiscated by the police for further investigation, and he was labelled a paedophile by the many hysterical talkback radio callers and letter writers. The media loved it. One of the trashy morning shows surprised the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd with the blown-up exhibition invitation image of a naked child, to which Rudd, without taking a breath (or asking for context) judged as “absolutely revolting,” which of course fuelled the media flame further.

I’m not dismissing the pain of the Tasmanian people. The horrific incident at Port Arthur is a sensitive issue in our relatively small community. Many Hobartians know someone affected by the massacre and it’s added to Port Arthur’s already bloody history as a penal colony. The painting speaks the truth in saying that Martin Bryant is and will always be part of the Port Arthur landscape, which is why it’s so important to have grown-up discussions on this topic. Nothing is solved by censoring artworks that address difficult or controversial topics, by calling artists ‘evil’ or calling for canvases to be burned. However, I must admit that part of me questions the necessity of a pictorial representation of Bryant’s presence, and from many of the comments on the Mercury website, it’s this literal representation that worries them.

But why, if an image of Bryant is so apparently offensive and harmful to Mercury readers, do they not question the motives of the paper when they put a full-page image of the killer on the front page every year on the anniversary of the event? A good friend’s dad, who was injured in the shooting, told me once that he stayed home each anniversary because he couldn’t stand seeing Bryant’s face littering the city, courtesy of the Mercury.

Pople’s painting is not the first to address the Port Arthur shooting. A recent exhibition at Hobart’s Inflight gallery focussed on the event. Another artwork, Matt Warren’s Cantus 35, was part of the 2007 Port Arthur Project, an exhibition at the historic site with an emphasis on site-specificity and place. His work was the only one out of 23 that addressed the more recent but no less present tragedy. A couple of years ago, he wrote in response to a question of mine:

When responding to a place, it is important to me have some kind of empathy or

find some personal relation to it. My family may or may not have a convict history, it's

fairly unknown to me. But … there was a very distinct reason why I chose the massacre as a subject. I had been haunted by a memory from the time it happened.

Cantus 35 stemmed from his own memories of hearing the sounds of gunshots over the radio on the 28^th April 1996, recorded by a dropped and therefore image-less video camera. Sited in the Sentry Box on the picturesque waterfront, the work used a gentle composition of harmonic sounds to try and “‘exorcise’ this memory and … instant negative response to the place and … somehow give respect to those who lost their lives as a result of the massacre.’ Warren’s use of sound and the isolation of each visitor as they stepped into the tiny Sentry Box were integral to the notions of respect and peace embedded in Cantus 35. By not drawing attention to individual victims or statistics and creating an abstracted, but meaningful soundtrack (the thirty-five tones used in the piece represented those had died in the massacre), the work drew ‘little opposition.’

Is the difference between the public reception of the work simply due to Pople’s pictorial representation of Bryant? I doubt it. I also doubt that the darkened painting is more harmful than the Mercury’s annual front-page portraits. The Mercury needs to wake up to their hypocrisy and consider whether they are doing their readers, Tasmanian artists and exhibitions justice when they mislead readers and frame debate with such a deliberate intention to mislead.

The New Museum Architecture (updated)

2011-12-09T16:14:00.001+11:00

I started forming this list in a previous post this year following a visit to a number of galleries in Rome, which all showcased innovative architecture while retaining novel elements of the site's original function, such as slaughterhouse or factory. I noted that the identity of many new museums is very much connected to this new style of architecture, yet the declarations of ‘innovation’, ‘difference’ and in some cases ‘challenging the notion of the white cube’, are ironically very similar. While I wrote the original post in May, the ideas had been brewing for quite some time, particularly the notion of rust fetish in architecture. Since I wrote the post, I’ve collected a number of images to illustrate my point, and rather than add them to the old post, I thought it’d be preferable to dedicate a whole post to the features of new museum architecture.

Art Gallery of NSW

Before I start on the new museum architecture, I’d like to highlight the epitome of the old/traditional museum architecture – the neo-classical sandstone building. This could be the National Gallery in London, the Modern Art museum in Rome, or the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. The latter is a classic sandstone portico entranceway similar to that of a Greek temple, is flanked by bronze statues of horses and their riders, and surrounded by the greenery of the city’s domain and botanic gardens. Before the viewer even steps inside the gallery therefore, the very exterior of the gallery has suggested notions of reverence and devotion. I’ve examined the semiotics of the AGNSW for my PhD and could bang on about it for pages, but I’ll save you and move on to the contemporary stuff. I just want to emphasise the fact that art institutions have always conveyed messages through their architecture; the new museum style may look different but the intentions are not all that dissimilar. While the newer white-walled galleries appear relatively neutral and unobtrusive in comparison to the distinct and heavy aesthetics of the older galleries and exterior, this neutrality is merely a façade, an illusion.

I’ve been to more than one lecture or specialised tour led by Museum staff, where they’ve stressed that “we’re not the usual white cube gallery”. One such gallery was the Istanbul Modern. Their reasoning? The gallery, which has prime views over the Bosphorus, used to be a shipping warehouse. They’d retained the exposed pipes on the ceiling, emphasising their presence by painting them red. Yet, their walls were white, the painting areas neatly partitioned off, and the video works were tucked away in what might be called a ‘black cube’. The gallery used the same strategies of neutralising the space as most contemporary art galleries. What I found most interesting was the anxiety about being labelled a ‘white cube’ space, and perhaps the misconceptions about the term. I think it also explains the popularity of industrial to art centre conversions, where original features are retained. By retaining original pipes, machinery, railway tracks, roughly hewn wood pillars, scarred walls, they distance themselves from the most literal interpretation of ‘the white cube’, and the ideology explained in Brian O’Doherty’s influential text. But maybe industrial nostalgia is the new ‘white cube’? The art world has a rust fetish.

Here are some of the features of the new museum:

1. Angles. Not right angles, other angles.

NGV Australia, Melbourne

Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne

MAXXI, Rome

Guggenheim, Bilbao

Tel Aviv Museum of Art (source: VISI)

staircase, CaixaForum Madrid

2. Floating (or unlikely) staircases.

MAXXI, Rome

Macro, Rome

cage staircase, Istanbul Modern, Istanbul

Spiral Staircase, MONA, Hobart

3. The walls are mostly white, even if they’re self-aware of the white. Sometimes they’ll have a few coloured walls just to show that they’re slightly subversive.

GOMA, Brisbane

Macro, Rome

The red to break up the white, Macro, Rome

4. (speaking of which...) A touch of red.

MAXXI, Rome

Ceiling, Istanbul Modern

5. Sexy concrete: polished for the floor; brutally raw or curved for the walls/exterior.


MAXXI, Rome

Istanbul Modern

Cer Modern, Ankara, Turkey

The Tel Aviv Museum of Art (source: VISI)

6. At least one ridiculously large room, which will often accommodate small objects. You will look up at the skylights or beams on the roof (oh, so far, far away) like you would in a church. The room will make you feel insignificant and humble. Art is god.

Macro, Rome

Olafur Eliasson, The Weather Project (2004), Tate Modern, in the turbine hall

7. They have toilets with weird sinks. You may or may not get them to function. (I wish I'd taken a photo of the Macro sinks, but I feel a bit uncomfortable taking photos in bathrooms)

Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Brisbane

8. The building has an industrial past, popular past functions include slaughterhouses, factories, power stations or shipping warehouses:


Macro (ex-slaughterhouse, Peroni factory)

Istanbul Modern (ex-shipping warehouse)

Detached, Hobart (ex-Church)


Cer Modern, Ankara, Turkey (ex-railyards)


Tate Modern, London (ex-powerstation)

okay, it's not a gallery per se, but Cockatoo Island's a popular venue for the Sydney Biennale (ex-shipyards, gaol). It's similar to the Venice Biennale's arsenale in this way. The use of industrial structures for temporary exhibitions is a whole other post...

Carriageworks, Sydney, multi-arts centre (the old Eveleigh Rail Yards)

Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA)

Matadero de Madrid, old municipal slaughterhouse

CaixaForum Madrid (former electric powerstation). A fantastic mix of rust, old brick, and living wall

9. Exposed plumbing or other functional parts of the gallery (also to show awareness of the white cube shiz)

Pompidou, Paris

Istanbul Modern

MONA, Hobart

10. Rust fetish. If the rust was not already part of the building prior to its current function as a gallery, ‘new’ rust is manufactured. Rust fetish not only refers to literal rust, but also aged features in general - old machinery, crumbling bricks, old graffiti...

ACCA, Melbourne (new rust)

Carriageworks, Sydney

Matadero, Madrid

CaixaForum, Madrid

10. Site-specific art that responds to unusual or novel aspects of the architecture.

GOMA, Brisbane


Daniel Buren, Dance Between Triangles and Lozenges for Three Colours, Work in Situ (2010)		, Macro

Julius Popp, Bit.Fall (2007) MONA

11. A will to get visitors lost.

MAXXI

MONA

12. A funky gift shop, expensive restaurant, and similarly overpriced café. It will have all three.

Cer Modern

Tate Modern (image credit: Splash Magazines)

GOMA, Brisbane (with water dragon)

Istanbul Modern (image credit: Tesker)

Shotgun. Do it now

2011-11-25T14:14:00.001+11:00

This is just a quick note about the current exhibition at CAST, the inaugural Shotgun exhibition featuring two local artists: Andrew Harper and Amanda Davies. It’s a fantastic exhibition and I only wish I’d seen it earlier because it closes on Sunday. This is not a review, but more a firm nudge. If you haven’t seen it and live locally, you must.

Andrew Harper’s video Hieronymus (2011) combines two of my favourite things: weird religious rituals and beer. It’s one of those few videos that have commanded my attention for multiple loops. Oh and it contains a naked artist.

Andrew Harper, Hieronymus (2011), Video Still. Source: CAST

Amanda Davies, installation shot, source: CAST

Amanda Davies’ paintings seemed a bit static and dull in comparison, but once you shake off the dark, the noise, and the movement from Harper’s work, they’re a bit more engaging. The work that stood out was the ghostly Incapacity (2011), and I also enjoyed the abstract work next to the entrance, which seemed to be the eventual conclusion to the otherwise figurative collection. Unfortunately, the abstracted painting is not in the catalogue.

You have two more days, Hobartians!

Shotgun

29 October – 27 November 2011

Contemporary Art Spaces Tasmania (CAST), 27 Tasma Street, North Hobart

Open 12-5pm

All images from the CAST website

Iteration: Again - public art for the art world

2011-10-09T17:47:00.001+11:00

We’re three weeks into the iterations. Iteration: Again is a four week public art project in Hobart initiated by curator David Cross, which involves seven local curators who have between them commissioned thirteen art projects around Tasmania. As the title suggests, the art projects have four ‘iterations,’ with most projects evolving each week.

I’m not going to review the project here, because I’m writing a piece for another publication, but I thought I’d outline a couple of the projects that are worth checking out during this last and final week. They’re also the artworks that I think engage most with the public, as opposed to the people who are 'in the know', that is, the local art scene. Most (in my opinion) are not worth the effort, although Iteration: Again will make a nice coffee table book afterwards, no doubt.

John Vella, Best Practice, curated by Jane Stewart

Column with my section absent

traded balloon wall

On the first day of the project, I trotted along to Vella’s Salamanca Market stall and after a small standoff I left with a helium balloon, which I traded two weeks later for a small section of Vella’s fantastic Clarendon House artwork, or at least a section of the column that was site-specifically installed at the historic house on Tasmania’s midlands in 2009. Circular sections have been ritually cut from Vella's past artworks over the four weeks, and participants are invited to select a circular piece in exchange for a marked balloon, or alternatively they can bid for them. A survey show with a twist.

James Newitt My Succession Party by David Cross

Who doesn’t want to live on their own private island on the Derwent River, and be sent off to a marching band and cheerleaders? I’ve had non-art Hobart locals send me questions on Twitter about the amusing project, which is situated in Hobart’s northern suburbs.

Departure. You can see the island on the left.

Marley Dawson and Christopher Hanrahan, MCR, curated by Nicole Durling

MCR, or the MONA Motocross Raceway, is a bit cringeworthy, but it's fun and worth seeing. I had the crazy experience of riding one of the tiny bikes yesterday and walked away in more pieces than the bike. Dagwood Dogs for effect.

calling it

Iteration: Again runs from the 18th September to the 15th October. The calendar of events can be found here. The ability to decode the calendar is a whole other kettle of fish.

[Update: the online version of my full published review in Realtime can be found here]

Venice Biennale: Best of 2011

2011-09-17T22:46:00.002+10:00

I know lists are a little tacky, but I want to share my top five favourite pavilions at this year's Venice Biennale. Egypt, the USA and France are inside the Giardini, while Singapore and Lithuania are near San Marco Square and the Arsenale, respectively.

Singapore

I stay for three loops of this ambiguous cinematic work by artist Ho Tzu Nyen, a total of 90 mins. This is a record for me, because I usually have little patience for video art. And no, it isn’t just because of the massive white beanbags. The artist presents a number of tragic figures, some of which in a way redeem themselves towards the end, all of different nationalities, ages, and weights – perhaps a reflection of the cultural melting pot that is Singapore. The work was dark and dramatic, and beautifully shot. I only wish at least one of the female characters were presented in a powerful position in the end.

Egypt

Ahmed Basiony was shot in the Egyptian riots in January, after being selected to represent his country at the Biennale. In his memory, a videoed endurance performance 30 Days of Running in the Space (2010), where he jogged for an hour a day in a suit that measured his sweat levels, is shown beside footage of the riots – a political but effective move. At the entrance to the pavilion is the best ‘hook’ I’ve seen at any of the biennale exhibitions: the last Facebook update by the artist, urging his fellow Egyptian to not give up the fight. Watching the artist jog up and down, sweating in a body-shaped plastic bag, knowing his future and the consequences of recent political events is certainly affecting.

USA

The art itself is not the best, but I appreciate the dry humour in Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla’s Glory. The performances on the mock American Airline and Delta business class seats by the country’s Olympic gymnasts are intriguing but perhaps a little novel, as is the ATM organ that plays music based on random algorithms when people withdraw cash. I list the pavilion in my ‘top’ list because of the tank performance outside the pavilion. Svelte Olympic athletes intermittently run on the treadmill atop an upturned tank, seemingly turning the wheels. Not only does the fuck-off tank demand extra public space outside their pavilion, but the sound of the frequent performances can be heard across the Giardini, demanding everyone take notice of the monument to sporting/military/artistic glory. Art imitating life, or rather country, really.

Lithuania

Darius Miksys’ project Behind the White Curtain, is part performance, part installation. He has gathered works by Lithuanian artists who have received grants from the country’s Ministry of Culture. Viewers are asked to choose works from the extensive catalogue, which the artist brings out from behind the white curtain that separates the room. As a visitor, I’m asked to help curate, to help arrange the works amongst those previously chosen, some of which are removed if the aesthetic’s not quite right. Most of the works in the catalogue are pretty banal, which probably explains why the artist’s asking whether it represents ‘real’ Lithuanian art. Serendipitously, a week later I come upon a small gallery, Nogueras Blanchard, in Barcelona, where once a week Miksys has been sending a list of works chosen by visitors (otherwise undisclosed), to be hung unframed on the wall as part of the group exhibition, Somewhere Else. After the over-publicised hype of the Biennale, it’s nice to find this unofficial spin-off.

Miksys at Nogueras Blanchard

France

I’ve had multiple arguments with people over Christian Boltanski’s installation, Chance, in the French Pavilion. Apparently, most don’t share my enthusiasm for the work. Chance works well with symmetricality of the neo-classical building, the central section dominated by a reel of black and white photographed faces threading themselves over, under and around a heavy structure of scaffolding and rollers. I’ve been watching the artist work in his studio all year via live video link at MONA in Hobart, so perhaps that’s why I feel the connection. You don’t need to be in Venice to win at Boltanski’s chance game either, you can play at his website www.boltanski-chance.com

Worst Pavilions

I wouldn't single them out as the two worst, but you can probably give Latvia and Canada a miss. It’s hard to use blacklights in art well, and Latvian representative Kristaps Gelzis didn’t succeed in his exhibition Artificial Peace. The Canadian Stephen Shearer's paintings were cringeworthy to the extreme.

The Italian Pavilion was a definite case of quantity over quality, with a closer resemblance to an amateur community art exhibition than a biennale. The works were crowded on cheap-looking metal racks, and as a result the better works tended to get lost.

Best Satellite Exhibitions

Tra, at the Palazzo Fortuny

Like the site's excellent 2009 Biennale exhibition, the works in Tra sit in dialogue with the decorative and loaded space that is the Palazzo Fortuny. My only criticism is that the catalogue’s images show the works in isolation, not in the palace space, despite importance of site to the curatorial premise.

Memory of Books.

Stay away from Chiharu Shiota's installation if you don't like spiders. The maze of string is similar to her work at Detached in Hobart earlier this year.

Afternoon Tea at the Quaffers Pavilion

Run by London-based WW Gallery. After viewing the drawing exhibition in this pop-up gallery, I'm invited upstairs to a traditional British afternoon tea. What's not to like?

Worst Satellite

Future Pass
Read my review of Future Pass here

Future Pass and Cracked Culture at the Venice Biennale

2011-06-14T21:39:00.001+10:00

Courtyard in the Abbazia, Future Pass

Yoshitomo Nara, Future Pass

In this post I want to discuss the exhibitions Future Pass: From Asia to the World and Cracked Culture? The Quest for Identity in Contemporary Chinese Art, both satellite exhibitions to the Venice Biennale. However, the emphasis is going to be more on Future Pass – I’ve just included a brief comment on Cracked Culture because I found the links between the two quite interesting. Both exhibitions distinguish their curatorial strategy as being from an Asian or Chinese, respectively, point of view. However, while the catalogue and didactic texts (of Cracked Culture, in particular), implied that this ‘different perspective’ would present quite a different exhibition to shows imagined by ‘investors and curators in the west’ (Cracked Culture catalogue), both Future Pass and Cracked Culture showcased the same familiar artists, styles, and iconography that I see in, say, Australia’s Asia Pacific Triennials.

Kwon Kisoo, in Future Pass

In the garden, Cracked Culture

The thing that surprised me the most about Future Pass was the proliferation of cute. If I’d read the short catalogue beforehand, I no doubt would have been more surprised. The curatorial statement is incredibly serious, which seems at odds to a lot of the seemingly depthless artwork on display. The exhibition is spread over two locations: Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana in Cannaregio, and Abbazia di San Gregorio in Dorsoduro, and each location has a number of dichotomous themes. The Palazzo hosts the ‘Virtual/Real’, and ‘Cosplay’ [is Cosplay dichotomous in itself?], and the Abbazia focuses on ‘East/West’, ‘Past/Future’, ‘Yin/Yang’, ‘Universe/Self’. Because I hadn’t read the catalogue beforehand (which is normal for me), I didn’t realise that the curators had based the exhibition on such sober concepts, and even after flicking through the large number of photos I took during my visit, I still can’t quite resolve the relationship between the artworks and the above mentioned philosophical notions.

Chang Chia-Ying

Future Pass seemed overly painting heavy. The sculptures tended to be shiny, finished, and acrylic. Most works were self-contained, which was a departure from so many of the Biennale exhibitions that appear to favour installation or performance, ie. more immersive works of art. The emphasis on figuration was also noticeable, mostly human figures or cute robotic shapes, anime-like figures, cartoons (including a few Disney character pastiches – something that I think was exhausted a long time ago).

Lelya Borisenko

Angelo Volpe

Luo Dan

Chen Hongzhu

Kaikai Kiki (Chiho Aoshima)

Aldo Lanzini

Joyce Ho & Craig Quintero

at the Abbazia

Sometimes it’s good to make the viewer work a little, but there was little ambiguity in most of these works. I felt spoon-fed.

Palazzo

Mapi Gill

The works that I found the most interesting were those that had some relationship to their surroundings, something that happened more in the Palazzo than the Abbazia. Without reading the catalogue, I was a little unsure whether the heads of the frescos slightly visible above the Mapi Gill paintings were deliberate. I’m still not 100% sure, but I hope it was. Shy Gong’s Baby Angel was obviously deliberately placed against the ornate wall decorations. It probably would’ve looked better with a more creative plinth or other presentation, but I enjoyed the relationship between the site and ‘angel’.

Shy Gong

The rest of the works didn’t have enough of a dialogue with the palazzo to warrant the curators' strong reference to the ‘white cube’ in the catalogue. They declare that the ‘contemporary artworks interact with, and sometimes almost seamlessly blend into, the historic buildings in which they are installed’. Yet it seemed that most of the works sat in these buildings despite their historicism; they were plonked, not placed in any meaningful relationship to the space. I found myself reflecting on the New Zealand Pavilion exhibition I saw in the same Palazzo at the 2009 Biennale: Francis Upritchard’s beautifully fragile figures. They weren’t site-specific, but they sat in the space harmoniously, the elaborate surroundings subtly influencing the reading of the works. Unlike most of the Future Pass works, Upritchard's figures worked with, not against, their surroundings. It’s no doubt tricky to show works of art in such semiotically loaded spaces as the Palazzo, and I’ve noticed so far that almost no artworks at the Biennale attempt site-specificity (a wasted opportunity in my opinion), but when it’s stated in the catalogue that there is a deliberate ‘interaction’, it’s even more disappointing when the promise is not carried through.

Francis Upritchard at the 2009 Venice Biennale

Cracked Culture exhibition

I sought out Cracked Culture in the back streets of Dorsoduro, because I have a particular interest in Mainland Chinese art, having studied in China. I was disappointed in the works, and I found it difficult to swallow the strong statement of difference mentioned at the beginning of this post. The work with water spewing out of a McDonald’s arch into a blow-up paddle pool, for instance, was about as predictable as the Mickey Mouse pastiches in Future Pass.

However, there were a few works that I really enjoyed in Cracked Culture, such as the video projected on a pile of the university’s chairs (the exhibition was spread over two university art campuses), and the flattened fire hydrants sitting in the stairwell, although I found the absence of labels for these two works odd (the opposite problem to Future Pass’s invasive labelling habit). I was also amused at the ‘exhibition continues’ arrows that lead to a seemingly empty classroom. Were the confused visitors looking around the room part of an obscure performance artwork?

a lovely label obscuring Wen San Su's chair, Future Pass

Overall, Future Pass and Cracked Culture showcase an absurd number of artworks between them (Future Pass, for instance, had 106 artists participate). Yet at the end of the day (literally. It takes almost a day to cover all four locations), I felt like I could probably count the number of artworks I vaguely enjoyed on both hands. Maybe I don’t get it, maybe you need to be ‘into’ cute to appreciate the Future Pass works, but basically, I found it difficult to swallow the hyperbole. I wish the exhibitions had lived up to their promise.

Grand Canal rabbit, or officially Fishing Rabbit by No2good, Future Pass

Day 1 at the 2011 Venice Biennale

2011-06-02T03:07:00.001+10:00

Yesterday was the pre-vernissage. The calm before the storm. The day where I should have seen more pavilions than I did, simply because today was crazy. Press weighed down by oversized cameras and/or minimalist leather-bound notebooks, VIPs and hipsters... all lugging dozens of superfluous tote (/show) bags, each pimping a country's artistic talents. It's art PR at its most obscene.

Anyway, here are some photos from the few pavilions I saw during my brief breaks. I'll return to these pavilions when I have a bit more time, but I just wanted to get these images published.

Please excuse the iphone quality photos too...

car crash liberetto at the Hungarian Pavilion

the words. Hot and red

my final encounter: the singers performing

Disguised outside Israel's Pavilion

Most of the objects in the US pavilion are 'stages' for performances, gymnastic and athletic performances. The only performance I've seen so far has been on the massive tank outside the pavilion. I'm itching to see the aeroplane seat performances, and withdraw money from the organ ATM. The exhibition is called Gloria, by the artists Allora and Calzadilla, and is delighfully humourous: a statue in a blindingly brigh sunbed, an ATM machine that dramatises a normally banal transaction, the elite athletes stretching in their sweabands and running shorts down the side of the pavilion before their turn on the monumental treadmill atop the upturned tank. I didn't like the US pavilion's exhibition at the last biennale, and I'm so glad to see that the US has a sense of humour at last.

Body in Flight (Delta)

Body in Flight (American)

Algorithm

Algorithim (detail)

Algorithm in use

Statue of Freedom

Track and Field

The United Kingdom's Pavilion was turned into a maze-like, claustrophobic space, which looked like a squat, or at least a building with confused identities. Mike Nelson apparently spent 3 months installing the work, which, after navigating the stairs up and around the comparmentailised pavilion, is easily believed. A darkroom in one upper corner of the building gives us the best clue as to the identity of the inhabitant (s?), and the photographs which hang on strings or on walls around the buildings cement this notion.

Christian Boltanski's Chance, in the French Pavilion:

I was particularly drawn to this exhibition because I've been watching Boltanski work live from his studio via a webcam, at the local museum in Hobart, MONA. MONA's owner, David Walsh, pays a wage to Boltanski in exchange for the rights to install a webcam that is streamed 24/7 across the world, to his museum in Tasmania.

The catalogue for the exhibition has an illuminating discussion between Boltanski and Walsh. A must read.

The tired looking Czech Republic and Slovak Republic pavilion:

Dominik Lang's The Sleeping City in the Czech and Slovak Pavilion:

Christoph Schlingensief at the German Pavilion, a posthumous survey of his work.

Hany Armanious at the Australian Pavilion. All the works are meticulously cast in synthetic resin, and his choice of cast objects is strangely beautiful. Here are just a few of the works:

I had one of these tables at art school, I'm sure of it.
Effigy of an Effigy with Mirage 2010

Interface 2011

Birth of Venus 2010 (probably my favourite)

True Romance 2010

Macro, Rome

2011-05-27T22:01:00.000+10:00

After last week’s rant on museum architecture, triggered by two newly built Rome contemporary art galleries, I’m dedicating this comparatively uncritical post to a flaky discussion of some of the works I enjoyed at the contemporary art gallery, Macro. My original intention was to also discuss the work at MAXXI, the Galleria D’Arte Moderna and the Museo Bilotti, but I need to give my brain a brief reprieve before I start blogging about the Venice Biennale next week. I briefly discuss MAXXI’s architecture in the previous post, which will have to satisfy.

Why Macro? Because unlike MAXXI, the gallery let me take photos of the art, which makes my life easier (It was made from plaster. It looked like a lobster. But it was green. It was the same size as a lobster. But perhaps one of the ones that grows off the coast of Tasmania. Oh, I’ve run out of space for anything other than description…). I can feel a rant on photography in galleries about to spill over, so I might just move on to the art….

As I noted in my previous post, Macro’s been built around a couple of ex-factories: the Peroni brewery and a slaughterhouse, and I’m going to confess now that it was my interest in museum architecture that triggered the pilgrimage to Macro, rather than the art. I had it in my head for some reason, that Macro was going to be fairly small, but I almost missed my train out of Rome trying to cover it all. It’s like a maze, a very spread-out maze, which gave the paradoxical impression of being a very empty gallery.

Ernesto Neto at Macro

Ernesto Neto

The first works visitors encounter are Ernesto Neto’s large ear splittingly loud silver cube, and one of his ubiquitous hanging spice-in-stockings work. The large space in which Neto’s work is installed is (I’m assuming) Macro’s ‘showcase’ area. For some bizarre reason, whenever I visit an overseas gallery I encounter one of his works. I enjoy his clove and cardamom-smelling installations, so perhaps the universe lures me to book tickets to certain locations based on this enthusiasm. While the scale of Macro’s key exhibition space forces a certain amount of humility in the viewer, it was nothing compared to my experience of his 2006 installation Leviathan Thot in Paris’ epic Panthéon. Neto’s white bulging organic shapes contrasted in the most bizarre way with the building’s strict symmetry, rich colours and indulgent ornamentation. The otherwise frosty space was filled with the warm smell of spices contained within Neto’s large bulbous stockings. In 2006, I’d just finished my undergrad degree in fine arts, and I think this installation was a catalyst for the subject of my PhD: site-specific art. Basically, what I’m trying to say is Neto’s work at Macro was brill, but I’ve been spoilt by my Paris experience.

Ernesto Neto, Leviathan Thot (2006), Panthéon

Ridiculously, the other work in Macro’s large space, The Crisis is (Not) Over. Drawings and Dioramas, was by Dan Perjovschi - another artist who seems to ‘follow me’ OS. I find his drawings amusing and topical, but I was a little disappointed that the work of a ‘new’ artist wasn’t in that monumental space.

Dan Perjovschi, The Crisis is (Not) Over. Drawings and Dioramas

Perino and Vele, Closed for This Week (2002)

I noticed the rough curved concrete supports on the next floor before any of the art. I was sooooo hoping by that stage that there’d be some sort of didactic text telling me whether they’d bottled beer or slaughtered cattle in the space, but no. Art was dotted throughout the respectfully white-painted space, such as Perino and Vele’s Closed for This Week (2002), hung between two pillars, and Mario Ceroli’s Goldfinger (Miss) (1965). I enjoyed the former because it was something that pretended to be another thing, and Ceroli’s work because the ‘back’ of his sculpture still showed the pencil and raw saw-marks of its production. I think I’ve mentioned my obsession with ‘things that pretend to be other things’ a few times in this blog. Being in Italy, I probably don’t need to tell you that I’m in trompe l’oeil heaven right now.

Mario Ceroli, Goldfinger (Miss) (1965)

Goldfinger (Miss), detail

Daniel Buren

The Antony Gormley exhibition didn’t interest me very much, nor the sculptures of Sarah Braman, in fact, the room that interested me the most was what you could call a documentary art space, recording the activities of Rome’s alternative art space Galleria L’Attico in the 1960s and 70s. The gallery encouraged cross-disciplinary art, and as I learned from the archived photographs and exhibition posters, it hosted exhibitions by now well-known artists, such as Jannis Kounellis, Joseph Beuys and Robert Smithson. The posters of Kounellis’ horses particularly caught my attention because Hobart’s MONA has a slightly less high-maintenance work of his that consists of a chair, bowl with knife, and two live goldfish. If the staff at MONA thought the fish were hard enough, imagine how demanding the horses would be.

A couple of artworks played with the gallery’s architectural features: Daniel Buren’s site specific Dance between triangles and lozenges for three colours (2010) and the art in the two lift-wells, which could only be viewed in full by riding the elevator. I’m a bit of a Luddite when it comes to video, so you’ll just have to believe me when I write that it’s worth taking the lift.

spotted in the Macro liftwell

Stay tuned for Venice Biennale posts…

Contemporary art galleries in Rome and the new museum architecture

2011-05-19T21:58:00.000+10:00

I’m so lucky. I’m about to experience the Venice Biennale for a second time as I’ll be working there next month. In the meantime, I’m studying Italian in Siena for a couple of weeks, and as the title of this post indicates, I just spent a couple of days in Rome.

Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna

So, contemporary art in Rome… unfortunately, I didn’t find any small artist-run spaces (shout out if you know of any), but I visited the contemporary art space, Macro, and Rome’s new mega museum: MAXXI (as in art of the XXI century). I also visited the smaller private gallery, Museo Carlo Bilotti Aranceria di Villa Borghese, and the city’s Modern art museum, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna. I very much enjoyed seeing contemporary Italian art, and so I’ll write on the art contained within these museums in my next post, but in this post I’d like to talk about the architecture of contemporary art museums in relation to Macro and MAXXI.

MAXXI: the unassuming streetfront

Macro and MAXXI epitomise the new museum architecture: they showcase innovative architecture while retaining novel elements of the respective original site. In the case of MAXXI, it’s really only the rather unremarkable (for Rome, at least) street front, but for Macro, it’s features of the gallery buildings’ past functions as slaughterhouse and Peroni brewery (don’t worry, they were separate factories). I enjoyed both museums, but after visiting a number of galleries whose identity is very much connected to this new style of architecture, I’ve noticed that the declarations of ‘innovation’, ‘difference’ and in some cases ‘challenging the notion of the white cube’, are ironically very similar.

Here are some features of the new museum architecture:

[Update: Dec 2011. I have written a more thorough list at a later post here]

1. Angles. Not right angles, other angles.

National Gallery Victoria (NGV) Australia, Melbourne

Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne

MAXXI, Rome

2. Floating (or unlikely) staircases.

MAXXI, Rome

Macro, Rome

cage staircase, Istanbul Modern, Istanbul

3. The walls are mostly white, even if they’re self-aware of the white. Sometimes they’ll have a few coloured walls just to show that they’re slightly subversive.

GOMA, Brisbane

Macro, Rome

The red to break up the white, Macro, Rome

4. (speaking of which...) A touch of red.

MAXXI, Rome

Ceiling, Istanbul Modern

5. Sexy concrete: polished for the floor; brutally raw or curved for the walls/exterior.


MAXXI, Rome

Istanbul Modern

Cer Modern, Ankara, Turkey

Macro, Rome

Olafur Eliasson, The Weather Project (2004), Tate Modern, in the turbine hall

7. They have toilets with weird sinks. You may or may not get them to function. (I wish I'd taken a photo of the Macro sinks, but it's a bit uncomfortable taking photos in bathrooms)

Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Brisbane

8. The building has a previous function as a slaughterhouse, factory or similar (usually) industrial structure:


Macro (ex-slaughterhouse, Peroni factory)

Istanbul Modern (ex-shipping warehouse)

Detached, Hobart (ex-Church)


Cer Modern, Ankara, Turkey (ex-railyards)

Tate Modern, London (ex-powerstation)

9. Exposed plumbing or other functional parts of the gallery (also to show awareness of the white cube shiz)

Pompidou, Paris

Istanbul Modern

MONA, Hobart

ACCA, Melbourne (new rust)

10. Site-specific art that responds to unusual or novel aspects of the architecture.

GOMA, Brisbane


Daniel Buren, Dance Between Triangles and Lozenges for Three Colours, Work in Situ (2010)		, Macro

11. A will to get visitors lost.

MAXXI

MONA

12. A funky gift shop, expensive restaurant, and similarly overpriced café. It will have all three.

Cer Modern

Tate Modern (image credit: Splash Magazines)

Istanbul Modern (image credit: Tesker)

GOMA, Brisbane (with water dragon)

As I wrote earlier, my next post will be on the art contained within the respective museums, but I just had to get this ‘new museum architecture’ theory out there.

10 Days on the Island starts today

2011-03-25T12:07:00.003+11:00

10 Days on the Island, Tassie's hyperactively-promoted biennial arts festival starts today. Well, unless you're a visual arts event, in which case you've been up and away for up to a week. 20 Days on the Island? I calculated yesterday that I'm personally 2584 days on the Island. You can probably tell I'm doing a PhD (or similar procrastination-rich study).

This is not a critiquing post, because I've been hibernating and haven't seen anything yet. It's more a 'this is what's on, and this is what I plan to see' post. The major constraint, as I've mentioned in other posts, to seeing 10 Days events is cost. I can't afford to attend most events. The one paid event I'm making my priority is Power Plant at the Botanic Gardens. It's $15 concess, $25 full, which is on the very low end of the paid scale. I'd love to see some of the music events and the theatre, but on a student wage, the cost is prohibitive. I think MONA FOMA has spoiled me! The cost structures are incredibly strange. Take one music event, DBR and DJ Scientific with Emeline Michel: It costs $25 in Hobart, but it's free in Launceston. If you have 5 people in the car, it's far cheaper to drive to Launceston from Hobart to see the show. If anyone can explain the reasoning behind this discrepancy, please do!

Anyhoo, I shouldn't really have a whine. There are free events, such as the visual art events (because visual artists aren't paid as much as other performers?). In the south, Reconstructing the Animal, curated by Yvette Watt, and held at the Plimsoll Gallery, and interestingly, the old Beaumaris Zoo site. Craig Walsh's Digital Odyssey is also at the top of the list. Rather than just be a 'gonna', I need to crack my cocoon and go see some of this stuff. Will post reviews soon....

MONA FOMA: twittering micro critic

2011-01-15T15:10:00.001+11:00

Over the next week I'm acting as a MONA FOMA microcritic for ABC local radio (936).

As I've mentioned in previous posts, (which can be viewed here, here, and here) MONA FOMA is a music, sound and art festival with an emphasis also on food and wine. This year's MONA FOMA is also a lead up to the much anticipated opening of MONA, David Walsh's exciting new museum.

Four local tweeters and I have been chosen to critically tweet throughout the festival, which officially opened yesterday. I'm already exhausted, as is my data allowance (I'm lucky enough to have my monthly cap refreshed tomorrow, however). I tweet under the name of @stealthpooch so if you're on twitter, please follow, whether you're local or not, and share the experience with me. If you're not on twitter, I've also added my twitter feed on the sidebar of this blog, so you can read my tweets that way. Otherwise you can also subscribe via an RSS feed.

If you are local to Hobart, I strongly urge you to attend both the festival and the museum opening. The festival is almost completely free, with the exception of a Philip Glass performance and the Grinderman concert. At the festival, there are fantastic sound art exhibitions, performance art, bands, cooking demonstrations and great wine and beer, and the museum will blow your mind.

Just do it.

Sculpture by the Sea: regressive and irrelevant?

2011-01-07T17:05:00.000+11:00

Sculpture by the Sea needs a rethink. Every year in November, I make the pilgrimage to Sydney to see the annual outdoor sculpture exhibition, where sculptures are installed along the picturesque cliffs from Bondi to Tamarama. However, after this last experience (2010) I don’t think I’ll bother anymore. Sculpture by the Sea (SS) has become commercial, boring, sameish, and conservative. None of these criticisms, particularly my concern with the commercial emphasis of the festival, are bad per se as I know that large scale exhibitions need to be funded from multiple sources. However, the combination of these critical issues is turning what was initially an innovative and interesting exhibition, into an event that is losing relevance to many contemporary practicing artists, and ignoring the site’s true benefit, that is, its potential for site-specific art.

One of the few truly site-specific artworks in 2010: recycled plastic bottle 'icicles'

Stylistically, most of the sculptures bear few similarities to the sculptures shown in contemporary galleries or even at other popular outdoor exhibitions around the world. One of the things I’ve noticed over the years is an increase in monumental cast or assembled metal works, often bronze, and either rigidly abstract or nauseatingly figurative. This last exhibition, in fact, gave me a sense of deja vou – it seemed that they’d re-exhibited the works from 2009. Now, I have no problem with abstract work, nor bronze as a material, however, the works were so Caroesque that I was reminded of Charles Green’s comments in his book Peripheral Vision. Green describes the gulf between the ‘older welded-steel sculptors and the younger post-object artists’ at the significant Mildura Sculpture Triennial one year. Apparently, this evident generational gap ‘led to the enclave of formalist works being labelled “Karo Korner”’ (Green, 1995 p. 17). I want to highlight the date of the exhibition: it was 1973. I believe that contemporary art has well and truly moved on from these traditional styles, styles that were becoming quickly irrelevant 40 years ago. Of course, such sculptures are interesting when considered in their historical context, however I fail to see the relevance of such heavy, masculine, and permanent works (and I emphasise the more negative connotations of the adjectives) to contemporary culture and society. Evidently, most museums and artists agree, and it’s really only at SS that I’ve witnessed such a popularity in this conservative and traditional artform. I should probably add at this point, that Sir Anthony Caro was actually invited to exhibit in the 2010 SS. I laughed when I saw his work, because I came across the massive structure plonked on the grassy cliff just as I was explaining to my friends what I mean by ‘Caroesque’. I also need to emphaise that I enjoy Anthony Caro’s work, and my objection to the SS’s ‘Karo Korner’ is merely concerned with its relevance to 21^st century art practice.

So why is SS so regressive in their choice of artwork? I understand that the works have to be durable due to their windy outdoor site, yet the exhibition is only for a couple of weeks and there are plenty of other materials and styles that can withstand such weather. Perhaps it’s because most of the entries embraced more traditional materials and subjects; although I doubt it, because not only do most practicing Australian artists work in more contemporary media (based on what I see in both commercial and public galleries, artist websites, and my friends and colleagues’ work), but I know of many excellent and high-profile artists being turned down for proposals that engage with the site in relevant and interesting ways. I also know that in past SS exhibitions, there have many more site-specific works of art. My guess is that such sculptures sell. Site-specific installations, regardless of their merit, do not sell as well as stand-alone works, simply because they often require a dialogue with the site to work properly. Additionally, in terms of materials, bronze is easier to sell (particularly to a conservative public) because of its associations with wealth, permanency and tradition. These works are safe; they don’t challenge the definition of art or cause controversy. Yet, the sheer number of them in the last few years of SS has made the exhibition just that: safe, traditional, boring and conservative.

Imagine how innovative and interesting SS could be if they had more works that actually interacted with the site. The landscape is incredible and calls out for playful and relevant artworks. The cliffs, the thrashing waves, the wind, the sand, the handrails, the plants gripping onto the cliffs, the dripping water, the salt, the tourists, the gentrification of the area’s housing, the caves… I mean, the site wants to be in dialogue with the sculptures, and yet the majority of the sculptures are simply ‘plonked’ there. While public artworks for the last 40-odd years have been moving towards interactivity and relevance to the historical, special or cultural aspects of their respective sites, SS is regressive, returning to a pre-1970s public art and ignoring the wonderful developments in outdoor art which have flourished since Christo wrapped Little Bay in 1969.

Let’s be proud of our country’s outstanding contemporary artists and make sure that SS, as one of the most popular and high-profile outdoor exhibitions, does justice to our thriving art scene. For if I was a tourist from another country and witnessed only Sculpture by the Sea as illustrative of 21^st century art in Australia, I’d think were stuck in 1968.

John Davis: Presence, NGV Australia

2010-10-16T21:57:00.006+11:00

I’ve been an admirer of John Davis’ sculptures since I came across a dusty black and white book in my first year of art school, and until his survey show, Presence, at the National Gallery Victoria, my enthusiasm had been based on mostly black and white photographic documentation of his delicate works. John Davis’ sculptures are surely a museum conservator’s nightmare – constructions of twigs, paper, cotton, tied loosely together or bonded with bitumen – which is probably the reason why I’d never seen more than one of his works in person before this show.

Evolution of a Fish: Traveller (1990)

Repetition and an emphasis on material and process are consistent themes across the exhibition. With the dramatic exception of the few sculptures from the late 1960s, which are surprisingly hard-edged and made from metal and fibreglass, his works indicate an element of play in their careful construction. His later forms are made from predominantly organic materials, and embrace an earthy and limited colour scheme – a reflection of Davis’ consistent exploration of environmental themes that started in the early 1970s. Most of the works are wall or floor-based, and the white walls of the gallery provide an interesting contrast to the crooked grid lines that occur in numerous works. This tension between the imperfections of the natural materials and the enforced construction of geometry is what makes Davis’ works so engrossing, and is perhaps also illustrative of the contradictory way in which humans perceive and interact with the natural environment.

Serendipitously, I visited the exhibition just after viewing the Tim Burton show at ACMI, and as a result Davis’ fish sculptures, which I’ve always considered quite serious pieces, started to look quite comical and animated with a monstrous streak. While I doubt Davis had similar intentions to Burton when creating his fish characters, I enjoy ‘seeing’ this very different side to the Evolution of the Fish series.


Tree Piece (1973), Sculpturscape

The show is set out chronologically, although I enter at the ‘wrong’ end because the start is strangely accessed through another exhibition, not the foyer. Nevertheless, like a resume, sometimes it’s better to start with more recent activity - such as Davis’ ubiquitous fish sculptures - and work back. My personal interest in Davis’ sculptures is in this early period of his career when he participated in the Mildura Sculpture Triennials, making site-related environmental works in the scrubby floodplains surrounding the Mildura Gallery. Unfortunately, the significance and influence of the site and events, in particular the 1973 ‘Sculpturscape’ exhibition, are not even mentioned in the exhibition’s didactic texts. The photographic documentation of Tree Piece (1973), where Davis wrapped a number of gum trees with various materials, is not attributed to any specific exhibition, despite Sculpturscape’s influence on not only Davis’ practice but also on the early development of Australian environmental sculpture, Installation and Site-specific Art in general. Nevertheless, Presence, is an excellent and inclusive survey of Davis’ three-decade practice, and a welcome opportunity to view such fragile works in person; and the colour catalogue that accompanies the exhibition will also be a welcome addition to the existing, predominantly black and white illustrated publications on his work.

John Davis: Presence is at the NGV Australia, 6 August - 26 October 2010

image sources:

NGV Australia website

Catalano, Gary. An Intimate Australia: the landscape and recent Australian art. Sydney: Hale and Ironmonger, 1985

A Serendipitous Istanbul

2010-08-20T10:44:00.000+10:00

Commercial Art Gallery, Istanbul

The Travertines, Pemukkale

My last post described the rather generic experience of the Cer Modern in Ankara, Turkey. Following Ankara, I spent a week in Istanbul, a vastly different city to the rest of the country. I was hard pressed to find contemporary art galleries in the other Turkish cities I visited on the trip: Iznik (famous historical ceramic centre), Bursa (car broke down), Bergama (the living city next to the ancient city of Pergamom), Cesme (Genovese Castle), Ephesus (ancient city), Pemukkale (ancient city and unlikely travertine landscape, pictured left), Olympos (ancient city, more Genovese ruins, and the Chimnea), and Göreme (historic monastery carved into the bizarre rock formations, the town of Goreme pictured below). However, in Istanbul it was hard to avoid contemporary art.

Göreme, Cappadocia

My friends and I dutifully headed off to the Istanbul Modern on our first day in the city. Like many contemporary art galleries, it’s housed in an ex-industrial building; in this case, an old shipping warehouse. They’ve retained part of the industrial aesthetic (which I affectionately term ‘rust fetish’), while fitting out the gallery with the obligatory white walls.

'look up!' Istanbul Modern ceilings

I revisited the gallery when it hosted the Inclusive Museum Conference dinner a couple of nights later. Someone from the conference asked me what the gallery was like earlier in the day, to which I replied “oh it’s a generic white cube gallery with a bit of rust fetish thrown in, but it’s got an emphasis on Turkish art which is great for international visitors”. Interestingly, on the guided conference tour before the dinner, the director proudly told us that the Istanbul Modern is “not your usual white cube gallery,” referring to the fact that it’s in an ex-industrial building and it wasn’t in the shape of a cube. She’d taken the notion of the ‘white cube’ very literally. It was a strange moment, simply because I’d confidently described the gallery as such only a few hours earlier. Rust fetish has become institutionalised; it’s the new ‘white cube’.

I took a couple of images of the library installation, which was pretty impressive: books suspended from the ceiling on the lower level, with a seamless transition from outside the glassed in library area to the inside. The reading was of varying quality:

Book installation outside the library, Istanbul Modern

The staircase was also pretty memorable. At first, I thought it was an artwork: bullet strewn glass walls, heavy chain casing, galvanised iron steps… it didn’t really encourage you to walk downstairs.

The work that stood out for me at the gallery was Sener Ozmen and Erkan Ozgen’s video Tate Modern Yolu (Road to Tate Modern), 2003. It’s an ironic and very amusing reference to Don Quixote’s novel of Cervantes, with the two besuited artists, one on a horse and one ridiculously perched upon a small tireless donkey, setting off from the mountains of Diyarbakir to the Tate Modern, London. I watched a couple of loops of the video on my first visit, which is a rarity for me with video.

The next day I came across a co-op art workshop, where practitioners were trying to maintain traditional Turkish arts and crafts, such as ceramics, marbling and miniature painting. They had for sale a couple of handpainted copies of an historical painting of a man with an oversized turban sitting on a relatively fragile looking donkey (pictured left), and I bought it, simply because it reminded me of the video. On my return visit to the Istanbul Modern, I was no less impressed with the video, with its over-the-top dialogue and mock seriousness.

I should point out that I returned to the Istanbul Modern a third time, but not for the art, it was for the food. The conference dinner wasn’t that impressive, but the gallery restaurant's position on the waterfront, with a balcony looking over the Bosphorus to the Topkapi Palace and Eastern Shore, was the main reason why we opted to return on our last night. At the conference dinner, there was a bloody cruise boat blocking the view (bringing back memories of my one and only visit to Quay, in Sydney), but on this last visit, not only was there an undisturbed view (left), but the food was really very good and relatively reasonable for the level service.

Warehouse art installation, Istanbul

Near the Istanbul Modern (but stupidly not signposted) was a warehouse full of a number of art exhibitions initiated as part of the city’s 2010 European Capital of Culture status. It was the first time that the warehouse had been used for this purpose. Upstairs were a number of smaller exhibitions, all of which worth seeing, although I really only remember a couple of works clearly. Downstairs was a topical exhibition about money, with a humorous work which invited concerned viewers to press the 'magic button', which would supposedly 'cure' the financial crisis.

We also stumbled across an interesting work in the Taksim square train station. Two anthropomorphic orange machines with drumsticks attached to their hands were playing percussion instruments, dictated by monitors in the Bosphorus. Not speaking Turkish, I wasn’t sure if it was measuring the pollution or waves, but it was an engaging work and exhibition location. We’d actually gatecrashed the opening night, and I was interested to see that Turkish art openings (if this was representative) don’t serve alcohol (maybe not surprising in a predominantly Muslim nation).

I left Istanbul happy that at least one Turkish city had fulfilled my enjoyment of serendipitous exhibition encounters.

A Turkish Gallery experience?

2010-07-16T16:29:00.000+10:00

I’ve just returned from a 3 week conference/ art research trip to Turkey, a country of ancient ruins, enthusiastic touts, lots of eggplant and meat, amazing fresh fruit and vegies, and a very cool city: Istanbul. I travelled around with two other girls in a hire car for two weeks before hiring an apartment in Istanbul for a week near the ever-awake Taksim Square. The conference I attended (and presented at) on the last five days was the International Conference on the Inclusive Museum, which was a topical end to my visit as I was quite unhappy with the (lack of) educational and money-grabbing approach of most of Turkey’s museums (more on that in a future post)

The curious Seraphim figure with an 'uncovered' face, Aya Sofya, Istanbul

From my extensive prior research and experience, the contemporary art (in a Western Art sense) in Turkey seems confined to Istanbul, and to a lesser extent, Ankara. It appeared strange to me coming from a country such as Australia, where every town above, approximately 3000 people, seems to have a contemporary art gallery (of varying quality and criticality, mind you).

Ankara’s Cer Modern was our first contemporary art gallery stop after two weeks of ancient ruins, traditional arts and crafts, Ottoman architecture and grimy interiors. I was shocked at the relief and the ‘I’m home’ familiar feeling I experienced when entering the building, which could easily be an art institution anywhere in the world. I truly understood what O’Doherty meant by his description of the modern ‘white cube’ art gallery:

A gallery is constructed along laws as rigorous as those for building a medieval church. The outside world must not come in, so windows are usually sealed off. Walls are painted white. The ceiling becomes the source of light. The wooden floor is polished so that you click along clinically, or carpeted so that you pad soundlessly, resting the feet while the eyes have at the wall. The art is free, as the saying used to go, “to take on its own life.”(Inside the White Cube: The ideology of the Gallery Space, p.15)

Entrance Couryard, Cer Modern, Ankara

True, the gallery was showcasing the art of a Turkish art collector, the majority of it by Turkish artists, but it still could have been a travelling show anywhere in the world. The gallery shop displayed the ubiquitous acrylic laser-cut ‘birds on a wire’ brooches and branded pencils, the floors were polished concrete, the bathrooms sported the latest shiny European taps, and the building embraced the popular museum ‘rust fetish’ aesthetic by showing the old train tracks beneath an acrylic section of the floor, revealing the structure’s previous use as a train shed. Perhaps the most ‘Turkish’ part of the gallery was its café. I ordered a hamburger, and it came deliciously spiced like the kofta (meatballs) we’d eaten for the previous two weeks.

Gallery Cafe, Cer Modern

The exhibition in the Cer Modern was interesting, even if painting dominated the exhibition (there was only one new media work and only a handful of sculptures and photographs). The premise of +Infinity: A selection from the Ebru Özdemir Collection, was, as the title suggests, a particular art collector’s collection. However, the short blurb on the exhibition went a bit further and suggests that we can ‘read the history of art’ through the collections of people like Ebru Özdemir. I thought the blurb, which you can read here, was interesting because in many art schools, the art market is often ignored or underplayed when teaching art history and/or theory, despite its significant role in shaping, or to a lesser extent (in my opinion), reflecting art history.

There were a lot of fairly banal works, but the ones that grabbed my attention were the surreal landscapes by painter Alaettin Aksoy, the tracing paper collage by Elvan Alpay, and the humorous Please Clear the Dance Floor by Gözde Iklin, which seemingly depicted the wedding from hell mixed in with some Devil Facial Tumour-esque forms. I also enjoyed Inci Eviner’s Leg Animal, where the artist had created a half-man half-squirrel type creature by dripping paint on unstretched canvas, a figure that appealed particularly as one of our many car games - ‘hypotheticals’ - involved a similar proposal: ‘would you rather have a squirrel for a foot, or a shark for a hand?’ The digital photographs by Kezban Arca Batibeki, collectively titled the Burnt Palaces Series (2006), depicted ruined interiors, ironically framed in ornate gilt frames. At the same time, the value adding effect of the frames was somewhat undermined by the ‘sameness’ of the frames – all of them the same size and dimensions – and the cluster-style hanging.

The show was an interesting introduction to a wide range of Modern and contemporary Turkish artists, some of which I recognised in our later visit to the Istanbul Modern. As this post is blowing out, I’ll write about the galleries of Istanbul in my next post.

The Cer Modern can be found at Altinsoy Caddesi No.3, Sihhiye, Ankara. +Infinity: A selection from the Ebru Özdemir Collection is on from the 2 April to the 5 July 2010

get Online at the Plimsoll Gallery

2010-06-05T12:54:00.004+10:00

The third in the ‘on a…’ series, is showing at the Plimsoll Gallery. Online follows the inaugural Onaroll, and last year’s Onalog, with all the exhibitions based on a particular material – fishing line, toilet paper, and logs, respectively. The series, curated by John Vella, seems to be maturing somewhat, both in terms of a move away from what I saw as toilet humour, and in relation to the use of materials. While the toilet paper and logs were used in a quite literal, descriptive manner; in Online, the works have somewhat transcended the material. The standout work is Anne Mestitz’ intensely coloured installation, where she’s stretched a concentrated mass of polychromed fishing line between the ceiling and floor in the middle of her ‘booth’. I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult that work would be to install.

Anne Mestitz, All that I am. Courtesy of the artist.

I should disclose that I’m a committee member of the Plimsoll Gallery, and this is not intended to be an independent review of the exhibition. I just believe that Online is the best in the series so far, and I hope that people will make the effort to go and see the exhibition.

Online showcases the work of Di Allison, Lynne Eastaway, Lou Hubbard, Anne Mestitz, and Terroir. Curated by John Vella. Catch the exhibition at the Plimsoll Gallery, Centre for the Arts, Hunter St, Hobart. Friday 21 May 2010 - Friday 18 June 2010. You can also join the Plimsoll Gallery Facebook group for ongoing exhibition updates.

The 2010 Biennale of Sydney: precarious beauty

2010-05-28T18:43:00.002+10:00

It’s upon us again: [drum roll…] “The 17^th Biennale of Sydney: The Beauty of Distance, Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age.” Does it promise to be bigger and better? No, thank goodness. However, the Biennale PR team are out with their twitter feeds, Facebook fan pages and other social media platforms still drumming up the hype; and the theme is definitely dramatic enough (‘survival in a precarious age.’).

To be honest, I love large exhibitions. Until last year, when I was lucky enough to be given a grant to visit the Venice Biennale, I’d really only been to the relatively largish Australian Perspecta (which is unfortunately not running anymore), Asia Pacific Triennial and the Sydney Biennale; however I’ve always been aware of the special art exhibiting conditions created by these major projects. It’s become obvious to me over the last couple of years, researching site-specific art in Australia’s Public Museums, that the availability of unusual sites even within regular exhibiting spaces (and subsequent funding and media coverage of the included works) is in fact widened during these events. By ‘unusual sites’, I don’t just mean the highly spruiked Cockatoo Island – I’m also thinking of interventions into the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ entrance vestibule, for instance. There was no vestibule-responsive work in this year’s Biennale, however, Cockatoo Island was well-populated with both site-specific and site-oblivious works, as well as a few special Biennale sites: Pier 2/3, the Botanic Gardens and the Opera House.

I was lucky enough to be invited to the vernissage (maybe it’s just the Aussie cultural cringe, but I wonder why they can’t just call it a preview?), and took advantage of the low crowds to ferry across to Cockatoo Island. After the last Biennale [link to 2008 Biennale Catalogue on Amazon], I was eager to see the extent of the site-responsive work. Two years ago, I wrote on this blog about the way in which the Biennale catalogue boasted of the 'over thirty' site-specific artworks, yet in reality only about seven works had a meaningful relationship with the site.

Again, I was disappointed. I don’t understand how artists can be given such amazing spaces and then rather than make work in dialogue with the site, they make work that competes with the surrounding space, making the rusted sinks, archaic machinery, painted symbols, drawers, signs and cranes look decidedly more interesting in comparison. A few works, such as the Mieskuoro Huutajat (Shouting Men’s Choir) video installation were subtly onto it (see left). Roger Ballen’s eerie photographs also sat well within the crumbling building on the top of the island. As a testament to the strength of a few of the works from the last Biennale, the spectre of Mike Parr’s installation MIRROR/ARSE still lingered as we passed the (this year unused) ex-Navy building, as did TV Moore’s work in the Dogleg Tunnel.

Roger Ballen, Cockatoo Island

Part of Aleks Danko's SOME CULTURAL MEDITATIONS, Cockatoo Island

Also on Cockatoo Island, was one of my favourite works from last year’s Venice Biennale, The Feast of Trimalchio by the Russian collective AES+F. The massive work in projected onto three large screens which surround the viewer. To a dramatic soundtrack, scenes of the ultimate holiday resort (a small tropical island with a ski resort at its peak), where guests are overly pampered to a creepy degree and stereotypes are threatened.

Serge Spitzer, Molecular (SYDNEY), the guard house, Cockatoo Island

We had a bit of a regressive bounce on the jumping castle, an artwork by Brook Andrew. It was only later, when I read the artist statement for Jumping Castle War Memorial in the free booklet, that I realised that the meaning of the work was far removed from what I’d imagined jumping up and down on the pattered blow-up.

Cai Guo Qiang’s Inopportune: Stage One, which seems to be the showcase work for this year’s Biennale, wasn’t working (left). Disappointed, I went next door and took a photo of the performance art next door, but they told me to go away. Apparently, they were not actors hired to drink coffee, smoke and handle drills for 2 months; rather, the work was still being set up and the ‘actors’ were in fact installers. This awkward moment was to be repeated throughout the day’s visit: we’d walk into rooms and there’d be a couple of people hanging from the ceiling, sweating, swearing and telling us that the projector wasn’t working but ‘come back tomorrow’.

The following evening I visited the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where they were hosting artist talks. I’m a massive proponent of the gallery’s after hours program, which occurs every Wednesday, and features things like artist talks, films and live music. I dutifully trotted down to the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes and paid to see some of the most underwhelming art I’ve seen in a long time. The Biennale art at the AGNSW was not that much more engrossing unfortunately. I headed to Chinatown instead.

My Friday afternoon involved traipsing thought the Botanical Gardens in search of the elusive Fiona Hall, Janet Lawrence and Choi Jeong Hwa works. Fiona Hall’s Barbarians at the Gate was similar to the Breeding Ground, exhibited in the Port Arthur Project in 2007. Hall’s usual themes of trade, colonialism and botany are well-suited to the gardens, yet the actual site chosen within the gardens was a little strange. Painted army figures hung from the tree above a number of architectural beehives, painted with camouflage patterns.

Janet Lawrence, WAITING -A Medicinal Garden for Ailing Plants (detail)

Janet Lawrence’s work was equally as detailed, and while the tent structure that encloses the work initially struck me as quite strange and somewhat detracting, it did give the whole work the feel of a temporary pseudo-scientific experiment. Choi’s giant inflatable lotus seemed to breathe, inflating and deflating every few minutes. It was sweet but not all that poignant. Finding the works in the bot gardens is almost as enjoyable as seeing them, as the Sydney botanical gardens are amazing, with views across the harbour and hundreds of bats hanging like small parcels from the trees.

....and deflated. Choi Jeon Hwa, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

As the sun went down, I made like a merdog to the opera house, where a second work by Choi is nestled between the ‘sails’ of the building (left). I lingered until Jennifer Wen Ma’s performance New Adventures of Havoc in Heaven III started on the Opera House steps after sunset. Shadows were projected onto smoke, an elusive substance which preferred to be bossed around by the wind rather than the twirling dancer distributing the smoke below. To be honest though, I’m not sure that the performance would be as exciting if we could see the projection most of the time. Those occasional glimpses gave it meaning.

The best of the Biennale was saved until last. The MCA’s four floors have been turned over to the Biennale director yet again, and they contain a number of excellent works, including a collection of the Chapman brothers’ cardboard sculptures, subtly titled Shitrospective. Despite their rawness, the figures created out of the seemingly rough and haphazard shaping and painting of recycled cardboard, are surprisingly animated. You can’t help but feel for the figures in wheelchairs, eyes bulging; and the cardboard miniature version of their The Chapman Family Collection work was very clever (Hint: walk around the plinths, otherwise you’ll miss the person peeing on a dinosaur’s leg).

I’m withholding final judgement on the Biennale before I see the works at the top of Cockatoo Island and Artspace in July. However, I have a few issues with the exhibition. While I enjoyed a number of the individual works in the Biennale, I’ve really struggled to see the thematic link between them all. Secondly, I believe that, like the previous Biennale, the really loaded sites such as Cockatoo Island, the Botanical Gardens and Pier 2/3 are not being used to their full potential, although maybe that’s not unexpected for someone with an interest in site-specific art.

Building interior, Cockatoo Island

The 6th Asia-Pacific Triennial, Brisbane

2010-03-14T23:48:00.004+11:00

I finally made it up to the Asia-Pacific Triennial in Brisbane. It was my second Triennial, and I wouldn’t have made the effort ($400 flights return from Hobart just for a weekend) if I hadn’t enjoyed the previous Triennial in 2006-07 so much. Granted, my 2006 visit immediately followed the most banal and disappointing Sydney Biennale of all time, but it wasn’t just the comparison that made the APT so great.

This year’s APT was not quite as engaging as the previous one, but it was still an excellent exhibition. I was excited to see that the water mall in the Queensland Art Gallery (yes, a massive pond in a building that requires strict climate and humidity controls) held another site-specific artwork by Ayaz Jokhio, and consisted of a six-meter tall octagonal room in the middle of the water, with a ‘bridge’ which allowed viewers to enter the work. Described as ‘conceptual architecture’ on the curator’s podcast (which you could easily transfer onto your iPod or iPhone using the gallery’s wireless network), the work referenced Islam and traditional Eastern design and architectural form. The structure sat easily in the space, and like the other site-specific works produced previously for this space, the pond acted both as an inspiration as well as a ‘frame’ around the contemplative work.

Also in the older Queensland Art Gallery was a massive pile of recycled materials - fabric, plastic bottles, egg cartons, paper, paddle pop sticks and thread – and an open invitation to build aeroplanes that would then be hung from the gallery ceiling. The project was called In Flight, and was by artists Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan who moved to Australia from the Philippines in 2006. Judging from the hundreds already suspended above me, I felt a wee bit intimidated, yet I pulled up a kid’s size stool and got to work. The result was a bit wonky; yet, it was great to make something, channel all that creative energy in me, after viewing two galleries filled with inspirational art.

my rather wonky contribution

Most of the APT is held in the newer Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) which is only a few hundred meters from the Queensland Art Gallery. Unfortunately, in the three years since my last visit the coffee shop below the state library that separates the two galleries has turned into a coffee-molesting, self-serve kids-fest so it made the walk between the two galleries quite a bit quicker (I managed to find a good coffee in the not-so-nearby Barracks complex off Petrie terrace, however). The cavernous spaces of GOMA were utilised by Wit Pimkanchanapong with his descriptively titled Cloud, made up of pieces of paper strung to long cords with paperclips. The cords were strung across the length of the entrance hallway above the heads of visitors as they walked into the building. It was an effective, albeit underwhelming work.

Cloud - as viewed from the 2nd floor

This year’s promotional artwork – Zhu Weibing and Ji Wenyu’s People Holding Flowers - was surprisingly small (in fact I was amazed at how familiar the image of the work was – the APT certainly advertises well). From the various magazine and billboard advertisements, I thought the tiny, besuited, pink-faced men holding similarly coloured lotus leaves were life-size, yet they didn’t reach my knee. In a way, it was kind of disappointing.

One of my favourite works (and apparently amongst my friends I’m alone in this affection) was the kitsch work by Indian artists: Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra. They had mocked up a gaudy living room with pigeon wallpaper, mirrors, photographs, and a tipping table. I wasn’t really convinced by the table and thought it detracted from the carefully staged scene, yet I enjoyed the atmosphere of the installation and the meticulous details.

Opposite was another ‘poster child’ of the APT – Kohei Nawa’s PixCell-Elk#2 (2009). The taxidermied stag looked like it had a bejewelled version of the poor Tasmanian Devils’ facial tumour disease. Various sized glass balls were glued to the stuffed animal, the balls magnifying, distorting and mirroring each other, the viewers, and the stag underneath. The work’s aura was no doubt assisted by its location in a glowing white cube, but it was an overwhelming and enjoyable work, and one that was very popular with fellow visitors.

Another favourite was one of Tracey Moffatt’s videos. I’ve seen other videos in this series (I think at the previous Sydney Biennale?) and they never fail to entertain me. This particular video was called OTHER and explored themes of ‘other-ness’ and the exotic in popular culture through short clips of popular movies. As works that critique social prejudices and assumptions, I believe they’re very successful because of the combination of humour, references to popular culture and distanced commentary.

A surprise inclusion was the revolutionary art, or chosunhua, from North Korea. I quite enjoyed it, although a friend of mine was mildly furious about the appropriateness of having such ‘uncritical’ art in a contemporary art exhibition. While much of the art in this year’s APT was conceptually rigorous, I don’t know if I could single out the work from North Korea as being the most shallow or lacking in criticality (I’m thinking that award goes to the one-liner works by Rudi Mantofani). From a social and cultural point of view, I thought it was a nice comparison to the work from China - a country that not long ago churned out similar revolutionary art.

Revolutionary Mosaic

The education and children’s programs associated with the APT are really amazing. I didn’t have the excuse of an accompanying child, but like in the previous APT this mere detail didn’t stop me from sitting down at the low tables in the ‘kid’s APT’ area and making a thaumatrope – participating artist Runa Islam’s kid’s APT project. The podcast mentioned earlier, was an informal and illuminating discussion between the exhibition’s organisers and a nice addition to the unusually well written didactic wall texts. Unfortunately, I missed the APT films that were screening over the weekend of my visit. Regardless, I still spent my two days in Brisbane totally absorbed by the APT.

The 6th Asia-Pacific Triennial runs from the 5^th December 2009 – 5^th April 2010 at the Queensland Art Gallery and the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane.

Melbourne is alive with Mimesis

2010-02-04T22:32:00.007+11:00

I headed to Melbourne last weekend for a day and a half of coffee, beer, Chinese duck (please please someone open a decent Chinese duck-selling restaurant in Hobart), and most importantly Art Galleries. Unfortunately it wasn’t a great season for ARIs, as many of them shut up shop over January, however I saw the both the International and Australian NGVs (National Gallery of Victoria), and a substantial amount of street art.

The two big ticket items in Melbourne currently are Ricky Swallow’s The Bricoleur, and Ron Mueck’s (self titled?) exhibition at the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, and the NGV International respectively. You’d have to be blind to miss the similarities between the two artists’ work. Both are masters in creating the ‘wow factor’, they play with illusion, make self-contained sculptures, and take mimesis to the most extreme level of anal-retentiveness. They’re also often criticised as being popularist for these reasons. In both exhibitions, viewers can be seen clustering around the often plinth-dependent works, saying things like ‘wow, it looks so real’, ‘this would take so long’, ‘did he do all this by hand?’, or ‘this is so cool, man’ (guess the demographic of that last comment…).

Ron Mueck at the NGV

They’re right. The work is ‘cool’, and part of the works’ attraction is imagining the painstaking labour that goes into handcrafting these objects. Critics do not necessarily see this ‘wow factor’ as a positive thing, however. For instance, I remember reading a particularly savage Art Monthly Australia article written by Adam Geczy a few years ago called ‘Neo-medievalism’ (2005) where he argues that Swallow’s carved sculptures are ‘a petit-bourgeois art’ and a ‘lapse into a retrograde medievalism’ and concludes that the popularity of Swallow’s artwork is simply the fault of ‘nostalgia’. Even Sebastian Smee’s more favourable review in The Australian (16 Dec 2006), warns that ‘Swallow’s dedication to the craft of woodcarving is self-conscious, even self-congratulatory.’

While not all of Swallow’s work is carved from wood (he’s now moved on to the equally as traditional bronze casting), the majority of the works in the show are carved from wood, and many of them I’d seen before. There was the life-sized table covered in sea creatures, called Killing Time, which I overhead a gallery tour guide boasting to an awed crowd: ‘…and it was carved from a single piece of wood’ [I thought it was two, but no matter]. On the adjacent wall hung the other very familiar sculptural still life: Salad Days.

I’d not seen The Bricoleur (2006) before, which depicts a single Converse sneaker wedged in a tree branch, carved from a single piece of Jelutong. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get past the frustrating futility of carving a block of wood to look like a tree branch (‘self-congratulatory’ indeed).

Once you get past the wow factor, however, Swallow’s works are really very clever. The title Killing Time, for instance refers to his experiences fishing, the notion of the still life, as well as the labour invested in creating the piece; and so the labour and the craft is not just incidental, but rather it contributes to the overall meaning of the work.

My favourite pieces were not actually the ones that Swallow had handcarved at all, but rather the bronze casts of decaying cardboard, which were akin to minimalist paintings along one wall. As a group, the works were called Bowmen’s Record, and individually These Days Aren’t Different Enough, numbers 1-4. Like his carved wood objects, the works still utilised a traditional sculptural medium – cast bronze – and yet this time Swallow had no hand in their production [no pun intended]. I’m still undecided as to whether it would make much of a difference if the artist handcast these works himself.

If anything, I actually enjoyed Ron Mueck’s work a bit more. While Mueck’s works had the same annoyingly distracting ‘wow factor’, they really revelled in the theatricality, whereas the spotlighting and similarly sparse set up of Swallow’s exhibition just seemed a little tacky.

For those not in the know, Mueck has a background in designing creatures for movies and television (most notably the cult Labyrinth) and so perhaps it’s not surprising that there is an element of theatricality in his works. What interested me at the NGV was the lack of any set or context surrounding his stubbornly independent photorealistic sculptures. With the exception of three works (one of which was hung on a blue painted wall), most were presented on plinths set away from the high white walls, and I’m guessing the aim was to create a ‘neutral’ background. This attempt to erase all context made the strange human figures with their distorted scales (a massive new born baby, a tiny Dead Dad or Sleeping Old Woman in Bed), seem even more surreal.

Sleeping Old Woman in Bed

Before I end this massive post, I also want to quickly mention the Clemenger Contemporary Art Award on now at the NGV Australia (outside the Swallow show), as I actually preferred this free exhibition to both the (expensive) Swallow and Mueck shows. The exhibition includes fantastic works by Julie Gogh, a bizarre car and trailer set by Domenico de Clario, a painting/installation by Guan Wei, a disconcerting multi-media/sculptural work by Destiny Deacon, and a mysterious Janet Lawrence work amongst others.

Lastly, I just want to acknowledge the lack of published reviews on MONA FOMA despite my excited promises in my last post. I did write an extensive review, but then realised the significant conflicts of interest made it unpublishable:

a) At least one of the artists will probably be marking my PhD (hard to avoid in Tassie), and

b) I volunteered at MONA FOMA.

I should note that I really really enjoyed MONA FOMA however, even if I didn’t follow up with published reviews. I didn’t sleep for 3 weeks!

MONA FOMA 2010 - anticipation post

2010-01-07T17:36:00.000+11:00

I’ve been itching to write on a Hobart exhibition again, but the galleries seem to be recovering from they annual Christmas shows and have either shut up shop (CAST, Entrepot) or have an uninspiring spread. Fortunately, this Friday (8^th) the second annual music/sound/art festival MONA FOMA begins.

The inaugural festival was, to be honest, the best festival that I’ve ever attended, and got a few embarrassingly gushing posts as well as an Artlink review from me (which was criticised as being too positive – what does that say about professional review writing?)

With the exception of the final night’s concert with the Dirty Three, John Cale and Bridezilla and a small event at the Theatre Royal, all the events at this year’s MONA FOMA are free. The festival is obviously well funded for this to occur, and the 2010 festival’s apparently co-funded by David Walsh (who’s currently building his Museum of Old and New Art), the Salamanca Art Centre, and the Tasmanian state government. This post is starting to sound a bit like a PR schpiel, however the reason why I don’t hesitate to point out the funding bodies is because MONA FOMA is so equitable. Other Tassie festivals, such as 10 Days on the Island might have great line ups of international artists, actors and musicians, however I can only ever afford to attend one or two events at most unless I wrangle myself a reviewing job (in which case I can’t truly relax and enjoy the performance because I’m too busy making value judgments).

One of the must attend events for me is John Cale’s Dyddiau Du/Dark Days. The work was exhibited at last year’s Venice Biennale in the Wales Pavilion but despite my frenzied attempt to see all the exhibitions in Venice in less than a week, this particular work was missed. Thank you fate.

The other must-see work is in the Bond Store of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, one of my favourite exhibition spaces in Hobart due to the fact that its walls are dank and covered in historical convict graffiti, the stairs are precariously steep and made of roughly hewn wood, the floors are uneven and the entire building is held up by massive solid wood columns and beams. The combined exhibition and performance is called 48 Fugues for Frank, and is described in the programme as “a musical homage to the life and work of Frank Zappa”:

Dodgy screen shot of the online MONA FOMA programme

Of course, I’ve also had a long love affair with the sounds of the Dirty Three, so I’m eagerly awaiting the closing concert.

I’ll try and post a few reviews on my MONA FOMA experiences over the next couple of weeks. Happy times.

Olafur Eliasson and tiny sculptures

2009-12-30T00:43:00.004+11:00

I have an obsession with maquettes.

At the recent Olefur Eliasson exhibition at the MCA in Sydney, despite all his wonderful finished works, the real lure for me lay in one of the side rooms: the maquettes of imagined or eventually realised works. Yes, the copper wire was messily soldered, the forms were perhaps unresolved, yet these tiny sculptures held something (other than potential) that really intrigued and excited me.

There’s something very special also about tiny sculptures. They’re not on display currently, but the Art Gallery of New South Wales used to have an almost permanent exhibition of tiny Robert Klippel sculptures just next to the (now extended) café. While I live in Hobart now, I grew up in Sydney and used to gravitate towards these strange forms whenever my parents took me to the gallery. Maybe it was their minuteness, perhaps the fact that they kinda looked like other things (bicycles, swings, see-saws…), the forms had some sort of hold over me. Alas, in the last few years, the Klippel sculptures have been removed, unfortunately coinciding with my ability to articulate exactly what I like about certain artworks. If only I could see them one more time in my adulthood…

Advertising for canvas prints on my blog, oh no!

2009-11-26T14:24:00.003+11:00

I thought I'd give this advertising for blogs a spin, as it seems a relatively harmless experiment.

However, I've noticed that a lot of the ads coming up are for canvas prints, which is a source of great distress for me. A couple of months ago, I let go with a rant about the evils of this new trend in 'home decorating', but apparently google ads don't pick up on tones in writing.

I can see the funny side of the whole dilemma, but all the same does anyone out there know how to pick and choose your google ads?

ArtStart Grants: what do they do with the artists after fertilising them?

2009-11-24T21:55:00.001+11:00

I'm not sure what Australia does with all the artists after they've grown and fertilised them, but I thought I'd stick up this link to the new Australia Council 'ArtStart' grant (mainly because I like the logo):

The thing that worries me is that all these grants stress that the cash is not intended to cover the living costs of artists. In other words, it looks like the government is supporting artists (particularly emerging, if you talk to any mid-career starving artist) through all these grants with fancy logos etc., but in actual fact they're not prepared to invest in creating full-time, or at least long term, meaningful jobs for those in the arts industry. Talk to any fine arts graduate and they'll tell you how hard it is to get a job relevant to their field (that does not include managing the photo hub at Kmart). I know that there are a ridiculously large number of people enrolling in art schools around the country, and not all can be expected to get a job in the arts, but it would be nice if I knew that more than one of my fellow BFA graduates now has a fulfilling arts-related job.

So how do you employ artists and fine arts graduates? Off the top of my head, I'd say that the easiest way would be to pour more money into museums and acquisitions, and thus provide more museum jobs. At the moment the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery does not have an acquisition budget for instance (Luckily for Tasmanian artists, the privately funded, soon-to-be-opened Museum of Old and New Art, is commissioning away...). Fund arts festivals which have a significant visual arts component, encourage both the public and private sectors to fund public artworks, and recognise the worth of artists in terms of creating a diverse and rich national culture (think about it - are most great cultures remembered in terms of their sporting prowress or their arts?).

Just an idea....