Australian artnotes: July

Above: Jeff Wall, Boxing, 2011, courtesy the artist and White Cube, London.

Midyear meditation
The solstice is a time to reflect, to come to rest after a peripatetic summer and autumn. Nationally, it has been a busy time across most visual arts genres, but especially for contemporary art. MONA (Hobart) celebrated its first anniversary in January, with the second edition of MONA FOMA, some new commissions, and an impressive Wim Delvoye survey packing in the crowds. Despite trouble with the tax office, David Walsh’s idiosyncratic private museum in June opened another excellent show: Theatre of the World (until 8 Apr 2013). Other cities have been jealously eyeing ‘Hobart’s Bridgeclimb’, but Adelaide in March took solace in an excellent Biennale of Australian Art, combined with a thought-provoking International, and Deadly at Tandanya, all part of Paul Grabowsky’s Adelaide Festival swan-song. Fremantle and Perth hosted the 5^th biennial FotoFreo, followed-up by Jeff Wall Photographs (until 10 September), and AGWA announced a major 6-exhibition partnership with New York’s MoMA until 2015, with the first instalment, Picasso to Warhol, on show until 3 December 2012. Melbourne’s ACMI hosted the major William Kentridge survey Five Themes, and the NGA Canberra delivered a compact National Indigenous Art Triennial. The touring show Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route (jointly developed by NMA Canberra and Form WA) continued its tour with a popular run at the Australian Museum. In April Sydney suddenly woke to a redeveloped MCA Australia and they love it, extravagantly – visitor numbers for its inaugural exhibitions program surpassed all expectations. The MCA, AGNSW and Cockatoo Island are currently major venues for the 18^th Biennale of Sydney (until 16 Sep), and the response is mainly positive – co-curators Gerald McMaster and Catherine de Zegher have successfully built on a strong run of Biennales to deliver a subtle and multi-layered event that repays thoughtful exploration. Still eagerly awaited is QAG/GoMA’s Asia Pacific Triennial in December. 


Musical chairs
A high-level institutional re-shuffle saw Michael Brand succeed Edmund Capon at AGNSW, QAG/GoMA’s Tony Ellwood replace Gerard Vaughan at NGV, and Vaughan’s predecessor Timothy Potts (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge UK) appointed director of the Getty Centre in Los Angles, a job once held by Brand. An announcement of Ellwood’s replacement in Brisbane is expected soon. Kevin Sumption replaced Mary-Louise Williams at the ANMM Sydney, and Christine Morrow took over from Domenico de Clario at Adelaide’s AEAF. At board level, Tim Fairfax stepped in as interim Chair of the NGA council, replacing Rupert Myer, a role that had been predicted to go to long-serving NGV council president Allan Myers, who was expected to make way for Naomi Milgrom (see Artnotes March). This didn’t happen – Myers stayed on, noses are out of joint, and the NGV board has closed ranks around the matter. Rupert Myer takes over from James Strong as Ozco chair, Robyn Archer is deputy chair, and Lee-Ann Buckskin is the new chair of Ozco’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board. 


Australia offshore
When it comes to major cultural exports it hasn’t been a headline year, however good things happen below the radar. It is Australian Indigenous art and culture that mainly excites the rest of the world, and Kevin Rudd as both PM and Foreign Minister initiated a program of cultural diplomacy aimed at previously neglected Latin America and African countries, in support of his campaign for a UN Security Council seat. In February the Australian Journey Festival travelled to Havana, Cuba, presenting BALGO: Contemporary Australian Art from the Balgo Hills, alongside exhibitions by Indigenous photographer Wayne Quilliam, and Victorian artist, Maree Clarke. Message Stick: Indigenous Identity in Urban Australia, developed by Artbank and DFAT, has toured the Pacific and is now making its way around Africa with appearances in Cape Town, The Seychelles, Port Louis, Harare, Nairobi and Abuja. The Australian Embassy in Washington DC presented Lie of the Land: New Australian Landscapes, and Healy and Cordeiro showed Are we there yet? at the city’s Corcoran Gallery of Art. Simryn Gill was announced as Australia’s representative for the 2013 Venice Biennale and a new pavilion, designed by Denton Corker Marshall, will be ready for the 2015 event. 8 Australian artists are included in this year’s Documenta in Germany. 


Ozco supports the participation of many individual artists at such international events, but our cultural attachés around the world frequently bemoan the dearth of DFAT resources to mount exhibitions at embassy spaces and other venues. Offshore private museums and well-endowed universities often take up the slack, and Indigenous artists are again the focus of international interest. In Utrecht, Netherlands, the Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art (AAMU), founded by a group of benefactors including Hans Sondaal, a former Ambassador to Australia, has since 2001 presented an astonishing range of exhibitions covering many aspects of Australian Indigenous art. Currently showing (until 9 December) is Outsider / Insider: The art of Gordon Bennett. In the USA the University of Virginia’s Kluge Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection has an ambitious program of exhibitions and residencies. Currently on show is History in the Making: Aboriginal Art of the Twentieth Century, and Jason Wing’s People of Substance (until 26 August). At the UVa Art Museum are paintings by Ramingining artist Johnny Liwangu, and elsewhere at UVa are prints from the heron island suite series by Judy Watson, and textual works by Vernon Ah Kee. 


Australian commercial galleries continued their offshore offensive at the India Art Fair, Art Stage Singapore and Art Hong Kong but had a much lower profile at the prestige USA and European fairs, with Auckland’s Michael Lett gallery the only Antipodean participant at Art Basel 2012. Anna Schwartz and Auckland’s Starkwhite made the cut for New York’s Armory Show, but no-one from the region was selected for the inaugural Frieze NY (April), or the established Frieze London in October. Acceptance into next year’s re-branded Art Basel Hong Kong is expected to be very competitive in the face of heavyweight northern participation. The Melbourne Art Fair returns from August 1-5, and Sydney will get a new event, the Sydney Contemporary Art Fair in April 2013. 


From the capital
Following recent visits to Afghanistan by Shaun Gladwell and Ben Quilty, the Australian War Memorial in May commissioned Indigenous Queensland artist Tony Albert for a tour of duty with the North West Mobile Unit (NORFORCE) to observe and record its activities in Northern Australia. No exhibition details have been announced but the results are sure to be fascinating. 


The National Museum of Australia presents Menagerie: Contemporary Indigenous Sculpture in Australia (until 14 October) featuring over 30 established and emerging artists whose work depicts animals. The National Library of Australia presents Lewin: Wild Art, (until 28 October) featuring the work of John William Lewin (1770-1819), described as ‘the first free professional artist’ to settle in Australia. The National Portrait Gallery’s Elegance in exile: portrait drawings from colonial Australia, runs until 16 August, and several of its exhibitions are touring the country: The National Photographic Portrait Prize 2012 is at Moree Plains Gallery (NSW) until 12 August; Beyond the Self: Contemporary Portraiture from Asia is at SAMSTAG (Adelaide) until 5 October; Skater:
Portraits by Nikki Toole is at Geelong Gallery (VIC) until 9 September. 


NAVA’s Federal campaign
NAVA has launched a new campaign to ask the Federal Government to mandate the payment of loan and commission fees for artists when their work is shown in publicly funded galleries or major public exhibitions or events. On behalf of the sector, NAVA is requesting that the payment level be required to accord with arts industry best practice standards as published in the Code of Practice for the Professional Australian Visual Arts, Craft and Design Sector. You can sign a petition at: http://www.change.org/petitions/australian-commonwealth-government-mandated-payment-of-fair-artists-fees.