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2011-11-29T18:42:00.001+11:00

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Australian Art Notes: December 2011

2011-11-26T19:53:00.008+11:00

Left: in our opinion, the the standout Australian show in 2011:
Dinh Q. Lê Erasure (installation view), 2011, single channel video, boat, found photographs, rocks, online archive, dimensions variable
Photo: Aaron de Souza. Courtesy the artist and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation
--------------
David Corbet's National artnotes appear in edited form in Art Monthly Australia (www.artmonthly.org.au)
_________

Are we there yet? (the year in review)

Well, there goes another one – and has it been a good year for the visual arts, nationally speaking? The answer, as always, is mixed. National Artnotes aims to cover issues of national arts policy and funding, the art market, national institutions and significant regional developments. We also try to view Australian art with an international perspective. We get to see some great art, but in general it is left to others to review and evaluate individual artists and exhibitions.

Export

One of our themes has been presentation of Australian art in an international context, whether at home or abroad, and how our governments, funding bodies and institutions perform. With a small population, we need to grow our markets for art and culture beyond our borders. The primary vehicles for offshore promotion are Ozco and DFAT, which support Australian art through institutional touring shows, along with key events like the Venice Biennale. Apart from Hany Armonious in Venice and Papunya Painting: Out of the Australian Desert (National Museum of China, from the NMA collection) it hasn’t been a big year for touring exhibitions. Australian Cultural Attachés in the world’s capitals continue to lament a diminution of resources for presentation. Ozco supports participation (by artists) in overseas biennales, and attendance (by commercial galleries) at art fairs, while many other quasi-government and University-based grant programs support overseas residencies. The commercial galleries play a major self-funded role, and 2011 has been a growth year for commercial art fairs in our region. We saw a significant Australian presence at Art Stage Singapore, India Art Summit (New Delhi, renamed India Art Fair for 2012), Art Hong Kong (recently acquired by Art Basel), the Auckland Art Fair, and the Korea International Art Fair. Further afield Anna Schwartz showed at the invitation-only Armory Show in New York, and Breenspace at VOLTA.

Import

On the import side there was a steady stream of international semi-blockbusters flowing into national and state institutions, including Vienna: Art & Design (NGV); Peggy Guggenheim (AGWA); Saatchi in Adelaide (AGSA); Surrealism (GoMA); The First Emperor, The Mad Square and Picasso (AGNSW); Annie Liebovitz and (from 16 Dec) Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (MCA) and Renaissance (NGA from 9 Dec). Apart from these (often pre-existing) shows, more international art has been seen in institutions, for example the NGA’s excellent Life Death & Magic (Indonesian traditional arts) and AGNSW’s specialist Asian galleries exhibitions. It has been a big year all round for the AGNSW, with the superb Kaldor Collection of late 20^th century art now housed alongside the rest of the contemporary collection in spacious new galleries, a spectacular swan song for outgoing director Edmund Capon. But for contemp-o-holics keen to see current and edgy overseas work, the above are slim pickings, with only the MCA consistently programming ambitious stand-alone shows of current international art. In Hobart and Sydney, three privately funded institutions help fill the gap, with MONA, the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) and White Rabbit Gallery consistently presenting new work. Commercial gallerists Anna Schwartz and Roslyn Oxley operate in the remaining gap, with significant private wealth and some major international artists, alongside a handful of well-heeled dealerships. The prestigious Melbourne Art Fair attracted a smattering of overseas galleries, including a modest Canadian participation.

Biennale-land

It is to Australia’s three major curated international bi/triennials that one must look for currency. The Biennale of Sydney (BoS) and Brisbane’s Asia Pacific Triennial (APT), both with 2012 editions in planning, are regarded internationally as ones to watch, and their attendance figures compare with major events worldwide, in part because of a policy of appointing curators of international renown. The Adelaide International, a de-facto biennial staged alongside the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art (ABAA), is also well-regarded, with Victoria Lynn’s Restless (from 2 March, various venues) eagerly anticipated. It is expected that the 2^nd edition of the NGA’s National Indigenous Art Triennial (NIAT 2012: unDisclosed, re-scheduled for May) will live up the promise of Brenda Croft’s first (2008) instalment, which toured nationally and to Washington DC to some acclaim.

Federal, State and City

Federal Arts Minister Simon Crean has maintained a steady-as-she-goes approach, with predecessor Garrett’s policy initiatives (notably the Resale Royalty Scheme and Indigenous Art Code) proving uncontentious, and a steady stream of reviews and reports under consideration. The arts are not seen as an election-winner by Labour or the Coalition, and hopes that a change of government signifies funding increases, or even enthusiasm, long ago gave way to acceptance that continuation, indexed for inflation, is the best one can hope for. Queensland bucked the national trend, with a 5% real increase in arts funding for 2011/12.

Ozco and the other nationally funded institutions, the NGA, NPG, NMA, NLA, NMM, Artbank, ABAF, Screen Australia and Bundanon Trust, all continue to do good work on limited resources, and we should certainly never take their existence for granted. The University galleries nationwide are an often underrated asset, supplementing a well-developed network of state regional galleries and some arts-aware city and local governments across the country. The major capitals in particular are attempting to nourish an inner city creative revival, with a noticeable increase in small-scale support for beach art, laneway art, urban art projects, ARIs and creative networks of many kinds. It’s not such a bad picture, and art may even be said to be gaining space in the imaginative life of nation.

Markets

Fact: people do buy art. All sorts of people buy it, and they buy it at all levels, from village fêtes to prestige auctions. It’s certainly true that many smaller galleries have been doing it tough for several years, struggling to keep afloat, much less returning to pre GFC (2007) levels. It appears that at the more accessible end of the market ($1-5K), people are keeping their credit cards in their pockets. Above that, it’s all about who’s ‘collectable’, and if you are, the $10-30K range appears surprisingly robust. Above these levels it’s likely there’s already a waiting list for your work, and you’re being re-sold at auction or dealerships. After a bit of re-shuffling, the auction scene has settled down again, with most major players still in the game, and an ambitious, new-ish kid on the block (Deutscher and Hackett) stalking the established houses. It’s widely believed that the heady sales of the noughties, especially for Indigenous art, are over – it was a bubble that was never going to be sustainable. But despite worldwide economic jitters, 2011 has been an encouraging year at re-sale, with clearance rates and revenues holding up in most cases, and a number of million dollar plus individual sales. Verdict: cautious optimism.

The zeitgeist

Across the year and across the nation we’ve seen ample evidence of a diverse art scene that sustains many thousands of artists, many galleries large and small, and a significant curatorial and academic infrastructure, extending beyond capital cities via regional institutions, supported by a broad political consensus that this is a worthwhile use of taxpayer money. Surveys regularly show that more Australians follow artistic pursuits than sporting ones. The audience for contemporary art, including Indigenous artists, is growing modestly, but imported ‘old master’ shows and well-worn favourites like the Archibald remain the most popular offerings. Our educational institutions are adequately resourced. There are reasonable opportunities for young artists with talent and industry to get ahead, get noticed, get a grant, even make a living if they are lucky.

GenY artists in Australia seem a remarkably cheerful bunch, and a self-protective carapace of techno-savvy irony seems to be de rigeur. Self-destructive, garret-like attitudes are out, and passions are not worn on sleeves, or even on lapel buttons. Understatement is what it’s all about, either that or full-on overstatement. GenX artists are establishing themselves in institutional positions to augment modest returns on art practice, and increasingly run University art departments, as the Boomers approach retirement. Across the generations, only a handful of Australian artists have achieved significant international recognition. That most of those are Indigenous artists may tell us something about how we are perceived globally.

We’ve heard it said that it’s all too easy. That a complacent and risk-averse curatariat presides over a parochial system of patronage, meekly followed by a compliant constituency of artists. That without social challenge, political upheaval, blood and guts, great art will not emerge. That most Australian visual art is a half-hearted, cynical business, a watered-down version of what is going on ‘overseas’. That most video art is banal and easy to do. That there is too much unexceptional photomedia, too much dot painting, too much portraiture, too much… well, you know how it goes. We don’t have the answers, but the questions are always interesting. Can you think of any art experience this year past which changed your worldview, made you see with new eyes, provided an epiphany? We can, but if you can’t, get into that studio and start making it!

All best wishes for 2012 – keep the comments and emails coming.

Australian Art Notes: November 2011

2011-11-01T18:00:00.000+11:00

Artsummit success

The 5th World Summit on Arts and Culture wrapped up in Melbourne in early October, with credit to all concerned it seems. The Summit, themed Creative Intersections, attracted 501 delegates from 72 countries, exploring intersections between the arts and other sectors across health, education, environment, business, international aid, social inclusion and digital technologies. A summary of case studies and papers will be released early in 2012, and the 6th Summit will take place in Chile in January 2014.

www.artsummit.org

Returning antiquities

The Australian government is quietly doing the right thing, with recent returns of precious cultural antiquities to Egypt, Peru and Jordan under the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act 1986. In September, 122 Egyptian artefacts including figurines and miniature amulets, some dating from the fourth millennium BC, were officially returned to Egypt. Nine artefacts, including fragile textile remnants, woven and pottery dolls and gold foil artefacts, were formally handed back to Peru, and two miniature pots have been returned to Jordan. The Federal Office for the Arts said “the Australian Government is committed to the protection of moveable cultural heritage – both our own and that of other nations. Anyone seeking to purchase cultural heritage objects must ensure that they are accompanied by the proper documents such as export permits”.

www.arts.gov.au

National Indigenous centre back on the radar

After a quiescent period, talk of an Indigenous cultural centre in Sydney’s contentious Barangaroo precinct has again been in the news, partly arising from the sudden resignation of Hetti Perkins as head of Indigenous art at AGNSW. Perkins has called for the establishment of a national institution that reflects the range and depth of contemporary Indigenous culture. Arts Minister Simon Crean encouraged her to make a submission to the NCP (see below). A national Indigenous knowledge centre was canvassed at the 2020 summit in 2008, and Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin says a feasibility study commissioned last year is still being considered. Powerhouse Museum director Dawn Casey supports a new national institution but says it should avoid ethnographic material and social history, and “be more about where we are today”. Sydney's deputy Lord Mayor, Marcelle Hoff, said Barangaroo would be a suitable site for an Indigenous centre, although not underground, arguing that the symbolism of an Indigenous centre buried below ground would be unacceptable.

Bunker busters

Simultaneously, the Barangaroo Delivery Authority (BDA) has initiated tendering for a 100,000-cubic metre underground ‘cultural space’, situated within a natural-looking headland designed by the US landscape architect Peter Walker, and ferociously championed by Paul Keating, at an overall estimated cost exceeding $90 million. Quickly dubbed ‘the bunker’ by the media, planning documents say usage will be determined in the future ''depending on what Sydney needs''. Sydney University’s Professor Peter Webber says ''No architect in their right mind could design a space like that without knowing what you could put in it”. In a last-ditch attempt to stop the plan, Webber has written to the NSW Premier, backed by more than 60 planning and architectural luminaries, including Richard Leplastrier, Peter Stutchbury, Philip Cox, Penelope Seidler and David Chesterman. The letter suggests the northern point, earmarked for the headland, is an ideal location for a new theatre, which should be built above ground.

BDA says the raw underground space will add just $8 million to the cost of restoring the headland and it cites other successful underground facilities including Hobart’s MONA, Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music and Renzo Piano’s California Academy Of Sciences. According to BDA documents, visitors will experience “a dramatic entry that leads into a large space with natural light reflecting off the warm sandstone wall from numerous skylights above”. It adds that the cultural facility will provide “a diversity of spaces to suit a wide range of exhibition and performance, allowing multiple configurations, heights and views, there are few limitations on how these spaces could be used”.

www.barangaroo.com

New MCA reveals 2012 program

Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) today announced a reopening date of

31 March 2012, following its $53 million redevelopment. The 2012 exhibition program was also announced, commencing with Marking Time (31 March until 3 June 2012) curated by Rachel Kent, featuring artists from Europe, the USA, Brazil, Japan and Australia, and Volume One: MCA Collection, curated by Glenn Barkley. Next up will be the18th Biennale of Sydney: all our relations (27 June– 16 September) across two levels. Spring shows include Primavera (5 October – 2 December), Ken Whisson - As If (1 October – 28 November) and Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro (4 October – 28 November). Next summer, artist Brook Andrew will curate TABOO - The Silent Identity (19 December– 24 February 2013) presenting recent work by Indigenous artists from Australia and around the world. Also announced is a series of permanent site-specific works by Australian artists including Brook Andrew, Hany Armanious, Emily Floyd, Grant Stevens and Helen Eager.

Review of the reviews

Comments on the Federal Government’s National Cultural Policy (NCP) discussion paper closed on 21 October, with over 900 submissions received as AMA went to press. Arising from perceived public interest, news media have demonstrated a higher level of attention than is usual for arts policy issues, with News Ltd, Fairfax and Crikey all presenting thoughtful pieces in the run-up to the comment deadline. Some have been critical of the ‘glacial’ pace of a process initiated by (then) Arts Minister Peter Garrett in 2006, with the final policy due in 2012. The review is just one of an acronym-strewn range of arts, culture and media reviews intended to inform a coherent ‘whole-of-government’ policy. National Artnotes has reported on many of these over the last year or so:

The Strategic Digital Industry Plan (SDIP), a.k.a Creative Industries, a Strategy for 21st Century Australia: was released in August, and responses to the discussion paper for Harold Mitchell’s Review of Private Sector Support for the Arts (RPSSA) closed in July, with the final report expected early next year. Also mentioned in the NCP paper is a 2010 election commitment to look at the possibility of a National Design Policy, with proposed draft scope of reference and timeframe expected soon.

www.arts.gov.au

The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA)’s revised Shape of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts was published in August, with further content, consultation and revision planned throughout 2012 and final publication TBC.

www.acara.edu.au

Then there’s The Convergence Review, being conducted under the auspices of the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE), examining policy and regulatory frameworks for a “converged media and communications landscape in Australia”. A discussion paper was released in September with submissions closing 28 October and final report due March 2012.

www.dbcde.gov.au

Finally, the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) has released a discussion paper on its Review of the National Classification Scheme, with submissions closing 18 November and final report due January 2012.

www.alrc.gov.au

Venice Pavillion update

Expressions of interest for the design of a new Venice Pavillion have now closed. The pavillion, managed by the Australia Council, is due to be completed for the opening of the 56th International Art Exhibition in June 2015, with appointment date for the chosen architect(s) to be announced. The selection panel comprises Luca Belgiorno-Nettis (Chair, Biennale of Sydney), Doug Hall (Biennale 2011 Commissioner), Kathy Keele (Ozco CEO), Simon Mordant (Biennale 2013 Commissioner) and Brian Zulaikha (President, Australian Institute of Architects).

www.australiacouncil.gov.au/venicepavillion

NPG Movember

The National Portrait Gallery has announced the collection based show Jo's mo show (with beards)

(28 October - 1 April) illustrating changes in beards, moustaches and sideburns from the 1780s to the 1980s. The NPG throws open its doors between 5pm - 9pm on the last Friday of every month for exhibition viewings, entertainment and drinks to kick-start the weekend. And a reminder that entries to the $25k 2012 National Photographic Portrait Prize close on 31st October.

Vale Steve (belatedly)

2011-10-10T09:51:00.001+11:00

Steven Paul Jobs
Inventor
February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011

Vale Ruby

2011-10-02T09:47:00.001+11:00

Ruby Langford Ginibi
Writer and academic
(26 January 1934 – 1 October 2011

Australian Art Notes | October

2011-09-30T18:40:00.000+10:00

David Corbet's National artnotes appear in edited form in Art Monthly Australia (www.artmonthly.org.au)

________

ABCArts cuts update

Following the ABC’s decision todiscontinue the Art Nation program anddisband the TV arts unit, protests have been widespread. A senate enquiry hasbeen launched into, among other things, “the implications of this decision onAustralian film and television production in general, and potential impact onquality and diversity of programs”. Some have accused the committee of actingwith indecent haste (submissions closed on 9 September) with its report due on12 October.

www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/ec_ctte/abc/info.htm

At press time, an open letter to theABC board had been signed by 59 prominent arts figures, stating that thedecision “will diminish the ABC’s irreplaceable role as the nation’s culturalmemory”. Signatories include Peter Carey, Helen Garner, Tim Winton, DavidMalouf, Nick Cave, Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee, Oscar winners Geoffrey Rush andAdam Elliot, and Edinburgh Festival director Jonathan Mills. The letter addsthat “without a strong in-house unit to create and to commission artsprogramming, the national broadcaster will fail its charter responsibilities.And it will fail us, by not reminding us that our national character isinformed and shaped by the imagination and creativity of artists”.

Auctionaction

Two out of three major fine artauctions in August were cause for cautious optimism in a sector that has beensomewhat soft in recent times. Sotheby's (Important Australian &International Art) sold Arthur Boyd’s TheFrightened Bridegroom (1958) for a record $1.2 million, and ArthurStreeton’s Ocean Blue, Lorne (1921)for $276k, achieving a total of $4.9 million across 67 lots, a clearance rateof 78%. Deutscher and Hackett (Important Australian and International Art) alsomanaged a respectable 78% by volume, total sales of $4.8 million across 165lots, with John Brack’s The FertilityGoddess (1974) fetching $600k. Bonham’s (Australian Art) sold a more modest40% of offerings. Topping their results was Brett Whiteley’s Nobby's Head and the Entrance to Newcastle(1991) at $576k, while his Vincent(bought for $1.02m four years ago) was passed in. This was an even worseclearance rate than Bonham’s disappointing result in June (Aboriginal Art),which sold 68 of 147 lots (46%) totalling $744k. Commentators have suggestedthat Bonham’s relative inexperience in the Australian market may be to blamefor what appear to be under-trend results.

In other news, Deutscher and Hackett haveannounced that their New Albion Gallery (NAG) has secured the current Sydneypremises of the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) from 2013, with DougHall AM, Australia’s current Venice Biennale Commissioner, as ConsultingCurator. SCAF will continue to be based at the adjoining annexe and willoperate its popular Culture andIdeas forums from this location, with future exhibition projects relocatingto the new Sherman-benefacted galleries at Gateway@COFA (see AMA 243).

NationalCultural Policy

The Federal Government’s NationalCultural Policy discussion paper is now available. Have your say on the futureof arts, culture and the creative industries in Australia. Comments close 21October.

www.arts.gov.au

National Gallery

The NGA Canberra has announced itssummer blockbuster: Renaissance:15th & 16th CenturyItalian Paintings from the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo (9 Dec – 9 Apr 2012).It is hoped the exhibition, featuring works by Raphael,Botticelli and Titian among a host of others, willprove a big draw for the gallery this summer. Despite opening a new wing, theNGA has struggled to repeat the spectacular attendance of its 2010 Masterpieces from Paris exhibition,which attracted a record 476,000 visitors.

NationalMuseum

The NMA Canberra has announced two newexhibitions: A New Horizon: ContemporaryChinese Art (from 30 Sept) features works from the National Art Museum ofChina, featuring painting, sculpture and new media art created since 1949. Off the Walls (from 28 Oct) featureswork by such artists as Rover Thomas, Narritjin Maymuru and Fiona Foley, drawnfrom the collections of various government bodies, made between 1967 and 2005.Opening on 16 November is Inside: Life inChildren’s Homes and Institutions, featuring the voices and personalobjects of the forgotten Australians and former child migrants who experiencedinstitutional care as children.

National Portrait Gallery

The NPG Canberra has announced twoupcoming exhibitions for its summer programme. Of kings and men: Celebrating 100 years of the Historic MemorialsCollection (3 Nov - 5 Feb 2012) celebrates 100 years of the HistoricMemorials Collection and its role in commissioning portraits of parliamentary andjudicial figures in Australia. Impressions:Painting light and life (25 Nov- 4 March 2012) presents portraits by, andof, artists at the heart of Australian impressionism including Tom Roberts,Arthur Streeton and Frederick McCubbin, featuring well-loved icons of latenineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Australian art, as well asrarely-exhibited works drawn from public and private collections. The $25kNational Photographic Portrait Prize 2012 (16 March to 20 May and touring) isnow open to entries, closing on 31 October.

www.portrait.gov.au

London Museum Fellowships

Two Australians will travel to Londonto continue work on the repatriation of Indigenous ancestral remains as part ofnew fellowship positions at the Natural History Museum. Arts Minister SimonCrean announced that Carol Christophersen from Darwin and Emma Loban fromThursday Island will spend six months with the Museum working on projectsassociated with the repatriation of human remains to their community of origin.

CreativeAustralia Artists Grants

OzCo has launched the CreativeAustralia Artists Grants, a five year program which delivers on the Federal Government’sbudget commitment of $10 million in new funding to the arts. The program willsupport artists across all artforms to deliver new artistic works, undertakefellowships and create additional presentations to Australian audiences overthe next five years. The focus will be onattracting applications from artists facing access barriers such as artistswith a disability, artists from non-English speaking and culturally diversebackgrounds, and artists in regional and remote areas.

www.australiacouncil.gov.au/grants/creative_australia

IndigenousArt Code update

Indigenous Art Code Ltd is conducting arenewed recruitment drive. When the Code was first released in mid-2010 itquickly received almost 100 signatories, an enthusiastic first response. Nowthat the Code has more resources in staff and marketing funds, CEO John Osteris currently travelling and meeting with artists, dealers and galleries acrossAustralia. One of the priorities is to enlist the support of the leadinginstitutions and arts agencies for the principles of the Code, as well as artistsand other stakeholders.

www.indigenousartcode.org

Sportand Art

Australianartists are invited to participate in the International Olympic Committee’sSport and Art Contest, in two categories: Sculptures and Graphic works. Thetheme of the contest is ‘Sport and the Olympic Values of Excellence, Friendshipand Respect’. The contest consists of a national phase from August 2011 –January 2012 and an international phase from March – June 2012. Participantsmust submit their work for the national phase to the AOC by Tuesday 31 January2012. There is no age restriction. For further information contact FrancesCordaro on 02 9247 2000 or email frances.cordaro@olympics.com.au

WetlandCare Australia National Art andPhotography Competition

TheWetlandcare Australia National Art and Photography Competition is now open forentries. With five categories available, there is a chance for people of allages to submit their photographs and artworks on paper exploring the theme ofWetlands, Tourism and Recreation for the chance to win great prizes.

www.wetlandcare.com.au

Vale Cy Twombly

2011-07-06T15:58:00.000+10:00

Edwin Parker 'Cy' Twombly, Jr

Artist

April 25, 1928 – July 5, 2011

Photograph: Francois Halard

Vale Elizabeth Taylor

2011-03-25T14:13:00.000+11:00

Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, DBE
Screen icon
February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011

Vale, Ian Abdulla

2011-02-02T14:31:00.000+11:00

Ian Abdulla
Painter
1947-2011

Vale Makinti Napanangka

2011-01-13T11:30:00.001+11:00

Makinti Napanangka
Painter
c1925 - 2011

AUS/NETHERLANDS: The Namatjira Project - 2011

2010-12-08T11:08:00.003+11:00

The Namatjira Project has announced preliminary dates and venues for its 2011 tour - see below.
If you didn't catch this during its all too brief Belvoir St (Sydney) season, book now!
International Community Arts Fesitval, Rotterdam, Holland.
30th March - 4th April
Creative development and showing in the Pilbara, WA.
18th July - 30th July

Melbourne season (announcing soon!)
10th August - 28th August

Drum Theatre at Dandenong Town Hall, Dandenong, VIC.
1 September - 4th September

Geelong Performing Arts Centre, Geelong, Victoria.
8th September - 10 September

Canberra Theatre Centre, Canberra, ACT.
14 September - 17th September

Illawarra Performing Arts Centre, Wollongong, NSW.
21 September - 24th September

Big hART and the Namatjira Project continues to nuture a close relationship with the Namatjira family, and will continue to work with them both in Alice Springs and on tour. For more info: hhttp://www.namatjira.bighart.org/

See our blog item from earlier this year: http://leflaneurblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/sydney-big-harts-namatjira.html

Sydney: Annie Leibovitz at MCA

2010-11-19T15:25:00.002+11:00

Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life 1990-2005

Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

until 27 March 2011

Above: Susan Sontag, Vandam Street Studio, New York 1999 © the artist and MCA Sydney

This large show is notable for its inclusion of many personal family photographs, and little-seen travel and landscape images, as well as many of the iconic images of celebrities for which she is best known.
The exhibition started its world tour at the Brooklyn Museum in 2006 and has since been seen at the San Diego Museum of Art, the Atlanta High Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the National Portrait Gallery in London, C/O Berlin, Alcala 31 in Madrid, Kunsthaus Wien and Fotografiska museum Stockholm.
Buy the book, Annie needs the cash!

Vale Roberta

2010-11-16T13:52:00.004+11:00

Roberta 'Bobbi' Sykes
Writer and activist
1943 – 2010

Vale Gregory

2010-10-30T15:05:00.001+11:00

Gregory Anthony Isaacs

Musician

15 July 1951 – 25 October 2010)

Canberra: James Turrell's new 'skyspace'

2010-10-21T09:42:00.002+11:00

James Turrell
Within without 2010

Australian Gardens
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

3 years and A$10 million in the making, this astonishing underground installation continues Turrell's series of 'skyspaces' around the world.

The Quaker artist's ongoing masterwork is Roden Crater, an extinct volcano in Arizona's Painted Desert which he has been transforming into a celestial observatory for the past thirty years - see the video below.

Photo: Within without 2010
Courtesy the artists and NGA

Sydney: Big hART’s 'Namatjira'

2010-10-20T13:03:00.005+11:00

Namatjira

Upstairs Theatre at Belvoir Street

until November 7

www.belvoir.com.au

This piece of 'community theatre', about the early 20th century Aboriginal painter Albert Namatjira, transcends the genre, delivering an intimate spectacle with heart, soul, humour and profundity in equal measure. It's effectively a 2-hander and Trevor Jamieson and Derek Wyatt are both compelling in their multiple roles. See it if you can. The Sydney season is nearly sold out but an extension and wider tour is likely.

More about the project:
http://www.namatjira.bighart.org

Flickr photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/namatjiraproject/5092303482/

Pictured: Trevor Jamieson
Courtesy Belvoir St Theatre

Vale Benoît Mandelbrot

2010-10-20T12:33:00.002+11:00

Benoît B. Mandelbrot
Scientist
20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010

Vale Joan Sutherland

2010-10-11T10:54:00.011+11:00

Joan Alston Sutherland
Singer
7 November 1926 – 10 October 2010

New Zealand: Taika Waititi's 'Boy'

2010-09-20T13:13:00.001+10:00

Boy
Dir: Taika Waititi, New Zealand
88 minutes

Sundance Film Festival January 22, 2010
World Cinema – Dramatic

Audience Award Winner at Sydney Film Festival QANTAS BEST FEATURE FILM

The highest grossing NZ film of all time may be the best movie to come out of Australasia this year. Many films attempt to get inside the mind of a child, with mixed success. Here, success is total. James Rolleston (pictured) and his little brother Rocky, played by Te Aho Eketone Whitu, are both superb on screen. Their feckless father Alamein is played by director Taika Waititi, also to good effect.
The narrative maintains a fine balance between deadpan Maori humour, poignant observation and profound insights into the world of a child teetering on the edge of adolescence. Often played for laughs, there are also heartrending moments. Feelgood? Well, maybe, but in a way that is truthful and universally relevant.

More info: http://www.boythemovie.co.nz/

Vale, Kevin

2010-07-14T16:41:00.007+10:00

Kevin Hough
Outsider artist
May 27 1956 – July 9 2010

Vale Louise

2010-06-01T12:35:00.003+10:00

Louise Joséphine Bourgeois
25 December 1911 – 31 May 2010
Image: © Estate Robert Mapplethorpe

Biennale of Sydney: a few standouts from preview day

2010-05-13T11:47:00.001+10:00

Newell Harry

Pier 2/3 Walsh Bay

Cai Guo-Qiang
Cockatoo Island

Brook Andrew

Cockatoo Island

Janet Laurence

Botanical Gardens

Janet Laurence

Botanical Gardens

Fiona Hall

Botanical Gardens

Choi Jeong Hwa
Sydney Opera House

More to come soon.

Biennale of Sydney: AES+F – The Feast of Trimalchio - part 1

2010-05-12T21:44:00.003+10:00

This work was also shown at the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2009.
Three simultaneous channels are projected onto a circular screen, each taking up a third of the space.
The three channels are shown here as layers.

Vale, Lena

2010-05-10T21:36:00.000+10:00

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne
June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010

Mexico: Daniel Lezama

2010-04-29T12:28:00.004+10:00

Daniel Lezama showed some extraordinary new works at Zona Maco 2010. This series shows highly stylised encounters between colonial/literary and Mexican archetypal/mythological figures, combining beautiful facture with potent symbolism. Characters such as Malcolm Lowry’s fictional Geoffrey Firmin (from Under the Volcano), explorer/artist J.M Rugendas and other ‘nomads’ are depicted in complex allegorical tableaux. Lezama is highly articulate about his work, and his website is worth a visit (www.daniellezama.net).

El Ecuador (nuevo pintor, nuevo modelo), 2009

Oil on linen, 320 x 240 cm

Cortesía Galería Hilario Galguera

Cita bajo el volcan, 2009

Oil on linen, 320 x 440 cm
Cortesía Galería Hilario Galguera

El dia de Diablo, 2007

Oil on linen, 320 x 240 cm

Cortesía Galería Hilario Galguera

Cape Town: Dada South

2010-02-20T14:40:00.010+11:00

Dada South?

Exploring Dada legacies in South African art, 1960 to the present.
Curated by Roger van Wyk and Kathryn Smith with Lerato Bereng
Iziko: South African National Gallery
12 December 2009 - 28 Feb 2010

Above: Installation view, courtesy the artists, curators and Iziko National Gallery, Cape Town

This is one of the most fascinating exhibitions we've seen in recent times, even without any special knowledge of the South African contemporary scene. Works by some of the original European Dadaists (Picabia, Duchamp, Ray, Tzara et al) are mingled with a wide array of local artists perceived to have a neo-dadaist connection, covering a period from the 1960s to the present day. Many of these artists are of some renown in their home country, and a number of them (e.g. Jane Alexander, Candice Breitz, William Kentridge, Kendell Geers, Robin Rhode) have significant international reputations, with a few living, working and/or teaching abroad.
There was no catalogue published to coincide with the show, but this may emerge in the future. The independently-curated exhibition is 'an ongoing, participatory project of documentation and research' and more information is available at: http://dadasouth.blogspot.com. To contribute to the Dada South archive of experimental practices, you can email dadasouthza@gmail.com

From the Dada South blog:
It is nearly a century since Dada first touched the central nerve of western culture, attacking its logic, denouncing its ideas of community and nationhood, and demanding total freedom of thought. One of Dada’s primary revolutions is the reinvention of art as a form of tactics. Seen in this way, their work represents the origins of many of the forms we see in contemporary art. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Dada attitudes found refreshed expression in Neo-Dada movements such as Fluxus, Arte Povera, the Situationist International and Pop Art, which preceded and deeply influenced Minimalism and Conceptual Art. It was in the 1960s that these ideas began to filter into South African art. Dada South? presents a collision of artistic strategies and forms that reflect the impact of Dada; works that are conceived and enacted in the spirit of Dada, which seek to question the conventions, values and function of art in a troubled society. The exhibition surveys an alternative history of resistance in a culture of isolation and repression, one that intersects with the canon of ‘resistance art’, but which deviates into forms that are less didactic, more eclectic and experimental. In the recuperation of these lesser-known histories, Dada South? proposes new vocabularies for South African art.

One of Dada’s lasting legacies is a style of provocation that postures as politics, but in fact ridicules its forms and institutions. Is it not paradoxical then, to host museum exhibitions about a movement that sought to destroy conventions, institutions and value systems? How we can talk about anarchy and the radical when we are bound by conventions of display and the inevitable fetishisation of the art object that the art museum supports?

South African art is often thought to suffer from an ‘anxiety of influence’ from Western artworld centres. Part of this perception is a poor understanding of our own art history. Dada South? intends to invert this by asserting South African practice as part of international art history; acknowledging a range of remarkable artistic positions that have called upon western influences selectively, even randomly, to develop local, indigenous responses to specific conditions of South African history.A major part of this process is about recuperating lost histories, practices and experiments. It is difficult to tell this story, as many works produced in a radical spirit were temporary interventions. They were not necessarily intended as art objects in the traditional sense, and certainly not expected to be purchased by museums for future preservation. As such, many such gestures exist only as oral histories and anecdotes that are occasionally backed up with an ephemeral document, like a poster, photograph, flyer or newspaper article found during an archival hunt.

Above © Robin Rhode Juggla 2007, digital print, courtsey the artist

One has indeed to come to the end of the world, and for me at least to Africa, to find the most ancient, the most archaic things and also – surprisingly though it may seem – the most up-to-date, the most extraordinary things which were dreamt of forty or thirty years ago and are now becoming a reality on this soil of Africa…this new world, which is in a state of ferment…is clearly going to be the world of the future.
- Tristan Tzara, after visiting Zimbabwe and Mozambique, 1962

Interesting? You betcha.

Vale, Ruby

2010-02-19T10:07:00.000+11:00

Ruby Hunter 1955 – 2010

Sydney: a ketchup edition

2010-02-06T19:51:00.187+11:00

Apologies for the break nos chers lecteurs, even bloggers have to have holidays. Normally we try not be retrospective, but unavoidably this is something of a rear-view take on some Sydney exhibitions that caught our eye from late 2009 into 2010. We'll try to be more current in future.

MCA SYDNEY: SPRING/SUMMER 09/10

Olafur Eliasson Take Your Time
Fiona Foley Forbidden
Making it New: Focus on Australian Contemporary Art
Primavera 2009
Almanac, the Gift of Ann Lewis AO
Louis Bufardeci & Zon Ito
Avoiding Myth and Message: Australian Artists and the Literary World

It has been a strong season for the MCA, with a good blend of local and international offerings, and none of them too obvious.

Above: © Olafur Eliasson. 360° room for all colours (2002) courtesy the artist and SFMoMA.

Eliasson (Denmark/Iceland) is of course approaching art megastar status, and it's the sort of international contemporary one-person survey show (initiated by San Francisco MoMA in 2007 and already seen at NY MoMA and MCA Chicago in 2008) at which the MCA excels - a youngish artist of great international interest, but not yet a household name. It is one of the few Australian institutions to do this, with some credit also to AGNSW, GOMA and NGV.

Eliasson is famously anal, demanding and precise, and it has to be said that the production/installation values of this show are fabulous. This particular body of work, dating from the early to mid noughties, is all about precision and the 'science' of light, yet it delivers quite playful results, sometimes merely interesting, at times poetic and transporting. The absolute standout piece for us is one of the less 'optical' ones, Beauty (1993), achieved by projecting dim white light through a fine mist of falling water in a darkened space. While obviously an installation challenge for the electricians, the work is very simple in execution and effect – a wraith-like 'entity' dances just above floor level, a hallucinatory will-o-the-wisp. This piece is one of the few in this exhibition that gives the clue to Eliasson's wider preoccupations with natural phenomena, and that is a pity, because at his best he is an artist that can deliver an almost theatrical magic and, like Andy Goldsworthy, a simple wonder at the beauty of the elements.

At Primavera, Michaela Glaeve's Cloud Field (2007), explored similar territory, though with less vivid effect, possibly because the space, with a fine mist rising from jets at floor level, was brightly lit. Christine Eid's installation Your Place (2006) featuring taxi-top lights with various Anglo and Middle-Eastern names was another memorable piece. Whatever one may think of individual Primavera selections (09 was curated by Jeff Khan), they are always worth seeing and a good MCA tradition.

As is the (biennial) Focus on Contemporary Australian Art (FOCAA) series, of which this was the fourth installment, curated in-house by the recently appointed Glenn Barkly. Unlike Primavera, which features only artists under 35, FOCAA has a mix of old and new, emergent and venerable. Featured in Making it New were Alison Alder, Micky Allan, Jon Campbell, Lou Hubbard, Matthew Hunt, Bob Jenyns, Linda Marrinon, Archie Moore, Tom Moore, Marrnyula Mununggurr, Raquel Ormella, Alwin Reamillo, Khaled Sabsabi, Neil Taylor, Ken Thaiday Snr, Ruth Waller, Toni Warburton and Ken Whisson. This was a very strong show, with our standouts being Neil Taylor, Bob Jenyns and Micky Allen.

Fiona Foley's recently-closed mid-career retrospective Forbidden was also very solid, but somehow failed to be more than that. She is an artist working across a wide repertoire of contemporary media, and it's appropriate for a survey show to cover the gamut, but therein lies the problem - it fails to satisfy in the way that a more concentrated or themed body of work may do. She undoubtedly has many exciting years ahead of her. A fine independently-published book is available.

The Bufardeci/Ito collaboration was a worthy offering, and the Ann Lewis bequest is a very fine collection indeed, but very special mention is due for Avoiding Myth and Message: Australian Artists and the Literary World, featuring mainly work from the collection. For anyone curious about text in contemporary art this was a fascinating exhibition for which the catalogue is still available.

Martin Sharp, Sydney Artist

Museum of Sydney 

Until 14 February, 2010

This exhibition closes soon. it feels like an age since LF attended the packed opening in late October. And quite an event it was, with the OzMag generation out in force. For quizzical bystanders that weren’t around in Sydney or London during those heady days, it was a who’s who of the era, resplendent in a flurry of silver manes, white goatees and embroidered waistcoats.

Before Mambo there was Martin Sharp. Much has been written about the show, hung salon style in that single large shoebox on the first floor, the walls painted cobalt blue for the duration. Even if you’re not a fan of Sharp’s oeuvre (and this writer is not especially), the massed Tiny Tims, Luna Parks, Harbor Bridges and Eternities achieve definite critical mass in a riot of primary colour. It’s vaguely chronological, and some of his very early work is included, offering a useful if eccentric survey of one of Australia’s most distinctive painter/designer/savants. If you ain’t seen it you should have, shame on you!

Martin Mischkulnig Smalltown

Museum of Sydney 

Until 14 February, 2010

Also closing soon is this excellent photography show, the subject of a handsome book with a text by Tim Winton. Highly reminiscent of Trent Parke’s Welcome to Nowhere series (2006), this is fine stuff.

The exhibition is described ‘a dialogue between photographer Martin Mischkulnig and author Tim Winton, travelling through out-of-the-way parts of Australia’, and Winton says ‘The wild landscapes of Australia are routinely described as desolate and forbidding… [yet] for all the talk of hostility and harshness, there is nothing so bleak and forbidding in country Australia as the places humans have built there…"

The same images were also featured at the Evan Hughes Gallery in October/November 2009. The book is excellent, so if you missed the show, get that.

Vale Claude

2009-11-10T13:17:00.000+11:00

Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1908 - 2009

Sydney: White Rabbit Gallery

2009-11-01T11:43:00.003+11:00

Jonas Burgert

2009-10-23T11:05:00.003+11:00

Jonas Burgert
Hitting Every Head
Haunch of Venison, London
Until 7 November

German painter Jonas Burgert (b.1969) makes huge, fantastical paintings that evoke weird hybrid mythologies, apocalyptic dreamscapes, disturbing and horrific visions, whimsical or spooky childhood worlds. He has often been described as a latter-day Heironymous Bosch, however his very painterly approach is utterly contemporary, and somehow very German.

Hitting every Head, 2009, Oil on Linen, 380 x 500 cm

kopfschluss (head end), oil on canvas, 2008, 260 x 340 cm

laengst vertraut, 2008, Oil on canvas, 140 x 120 cm

© Jonas Burgert

Waffenschwestern, 2004, oil on canvas. 300 x 280 cm

Courtsey Saatchi Gallery, London

Sydney: Clinton Nain

2009-09-17T11:39:00.006+10:00

Clinton Nain
re-dress
GRANTPIRRIE GALLERY, Redfern
until 19 September 2009

Left: © Clinton Nain Pay 5, 2009, Acrylic and bitumen on canvas

This exhibition closes on Saturday, Nain's first Sydney show for 2 years. It has slipped under Sydney's art radar somewhat, possibly because it doesn't feature his better known motifs of weeping hearts, mission dresses and potholed roads. One of Nain's great strengths as a painter is that he is constantly exploring new expressions of his familiar themes, and refuses to just keep doing what has sold well in the past, which must be tempting, especially with his work of the last decade doing well in the secondary market.

To those that are familar with the artist's many themes, this exhibition is an exciting progression from his explorations of written language seen in his shows AEIOU (2006), and Resistance to Resilience (2008) at Nellie Castan Gallery in Melbourne. Bitumen and white acrylic on canvas are the media, and here scrawled and iterated words have decayed and merged to the point abstraction. The impact of the whole room hung with these works is quite extraordinary - go see.

Sydney: Tim Silver

2009-09-13T12:53:00.004+10:00

Tim Silver – Coming around again & Rory
Breenspace
until 26 Sep 2009

Left: Tim Silver Untitled (Rory) 2009, watercolour pigment, initial dimensions 105 x 40 x 34 cm irregular

Much written about, this exhibition is worthy of note, if not a physical visit. Sally Breen devotes almost the whole of her enviable warehouse space to a single work, Rory (pictured), which 2 weeks into the show should be considerably reduced by the dripping water from above - and soon to be no more than puddle of blue pigment on the floor.

In a small separated area are a series of photographic pieces - each a progressive record of the watery decay of different objects - beach jetsam such coke cans, plastic bottles and thongs cast in solid pigment, cinnamon and other metaphorical substances, but always water soluble. These works are for sale, each a series of 5 A4-sized prints, but it's the cast multiples in the backroom that exert the real fascination and are, we understand, not for sale. Silver keeps the concept pure - he is all about ephemeral decay.

Some of this work will also be seen at the upcoming 'Wax-On' group show at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery in December, curated by Nell Schofield.

Rachel Ward's Beautiful Kate

2009-08-26T10:28:00.005+10:00

Beautiful Kate
Australia, 1hr 41min‎‎‎
Written and directed by Rachel Ward

This has been pretty much universally praised by the critics, while other commentators have characterised it as just another depressing Australian flick about suicide and despair. This latter response may arise from the casting of Ben Mendelsohn (Ned) and Bryan Brown (Bruce, Ned's father), with their strong associations with suburban angst and urban nastiness. Have no fear, despite being very angsty and very nasty, they are both excellent, giving arguably their best performances to date, and ably transcend the 'Oh not them again' factor. All the performances are exceptional, with a special mention for newcomer Sophie Lowe as Ned's twin sister Kate (the beautiful).

It's certainly a bleak and unforgiving movie in parts, but we found it to be quite a redemptive tale - an age-old one really, involving a 'prodigal' son's return, and dark family secrets finally brought into the open.

Director Rachel Ward based it on the by American Newton Thornburg's 1982 novel of the same name, transposing it from 70s Idaho to a remote outback community in South Australia's Flinders Ranges. Its form is a (mostly) well-constructed and dramatically successful dual narrative, with the contemporary-ish story (son returns after 20 years to visit dying and despised father) interwoven with flashbacks to the 1970s and 80s (the childhood and adolescence of the four siblings, two of whom are now dead).

It's the flashbacks (and the poster, UK version shown) that have evoked the Bill Henson comparisons, particularly the 'Dam Scene', and this was calculated. Ward, speaking to Andrew L. Urban (Urban Cinefile) has said "My aesthetic for the flashback narrative is inspired by Bill Henson’s work. Like Beautiful Kate he inhabits a world of teenage alienation and sexuality. A world lit by pole lights, car headlights or torches. I like the way he reveals only small poetic fragments, fragments of alabaster skin, of silhouetted breasts, of bruised lips, the glint of a tear. He too treads that fine line between beauty/romance and desolation/realism. There are a number of fairly explicit sexual scenes throughout. While I do not intend to enter Larry Clarke territory, I hope not be prudish. This film is sexually provocative.”

Like Samson and Delilah, this film deals with things that many families would prefer not to think about, and it will be confronting to many, but Ward and her team have created a fine movie about things that matter. Go see.

Sydney: Kosky's Poppea

2009-08-09T17:51:00.005+10:00

Barrie Kosky's Poppea

Based on L'incoronazione di Poppea by Claudio Monteverdi, libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello, based on historical incidents described in the Annals of Tacitus. (First performance: Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, 1642)
and the songs of Cole Albert Porter

Sydney Opera House, Playhouse Theatre
until 22 August

You know you're at a Kosky piece when there's a blood-smeared nude man on stage most of the time and you barely notice him. The Baroness's sublime reinterpretation of Monteverdi's last opera was a sensation at the Vienna Schauspielhaus where it originated, and at the 2007 Edinburgh Festival, programmed by that other Australian arts wunderkind, composer Jonathan Mills. Now it has finally arrived in Sydney, at the Playhouse, SOH for a 2-week run.

We loved this. We are fans of Kosky from way back. But still, you try to be objective.

A minimal set and 4-person orchestra pit is all there in the way of evocation of place. Six performers sing the roles. And what performers! Much has been written of Melita Jurisic (Poppea)'s stage presence. She is mesmerising, with a throaty tenor purr that evokes a debauched pre-war Berlin, molassses-rich with visceral and obsessive love. The others are all equally fine, moving easily between (presumably) Busenello's words transposed to German, and some of Cole Porter's best-known songs. Sounds ghastly? It works, surprisingly, because these actor/singers could carry anything off. It's worth it just for 'De-Lovely' - it's in the second half, which really is worth staying for, we promise.

In the pit, three cellists weave a seductive path through Monteverdi and Porter, while the Baroness von Kosky herself punishes the ivories. This is piano as storyteller - cartoon-like, often, in true burlesque spirit. Sometimes all shrill arpeggios, sometimes discordant breaking glass, sometimes pounding and thunderous, it's hard to subtract the director's bravura turn from the whole. There were times I found the piano insistent and relentless, at other times delicate and moody... on the whole I think he pulls it off rather well. It's brave, and there's no hiding behind the actors here.

This is one of the best things to hit the Sydney stage this year - tix are only about $40, so go see if you can.

A la prochâine

Vale, Merce

2009-07-27T09:46:00.000+10:00

Mercier (Merce) Philip Cunningham
April 16, 1919 – July 26, 2009

A sense of place? The new City of Melbourne Identity

2009-07-26T15:12:00.004+10:00

THE NEW CoM IDENTITY by LANDOR ASSOCIATES
has aroused torrents of invective, and Melbourne's design fraternity are up in arms. The debate still rages, not least in the comments area on AGDA's open blog, arising from Andrew Ashton and David Pidgeon's 'Open Letter to the Lord Mayor' (see below for text and link to forum).

Nous, les flâneurs, added this statement to the discussion:

There's a saying which goes - If it's Melbourne-based entity the designers have to be from Melbourne... if it's Sydney the designers have to be Australian. But in the really confident design capitals of the world, eg New York, Paris or Tokyo, they don't give a damn, as long as it's visionary. Think of architectural commissions... Pei, Rogers and Piano in Paris, Gehry in Bilbao, Hertzog and De Meuron in China. Sydney dared do it once with a Dane.

The problem really is that this new identity is not visionary, exacerbated by unfortunate mayoral comments, and the fact that Melbourne's internationally renowned studios weren't invited to pitch.

The ' design local' issue arises mainly because the new identity conveys no feel for Melbourne's unique soul and is widely seen as a missed opportunity to do something really good. It's not certain that local designers would have managed this, but surely more likely?

What were they THINKING? We give it a year, max. Maybe MCC could sell it on to a casino?

-----

An Open Letter to the Lord Mayor of Melbourne
24th July, 2009

The City of Melbourne’s rebranding has attracted a veritable storm of controversy, not least because of Lord Mayor Robert Doyle’s inaccurate and unfortunate comments about Victoria’s design industry. Below is an open letter to Robert Doyle, written by Andrew Ashton and David Pidgeon from AGDA Victoria, asking him to outwardly support and promote Victoria’s design industry. We urge those of you who are interested in supporting the industry to take the time to leave your name, studio name and location in the comments section below. We will then pass on the collated signatures and comments to Robert Doyle, Lynne Kosky and John Brumby.

24 July 2008

Th Right Hon the Lord Mayor of Melbourne,
Councillor Robert Doyle
City of Melbourne PO Box 1603 Melbourne VIC 3001

Dear Lord Mayor,

We are writing to you to express our concern over the recent release of the new brand mark for the City of Melbourne. It is of concern to us that the City of Melbourne seems to have ignored the stated Victorian Government policy of supporting and promoting the State’s design industry.

Mr Doyle, the pool of communication and brand design talent in Melbourne is unrivalled in this country and is arguably the most diverse in South East Asia. It is this fact that leaves us dismayed when trying to understand why you chose to appoint a Sydney based / American owned firm to complete a task that could have been just as successfully completed by any number of Victoria’s internationally acclaimed graphic designers.

As for the issue of the “daggy” incumbent design, we would have rather hoped that your significant experience in politics would have taught you to more deeply consider the implication of any public comment. It was frankly insulting to the original creator of the incumbent City of Melbourne brand Mr Richard Henderson of FHA Image Design. We all acknowledge that time waits for few styles and aesthetics but Mr Henderson’s work served the City very well for twenty years and such a glib, final assessment of this legacy does no marketing or design professionals any favours. It tends only to decrease the sophistication of community discussion around communication and brand design.

We urge you to consider and support fellow Victorian designers as you will find that many of these professional are in their own right symbols to the world of “how cool, intellectual, CREATIVE and urbane” Victorians are.

Yours faithfully,
Andrew Ashton – Studio Pip and Co. Balaclava, Victoria / AGDA and AGI Member AGDA Victoria Treasurer

David Pidgeon – Design by Pidgeon East St KIlda, Victoria / AGDA and AGI Member AGDA Victoria Councillor

LINK TO THE ONGOING DEBATE (AGDA):
http://blogs.agda.com.au/suite7/view/post/an-open-letter-to-the-lord-mayor-of-melbourne

Vale, Pina

2009-07-02T11:26:00.004+10:00

Philippine 'Pina' Bausch
July 27, 1940 – June 30, 2009

Vale, Michael

2009-06-27T20:53:00.002+10:00

Michael Joseph Jackson
August 29 1958 – June 25 2009

Samson and Delilah

2009-06-03T15:51:00.011+10:00

Samson and Delilah
Australia, 2009
101 minutes
Director, Screenplay, Cinematography: Warwick Thornton

Winner, Caméra d'or 2009
Festival de Cannes 2009, Un Certain Regard

There are some films where it’s no consolation telling yourself “It’s just a movie”, because you know that they reveal an appalling truth, irrespective of the fact that these are actors playing parts. The Australian film Samson and Delilah, whose director Warwick Thornton took out the Camera D’Or for best first feature, is one such film.

From the first frames we seem to inhabit the skin of these Indigenous teenagers, and Thornton’s unflinching depiction of their physical and emotional world is all the more powerful for the almost total lack of dialogue between them – early on we surmise that Samson (Rowan McNamara) has speech problems and may be partially deaf – it is never spelled out, but would explain certain incidents. He only utters one word in the entire film (his name), and Delilah (Marissa Gibson) only really speaks to her aged grandmother, charismatically played by Mitjili Gibson.

I found the film quite harrowing, which is no doubt the desired effect, but I didn’t expect to be so completely absorbed into the world of these youngsters. The moment when Samson, having ‘lost’ Delilah for the second time, covers his head in a blanket and begins to quietly keen with grief, is a moment of utter human despair, and we feel ourselves there with him, in his haze of petrol fumes and hopelessness and loss. Thornton’s close-up photography and extraordinarily subtle direction of his two young principals, whose faces express what no dialogue could, conveys an almost unbearable tenderness, even as we recoil in horror at their plight.

Yet when the protagonists are in the ‘big town’ trying to get food and money to survive, Thornton skillfully distances his audience, turning us into uncaring supermarket workers, indifferent café dwellers, an arrogant gallerist, a suspicious priest (in a church with a black Madonna and Christ-child, a nice touch). Suddenly we see the characters we have been empathising with, through other eyes - as dangerous-looking Aboriginal kids, trouble best avoided. Thornton makes us ask the questions: Are we these cold-hearted people? The next time we see a brutalised Aboriginal youngster will we try to imagine how it came about? Or try to help?

This is skilful and potent film-making, and a towering achievement for a first-time director, but especially for one dealing with a subject many Australians would prefer not to think about. And there is truthfulness too in an, if not happy, then at least hopeful ending. It is not about being saved, but saving yourself, and love is probably all we’ve got.

Go see if you haven't already.

Decima Bienal de la Habana

2009-04-06T17:03:00.005+10:00

Decima Bienal de la Habana
Integración y Resistencia en la Era Global

10th Havana Biennial
Integration and Resistance in the Global Era

Havana, Cuba, 27 March - 30 April 2009

This article was first commissioned by Art World Australasia Edition.

Since Havana’s 4th Biennial in 1991, the sprawling complex of 16-18th century fortifications known as Parque Morro-Cabaña has been the event’s principal venue. Situated across the harbour mouth from Habana Vieja (the old town), this austerely beautiful setting provides an exceptionally fine venue for the exhibition of contemporary art. Long pavilions of vaulted storerooms contain a series of discrete yet linked chambers, accessible from both the outside and through connecting doorways. The absence of distracting architectural detail (walls are simple whitewashed plaster), creates a satisfying focus for the work of individual artists, collective and interactive projects. The Biennial also has a long tradition of including independently curated Projectos Collectivos (group shows) and one-person shows by Invitados Especiales (specially invited luminaries) in its program, mounted in diverse colonial and 20th century buildings throughout Habana Vieja and Vedado. The result is an event that enlivens an already vibrant city and encompasses most of its museums and public galleries.

The theme ‘Integration and Resistance in a Global Era’, as well as providing a broad curatorial framework, conveniently summarises Cuba’s wider cultural and economic dilemma in the early 21st century. There is a real prospect, at the time of writing, that the 50-year old US blockade may soon be lifted, or at least eased. Add to this the spectre of internal generational change, and the country appears poised on the verge of immense upheaval, restless for it, yet fearful that the modest gains of socialism may be lost in a frenzied capitalist free-for-all. Cuba occupies a unique frontline position, both geographical and political, in relation to the ‘Northern hegemony’, and many participating artists have no doubt been selected with this in mind. The brandmarks of Western capitalism are a recurrent presence through the work of many, along with the visual ephemera of financial meltdown, but this is not the ironic work of cultural insiders, rather the view from outside, looking in.

Installation, photography and screen/time-based work predominates, with little contemporary painting in evidence, and that mainly from China. Given Cuba’s strong painting tradition, this is slightly surprising, with José Bedia the only contemporary Cuban painter of note, featured in a 3-person tribute show (with the late Wilfredo Lam and Raúl Martínez) Risistencia y Libertad, at the Museum of Fine Arts. Elsewhere senior figures such as Abel Barosso and Raul Estrada Aguilar (Cuba), Ronald Duarte and José Paulo (Brasil), Marcus Lopez (Argentina), Marcela Diáz (Mexico), Claudia Aravena Agughosh (Chile), Raul Quintanilla (Nicaragua) and Alex Burke (Martinique/France) rub shoulders with emergent collectives and individuals from across Latin America, the Carribbean, Africa, Australia and Europe (mainly Spain and France). USA-based artists tend to have Latin American connections and an overtly political practice, for example Erica Lord, Titus Kaphar, Loring McAlping. Asia is under-represented, and the Indian subcontinent not at all. China’s presence is boosted by a small but solid group show China: Contemporary Art Revisited, and new Cuba-based work by painter Liu Xiaodong, whose large-scale Hot Bed (painting/installation, 2005-06) will be remembered by Australian audiences at the 2006 Sydney Biennale. Invitados Especiales include León Ferrari (Argentina), Paulo Bruscky (Brasil), Guillermo Gómez Peña (Mexico), Fernell Franco (Colombia), Sue Williamson (South Africa), Hervé Fischer (Canada), Shigeo Fukuda (Japan) and Pepón Osorio (Puerto Rico), and some of these gave performances and talks during the inaugural week.

Australia achieves critical mass with work by Tony Albert (photographs), Darren Siwes (photographs) Guan Wei (installation/painting), Michael Goldberg (video/installation/performance), Gerry Wedd (ceramics) and Danius Kesminas’ Jogyakarta-based group Punkasila (installation/performance). Much of this work is not new to Australian audiences - Tony Albert’s ironic 50 Percent series of self-portraits dates from 2007 and Guan Wei’s whole-room installation Rising Sea Level was seen at Campbelltown Regional Gallery as part of News From Islands in 2007. Destiny Deacon and Virginia Fraser’s profound and moving installation Home Security (2007) is part in the independently curated (by Régine Cuzin, France) touring show Latitudes, as is New Zealander Lisa Reihana’s impressive installation Digital Marae (2007). Mounted in the accessible Centro de Desarollo de las Artes Visuales in Habana Vieja, this show has excited considerable interest among ordinary Cubans, and is one of the more substantial Projectos Collectivos.

This 10th Biennial takes place on the 50th anniversary of the 1959 Revolution, and marks the 25th anniversary of the event’s founding in 1984. There are 200 artists from 40 countries. These numbers have a pleasing symmetry, suggesting curatorial consolidation of an event that has long punched well above the weight of Cuba’s 2nd world economy and 11.5 million population. This can be said of many Cuban achievements, and the contradictions are ever-present: the highest life expectancy (76) and literacy rate (95.7%) in Latin America; a command economy centralised in a pervasive state apparatus; doctors earning less than taxi drivers. All the more extraordinary then that such a large, professional and confident Biennial has been mounted, comparable in depth and breadth to many of the world’s best. This extends beyond curatorial and exhibition production values to superb publications and contemporary graphic branding, signage and wayfinding systems. Only the rather rudimentary website is a letdown – a pity for those unable to attend.

Ruben del Valle Lantarón and his curatorial team are in fact building on a long tradition of excellence and internationalism established under the remarkable Lillian Llanes, who directed 5 Biennials between 1984 and 1999, spanning the years of the ‘Special Period’ when famine stalked the land after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is Llanes who is credited with developing the decentralised Biennial model, taking the art out of the museums and into the streets, and initiating numerous ‘collateral’ events – workshops and installations across the city – an approach which has been broadly adopted the world over. Havana has long had an emphasis on the art of the Third World and the ‘Economic South’, along with a commitment to nurturing dialogue among participants through corollary ‘theoretical’ programs, approaches which are now de rigeur in Europe. Llanes’ legacy can be seen in Okwui Enwezor’s memorable multi-platform Documenta 11 (2002) and Charles Merewether’s Zones of Contact Biennale of Sydney (2006), both of which eschewed the inclusion of many well-known western artists in favour of broad representation from 2nd and 3rd world countries, and work which interrogates the evolving economic and cultural nexus between developed and developing worlds.

This is a Biennial with depth and, dare I suggest, heart. A landslide of challenges confronts Biennial organisers, yet their passion sustains them, aided by an army of cheerful young volunteers. During the memorable inauguraçion at La Cabaña, with the sun setting over Habana Vieja, the music pulsing and the mojitos flowing among a United Nations of artists young and old, it seemed for a moment just possible that the energy of their ideas and creativity might change the world.

Hasta lluego

Sydney: Taking a line for a walk

2009-03-22T00:34:00.001+11:00

I WALK THE LINE: NEW AUSTRALIAN DRAWING
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
17 March - 24 May 2009

Despite the frequently heard assertion that 'art schools don't teach drawing these days (hrrumph)', a worldwide resurgence in drawing is undoubtedly being led by a younger generation of artists. One factor may be that it isn't an expensive medium to work in, and Phaidon's impressive 'VITAMIN D' compilation published in 2006, showed an astonishing breadth of practice globally, which is evident in microcosm in Australia. The 29 artists chosen range from young and emergent to moderately well known, and are drawn from all over the country, with a number of NZ artists now resident in Australia.

Purists of the old school (the same ones who claim drawing isn't being taught?) may well shudder at the inclusion of video, performance and sculpture under a very broad definition of drawing, but this adds to the strength and depth of the show. It's about time we had a significant survey of drawing and curator Christine Morrow has done a fine job.

It's hard to name names in such a strong and varied show, but personal faves include Michelle Ussher, Laith McGregor, Patrick Hartigan, Elvis Richardson and the late Cassandra Laing. Among the more established figures are Maria Kontis, James Morrison, Gordon Hookey and Vernon Ah Kee.

The only negative thing that can be said about this exhibition is that we wish there was a lot more of it. It might have been interesting, space permitting, to contrast the 'young and not so young turks' with more venerable figures (such as Godwin Bradbeer) and perhaps included a couple of printmakers. These are small gripes however, go see.

New York: Marlene Dumas at MOMA

2009-01-09T21:08:00.008+11:00

Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
22 June 2008 - 22 Sept 2008

Museum of Modern Art, New York
December 14, 2008–February 16, 2009

If painting is female and insanity is a female malady, then all women painters are mad and all male painters are women.”- Marlene Dumas, 1993

Above: © Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave, 2003, oil on canvas. Courtesy MOMA

Above: © Marlene Dumas: Dead Marilyn, 2008, oil on canvas. Courtesy MOMA

Above: Installation view. Courtesy MOMA

Marlene Dumas may well be South Africa's most famous art export. Born in a small rural community in 1953, she has lived in Amsterdam since 1975, and was for several months last year the world’s Most Expensive Female Artist, with her painting 'The Visitor' (below) selling to New York private dealer Nancy Whyte for US$6.34 million in July 2008 at Sotheby’s London. The sales figure overshadowed Dumas’ preceding record of £1.8 million in February 2005. Dumas is far better known in Europe than the USA, but the auction result and now this prestigious mid-career review, originating at MOCA LA and now at MOMA NY, will change all that. The exhibition includes approximately seventy paintings and thirty-five drawings, starting with early mature works from the late 1970s. Dumas is well-known for always working from photographs, not from life, and has said “Secondhand images can generate firsthand emotions.”

Above: © Marlene Dumas: The Visitor, 1995, Oil on Canvas

New York seems to be hot for her. Well... some people, anyway. An artworld frisson erupted around a rather scathing review by influential NY Times critic Roberta Smith (The Body Politic: Gorgeous and Grotesque, Dec 11 08), which began: "The figurative painter Marlene Dumas has been characterized as an artist who leaves you either hot or cold, but that’s not necessarily so. “Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave,” a midcareer survey at the Museum of Modern Art, cuts right down the middle. It left me warm."

While offering some positives, the review compared her unfavourably to the likes of Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois, suggesting that "Ms. Dumas’s best work may lie ahead..."

Peter Schjeldahl in The New Yorker was more enthusiastic, yet in his way even more scathing, and much, much funnier, referring to her "punctilious inelegance". Of her heritage he says: "In common with the draftsman and animator William Kentridge, another white South African of political bent, Dumas channels a direly exotic heritage of collective guilt and personally redemptive anger. She adds to it an element of truculent but breezy feminism, often expressed in her lively writing".

Dumas came to international fame on the wave of resurgent interest in painting in the last decade of the 20th century. She was included in the 2005 Saatchi show 'The Triumph of Painting', along with such superstars Luc Tuymans and Peter Doig, and her painting 'Young Boys' (owned by Saatchi, see below) created a considerable media stir at the time.

Above: Marlene Dumas: Young Boys, 1993, Oil on Canvas. Courtesy Saatchi Gallery London

LF thinks she's a very interesting painter, but the veneration and prices she now inspires are puzzling. There are many excellent artists working in this genre, and of this quality, and as some have pointed out, Dumas has been doing much the same thing for several decades without much apparent progression. Perhaps this is her special quality - a resolute determination not to grapple with complex conceptual conundrums, and just keep on doing faces?

Having said that, it's a large and varied show, and the top floor may be the most interesting, showing some very early drawings and collage works. It's on till mid Feb, so go see if you can.

A toute a l'heure

Best of 2008

2008-12-30T12:25:00.010+11:00

The vote is in!
By request, and in no particular order, our standout exhibitions and other things from around the planet in 2008.

Top 5 Exhibitions (International)
- Louise Bourgeois (Tate, Pompidou, Guggenheim NY, MOCA LA)
- Juan Muñoz Retrospective (Tate, Guggenheim Bilbao)
- Wolfgang Tillmans - 'Lighter' (Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin)
- R. Buckminster Fuller - 'Starting with the Universe' (Whitney, NY)
- WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (MOCA LA and P.S.1 NY)
and... The Whitney Biennale

Top 5 Exhibitions (Australia)
- Biennale of Sydney
- Tim Hawkinson - 'Mapping the Marvellous' (MCA Sydney)
- Gordon Bennett Retrospective (NGV Melbourne, GOMA Brisbane, AGWA Perth)
- Ai Weiwei (SCAF Sydney and CRG, Campbelltown)
- Optimism (GOMA Brisbane)
- and not forgetting: Bill Viola: The Tristan Project (AGNSW and St Saviour's Church, Redfern) and 'Lines in the Sand' at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, Sydney.

Top 5 commercial gallery shows (International)
- Cy Twombly 'Three Notes From Salalah' (Gagosian, Rome)
- Jake and Dinos Chapman (White Cube UK)
- Richard Serra (Gagosian UK and USA)
- Damien Hirst’s Sotheby’s auction
- Antoni Tapiès (Lelong Paris)

Top 5 commercial gallery shows (Australia)
- Stuart Ringholt (Anna Schwartz, Melbourne)
- Mitch Cairns (MOP, Sydney)
- Newell Harry (Oxley, Sydney)
- Guy Maestri (Tim Olsen, Sydney)
- Patricia Piccinini (Oxley, Sydney)

Top 5 English language movies
- Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Sydney Lumet, USA)
- In Bruges (Martin McDonagh, UK)
- Burn After Reading (Coen Bros USA)
- The Visitor (Tom McCarthy, USA)
- Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, UK)

and La cânard award goes to:
- Australia (the movie) - for the movie most likely to acquire bad taste camp classic status

Top 5 English language novels
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Díaz)
- The Believers (Zoë Heller)
- Netherland (Joseph O'Neill)
- Breath (Tim Winton)
- What is the What? (Dave Eggers)

Heureuse nouvelle année, nos lecteurs.

Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool

2008-12-15T20:20:00.007+11:00

BARKLEY L. HENDRICKS: BIRTH OF THE COOL
EXHIBITION TOUR
February 7, 2008 - July 13, 2008: Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
November 12 - March 15, 2009: Studio Museum in Harlem
May 16 - August 22, 2009: Santa Monica Museum of Art
October 17 - Jan 3, 2010: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
January 30 - April 18, 2010: Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

Above: © Barkley HendricksFela: Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, oil and variegated leaf on canvas, handcrafted burned frame and embedded computer camera

Following a recent post on Kehinde Wiley, the man sometimes cited as his artistic progenitor is showing at the Studio Museum, Harlem. From the Nasher Museum website: Barkley L. Hendricks. Born in 1945 in Philadelphia, Hendricks's unique work resides at the nexus of American realism and post-modernism, a space somewhere between portraitists Chuck Close and Alex Katz and pioneering black conceptualists David Hammons and Adrian Piper. He is best known for his stunning, life-sized portraits of people of color from the urban northeast. Cool, empowering and sometimes confrontational, Hendricks's artistic privileging of a culturally complex black body has paved the way for today's younger generation of artists. This unprecedented exhibition of Hendricks's paintings will include work from 1964 to the present. Trevor Schoonmaker, curator of contemporary art at the Nasher Museum, is organizing the show. The exhibition catalogue, distributed by Duke University Press, will include contributions from Schoonmaker, Richard J. Powell, the John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University, Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Franklin Sirmans, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Menil Collection.

Martha Schwendener, wrote in the Village Voice (August 19, 2008):
Wiley, though, isn't even in the first generation of black men to paint the figure. Kerry James Marshall's patchwork compositions are subversive confections of Eisenhower-era vignettes filled with tar-baby black figures and jarring texts. And then there's Barkley Hendricks—in fact, Wiley's paintings are a kind of juiced-up redux of Hendricks, with similar centralized figures and an emphasis on pattern. A recent painting by Hendricks of Nigerian Afrobeat star Fela Anikulapo Kuti showing him as a haloed saint has a yellow-wallpaper background that competes with the figure in the foreground, just as in Wiley's compositions.And despite the surface swagger, Wiley is a much tamer painter than either of these two artists. Marshall's paintings carry titles like Black Power and By Any Means Necessary; Hendricks's subjects range from women with foot-tall Afros and T-shirts that read "Slave" and "Bitch" to Fela, a musician whose 1977 hit album Zombie was an attack on the Nigerian military. (Hendricks's Fela painting shows the musician grabbing his crotch—something that, despite the infamous lewdness of hip-hop, Wiley avoids.)

De Stijl or just stale? ... on museum architecture

2008-12-13T13:51:00.025+11:00

Startling architectural juxtapositions can be beautiful and inspired. Consider the Piazza San Marco in Venice - the Basilica San Marco in white wedding-cake high Byzantine style, the Doges' Palace in terra-cotta Ottoman-Venetian gothic, the austerely 'Florentine' brick Campanile and the Napoleonic arcades all seem to hang together with a beautiful, crazed logic. Or perhaps we're just used to them because they're so old?

Well, what about Richard Rogers' Lloyd's Building, or 30 St Mary Axe (the gherkin) in London? Or Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao? The juxtapositions are startling, yet hugely successful. There are many other examples, and Utzon's Sydney Opera House could be considered one of them, although there is no juxtaposition... just a ship assail on a low-slung sandstone harbour. Zaha Hadid's ill-fated Cardiff Opera House, Gehry's Venice Public Library and Rogers and Piano's Centre Pompidou are further contemporary examples.

The reason these buildings are so successful is that each of them is utterly innovative and uniquely of their time. Can, or will, the same be said of the proposed new wing for Sydney's MCA by Sam Marshall? Phillip Cox has already has his spray, and reluctantly, LF agrees. It's not that we are advocating some sort of match-up with the MCA's existing facade, just that a Rietveldian assemblage of boxes is NOT INTERESTING ENOUGH!

Above: MCA proposed new wing: 2 views, courtesy MCA

Gerrit Rietveld, Schröder House, 1924

LF hasn't studied the interior plans, and we're persuaded it will be a lovely series of spaces inside, but Cox is right - this is a missed opportunity to do something innovative and daring, to create an entirely new architectural conversation between the orderly deco rhythms of the Maritime Services Building and a new wing. What we have with Marshall's facade is not a 'Rubik's Cube' (as it has been instantly dubbed by the press) - A genuine Rubik's cube (in those garish colours perhaps?) might actually be quite interesting. Marshall's unsettling jumble of intersecting rectangles owes everything to 20th Dutch 'de Stijl', and nothing to the surrounding sandstone vernacular, or its maritime setting. Deliberate, obviously, but willful in its refusal to have a decent conversation with its neighbours. And the there's that ghastly clocktower from the cheap, faux-historic shopping centre behind, raised above the edifice like a sore thumb. This is suburban 'try-hard' architecture upped to a monumental scale, and we don't think it works. Please re-consider. Maybe get Zaha Hadid to do a couple of concept drawings after a stroll around the precinct? Or Mr Murcutt perhaps?

Or Richard Johnson, whose firm Johnson Pilton Walker designed the new national Portrait Gallery, below. Low-slung, single storied, yet quietly distinctive, it sits near the half-decent legal catheral of the High Court, and Colin Madigan's flawed concrèt brut NGA, itself in the throes of building a promising new wing by the able Andrew Andersons, which will fix the disastrous entrance and add light and space.

Above: Street Facade and Interior (lobby) detail, NPG Canberra, courtesy Johnson Pilton Walker

It's not just the NPA's street facade, with its distinctively cantilevered concrete blade, that works. The spaces inside are lucid, humane and allow us to follow an instinctive journey around the collection. The finishes, in a variety of materials, have a restraint and simplicity - polished terrazzo, blackbutt (?) floors, unadorned concrete, simple diffusing blinds... we recognise this style from Johnson's serene Asian extension at AGNSW - a translucent lantern. It's like an architectural version of the best mod-oz cuisine - Asian inspired, yet imbued with a uniquely Australian modesty.

More soon on the collection.

Vale, Dot

2008-12-11T10:09:00.003+11:00

Dorothy Porter 1954 - 2008

Kehinde Wiley's Blak irony

2008-12-10T20:44:00.008+11:00

"RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture"
The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC
February 8–October 26, 2008

Kehinde Wiley
THE WORLD STAGE: AFRICA LAGOS~DAKAR
The Studio Museum, Harlem, NYC
July 17—October 26, 2008

Kehinde Wiley
DOWN
Deitch Projects, 18 Wooster Street, SoHo, NYC
November 01 -December 20, 2008

Above: © Kehinde Wiley: Notorious B.I.G., 2005, Oil on canvas, 6 x 8 feet

Above: © Kehinde Wiley: LLCool J 2005, Oil on canvas, 6 x 8 feet, courtesy the Artist and Deitch gallery

Kehinde Wiley seems to have been ubiquitous in the USA this past year. 2008 has been a big one for the LA-born, gay African American painter, best-known for his hip-hop stars and homeboys, as seen in the recent exhibition 'RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture' at Washington's NPG. His exciting new show 'DOWN' is on for one more week at Jeffrey Deitch's Wooster St space, featuring his usual suspects in pièta-like poses, again echoing, or interrogating, great Western history paintings, including Mantegna's foreshortened Christ. A high-camp homoeroticism has always been present in Wiley's work, and this time it's a little more overt, as widely noted. (See below).

Above: ©Kehinde Wiley, Sleep, 2008, Oil on canvas, 132 x 300 inches (335.3 x 762 cm), Source Imagery: Jean-Bernard Restout, Photo credit: Max Yawney

Above: © Kehinde Wiley, Christian Martyr Tarcisius, 2008, Oil on canvas, 83.9 x 180 inches (213.1 x 457.2 cm), Source Imagery: Auguste Falguiere, Photo credit: Max Yawney

Above: © Kehinde Wiley, Lamentation Over The Dead Christ, 2008, Oil on canvas, 131 x 112 inches (332.7 x 284.5 cm), Source Imagery: Mantegna, Photo credit: Max Yawney

And then there's his ongoing 'World Stage: Africa, Lagos ~ Dakar' project, for which he's been traveling two years and creating some of his trademark epic paintings in different African countries, recruiting young men off the streets to pose for him. The paintings from this project, shown recently at Studio Museum, Harlem, continue his exploration of 'heroic art poses', here referencing not European paintings, but the poses of African public sculpture. Young men dressed in Western clothes—jeans, shorts, soccer jerseys, button-down shirts—assume the positions of a 'Dogon Couple' or a sculpture in the Place Soweto (National Assembly). The catalog to shows photographs of the original sources, which range from tribal/pre-colonial to quasi-modern. See below.

Above: © Kehinde Wiley: Flashy eye-candy: Three Wise Men Greeting Entry Into Lagos, 2008

Above: ©Kehinde Wiley: Rubin Singleton, 2008, Courtesy artist and Deitch Projects

Critics and audiences, especially white ones, are somewhat conflicted about Wiley - on the one hand there are delicious layers of political and social irony in his huge paintings, and he's undeniably an icon-maker of considerable skill and visual audacity. On the other hand his work sails perilously close (stylistically) to slick album-cover art. That's the whole point, really, we think... he's mining a rich vein of popular 'blaxploitation' art that goes way back... consciously using the techniques of commercial illustration and photography to manufacture his latter-day heroes. But art aficionados are never quite sure where the joke ends, and whether it might ultimately be on them.

There are strong echoes of Yinka Shonibare's sophisticated deconstructions of Western Art in Wiley's approach, and like Shonibare, he is highly articulate about his work. Talking recently to New York Magazine's 'Vulture ' blog, he had this to say:

Q: This work seems to have a more sexual and exposed feel to it.
Wiley: I believe it's the repose. Historically, we're used to female figures in the repose. It was designed as a type of early pornographic image in which the body in repose was laid bare for the male gaze. I think we're almost trained to read the reclining figure in painting within an erotic state. There's a type of powerlessness with regard to being down off of your feet, and in that sense, that power exchange can be codified as an erotic moment.

Q: Is the very nature of art political?
Wiley: I remember in my early education having to deal with why I choose to paint black subjects rather than choosing models of different ethnicities, which laid bare that question wasn't being asked of the rest of the student body as to why they were choosing to paint people in their own group. The black body is inherently political. Insofar as I have goals, which perhaps go in a more personal and poetic direction, it should never ignore the large social and political implications of pairing images of strength, domination, and control with the black body, which by and large has been defined by a type of hypersexuality and propensity toward antisocial behavior. It simply posits a big question mark into the world — how do we look at these bodies? How do we respond to them and their history? How do they build a sense of wonder and loss?

Q: This country has been at war with itself and with others? How does "Down" come into play?
Wiley: This body of work concentrates on a genre of painting that has to do with honoring leaders and religious figures in moments of death and also repose. So much of what turns me on about some of the great, strident figures that I've painted in the past, great military leaders, had to do with a sense of vulnerability that undergirded a lot of that artifice. There almost appeared to be a soft spot at the belly of those paintings that reveals a great insecurity that gave rise to need. This show is a part of that dynamic: how we stave the fear of death and the fear of loss of control, the loss of people.

Martha Schwendener, writing about the Studio Museum show in the Village Voice (August 19, 2008), nicely expresses the critical dilemma:
Wiley's version of neo–Black Power is complicated, since it centers on the corporatized fields of sports and entertainment, and captures Africans dressed in the cheap outfits (born out of sweat shops and globalized commerce) that mean a young man in Lagos wouldn't look out of place on 125th Street. Only one painting, Three Wise Men Greeting Entry Into Lagos, finds Wiley's subjects dressed in African attire—well, African tunics worn over jeans.

Wiley's work is also nearly devoid of women. He did a painting of the rappers Salt-N-Pepa and Spinderella in 2005, but the African canvases are like Elizabethan stage plays, with young men taking the place of women in paintings like Place Soweto and the even more clearly feminized Benin Mother and Child. Wiley's work may be "about representation" and power, but the women who exist in the public spaces of African cities are dismissed from "The World Stage."

There's a reason for this. Wiley himself states that the works are about a kind of coded homoeroticism. (In some of his paintings, vegetal patterns in the background wind around the figures in the foreground, replicating sperm.) But in a catalog interview, when curator Christine Kim tells Wiley that one of his American models "left the building" during a panel discussion in Columbus when gay sexuality was brought up, Wiley backtracks, stressing that, in the studio, he attempts to create a "neutral environment." You can't have it both ways, however, and this neutrality spills over into the paintings, which feel most of the time like a hedging of bets between multicultural political correctness and messier gay/black politics.

In many ways, Wiley is a symptom of the age—or maybe a victim of the era and his own success. He shows with Jeffrey Deitch, the impresario whose mission seems to be to fuse art with entertainment. Like much of Deitch's youth-culture-heavy stable, Wiley's flashy eye-candy painting is framed as edgy and subversive, but it sidesteps the heavyweight, head-on politics of artists like Glen Ligon. By comparison, Wiley is glossy, market-ready, and safe—unless the feel-good, one-world/one-love vibe is a ruse, a way of making a large population fall in love with paintings that they might, under clearer circumstances, reject.

Above: © Kehinde Wiley: Petrus Blackenheim and Saint George, 2006, Oil and enamel on canvas, 6 x 8 feet (182.9 x 274.3 cm)

Above: © Kehinde Wiley: Officer of the Hussars, 2007, Oil on canvas, 9 x 9 feet (274.3 x 274.3 cm)

Go see, or visit:
http://www.kehindewiley.com/
http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/572111
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/10/artist_kehinde_wiley_on_his_ne.html
http://www.deitch.com/projects/sub.php?projId=252
http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/recognize/
http://www.studiomuseum.org/the-world-stage-africalagos-dakar/

Half Light at AGNSW

2008-11-23T22:06:00.002+11:00

Half Light
Portraits from Black Australia
until 22 February 2009
Rudy Komon gallery, Upper Level

Above: Destiny Deacon Where's Mickey? 2003 light jet print from Polaroid. Private collection, Sydney © Destiny Deacon. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney.

LF joined the benefactors, pre-Xmas bash, for a viewing and talk by curator Hettie Perkins. Many of the artists were there, and La Perkins let them do the talking, which worked well for the most part. Richard Bell gave a fine harangue, to broad Aboriginal grins and a few rather fixed smiles from the white folks present, but it was all good clean fun – very much a family affair.

This all-photography show is solid, if unsurprising – much of it is well-known and has been exhibited many times before. LF's standout was Tony Albert's 'Polaroid' series (actually hi-res digital we think), and of course the late Michael Riley's studio portraits, seen not long ago in the 'Sights Unseen' retrospective. Tracey Moffatt is notably absent as an artist, which is a pity, but everyone else is there, so it's a useful catch-up survey all told.

The oppression we had to have

2008-11-23T16:58:00.006+11:00

Thoughts on the election of Barack Obama, and Kevin Rudd's Australian Labour Government, one year on.

“Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation”
- James Madison, 4th US President 1809-17

Until a year ago it seemed that John Howard might go on for another decade, prosecuting an unwise war against the clear wishes of the majority, refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol or say ‘Sorry’ To Indigenous Australians, among many other signature ideological positions that had embarrassed Australian internationally for a decade. Yet, since the ‘correction’, no-one seriously questions Kevin Rudd’s remedial policies as anything other than the good and proper actions of a responsible government. The election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States was, until September this year, an impossible dream. Now the world can hardly wait for January 20 2009, when it takes effect.

The parallels between Australian and the USA are striking, and commentators have variously hailed the Obama victory as the end of the Reagan era, the demise of the Neocons as a political force, the realization of Martin Luther King’s dream, or The Age of Aquarius finally getting underway after a shaky start. Regarding the last, apparently it’s just before breakfast. And all because an intelligent, well-educated, charismatic black man has been elected President. Or, in Australia’s case, a swotty bloke with reasonable positions on almost everything.

Yet if we look at the elected leaders of most Western, Latin American and Asian democracies since WW2, it’s apparent that the trend has long been towards centrist, consensus politics. The hard-right exceptions prove the rule… Nixon, Thatcher, Reagan, George W Bush and, in Australia, John Howard.
But Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Jerry Ford (the Accidental President), Jimmy Carter, Bush Senior and Clinton could all be described as reasonable men governing from the political centre, and pursuing a broad consensus foreign policy. Even Nixon, for all his avarice and dishonesty, ended the war in Vietnam and reached out to China, and Reagan succeeded in ending the Cold War, albeit with a military build-up that eventually sent the Soviet Union broke.

In Australia you could broadly characterise Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke and Keating as centrists – if Whitlam’s policies seemed radical at the time, they are mostly uncontroversial now. In the UK John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and the current Tory leader are broadly of the same political stripe, along with every postwar Prime Minister of Canada, Japan, most of Europe and the Balkans, including most former Soviet vassals.

If the USA and Australia have merely ‘corrected’ back to the centre with the election of reasonable and humane technocrats, they now resemble most other democracies, and have much in common with a generation of European and Asian leaders who support multilateral solutions, good-neighbourliness and diplomacy over bombastic unilateralism. The real aberrations have been John W. Howard (JWH) and George W. Bush (GWB), those brothers in arms, the nagging exceptions to the centrist thesis for most of the last decade.

If it’s true that people get the government they deserve, then Australians apparently deserved, for a decade spanning the millennium, a hard-right ideologue, dog-whistler, wedge-meister and dirty fighter who governed in the interests of his own supporter base – essentially the entrepreneurial class. There are some credits of course (gun control, East Timor) but Australia’s longest sustained economic boom was just their dumb luck… a result of the Hawke/Keating reforms and a worldwide economic growth bubble, now popped. The rich got a lot richer, and the trickle-down effect was enough to keep many voters employed, happy, and spending big on their mortgages and credit cards.

The USA has followed a similar trajectory. Clinton/Gore got the economy competitive again, and back in the black. They governed from the political centre, built multilateral approaches to security, terrorism, Israel/Palestine, the Middle East, climate change, trade. It was promising, for all Clinton’s shortcomings as a man, and there was every reason to expect a continuation under stolid Al Gore. And yet, with a ‘stolen’ election and no popular mandate, the USA took its hardest turn to the right since Reagan. The effect was immediate – relations with China, Russia and the Middle east soured almost overnight, and Palestine, where the Intifada had been quiescent, erupted again. Was 9/11, obviously long in the planning, fast-forwarded in response? We’ll never know if it would have happened under Gore, but we can suppose that the response would have been more measured, and wiser counsel would have prevailed.

Instead a cabal of arch-conservatives … Perle, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and of course the arch wedge strategist himself, Karl Rove, got their way on policy. And their political vehicle was a not very bright man – untraveled, unread, deaf to the lessons of history and his great forbears in office. It was a perfect match – “The haves, and the have mores”, to quote Bush himself.

The strategy was a simple, and much like John Howard’s approach – make the people afraid, then pick the issues that will divide them one against the other – abortion, intelligent design, gay marriage, prayer in schools, immigration, dole bludging, unions, ‘handouts’ for minorities, to name the most common ones. Obviously it helps if there is evidence of a real threat, and 9/11 and the Bali bombings were certainly real threats, easily conflated in the public mind with Iraq, Muslims, boat people (or criminal Mexicans), so that “defending our way of life” became a catch-all for any number of bad policies. We were sold a vision of the world designed to make us insular and compliant, and persuaded that civil liberties should be curtailed, compassion towards genuine refugees suspended, multiculturalism discredited, and Aboriginal reconciliation abandoned. And over it all hung the threat of a return to 17% interest rates under those dreaded bogeymen, the ‘Union Bosses’.

And it worked, surprisingly well, and for a surprisingly long time, in both Australia and the USA. So, why did the people turn when they did?

One might argue that in Australia GWH had become not just ‘out of touch’ with average voters, but had been seriously out of whack with the underlying centrist trend in Australian politics from the beginning. The unexpected capture of the Senate in 2004, and the consequent legislative arrogance, alerted (and alarmed) the electorate. George Megalogenis’s incisive demographic analysis of the 2007 vote (Labour Market Sees Red, The Weekend Australian Dec 1-2, 2007) quoted Paul Keating as saying “Every now and than the conservative parties of Australia decide to bare their fangs with the full ideological bite … They never really change, it is just sometimes they decide to disguise themselves. I think John Howard just ran out of disguises”. Or to put it another way, the dog-whistle suddenly became clearly audible, and voters grew tired of being taken for fools. I suggest the turning point was the Haneeff affair, but others see it as cumulative, from Tampa and ‘kids overboard’ through AWB, David Hicks, ‘blame-the-states’ and the whole sad litany of wedge issues that worked brilliantly for a while, then just suddenly just stopped doing so, to the evident annoyance of their architects. And now a similar change has rolled through the USA, for very similar reasons. The final straw was of course the financial meltdown – the one thing that conservatives are supposed to be good at is the economy, and credit is the opium of the people. When that fell over, it was all over.

In Australia and now the USA, it seems that this was an ‘oppression we had to have’. Perhaps we needed to see how easily bad leaders can hoodwink us with fear. Not only have we got a decent Prime Minister out of it, but also, finally, a half-decent opposition leader. And Obama looks to be a genuine consensus-builder and healer – something the USA and the world badly needs.

So are we squarely back on the centrist track, or will the pendulum inevitably swing back, and how soon? The architects of the United States constitution were worldly men, and highly cynical about the motives of those in power, so they designed a fairly robust system, which has been vindicated by the election of Obama. But in what dark places will the Neocons dwell until the next time, and can they conspire to ensure that Obama fails, so that Americans turn, afear’d again, towards the next jingoistic hawk of the hard right – Sarah Palin anyone? Will the discredited Australian ideological right heed the lesson? Malcolm Turnbull understands better then most to succeed again the Coalition must recapture the middle ground, and that people want consensus and co-operation. There really isn’t much policy difference between him and Rudd, but the chances of genuine bi-partisanship seem as distant as ever. Barrack Obama will no doubt appoint a number of Republicans to his cabinet, as Democrats do, and is serious about moving beyond the old 'Red State/Blue State' divide, but with our outmoded adversarial system that just can’t happen in Australia. A really bold move would be to break with tradition and appoint Turnbull to the cabinet’s economic advisory group. It would ensure a genuinely non-partisan approach to economic management – we face grave economic times after all – and perhaps Turnbull would stop saying idiotic, opportunist things that he plainly doesn’t believe.

And, finally, we should enshrine a Bill of Rights in the Australian constitution, and by so doing ensure our broad social contract is never again hijacked by megalomaniacs and ideologues of any persuasion. We are one of the few Western democracies without such an instument, and it is reassuring to hear that the Attorney General is serious about, if not full-on constitutional change, then a Charter of Rights which Parliament will be obliged to consider when passing legislation.

'Course we can.

Yes We Can

2008-11-05T20:31:00.006+11:00

Full text of Barrack Obama victory speech

Chicago, 4 Nov 2008

“Hello, Chicago.

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

“It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

“It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled, Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.

“We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

“It’s the answer that led those who’ve been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

“It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment, change has come to America.

“A little bit earlier this evening, I received an extraordinarily gracious call from Senator McCain.

“Senator McCain fought long and hard in this campaign. And he’s fought even longer and harder for the country that he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine. We are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader.

“I congratulate him; I congratulate Governor (Sarah) Palin for all that they’ve achieved. And I look forward to working with them to renew this nation’s promise in the months ahead.

“I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart, and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on the train home to Delaware, the vice president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

“And I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years, the rock of our family, the love of my life, the nation’s next first lady Michelle Obama.

“Sasha and Malia I love you both more than you can imagine. And you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the new White House.

“And while she’s no longer with us, I know my grandmother’s watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight. I know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

“To my sister Maya, my sister Alma, all my other brothers and sisters, thank you so much for all the support that you’ve given me. I am grateful to them.

“And to my campaign manager, David Plouffe, the unsung hero of this campaign, who built the best — the best political campaign, I think, in the history of the United States of America.

“To my chief strategist David Axelrod who’s been a partner with me every step of the way. To the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics, you made this happen and I am forever grateful for what you’ve sacrificed to get it done.

“But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you.

“I was never the likeliest candidate for this office.

“We didn’t start with much money or many endorsements.

“Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

“It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give 5 and 10 and 20 to the cause.

“It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy, who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.

“It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organised and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

“This is your victory.

“And I know you didn’t do this just to win an election. And I know you didn’t do it for me.

“You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

“Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.

“There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after the children fall asleep and wonder how they’ll make the mortgage or pay their doctors’ bills or save enough for their child’s college education.

“There’s new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair.

“The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

“I promise you, we as a people will get there.

“There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can’t solve every problem.

“But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years — block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

“What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter cannot end on this autumn night.

“This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

“It can’t happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

“So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

“Let us remember that, if this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.

“In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let’s resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.

“Let’s remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity.

“Those are values that we all share. And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.

“As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

“And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.

“And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

“To those — to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

“That’s the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we’ve already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

“This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight’s about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

“She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons — because she was a woman and because of the colour of her skin.

“And tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America — the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

“At a time when women’s voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

“When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

“When the bombs fell on our harbour and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

“She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that ‘We Shall Overcome’. Yes we can.

“A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.

“And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.

“Yes we can.

“America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves — if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

“This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.

“This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

“Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865), 16th President of the United States
The Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg Cemetery, Pennsylvania, November 19, 1863

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

London: The New Saatchi Gallery - The Revolution Continues

2008-10-14T11:14:00.012+11:00

THE REVOLUTION CONTINUES: NEW CHINESE ART
Saatchi Gallery
Duke of York's HQ, King's Road, Chelsea, London
until Jan 18 2009
FREE

At last the much-anticipated new gallery in Chelsea has opened, in the vastness of the old regimental barracks on the Kings Road, and at vast expense. Critics, while loving the immense spaces, have been divided on the quality of this inaugural exhibition, which features most of China's contemporary superstars, with the notable exception of Ai Weiwei.

The Guardian's Adrian Searle (Saatchi gallery: A study in blandness, October 7 2008) is withering:
The former Duke of York's HQ has been transformed into a study in blandness. If not for the art, we might be at a King's Road corporate wellness retreat...
Too much here looks secondary, or like a tiresome kind of entertainment. There are few signs of language being stretched and one has the feeling that many works have been manufactured with a market in mind...
On the whole the sculpture is better than the painting. It is almost all figurative, sometimes aiming for abject hilarity, sometimes for mordant gravity. But this time, optimism and Saatchi's unquenchable enthusiasm might not be enough.

Although everyone seemed to make an exception for Sun Yuan and Peng Yu's extraordinary Old Persons Home, left, Charlotte Higgins (Guardian Blog) was also unimpressed by most of the art:
The paint was still drying and the pale-wood floors still pristine this morning as the press drifted around the inaugural exhibition of Chinese art.
And therein lies the problem. It just is a truly grim show.
There is one mildly amusing piece - Sun Yuan and Peng Yu's room full of life-like sculptures of very elderly men in wheelchairs, each one looking something like (although hard to pin down to) a world leader in his dotage. These uniformed fellows in their medals, heads lolling on shoulders, white hair unkempt, reminded one of the broken Saddam, or of Yasser Arafat in his last days, or of what Bill Clinton might end up like in his twilight. The wheelchairs moved around of their own accord, such that the old blokes with their blankets on their knees bumped into each other from time to time.
Well, that was the highlight. Too much of the work here was on one note, or had one shouty visual trick up its sleeve. As often in the company of the work of Charles Saatchi, or at least the stuff that he has collected recently, I found myself being reminded that he is an ad-man. Visual puns are his bread-and-butter. That's why he likes this kind of thing: the miniature city (badly) constructed out of dog chews; the 'history-painting' containing Mao sitting in the back row at a McCarthy hearing; lord help us, the giant turd containing miniature toy soldiers. Hectoring art with little to say.

It was not all bad - Richard Dorment (The Telegraph) was more approving, see the video link below, which includes footage of Old Persons Home.

Considering it's free, and there is a very promising line-up of shows to come, it would appear that London is just being characteristically bitchy about the flamboyant Charles Saatchi. LF disagrees with the naysayers - we think that more far-sighted zillionaires should follow his lead and fund great public galleries. If you don't like all the art on show, at least it's there to experience first-had, so get yourself along and decide for yourself.

London: Frieze Art Fair opens Thursday 16 October

2008-10-13T12:39:00.000+11:00

16-19 October 2008

It's here again - so soon!
"Frieze Art Fair takes place every October in Regent’s Park, London. The fair provides an environment to introduce and showcase new and established artists to visitors from around the world."

http://www.friezeartfair.com/

London: Tate Modern unveils the new Turbine Hall installation

2008-10-13T12:20:00.000+11:00

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
TH.2058
Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, London
until 13 April 2009

Left: Centre-stage in the new installation, entitled TH.2058, is a larger-than-life model of a massive spider sculpture by Louise Bourgeois, who herself took on the Turbine Hall commission in 1999. Courtesy Tate Modern, London

Tate Modern has unveiled the latest in its series of Turbine Hall commissions - one of the most terrifying challenges in contemporary art, if also one of the most prestigious. French artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster has filled the vast space of Giles Gilbert Scott's former power station with recreations of sculptures by Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Henry Moore, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, blowing them up by 25% and placed them among a sea of mattress-less metal bunk beds, complete with reading material. The aim is to present a vision of a post-apocalyptic world 50 years into the future, the artist says. (The Guardian, October 13 2007)

London: Andy Warhol's exposures at The Hayward

2008-10-12T12:51:00.002+11:00

Andy Warhol
Other Voices, Other Rooms
Films, screen-tests, videos and Polaroids
Hayward Gallery, London
Until January 18 2008

"Mr Land invented this great camera called a Polaroid. And it just takes the face of the person. There is something about the camera that makes the person look just right. They usually come out great. I take at least 200 pictures and then I choose. Sometimes I take half a picture and a lip from another picture. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's easy." – Andy Warhol

What's to say? A must-see from the inventor of '15 Minutes of Fame'. See Jonathan Jones' Guardian review below.

Below: Polaroid pictures taken by Andy Warhol: O.J. Simpson, Robert Rauschenburg, Joseph Beuys, Truman Capote. Photographs: Founding Collection, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh © 2008 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc
Video: Andy Warhol photographing Joseph Beuys

The Polaroid production line
© Jonathan Jones, The Guardian, Monday October 6 2008

"Mark Rothko was once at a party in New York when Andy Warhol walked in, with his entourage of superstars. Warhol heard Rothko complain bitterly to the host: "How could you let them in?" The two great American artists were not exactly drinking buddies - so it's a strange twist that a Warhol exhibition should open in London this week, coinciding with a retrospective of his antithesis, Rothko.

Rothko thought Warhol represented the worst things about America: consumerism, celebrity, superficiality, you name it. But the two artists may have had more in common than you might think. In the early 1990s, New York's MoMA put on a great display of abstract paintings from the 1940s and 50s. At the end, some curator put Warhol's Orange Car Crash Fourteen Times (1963). It was totally right. Warhol's tragic subject matter, held in a saturated field of colour, shared the pathos and power of the abstract expressionists, but with less introspection, and more interest in others.

This was abstract reportage, and its compassion, its determination to bear witness, was almost unbearable.

Other Voices, Other Rooms was a novel by Warhol's favourite writer, Truman Capote. The Hayward's Warhol retrospective has adopted this as its title, as if to underline the artist's readiness to listen to, and look at, other people. It features Warhol's films, screen-tests, videos - and his Polaroids, which it rightly hails as works of art in their own right, even though they were actually used by Warhol as aids for painting portraits. They are strangely compelling images: one of the great humanising threads running through his factory-like output is his fascination with portraiture. The Polaroids provide a fascinating insight into this man who wanted to capture the world like a camera.

The Polaroids are, however, the most difficult of his works to reconcile with any lofty view of Warhol's output. In the early 1970s, he started to do society portraits. His subjects were stars and high-society types, from Chris Evert to OJ Simpson, Grace Jones to Joseph Beuys. Sitting for Warhol simply meant letting him take Polaroids of you. These were converted into silkscreen templates, printed on to canvas and painted over in lurid smears of bright colour that take the contrasts and saturations of the photographs as their starting point. In the Polaroid, Capote has bright blue eyes; in the painting, these become electric circles of sky blue within a pink face.

Just to make that observation is to home in on how precisely and intelligently Warhol's portraits work. Capote's eyes are not just eyes - they are the eyes of the great Truman Capote, whom Warhol revered and whose book In Cold Blood looks unshakingly into the worst elements of US life, just as Warhol did when he painted the electric chair. There's an emotional choice in the decision to heighten his eyes: a man becomes a myth, a face becomes an image.

The fact that Warhol liked famous people does not mean - as is usually assumed - that he worshipped celebrity for its own sake. In his book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, he gives celebrities this advice: you shouldn't value your fame in itself; you should "always have a product that's not just 'you'". An actress should count up her performances, a model her photographs. This way, "you always know exactly what you're worth, and you don't get stuck thinking your product is you and your fame". This is the opposite of the famous-for-being-famous ethic he often gets the blame for.

In the Polaroids, it's noticeable that no one is "just" a celebrity. These people do things: there are artists Warhol sincerely admires (Robert Rauschenberg, Max Ernst), pop stars, sports heroes. And many of the portraits are far from flattering. The camera does no one any favours, producing oddly lumpen, gross images of bright, damaged flesh - the raw facts, the rude material. Warhol said he deliberately miscast his films because the wrong person is always funnier and stranger. In these Polaroids, the stars, famous as they are, look miscast in their own lives.

Warhol's quest for the ungainly, even the freakish, reaches its fascinating climax in these Polaroids. Warhol thought himself ugly. He also thought of himself as a mirror. In front of the camera, as if in front of the mirror, he tries out disguises: drag, wigs, lipstick. He even poses as himself, plain Andy Warhol. The more you look at his work, the more you feel there really was such a person, who was not just an empty mirror but a dark, reflective lake - with hidden depths that have still not been fully charted."

Memes and matresses - Alexander Seton at Chalk Horse

2008-10-04T12:11:00.008+10:00

Alexander Seton
Memeoid
Chalk Horse Gallery, Sydney
until 25 October
Also (upstairs): Marley Dawson

This is LF's standout opening of the week, not least for a thirsty, happy crowd spilling out into the street on a sultry spring night - don't you wish it happened more?

Alexander Seton must be Australia's most skilled carver, with the possible exception of Ricky Swallow. But then marble (from Wombeyan) is a much more demanding medium than wood. The standout installation - actually catalogued as 4 separate works - is a series of minitaure bunk-style beds in unvarnished blackbutt, on which lie a series of baby matresses, on each of which lies a jarring and sometimes cryptic object(s), including a tiny, sleeping, swaddled infant. So far so interesting, although on opening night the blandly-lit space did nothing to enhance this subtle tableau, which seems to demand a darkened and hushed space. Those unfamiliar with Seton's work may take some time to realise that the matresses are carved, with exquisite detailing, from solid marble - the quilting, the creases, the pleating, the subtle textile qualities of matress lining... Wow!

This is a great example of material as metaphor, an old LF theme, but is just an added resonance in an already poignant installation. There is a further subtext - Seton is apparently referencing internet 'memes' - viral cultural multipliers on YouTube and the like. One of the matresses has a webcam as its object, another some sort of high-tech chrome 'wand', referencing memes such as 'The Dancing Kid' and 'Star Wars Baby'. LF isn't totally convinced that YouTube videos can be coinsidered memes in the original (Richard Dawkins) sense of the term, but they are certainly 'memeoid' in nature, and it's an interesting overlay on Seton's more enduring concerns, and the beautiful tension between the hard monumentality of marble, and the soft comforts of 'bedware' as also seen in his stunning Security Blanket series of 2007, below.

Left: (Not in current exhibition) ©Alexander Seton
Self-censoring helps everyone (2007)
Plastic & Womeyan marble
Couresy the artist and Chalk Horse Gallery

Dougal Phillips wrote about Seton's 2007 installation Security Blanket:
In Security Blanket, Alexander Seton brings the fine art of marble sculpting to a conceptual sculptural practice which draws upon themes of memory, play and safety. The works in this exhibition are beautifully crafted objects which marry hyper-real material effects with carefully chosen miniature icons - a row of houses, a Spruce tree, a jeep.

The common foundation of each of the works is the folded doona recreated in marble. Each doona is folded differently, someas if laid out at bed’s end, others as a heaped pile on a teenager’s floor or as a stage for combat in a child’s room. The materiality of the marble is key here. The doona folds have been carefully rendered, with colour of the marble matching the off-white and grey tones of an aging comforter. The marble itself incorporates the powerful impressions of childhood - not only does it remind the artist of his bedclothes, this particular marble is quarried from the Wombeyan area, close to where Seton spent time as a child.

What Security Blanket ultimately offers is a double-barreled question: What does security mean, and where is it found? People of all ages cling to their doonas physically and mentally, as landscapes for emotional turmoil, covens of vulnerability or, in the eyes of the child, a ground-level world to be built on and conquered. In the end, what Seton reminds us is how little really changes over the years.

- Courtesy Dr Dougal Phillips , Honorary Research Associate
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, University of Sydney Director and Curator, 1/2doz.

Back to Mimeoid at Chalk Horse - there is also a considerable cast multiple component, plus video, but it's the rocks that get us off. Marley Dawson's witty sculptural meditations on the world of men's sheds and tools is also worth seeing, and testament to Chalk Horse's ongoing commitment to mounting complex installations by emergent artists, and their brave transcendence of the demands of running a commercial gallery.

A la prochaine.

A Nigerian in Sydney - Yinka Shonibare at the MCA

2008-09-25T13:13:00.009+10:00

YINKA SHONIBARE MBE
Museum of Contemprary Art, Sydney
until 1 February 2009

Left: How to Blow up Two Heads at Once (Ladies), 2006
Two mannequins, two guns, Dutch wax printed cotton textile, shoes, leather riding boots, plinth
93 1/2 X 63 X 48 inches

This is definitely the show of the Spring season. The MCA have mounted a very impressive survey of the Nigerian/British artist, a couple of whose works were included in Contemporary Commonwealth at the NGA, coinciding with the Commonwealth Games in 2006, remember them?

This a large review show and includes all his best-known pieces, LF's favourite being 'The Scramble for Africa', featuring his signature headless manequins seated around a table, dressed in 'Dutch' printed cotton, dividing up a continent. Shonibare's work has great depth and sophistication, reaching far beyond the obvious post-colonial polemics, and he has an impressive knowledge of European art history and Enlightenment culture, which he wickedly subverts at every turn.

It's good to see some work by a major African artist in Australia - it's on for ages so get over there.
Primavera also opened last night, more on that soon.

A la prochaine.

Mexican Visions 2009

2008-09-19T10:26:00.003+10:00

The Art of Light

2008-09-17T18:18:00.020+10:00

Jonathan Jones untitled (the tyranny of distance)
Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF), Sydney
14 ⁄ 08 ⁄ 2008 – 11 ⁄ 10 ⁄ 2008

NEON , curated by Tania Doropoulos
Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney
30 August - 25 October 2008

Robert Irwin Light and Space
White Cube Mason's Yard, London
17 Sep—19 Oct 2008

Newell Harry Fish or Cut Bait?
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
21 Aug–13 Sep 2008

Glenn Ligon: Some Changes
Touring 2006-2008
The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh
Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus
Musée dArt Moderne Grand-Duc, Luxembourg

Above © Estate of Dan Flavin, Site-specific installation, 1996, Courtesy the Menil Collection

Above: © Jonathan Jones, untitled (the tyranny of distance), 2008 . aluminium, tarpaulin, fluorescent tubes and fittings. 6 walls, each 3.4 x 1.9 x 8.27 m, courtesy the artist, Gallery Barry Keldoulis and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney

Above: © Jonathan Jones Lightscapes installation view, foyer, Westpac banking Corporation. Courtesy the artist, Westpac and Gallery Barry Keldoulis.

Above: © Robert Irwin Light and Space (Detail), 2007. 115 fluorescent lights, courtesy the artist, White Cube and Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Photo: Philipp Scholz Ritterman

Above: NEON – installation view, courtesy the artists and Anna Schwartz Gallery

Above: © Newell Harry, Fish or Cut Bait?Installation view, showing Beginnings and Endings / Endings and Beginnings neon work across far corner, and Ovid/Void: Rousing the Rubble (for David) to the right, courtesy the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery.

Above: © Glenn Ligon Warm Broad Glow, 2005
neon and paint, 24 × 190 in, courtesy the artist and Fogg Museum, Harvard.

Neon and flouroscent tubes are more popular now than ever, it seems, and it's increasingly difficult for artists to carve out their own style in a medium that tends to suffer from 'sameyness'. Flouro tubes deliver an aesthetic that was comprehensively explored by the late, great Dan Flavin (1933-1996). The extraordinary retrospective of his work that travelled the world, ending up at LACMA in August 2007, reminded us just how elegantly he used the medium, and leaves us with the feeling that everyone else has been covering the same ground, with added irony.

Jonathan Jones is Australia's flouro and lightbulb king, although it's not all he does. He has a elegant way with 'threading', and this has manifested at times in some rather beautiful knotting and looping of electrical cabling. As an Indigenous man he subtly references traditional motifs, and his more recent flouro projects, including the work currently showing at SCAF and his massive lobby installation at Westpac Bank's Sydney headquarters manifest this kind of geometric patterning, but there is some spookily similar work around, for instance Robert Irwin's show which has just opened at White Cube in London. Which isn't to suggest that either is even aware the other's work, but that there are only so many things you can do with linear tubes.

Neon has a greater flexibility, literally, but the medium itself tends to be unsubtle, and carries all those corny old echoes of Vegas and cheap motels, which tends to impose a 'jokiness'. Imagery is difficult, so most artists end up doing words, the problem being that in formal terms one set of neon words tends to look much like another. In response, these texts have had to become increasingly cryptic - the medium referencing itself with ever greater levels of irony. The current show at Anna Schwartz's magnificent Carriageworks space is a perfect exemplar. Anyone who's anyone has to do a neon sculpture these days, and this show, which holds so much promise curatorially, is really a flashy collection of novelties assembled around a common medium, without much depth. Which isn't to dismiss the quality of some of the works, or the fact that AS has mounted such a technically difficult and expensive show.
Joseph Kosuth's deadpan 'Neon' of 1965 in some ways says it all - spelling out N E O N, in neon. Another much more recent Kosuth piece 'W.F.T. #1 [yellow]' (2008) is also impressive. Kosuth has said of its pregenitor 'The Language of Equilibrium': This project, in yellow neon, has as its basis language itself. It is a work which is a reflection on its own construction… The work engages the cultural and social history of the evolution of language itself, how the history of a word shows its ties to cultures and social realities being quite distinct and disconnected. It is only in the present when a word is used, as it is with a work of art being experienced, that all that which comprises the present finds its location in the process of making meaning. Here, in this work, language becomes both an allegory and an actual result of all of which it should want to speak.

Without 'independently wealthy' entities like AS and SCAF mounting such shows Sydney would be much the poorer - long may they continue. Go see, both have long runs.

Newell Harry has worked with neon quite a bit, and in his just-closed show at Oxley9 incorporated a number of neon elements into an interlinked series of installations. This was much more satisfying than the compilation show at Schwartz. Harry has a strong sense of material as metaphor, and much of his work (from paintings to woven mats) utilises fragments of text and notation, and the neon component acts as a stylistic extension of these concerns, rather than as a stand-alone novelty.

There are strong echoes of Glenn Ligon's approach here, and not just in the use of the medium. Ligon references black identity and cultural conudrums in similar ways, often working with texts, famously in 'Warm Broad Glow' (2005) referencing a passage in Gertrude Stein’s novella Melanctha (“the warm broad glow of negro sunshine”). This work made the cover of Artforum in 2006, coincident with the much-praised touring show Some Changes, which ended its run in Luxembourg in February 2008.

Finally, the definitive exhibition of light art Lichtkunst aus Kunstlicht (Light Art from Artificial Light) was mounted in 2006 at ZKM | Museum für Neue Kunst (Museum of Contemporary Art) in Karlsruhe, Germany. The fine catalogue from the show is still available and should be required study, along with the Dan Flavin retrospective, for anyone contemplating making a light sculpture.

A la prochaine.

Sydney: Animal Antics - Daniel Wallace and Hayden Fowler

2008-09-02T15:29:00.009+10:00

Daniel Wallace
Are We There Yet?
Damien Minton Gallery
until13 September 2008

Left: © Daniel Wallace
The short cut Series (detail)
River rock pigment board and feathers on gum tree branches, 2100x 850mm (each approx)
Courtesy the artist and Damien Minton Gallery

Daniel Wallace's work is not quite like anyone else's. Painted in natural pigments on various 'found' surfaces, his paintings and objects are at first glance a playful take on Australian road signs and the iconography of the road, complete with silhouetted blackfellas, cute critters and ghostly gum trees. They go much deeper however, and you don't have to peer far below the surface to discover a dark underbelly. 'When the welcome is worn out' for instance, features an actual cupboard door, appearing 'trompe l'oeil' to be standing under a gnarled tree, on which perches an ominous black bird. The door opens to reveal an Aboriginal figure hanging from the tree. The exhibiition is laden with similar, and more subtle, references to Australia's treatment of Aborigines, and suddenly the title of the exhibition has new meaning. Wallace is tipped to go far, and his work is very reasonably priced, so get in there young collectors!

Hayden Fowler
Second Nature
Gallery Barry Keldoulis
until September 20, 2008

Left: not in current exhibition
© Hayden Fowler – Goat Odyssey 2006 looped digital video on DVD 15 min 10 sec, Nursling I - V 2006 digital type C prints 65.5 x 99.5cm photo credit: Michael Randall, Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney

Hayden Fowler is rather better known and couldn't be more different as an artist, being essentially a 'meteur-en-scène' who creates seamless high-res photographic images or videos, often situated in a featureless white space. Here the backgrounds are uniformly clad with bas-relief white plastic panels reminiscent of Star Trek interiors, and which are carried over in reality to a room where one of his cryptic interactions takes place on video. We don't pretend to understand Fowler, or his apparent obsession with domestic farm animals, but his work is always visually arresting, and throws back at us more questions than answers. Definitely worth a look.

More creature conforts soon.
A la prochaine.

Biennale#2: Cocakatoo Island - a beautiful desolation

2008-09-02T14:44:00.012+10:00

Biennale of Sydney
closes Sunday 7 September 2008

There are just 5 days of Sydney Biennale remaining, and the trip out to Cockatoo Island is well worth taking if you haven't already. Free ferries leave hourly from in front of the MCA at Circular Quay, stopping at Wharf 2/3, and take about 30 minutes. Allow 3 hours on site. It's worth it for the William Kentridge rooms alone. LF thinks he may be the most intersting artist in the world today - 'son et lumiere' at its most basic, and magical. Mike Parr's whole block (appropriately the old Weapons Workshops) retrospective of video/film works is stunningly well conceived, whatever you think of the individual works, exhuding a dank and dangerous aura, complete with reeking buckets of urine, natch. Vernon Ah Kee's graffitti'd washroom explores parallel territory, and his large pencil portraits on canvas, in one of the turbine halls, have a quiet majesty. Jannis Kounellis' nearby sails installation is one of the few works that really feels 'site-specific', but apart from some boring videos, the standard is high throughout. If you've done no Biennale this year, then skip the MCA and AGNSW and Get On that Boat!

Some impressionistic images, ©Le Flaneur 2008.
Courtesy the artists and Biennale of Sydney

Melbourne: Clinton Nain at Nellie Castan Gallery

2008-07-23T16:26:00.007+10:00

Clinton Nain
Resistance to Resilience, paintings
Nellie Castan Gallery, South Yarra
until 9 Aug 2008

Left: © Clinton Nain, from Resistance to Resilience
Courtesy the artist and Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne

After his remarkable 2006 exhibition, aeiou, Clinton Nain is back with a new exhibition of paintings, using the metaphorical mediums of bitumen and 'house paint' (in a colonial palette). His potent and recurrent motifs of hearts, targets, dresses and scrawled notation are ever-present, but Nain is always developing his personal language and excavating new meanings and resonances from his deceptively simple ingredients.

Make sure you see it if in Melbourne.

Sydney: Retribution special: Don Giovanni

2008-07-13T10:29:00.004+10:00

Don Giovanni
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Sydney Opera House
in repertory until 10 September

LF doesn't usually cover opera , but this new production by German-born Australian Elke Neidhardt is something a bit special, not least for the appearance, in the title role, of Hungarian Gabor Bretz, fresh from appearances in Budapest, Salzburg and La Scala, Milan. Neidhardt has created a sort of swaggering Nick Cave meets white-shoe-brigade figure, someone we all know really, and has set the action (originally conceived as Sevilla, Spain) in a contemporary-ish no man's land, with minimal sets.

All the better to focus on the superb bass and bass-baritone singing in Mozart's 'heaviest' opera. For those who don't know the story or follow Italian libretto, don't worry, we all know it - he's Don Juan, in the last years of his life, sexual powers waning in direct proportion to his bragadaccio. Retribution is coming, though, and takes the form of the murdered 'Commendatore', usually manifesting as a stone statue come to life, but here as a menacing abstract light-show of florescent tubes. Even better than Bretz is Joshua Bloom as his sidekick Leporello, and the girls are pretty goo too: Rachelle Durkin was a good if sometimes too-strident Donna Anna, and Catherine Carby is Donna Elvira, who manifests (visually) as a cross between Cindy Lauper and Vicky Pollard.

The World Premiere was in Prague in October 1787, 2 years before the 'world changed forever' (the first time) with the French revolution. It's as if Mozart knew that the excesses of the ruling class could not continue. As always, there's an iron fist in the velvet glove of the music. Après nous, la déluge?

Finally, following a recent post about American director Peter Sellars' version of Tristan and Isolde, with videos by Bill Viola, there's grainy video below of Sellars' famous 1990 interpretation of 'The Don', set in Spanish Harlem, and featuring the sensational identical twins Herbert and Eugene Perry as Don Giovanni and Leporello. The scene is the final one, and the Commendatore is a somewhat more literal giant human figure.

Above: The Perry twins in the final scene of Peter Sellars' Don Giovanni, 1990, with French subtitles.

Shock Horror: Special Nude 'Family' Edition

2008-07-12T11:06:00.045+10:00

Left: Le Flâneur's father, aged 7
Photographer unknown, c1930

The week began with a re-run of Prime Ministerial and shock-jock outrage, at Art Monthly Australia's decision to feature photographer Polixei Papapetrou's 2003 photograph of her daughter Olympia on its front cover (seee below). Editor Maurice O'Riordan writes that the decision "... may be seen as controversial but is made in the hope of restoring some dignity to the debate; to validate nudity and childhood as subjects for art; to surrender to the power of the imagination (in children and adults) and dialogue without crippling them through fear-mongering and repression."

LF urges anyone remotely interested to read this issue, which contains some thoughtful insights from a number of writers, including an excellent and somewhat critical essay on Bill Henson by artist and SCA lecturer Adam Geczy. (see http://www.artmonthly.org.au)

It should be said that the offending cover photograph (left) has already been widely seen and exhibited, we believe without comment or complaint, however other photographs by Papapetrou, namely Olympia wearing her grandmothers Jewels was withdrawn, following complaint, from the Gosford leg of the ACP's touring show Childhood and the Uncanny in 2007. Both the artist and her highly articulate daughter Olympia (now 12), have given spirited responses to the media beat-up, which seems to have somewhat subdued the howls of outrage. There's an acceptance, perhaps, that these are family matters, and that despite many assertions to the contrary, a 7 year-old need not give 'informed consent' to be photographed naked by her mother. Need she, and can she, give informed consent for the images to be exhibited, or used on the front cover on a magazine, though?

It's an interesting question, hence this special 'family' edition. All these images are G-rated, and freely and uncontroversially featured on gallery and artists websites. There is nothing in them that isn't on show on beaches, sports fields and backyards Australia-wide, yet somehow they have been caught up in the controversy surrounding the work of artists like Bill Henson (Aus) and Larry Clark (USA). There is a difference. Those two artists work with models or documentary subjects, and often deliberately investigate aspects of sexuality and transgressive behaviour, which is a different and wider debate, albeit related.

Papapetrou is a good example, because on one level she is just another mother photographing her own child, something that is done every day in most families - digital documentation of first steps, beach holidays and sprinkler fun in the suburbs, shared on Facebook, or lovingly emailed to distant aunts and grandparents. Nudity in this context is almost synonymous with childhood, and it would not occur to anyone that such images require 'informed consent', or might be of sexual interest, surely?

Surely? .... er.... not?

According to the more ferocious thought police, all images of child nudity are criminal per se, irrespective of context, and it would be unwise to be caught with such images on your computer. Under that extreme definition LF is a criminal, not just for having a nude picture of his 7-year-old father (now passed on), but for publishing it online. We'll take that risk, however, for the sake of the debate, because an important issue is at stake.

Left: © Sally Mann: 'Emmet, Jessie, Virginia 1989' from 'Immediate Family' series. Courtesy the artist.

The obvious difference between family snaps and Papapetrou's work is that she exhibits her images as 'gallery art', and they are viewable on the web in that context. She is in fact part of a widespread 'tradition' of photographer/artists/mothers using their own children and their (children's) friends as subjects, for instance Sally Mann (USA), Jillian Edelstein (UK), Ella Dreyfus (Aus), Cherry Hood (Aus), and Petrina Hicks (Aus) to name but a few. So what could be more natural and wholesome? None are remotely 'sexualised' in intent or effect, yet all have attracted some degree of comment or controversy around this very perception.

Left: © Jillian Edelstein: 'Gabriel and Savannah'. Courtesy the artist.

Like Mann, Edelstein documents her children's lives, in both posed and spontaneous moments, and in speaking of her iconic image (left), has defended the "naturalness of an artist/mother to photograph her children and not be castigated for doing so. The image says so much: his protection of her as older brother... and the pose, like a Pièta... yet it was a totally natural moment of play in the pool."

In the case of Dreyfus the controversy is perplexing, as her portraits are usually waist-up. In Hood's case even more so, since her medium is watercolour and usually head and shoulders, yet the bleedy lips and complex gaze of her teen boy subjects make some people uncomfortable. What the hell is going on?

Catherine Keenan wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald about Ella Dreyfus's' 2005 exhibition, depicting her son and his under 12 football team: "Ella Dreyfus is used to causing a stir with her photographs. So her latest exhibition, Under Twelves, seems surprising at first - for its tameness... Photographed from the chest up, they are sweetly beautiful, full of a softness and vulnerability that is all the more precious for the sense that it will soon be swept away by puberty. And therein, perhaps, lies the rub. We are not used to admiring the beauty of young boys."

Far left: © Cherry Hood: 'Oliver' 2003, Watercolor on paper, courtesy the artist. Illustration in Harold's End by J. T. Leroy.
Left: © Ella Dreyfus, from 'Under Twelves' series 2005. Courtesy the artist.

It was not always thus. In American John Singer Sargent's day it was something innocent to be celebrated, and a welcome relief from the society portraits by which he made his living. Boys were a subject free of the sexual overtones that might have attended the depiction of unclothed girls, which in the 1800s still required an allegorical or mythical setting (a Grecian vase would do it) to add artistic respectability. In those days it was normal for males to swim nude, and Sargent's spontaneous studies of men and boys bathing evoke a time of innocence, the naturalness of the human animal at play in the sun, and are among his most critically admired works. The study left hangs in the Tate gallery in London.

Left: John Singer Sargent: 'A Nude Boy on a Beach', 1878, Oil on wood. Courtesy Tate Gallery, London.

It appears that as a society we are now imposing a new set of meanings on these images, meanings that weren't there until recently, rather than responding to any innate qualities in the images themselves. Does this mean that the simple depiction of childhood/adolescence is now taboo? Has the existence of pedophiles and internet predators affected our ability to look at images of innocence... with innocence? Has the much-noted 'sexualisation' of kids and tweens in advertising media corrupted our ability to look at photographs objectively? What is this media 'sexualistion' anyway? Can it remotely be equated with the hard-core porn out there? Why has any image of a child in art, clothed or not, suddenly become disturbing to our society?

And... where do we go from here?

Do we allow the existence of both pedophiles and those who see 'sexualisation' in ALL depictions of children, to create an atmosphere where the innocence, the complexity and the beauty of children can no longer be celebrated? One could argue that, as with terrorism, is we start to self-censor and curtail our freedoms for fear of a few disturbed people, we all lose.

To quote our PM: "Just let kids be kids".

As ever... you are the jury.

Sydney: A 'Grafitti-esque' Special Edition

2008-07-05T15:00:00.050+10:00

There has been some spookily similar 'grafitti-esque' work showing around Sydney commercial galleries of late. While most of this art is visually seductive and collectable, and the artists no doubt easily distinguishable to the cogniscenti, LF has begun to wonder if some of these artists are in fact the same person. Have they ever all been seen in the same room together? Seriously though, this phenomenon is not just confined to Sydney. Worldwide the 'graffiti aesthetic' is thriving, not just on countless walls, trains and trucks, but multiplying virally through the upmarket gallery scene. Los Angeles in particular seems to go in for this look, but it was Jean Michel Basquiat who perfected it as a contemporary style in New York in the 1980s. RIP JMB, if he only knew how many imitators he's spawned, he'd.... well laugh loudly, no doubt.

David Griggs
All I want is peace in the Middle East, a blow job and a free T-shirt
Kaliman Gallery, Sydney
until 19 July
Images from the exhibition © David Griggs, courtesy the Artist and Kaliman Gallery

John Citizen
Interiors and Colored People
Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney
until 12 July
Below left: © Gordon Bennett: 'Notes to Basquiat: Cut the Circle' 2001, acrylic on linen 120 x 120cm, photography John O'Brien. Below right: © Gordon Bennett: from 'Interiors and Colored People' series. Courtesy the artist and Gallery Barry Keldoulis

Gordon Bennett (aka John Citizen) has, with chracteristic irony, commented on this with his 'Notes to Basquiat' series in 2001, and Citizen's current show at GBK is a witty development - a deadpan commentary on contemporary art's blurring into interior decoration. Citizen's modern interiors (evoking Patrick Caulfield and Howard Arkley) use flat colour and thick black lines, empahsising the 2D surface, and featuring in-situ 'tasteful' paintings - 'Aboriginal', abstract or portrait - with larger versions of the portraits alongside, in lurid colour-by-numbers style, featuring happy lifestylers - the 'Coloured People' of the exhibition's title. It's quite a pisstake - jeering at the very punters who are there to buy his work. At the opening the young collector types had an aggrieved look about them, not surprisingly.

It's not news that street art is routinely commodified and brought inside the white cubes, despite Banksy's best efforts to keep it outside. Punters are obviously hot for this look - it's perfect for that new, all-white apartment, lending a splash of colour and a whiff of the street to an antiseptic interior - a bit of safe visual slumming. But the answer to why there's so much of it may also be that it's easy to do, from the artist's point of view. Scrawl a few words, scratch a few cryptic figures, a fragment of label, a badly daubed skull or two, and ... you have it!

Some practitioners are considered hip, and others not. Melburnian David Griggs (currently showing at Kaliman, see above) broadly references Manila street/gang culture, and has become a darling of contemporary curators, rapidly entering the major collections, while Melbournian Philipino Australian Mike Chavez remains relatively obscure. His group show (with Daniel Brinsmead, Doug Bartlett, and Adrian Doyle, see below) has recently closed at Harrison Galleries. Michael Jeffery (currentIy at Richard Martin) has achieved commercial success, but not critical acclaim. Another practitioner, Johnny Romeo, opens at NG Art Gallery this week. Within the genre Mike Chavez stands out, not only for his use of screenprints, but for the strength simplicity of his compositions and of his 'messages'. Critical success is not always a question of originality, and is often the luck of the draw, or having the right gallery. It was ever thus.

Mike Chavez, Daniel Brinsmead, Doug Bartlett, and Adrian Doyle
Harrison Galleries, Sydney
7 - 27 June 2008

Below left: © Mike Chavez: 'Get Rich or Die Tryin', 2008, mixed media on canvas
Below right: © Mike Chavez: '50 Years in Converse', 2008, screenprint, spraypaint & acrylic on linen
Courtesy the artist and Harrison Galleries

Below left: © Doug Bartlett: 'Wishing and Hoping', 2008, mixed media on canvas
Below right: © Daniel Brinsmead: 'Babylonia', 2008, mixed media on canvas
Courtesy the artists and Harrison Galleries

Michael Jeffery - Sticks & Stones
Richard Martin Fine Art, Sydney
28 Jun - 9 Jul 2008
Below left: © Michael Jeffery: 'Neil's Big Day Out', acrylic paint skins, and spray enamel on canvas
Below right: © Michael Jeffery: 'RK', acrylic paint skins, and spray enamel on canvas
Courtesy the artist and Richard Martin Fine Art

Johnny Romeo - 'Galaxy Cattle'
NG Art Gallery, Sydney
8 - 26 July 2008
Below: © Johnny Romeo: 'Foreign Film Tobacco', acrylic and oil on canvas
Courtesy the artist and NG Art Gallery

A toute a l'heure.

Biennale of Sydney #1: Black and white and red all over

2008-06-21T13:05:00.028+10:00

The Biennale has opened to mixed acclaim.

"Boring as batshit"... "Rich, intense, mysterious"... "Dry and political"... "Confronting and provocative"... "Very monochrome" "Fun, fun, fun'... "Pretentious rubbish"... these are just some of the comments noted by LF at the vernissage and opening events, which seems to indicate that director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (CCB) must be doing something right.

It's too early for a comprehensive review of the work, but LF's initial impression is of a Biennale that is overwhelmingly European in its influences, despite the presence of many artists from all over the world. This is understandable given CCB's pedigree as a curator of 20th century conceptual art, especially the (initially Italian) Arte Povera movement, having written and edited the impressive Phaidon publication of that name.

The concept of Revolutions, although obviously operating on many levels, appears to be most firmly rooted in a fascination with the Russian-French-Italian-American 20th century intellectual left, and the social and artistic convulsions resulting from their brave new ways of thinking about the world. This is not a negative by the way. It's probably about time we had a rigorous and comprehensive survey of the ways in which these influences still permeate every aspect of western, and much non-western, contemporary art. This may be the most thorough survey of these influences since René Block's much-admired 'The Readymade Boomerang - Certain Relations in 20th Century Art' Biennale 0f 1990, nearly 20 years ago.

The admirable and very clever 'Online venue' (http://www.bos2008.com/revolutionsonline/) and catalogue seem to echo this idea - following of threads of influence, expressed via doodled scribbles and arrows, allowing one to explore linkages and correspondences across cultures and eras, in an open-ended way. A great piece of web design.

The catalogue also deserves a special mention - not least for having the courage to stick with monochrome throughout, featuring only drawings, many of them rough conceptual scribbles, from the participating artists. The difficulties of compiling these catalogues so far in advance is that much of the work is yet to be created or is site-specific, so too often we end up with a brochure of 'best-known-pieces' - one page per artist, without any context apart from some formidable up-front essays. CCB has stuck with the page (or 2) per artist, but created a rich textual accompaniment, with key writings by influential (mainly European mid 20th century, with a couple of Americans thrown in) 'revolutionary' thinkers. Marx, Lenin, Fanon, Debord, Benjamin, Breton, Lacan, Derrida... everyone's there. Once again this is not a negative, but reinforces the earlier comment about the European intellectual left underpinning of the Biennale's theme.

The inclusion of Australian (eg Taussig, Richard Bell) and American (eg Hoffmann, Torres-Garcia) writers, and of such diverse Australian contemporary artists as Shaun Gladwell, Tim (TV) Moore, Destiny Deacon and Mike Parr, plus artists from Asia, Latin America and Africa, does not really mitigate this impression, but rather enhances the perception that the art world globally has yet to emerge from the intellectual paradigm that began with, well... Duchamp. 'Le Mâitre' had to come up sooner or later. It's almost a banality these days to trace the demise of 'retinal' art to Marcel Duchamp, but it's nevertheless true. Probably. Maybe.

So... we have that upside-down bicycle wheel again, reminding us of the Biennale's theme, and signalling the birth of conceptual art. OK... got that. Spirals and rotating devices abound, especially at AGNSW. On entry, Michael Rakowitz's impressive 'White Man Got No Dreaming', a homage to Vladimir Tatlin's famous tower (of Babel) references, among other things, the impending 'redevelopment' of Redfern's Aboriginal neighbourhood. Bruce Nauman's neon sculpture of 1967 (made before everyone was doing them) 'The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths' (shown above) is backed by Ross Gibson's 'conversation' booth. A study by the late, great Robert Smithson for his 'Spiral Jetty' nestles unobtrusively along the way, and it's good to see recreations of some of Len Lye's bizarre constructions, nicely juxtaposed with Jean Tinguely's infernal machines and Rebecca Horn's "Cutting through the past'. There are some pleasing in-jokes for those who know their 20th century art history.

Cocakatoo Island is the most interesting venue, and fabulously atmospheric - get there or be square - the ferries are free and frequent from Wharf 2/3 Walsh Bay. The artists party in the Turbine Hall (lit revolutionary red) on Wednesday night was quite a blast, and well-conceived as an event, although many artists expressed disappointment that the art was off limits for the night.

More to come, but in the meantime some impressions of opening events, photos ©Team Flaneur.

Australia/Japan - Bill Viola: the Shock of the Blue

2008-06-18T17:33:00.006+10:00

Although the powerful St Saviours video installation was on for a brief time only, there is still time to catch 'The Fall Into Paradise' at AGNSW. LF has taken to visiting this extraordinary short work whenever at the AGNSW (which has been often of late), purely for the exhilarating shock when the two bodies hit the water. We urge you to go see this if you haven't done so, preferably in an altered state. Grouped under the title 'The Tristan Project', these videos form part of the spectacle that Viola helped create for Peter Sellars' production of Wagner's 'Tristan ad Isolde' for the Opéra National de Paris, which continues to tour the world, and premieres in Japan soon.

SYDNEY
Bill Viola: The Tristan Project: 'The Fall Into Paradise', 2005
Level 2 Contemporary Projects Space
until 27 July 2008

Bill Viola: The Tristan Project: 'Fire Woman' and 'Tristan’s Ascension' (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall), 2005
St Saviour's Church, Redfern
9 April - 17 May 2008

JAPAN
Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner, Opéra National de Paris.
Conductor: Esa Pekka Salonen, Director: Peter Sellars, Video: Bill Viola
Premiere: July 20, 2008, 3:00pm, Hyogo Performing Arts Center
July 27, 31 2008: Bunkamura Orchard Hall

Left above© Bill Viola: still from 'The Fall Into Paradise' 2005. Video/sound installation. Photo: Kira Perov
Left below© Bill Viola: still from 'Fire Woman' 2005. Video/sound installation. Photo: Kira Perov

Sydney: Bill Henson re-opens

2008-06-16T14:57:00.012+10:00

Bill Henson 2008
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
until 21 June
Viewing by appointment

Above left: © Bill Henson, 'Untitled #17', 2007/08
type C photographs, 127 × 180cm, analogue prints
Courtesy the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

LF joined the happy throng at RO9G's Biennale welcome drinks, and was able to view this rather subtle exhibition as the artist intended it to be seen, the 'confiscated' works now restored, with a PG rating. As often in past shows, figure studies are juxtaposed with shadowy landscapes and sombre interiors to create Henson's familiar dark poetics. No huge change is visible in this show, although some observers have commented that some of the figure studies are more 'descriptive' or 'literal' than in the past. There is no apparent "despoliation and abuse" (to quote an earlier comment by Edmund Capon - see full context below), and these solo studies of a young girl and boy, sometimes in extreme close-up, exhibit an almost tender innocence, a sense of the privacy and shyness of adolescence.

Odd then, that these relatively innocent images are the ones to have created such a furore. In the meantime, one of the much more confronting large diptyches from 1995/6 has remained hanging as part of the AGNSW's rotating modern art collection, see below. LF has noted apparently incurious families with toddlers viewing this without evident ill effect.

© Bill Henson, Untitled 1995/961995-1996
diptych: 2 type C photographs, adhesive tape, pins, glassine
Purchased 1996
Courtesy the artist and RAGNSW

In a 2002 documentary on Henson's work aired on ABC-TV (and recently re-screened) Edmund Capon, the director of the NSW Art Gallery, has said of this series "There are images that are close to despoliation and abuse, but they're sort of orchestrated with this wonderful sensual baroque exoticism at the same time."

In 2005, when a major retrospective of Henson opened at AGNSW, Ben Cubby (Images that stir the mind, SMH, January 7, 2005) wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald:
Henson is nonplussed by the idea that his work is morally murky. "For me, perhaps you have a tenderness and fragility, but at the same time you have a sense of violence or threat or violation. You have all of these seemingly opposing forces. That creates a certain ambiguity, which can be unsettling ... Many times in the past people have said to me that their mind is being pulled in one direction and their heart somewhere else. Which I think is great because, if nothing else, it takes them on a journey."

Some other memorable quotes from recent times:

"Whatever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff - frankly I don't think there are any - just allow kids to be kids."
- Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia, May 2008

"Henson's images are veritable symphonies of decadence and beauty, of squalor and opulence, of mysterious darkness and ominous light, of quiet obsession and subversive ecstasy."
- Edmund Capon, Director, Art Gallery of NSW, May 2008

"You can call it anything you want, but at the end of the day, these are images of naked adolescents."
- Hetty Johnston, Bravehearts, May 2008

"In the end it's only a representation. We're not being asked to agree or approve."
- Judy Annear, Senior Curator, Art Gallery of NSW, May 2008

"Henson's art is worth defending, because he is a great artist and his themes - solitude; intimacy; transitional, incommunicable states; desecration; what the critic Dennis Cooper called "moments of intense self-mourning", and so on - are addressed with profound sensitivity and understanding. They have found expression over the years not only in images of the faces and bodies of teenagers and young adults, but in a whole array of other imagery, including landscapes, still lifes and urban crowds. Of course, there is a kind of artist (one sees more and more of them these days) who finds a taboo and breaks it, hoping thereby to create a sensation. Henson is not that kind of artist. He is well aware that his work has the potential to stir up controversy. (He has sensible and sensitive things to say about this, but he is acutely aware that one cannot ultimately control the reception of one's images.) But his vision is authentic and original. And it is highly sensitive to emotional ambiguity, as great art should be (and politics never is)."
- Sebastian Smee, The Australian, May 28, 2008

The Classification Board, under its new chief, former ABC head Donald McDonald, is far less troubled by Henson's work. Earlier this week it cleared five images - four of them had been partly censored - and it has now given the young girl on the invitation a rating of PG.
The board's guidelines state: "Material classified PG may contain material which some children find confusing or upsetting, and may require the guidance of parents or guardians. It is not recommended for viewing or playing by persons under 15 without guidance from parents or guardians."
The picture came to the board for classification when it was found in a blog discussing pornography and the sexualisation of children. The classifiers found the "image of breast nudity … creates a viewing impact that is mild and justified by context … and is not sexualised to any degree".
While a minority of the board thought the impact of the picture was "moderate", none of the classifiers called for any restriction on its display.
– David Marr, Sydney Morning herald, June 6, 2008

We leave it to you, the jury.

Sydney: SafARI 2008 kicks off at MOP

2008-06-12T12:29:00.004+10:00

SafARI exhibits the work of emerging, unrepresented Australian artists across multiple Artist-Run Initiative (ARI) venues in Sydney during the crucial opening weeks of the Biennale of Sydney (BoS)

SafARI Opening Night
6.00pm to 9.00pm Friday 13 June 2008
MOP Projects, 2/39 Abercrombie Street, Chippendale, Sydney, NSW, 2008
Join us to celebrate the opening of SafARI 2008 at MOP Projects.

SafARI Public Forum with special guest speaker Barbara Flynn
3.00pm, Sunday 22 June 2008
Gaffa Gallery, 1/7 Randle Street, Surry Hills, Sydney, NSW 2010

Don't miss this opportunity to gain insight into collecting emerging art from one of Australia's most well regarded art advisors, Barbara Flynn. A valuable forum for both artists and collectors, Flynn brings perspective to this topic developed through more than 30 years of involvement with contemporary art. Flynn has formed collections for the major Australian corporations and art collectors over the last ten years in Australia. Her first jobs were in museums in Germany and she operated her own galleries for emerging artists from 1980 to 1994 in New York.

SafARI Artist Talks and ARI Tour
2.00pm sharp, Saturday 28 June 2008
Meeting at MOP Projects, 2/39 Abercrombie Street, Chippendale, NSW 2008

Meet most of the SafARI 2008 artists while on a SafARI tour with
curator Lisa Corsi.

Please note that access to Gaffa is via stairs.

SafARI Closing Party
6:00pm, Saturday 28 June 2008 (following artist talks and ARI tour.)
China Heights, Level 3, 16-28 Foster Street, Surry Hills,
Sydney, NSW 2010

More info: http://www.safari.org.au

Sydney: Elcho Island's Chooky Dancers

2008-06-12T12:05:00.010+10:00

LEft: Chooky Dancers and a new friend at the AGNSW.
Photo © Le Flaneur

A cut-down touring group performed at AGNSW on Saturday 14 June, to an enthusiastic audience of all ages. They later went to the Sydney Swans vs St Kilda match at the SCG, and were taken 'backstage' to meet the Swans players, a very different kind of crowd.

Go you good things...

Below: Zorba the Greek Yolngu Style: The Choooky dancers from Galiwin'ku on Elcho Island performing their interpretation of Zorba the Greek at the Ramingining Music Festival on the 30th September 2007 in Arnhemland, NT, Australia

Mexican Visions: Denise De La Rue at Gagosian Los Angeles

2008-06-12T10:25:00.007+10:00

Matador
Denise De La Rue
Gagosian Gallery
456 North Camden Drive
Beverly Hills, CA
Jun 14 - 21, 2008

Left: © Denise De La Rue
'Ignacio Garibay, Mexico City, Mexico', 2006
Analog print on color glossy paper, 48-3/8 x 35-3/8 inches (123 x 90 cm), Ed. of 3
Courtesy the artist and Gagosian Gallery

Mexican photographer Denise De La Rue's debut exhibition at Gagosian LA will be interesting.

From the press release:
"De La Rue's Matador series offers a glimpse into the complex social and moral implications of modern bullfighting, a cultural cornerstone of the Hispanic world. She portrays the mythic bullfighters of Mexico and Spain immediately after the fight, often bloodied. Her large- scale photographs dissect the constructed façade of the fight to provoke new perceptions of familiar images.

Removed from the immediacy of the ring, De La Rue places the matadors in settings that are reminiscent of Baroque portrait painting. Museums and mirrored dressing rooms draped with tapestries are backdrops depicting religious scenes. De La Rue uses her primarily male subjects to examine the accepted tenets of the bullfighting culture and to expose the dualities embedded in this historic tradition. She explores the dual identity of these heroes of the past, part ballet dancer - beautiful in their ornate dress and elegant dance in the ring; part warrior - locked in mortal combat with the toro bravo. At the same time, she asks viewers to consider both the lionization of the fighters in Hispanic cultures and the pervasive disapproval of the sport by the rest of the world. Matador expands on her previous series profiling Mexican wrestlers and continues her exploration of the many identities and personas that shape our world.

Denise De La Rue was born in Mexico City in 1972. She is a graduate of Art History from the Centro de Arte Mexicano, Mexico City and studied at the Escuela Activa de Fotografía, Mexico City, and the Academia delle Belle Arti in Florence, Italy. She was also a participant in the group show "Mextilo", at the Centro Nacional de las Artes in 2005. She lives and works in Mexico City.

An artist's book, MATADOR, accompanies the exhibition."

London: Jake & Dinos Chapman channel Adolf Hitler at White Cube

2008-06-10T11:11:00.001+10:00

If Hitler Had Been a Hippy How Happy Would We Be
and Fucking Hell
30 May—12 Jul 2008
White Cube
Mason's Yard, London SW1

Left: Jake and Dinos Chapman with their re-created 'Fucking Hell' installation
Photograph: Joel Ryan/PA
Courtesy the artists and The Guardian, UK

Mark Brown wrote in The Guardian ( May 30, 2008):

Five years ago the artists Jake and Dinos Chapman were labelled vandals for defacing a set of Goya prints. There may be less fuss over their new target: 13 watercolours of dubious quality by a man who never made it to art school despite his best endeavours. Adolf Hitler. Yesterday the brothers revealed new works including the amateurish Hitler paintings, on which they have painted rainbow skies, smiley faces and colourful stars and flowers.

The artists take delight in what the tyrant's reaction might have been. "If hell exists and Hitler is there, I think he is turning in his grave," said Jake. The brothers spent £115,000 on a "job lot" of pretty dire paintings by Hitler. They said that they were exploring themes of redemption and had made Hitler's art "better by it being worse".

The Hitler watercolours are the sort of works that can be seen in junkshops the world over, say the brothers, describing them as impoverished and benign.

"They are absolutely archetypal of the miserable representation of art that was going on then," said Dinos. Too much time could be spent looking at the art to try to read the mind of the man Hitler became, they say. "All they indicate is that this person is not very good at art, they don't indicate this person will become a terrible tyrant," said Jake. The last time the brothers had a go at someone else's art was in 2003. In Insult to Injury, they took a collection of 80 Goya prints and drew puppy and clown heads on the faces. It offended some and delighted others.

The brothers - once called "the cleverest of the Young British Artists" by the critic Matthew Collings - also marked the fourth anniversary of the loss of one of their most celebrated pieces of work, 'Hell', destroyed in the 2004 Momart warehouse fire in east London, by revealing its successor. This time it is entitled 'Fucking Hell' - also on show at the White Cube gallery in central London - is nine glass cabinets arranged in a swastika formation with tens of thousands of miniature figures enduring awfulness on a grand scale. The original installation was lost in the east London fire which destroyed much of Charles Saatchi's stored art collection four years ago.

"You couldn't fail to see something funny about Hell being on fire," said Jake. Their first thought was: let's do it again. Jake said: "We wanted to rescue the work from the sentimentality that soon clothed the work after it burned, an affection for the work that wasn't there when it actually existed as an object, so the idea of a world without Hell was unacceptable to us.

"While everyone else was whingeing around kicking their legs in the air like overturned cockroaches, the first thing we said was we'd remake it". The Chapmans did not realise Hell was in the fire at first. "We thought it was in special storage for the stuff that he [Saatchi] really liked," joked Dinos.

Backstory (The Guardian)

Adolf Hitler, like so many amateur artists, thought he was rather good with a paintbrush, if not brilliant. After school he applied to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts but was turned down because he lacked a school leaving certificate. He tried to persuade it with the quality of his landscapes and, much to his fury, was turned down again. Hitler's view of art was straightforward - he liked sentimental landscapes. What he didn't like, he labelled decadent. He instructed his minister for popular enlightenment and propaganda, Josef Goebbels, to lead a purification purge against this degenerate art (ie virtually all modern art) as "part of the Jewish conspiracy". He complained that modern artists "see meadows blue, skies green, clouds sulphur yellow, and so on ..." In 1937 the Degenerate Art exhibition was held in Munich. Organised by the Nazis, it was to show how corrupting the art was. If Hitler Had Been a Hippy How Happy Would We Be subverts his work with a sky of rainbow colours.

Heavy fun, go see.

Police raids in Sydney, Drama Queens at Art Basel

2008-06-03T16:30:00.006+10:00

Image courtesy Crikey.com.au

International artwatchers have been aghast at the shenanigans in Soudan Lane (Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery) in Sydney and other locations in Australia, including Canberra's National Gallery of Australia (NGA), where a large number of works by Bill Henson (some in the collection for 20 years or more) have been 'seized' by police and impounded on the premises, pending further investigations. Sydney hasn't had such a 'grande scandale d'art' since the hogs ate momma, as they say in Texas. Or perhaps Australia's Ern Malley affiar?

We won't bother to go into the specifics, which have been exhaustively documented, except to say that Bill Henson is a very interesting artist, perhaps the more important for provoking the debate Australia is now having with itself, and as usual failing (as a society) to face the ghastly truth - that child abuse is the dark underbelly of Australian suburbia, and the family is where it largely occurs. Oh, and yes, there ARE unpleasant predators out there, and it's very naive and possibly criminally negligent to put such images on the net.

Roslyn and Tony Oxley have emerged from their gothic mansion (LF likes to imagine a scene from 'The Fall of the House of Usher') and flown out, and are no doubt relived to be breathing the pure, clean, enlightened air of Switzerland, and enduring the social excitement of being the subject of "ongoing investigations" by the authorities. Henson's work is slated to appear as part of the Roslyn Oxley9 'stand' among the commercial galleries, and there will no doubt be a phalanx of press there, keen to see whether not only are we producing porn, but EXPORTING it!

What a hoot! What an international embarrassment! Quel Grand Cringe! (pronounced Crraaainnje)
It shrivels the soul, yet thrills it with a delicious sense of outrage.

For a good blow-by-blow account of the unfolding drama see The Art Life: http://artlife.blogspot.com/

The image above is by an unknown humorist, accompanying an article by Alex Mitchell: "Bringing down Henson: Police, politicians and pester power join forces" on Crikey.com.au
For the full article: http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20080530-How-police-politics-and-pester-power-combined-to-bring-down-Bill-Henson.html

Finally, watch out for the performance 'Drama Queens' by artists Michael Elmgreen (Denmark) and Ingar Dragset (Norway) as part of the 'Art on Stage' program at Art Basel.

Art | 39 | Basel
Messe Basel, Messeplatz, Basel, Switzerland
Wednesday, June 4, to Sunday, June 8, 2008.
Daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Media Reception
Tuesday, June 3, 2008, 10 a.m, Hall 1 (Art Unlimited)

From the Press Kit:
Art Basel's Show Management will be in attendance, as will the members of the Art Basel selection committee. All will be happy to provide information and give interviews from 10.30 a.m. to 11 a.m. The vernissage for invited guests and the media (admitted upon presentation of the press ticket) takes place that evening from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.

The 39th edition of Art Basel takes place in the museum- rich city of Basel (Switzerland) from June 4 through June 8, 2008. As the world’s premier art show, Art Basel is the annual meeting place of the international art world. This year’s 300 exhibiting galleries from all over the world were selected out of a record number of over 1,000 applications and will be showing works by over 2,000 artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Art Unlimited hall, with its 60 large- scale projects, and Art Basel Conversations, featuring internationally respected panelists, represent further highlights.

The Art on Stage platform (presented in association with the Theater Basel) will provide the framework for the performance Drama Queens by artists Michael Elmgreen (Denmark) and Ingar Dragset (Norway). The local museums also have fascinating exhibitions (including Chaim Soutine, Andrea Zittel, Monika Sosnowska, and Fernand Léger) and a broad range of events in store.

Over 300 of the world’s leading galleries will be exhibiting at Art Basel (for a list of exhibitors, go to www.artbasel.com/go/id/elg/)

See you 'on the floor'. Or not. Hmmmm...
Groses bises cheries.

Vale, Yves

2008-06-02T19:49:00.002+10:00

Yves Saint Laurent
1936 - 2008

Gehry's Serpentine Pavillion in London takes shape

2008-06-01T14:15:00.002+10:00

Forthcoming Summer 2008
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, Kensington Gardens
Designed by Frank Gehry

Left: Model of Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2008
© Gehry Partners LLP 2008

From the press release:
The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2008 will give London the first example of Frank Gehry’s spectacular architecture. The highly articulated structure – designed and engineered in collaboration with Arup – comprises large timber planks and multiple glass planes that soar and swoop at different angles to create a dramatic multi-dimensional space. Part-amphitheatre, part-promenade, these seemingly random elements will make a transformative place for reflection and relaxation by day, and discussion and performance by night.

The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion series, now entering its ninth year, is the world’s first and most ambitious architectural programme of its kind, and is one of the most anticipated events in the international design calendar.
Frank Gehry said: “The Pavilion is designed as a wooden timber structure that acts as an urban street running from the park to the existing Gallery. Inside the Pavilion, glass canopies are hung from the wooden structure to protect the interior from wind and rain and provide for shade during sunny days. The Pavilion is much like an amphitheatre, designed to serve as a place for live events, music, performance, discussion and debate. As the visitor walks through the Pavilion they have access to terraced seating on both sides of the urban street. In addition to the terraced seating there are five elevated seating pods, which are accessed around the perimeter of the Pavilion. These pods serve as visual markers enclosing the street and can be used as stages, private viewing platforms and dining areas.”

Julia Peyton-Jones, Director, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects, Serpentine Gallery, said: “Frank Gehry has designed an extraordinary Pavilion that opens up unexpected vistas to the Gallery, and the Park. It is a visionary scheme.” The Pavilion will be the architect’s first built structure in England. He collaborated for the first time with his son Samuel Gehry. The Pavilion is a fully accessible public space in the Royal Park of Kensington Gardens, attracting up to 250,000 visitors every Summer and is accompanied by an ambitious programme of public talks and events.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye at TNAC Tokyo

2008-05-29T11:04:00.003+10:00

Utopia: the Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye
May 28, 2008 - July 28, 2008
The National Art Center, Tokyo
7-22-2 Roppongi Minato-ku

Left: Summer Awelye I, 1991
Synthetic polymer paint of canvas, 302.0 x 136.8 cm
Private Collection © Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Licensed Viscopy 07
Courtesy Estate of the Artist and TNAC Tokyo

From the gallery's press release:
"Emily Kngwarreye is one of the most important abstract painters of the 20th century and one of the most significant artists that Australia has ever produced. Emily was born into Australia’s Aboriginal community, an Indigenous people that has inhabited the Australian continent for about fifty thousand years, long before the federation of the Australian nation. Throughout their history, Aboriginal people have used various forms of dynamic artistic expression, including body marking and sand paintings, to reflect their unique perception of the world. Although Aboriginal art has often been classified as tribal or primitive art, Emily’s strikingly modern and beautifully innovative works were created in an environment far away from the influence of the Western Art tradition. Her works have been featured in more than 100 exhibitions over the last decade and they are housed in collections around the world. In 1997, Emily’s works were exhibited at the Venice Biennale and visitors from all over the world were deeply impressed by the richness of her art. As modern art, Emily’s works transcend the Aboriginal art genre and now, more than ten years after her passing, they are highly acclaimed and recognized throughout the world. Emily first began working on canvas in her late seventies and she produced between three thousand to four thousand works in the eight years prior to her death. This exhibition gathers over 100 selected works from her oeuvre and it is the first major retrospective exhibition of Emily’s works ever held outside Australia. Emily’s genius was nurtured in the Australian outback and her world provides a wealth of inspiration. We hope that this exhibition will be an opportunity for visitors to learn more about the extraordinary legacy of Emily’s innovative combination of Aboriginal tradition and modern art."

Australia's greatest abstract painter, bar none.

後で会おう

Latino Visions: Juan Muñoz Retrospective at Guggenheim Bilbao

2008-05-25T15:19:00.002+10:00

Tate Modern, London
until April 27

Guggenheim Bilbao
27 May - 28 Sep 2008

Left: Juan Muñoz
Many Times (detail), 1999
Private collection © The estate of Juan Muñoz
Photo © Musée De Grenoble, Jean Luc Lacroix

LF caught this excellent retrospective of the late, great Madrileño at the Tate before it closed, and it would be well worth a detour to Bilbao if you find yourself in the 'hood.
All the work is stupendously good and was impressively mounted in the Tate Modern's austere and soaring spaces.
The work reproduced here ('Many Times', 1999) is one of those rare installations that LF considers a total knockout - a (gallery opening?) moment is frozen in time, yet to walk among the hundreds of cloned little grey oriental men is to participate in an extraordinary, almost living tableau. Funny, disturbing, profound.

Hasta luego

Louise Bourgeois: from Pompidou to Guggenheim NY

2008-05-25T14:54:00.007+10:00

Pompidou Cenre, Paris
Until 2 June

Solomon H Guggenheim Museum
New York
22 June - 28 September

If you haven't caught this majestic survey of 'La Maitresse' at Tate Modern or the Pompidou, you may have to catch it in the USA. It closes in Paris o 2 June and moves to the Guggenheim NY from 22 June (then on to LA and Washington into 2009).

What's to say, except to quote an earlier LF rave:

"The wonder of Louise Bourgeois is that her practice is steadfastly personal, refuses to indulge in facile art-historical or social references, yet sits at the hip pinnacle of late 20th century art, and she is revered as one of the most important 'feminist' artists of her age. This upper-class frenchwoman (who is reputed not to have left her New York apartment for a decade) has for sixty years pursued her intensely idiosyncatic work with single-minded purpose, producing extraordinary sculptural tableaux and objects loaded with potent overlays of meaning – by turns sinister, lyrical or ominous, distilling her simple materials into objects of archetypal power."

The retrospective is not too vast, but features most of the the major sculptures, many of the most important 'Cells', important recent work with fabric, and a large component of works on paper.

Go see.

A toute a l'heure.

The Art of the Possible

2008-05-24T10:13:00.000+10:00

An occasional series on political art in the public domain.

"Politics is the art of the possible"
Otto Von Bismarck, 1867

Left: Poster sighted at Venice Beach markets, California
Photo © Le Flaneur, May 2008

A visit to Santa Fe, USA

2008-05-14T18:07:00.005+10:00

LF got to spend a little time in Santa Fe, New Mexico in May, and was impressed by the sheer volume of art in a city of only 80,000 people. You could in fact describe SF as an 'Art Town' - it has been a magnet for artists since the turn of the century, and with Georgia O'Keefe's legacy, and many revered artists such as Bruce Nauman and Richard Tuttle living in the 'hood, its' 'hot art' status is perhaps not so surprising. LF was fortunate while there to visit one of the great private American collections (privacy requires that it remains nameless, but there is a picture, left), situated in an extraordinary glass box high in the hills overlooking the Rio Grande valley. The presence (at least part of the time) of many well-heeled collectors, and the dry, clean desert air, is undoubtedly another reason why art thrives there. And it's a hell of a long way from Washington.

As well as some 400 commercial galleries (a lot of them showing tourist crap, admittedly) the city centre boasts the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts (20th century Southwestern American art), and the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum (contemporary Native American fine art). Museum Hill, a few miles southeast of the city, features the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, the truly fascinating Museum of International Folk Art (the world’s largest collection of folk art, no less), The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian (contemporary and traditional Native American art) and The Museum of Spanish Colonial Art. That's quite a haul for a little town.

In addition SITE Santa Fe, a well-regarded non-profit artspace, provides a year-round program of exhibitions, including the annual (sic) biennial, details below.

“Lucky Number Seven"
SITE Santa Fe Biennial
June 22-October 26 2008

Photo: Herbert Lotz, 2005, courtesy Site Santa Fe

David Ebony writes in Art & America:
Organized by independent curator Lance Fung, this year’s SITE Santa Fe Biennial, the seventh installment, promises to be full of surprises. The list of the 27 participating artists from around the world, recently released to the press, has already raised eyebrows in the art world, as it is almost completely devoid of familiar names. In a departure from conventional biennial procedures that routinely tap art stars to move tickets, Fung, operating with an approximately $800,000 budget, decided to focus exclusively on emerging artists. And, as with “The Snow Show,” for which Fung paired artists and architects to create collaborative projects in Finnish Lapland (2004) and at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, the Santa Fe exhibition will be a team effort. Rather than selecting the artists directly, he asked numerous nonprofit, international contemporary art institutions to suggest one or two artists to be included in the show. From these candidates he chose 27 artists nominated by 18 institutions; these institutions will act as co-curatorial partners in the endeavor. Among those on board are Hiroshi Fuji, selected by Japan’s Art Tower Mito; Bharti Kher, chosen by England’s Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art; Piero Golia, proposed by Turin’s Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo; and Fabien Giraud and Raphaël Sibony, submitted by Paris’s Palais de Tokyo. In another unusual move, at a time when many artists have their works fabricated, Fung requires that all the artists create their pieces by hand in Santa Fe. Working in a variety of mediums, and each allotted a $7,500 budget, the artists are obliged to come to New Mexico at least three weeks in advance of the exhibition and produce works either within the SITE Santa Fe building or off-site. For that purpose, Fung has enlisted the architecture team Tod Williams and Billie Tsien to redesign SITE’s interior especially for the biennial.

The model for their distinctive scheme, featuring a series of ramps and zigzagging galleries, was recently unveiled in Santa Fe. In a move to counter the hypercommercialism of today’s art world, Fung requires that no artist accept funding from a commercial gallery for the SITE work. He underscores the specificity of the event by also stipulating that none of the works can be sold after the exhibition, and all are to be destroyed. His unorthodox approach to the biennial has raised some concerns among SITE’s board members. However, Laura Steward Heon, SITE’s director and chief curator, who chose Fung as the organizer, told A.i.A. that part of SITE’s mission is to take risks, and that the biennial, relatively modest in scale, presents the opportunity to innovate. Although the format might seem to invite chaos, much about the work the artists will produce in Santa Fe is known from their proposals. Still, it seems that more than a little positive musing on the laws of chance will be part of the event, and it’s not for nothing that Fung has titled the show “Lucky Number Seven."

Vale Bob

2008-05-12T20:07:00.001+10:00

Robert Milton Ernst Rauschenberg
October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008

Goya in times of war at the Prado, Madrid

2008-05-09T12:28:00.005+10:00

Goya en tiempos de guerra (Goya in times of war)
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
until 13 July 2008

Left: Francisco de Goya y Lucientes
The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid: the executions on Principe Pio hill, 1814
Oil on Canvas
268 cm x 347 cm

This must be the most comprehensive survey ever of the great master's ouevre, appropriately mounted at the museum that holds many of his greatest works. The 'pieces de resistance' are the two great canvases of the 2nd and 3rd of May 1808 (see 3rd May left) which have been cleaned and restored, however the exhibition is vast, and features almost 200 works by the artist, and is part of the program commemorating the bicentenary of the start of the Spanish War of Independence in 1808. It includes more than 65 paintings loaned from other institutions and private collections, including 'Majas on the Balcony' and 'Portrait of the Marchioness of Montehermoso', both from private collections; 'Friar Pedro de Zaldivia clubs Maragato the Bandit' from The Art Institute of Chicago; 'The Capture of Christ from Toledo Cathedral', and a group of nine works loaned by the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid.

Brooding, bloody and pessimistic, Goya grapples with the dark heart of Spain. While LF doesn't warm to all Goya's painting, the etchings (and even better, studies on paper for the etchings) are a visual treat. Our absolute absolute standout painting is the small self-portrait painted late in his life (1815) - see left - an uncompromising masterpiece.

Postscript: Goya's Black brother - the Australian connection
Abstract of a paper presented by Professor Ian Howard (College of Fine Arts. University of New South Wales)
NORTH AND SOUTH – THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ANTON GOYA 1748-1828
'Art and re-enactment’ Conference, Australian National University, Canberra, 5-7 June 2007

Goya’s twin brother, Anton, was born black. In 1748 Spain this meant he was destined to an entirely different life than that of his famous artist sibling. Banished from the family home in Saragossa, at a young age he was shanghaied to a life at sea. In his early twenties he sailed with Cook into the Pacific, in his thirties he dumped tea into Boston Harbour. At 42 he fortuitously jumped ship from La Perouse’s Astrolabe at Botany Bay. Possessing in a rough sort of way, the artistic talents of his brother, he quickly established himself as the painter of Port Jackson which brought him unwanted attention, leading to an early return to the northern hemisphere. In Paris, turning fifty, he saw Louis XVI guillotined and Napoleon seize power. Returning to his native Spain, he was again dragooned to sea, this time with the combined French and Spanish fleet moored at Cadiz. At 59, he was the oldest sailor to survive the Battle of Trafalgar. At the subsequent Spanish uprising against the French, galvanised on the third of May, 1808, the twin brothers, now in their early sixties and unknown to each other, met briefly, for the first and only time.
Records of Anton Goya’s extraordinary life, led variously in each hemisphere of the globe between 1748 and 1828 is being pieced together from historical records and the extant art works he produced, which are now being uncovered, surprisingly, in China.
Although this presentation will concentrate on the emerging story of Anton’s life, it is anticipated that the final work will take the form of a narrative, an exhibition and video documentary.

Interesting or what?

Hasta luego