the art life

From Julie Kearney...

In Brisbane’s new GOMA - which currently hosts the Sixth Asia-Pacific Triennial - a room has been set aside for a bubble-encrusted stuffed elk whose fur can be seen expanding and multiplying behind the distorting glass baubles. It’s one of the star attractions of the show and features as its advertising logo. Alone in the whiteness of its special room the dead animal carries the authority of Art by virtue of being so displayed. Art it undoubtedly is, but it’s also a sad slaughtered creature, killed not for eating but display, first stuffed by a taxidermist and now transformed into a bizarre aesthetic experience for bemused crowds of sightseers.



The quality of work in the current exhibition of Asia-Pacific art is far from the wonders of APT1 and APT2 but no one seems to have noticed. The tabloid reviews to date have been universally approving and the viewers, drifting through the galleries in their recently vastly increased numbers, enjoying their new-found role as public art connoisseurs, appear to be satisfied too.

On the other hand, it should be remembered that we the public, are the beneficiaries of Queensland’s woeful art education policies which deprived most of us in our formative years of our right to an education in the visual arts. And to this state of ignorance may perhaps be added the pernicious influence of house and garden magazines - the only journals concerned with aesthetics that most of us read – which for some years now have been informing us that the most desirable artwork we can hang on our living room walls is a piece of framed wallpaper. It’s a view that gives a new dimension to the hitherto derogatory term, wallpaper art. Today we live among wallpaper art. It flourishes not only above our sofas but in the public galleries to which we take our children.

The depoliticisation of art is nothing new. We have been schooled in acceptance of content-free work, art for art’s sake, ‘high art’ in other words, except for one astonishing digression: the first couple of Asia-Pacific Triennials. These earlier exhibitions, in 1993 and 1996, spectacularly broke that mould. They showed us, through the works of artists drawn from countries politicized by undemocratic structures, that art could be different, that it could be powerful and moving and deeply political while still remaining aesthetically diverse and exciting, often more so. In a range of media and genres, works by artists from our neighbouring Asia-Pacific countries gave the lie to the received view that ‘political’ art can’t be ‘high’ or even art at all because it is merely dull, dishonest work serving the needs of totalitarian states. Such propagandist political art exists, of course. We have seen it in exhibitions of Chinese art since the 70’s and we know about it from the degenerative forms of state art under Stalin which followed hard on the heels of the first fine flush of genuinely political, innovative works by the Constructivists. Non state-controlled, these earlier Russian artists left a legacy we still draw on today, in our modern concept of the artist’s book for instance, which was developed by them as a strategy for communicating with the people in the years following the Russian Revolution.

It’s interesting that the kind of state sponsored political art which followed the Constructivists is present also in the current APT, in a series of finely executed colour woodcuts and sensitive portraits from North Korea. Much has been made of the daring inclusion of these works simply because they are ‘political’ though in fact only a small proportion of them are propagandist. What is surprising about them, and political by implication in a different way, is that the non propagandist North Korean works bear a marked resemblance in style and technique to Australian work in the thirties. Printmaking flourished here in the 30s and most of the twenty-first century North Korean woodcuts on show could be mistaken for works by Jessie Traill or Violet Teague. The Korean woodcuts featuring bridges and other industrial structures are uncannily like the images of Sydney Harbour Bridge that were so popular with artists during the years of its construction. Like North Korea now, Australia in the 30’s was a culturally conservative society, the majority of its artists yet to break away from the restraining influence imposed by Robert Menzies’ feared Australian Academy of Art, in order to take advantage of the possibilities offered by Post-Impressionism and Cubism. It seems that North Korean artists today are in a similar situation. Many viewers, enjoying the accessibility of their works, would say that this is not a bad thing and this is a valid opinion though not the point here. Artists should always be free to make choices as to which direction they go in, whether we like that direction or not, for without freedom art becomes stultified and dies. Art is another word for creativity and by definition needs to be free to change if it wishes.

For those of us who remember the first Asia-Pacific exhibitions, there is another kind of political art, not state sponsored or controlled by the likes of Stalin, Menzies and Kim Jong-il, but work that comes from the hands of individuals living and working in inequitable societies or simply responding to the depredations by capitalism upon the environment. Who can forget the work of Japanese artist Shigeo Toya in the inaugural APT? Titled Woods 11 and now in the possession of the Queensland Art Gallery, it was and is a massive forest of chain-sawed trees, stunningly sculptural in its textural interplay of forms. It was also moving for many viewers as they walked among the branchless trees because it appeared to be a powerful comment on the destruction of the world’s forests.

Anyone who saw it will also remember the burning man installation in the Sculpture Garden at the second APT. The work of Indonesian artist Christanto Dadang, it was created in response to the burning and raping of many Indonesians of Chinese origin in May, 1998. At Dadang’s symbolic burnings at the Queensland Art Gallery, life-size effigies of men were slowly consumed by fire and crowds of Australian viewers, visibly moved, stood watching in total silence for up to an hour. Dadang’s hope for this work, that it would act as ‘a shock capable of illuminating our sense of humanity’ was fully realized. (APT2 catalogue p.200.)

Or who remembers the installation, also at APT2, titled All Stock Must Go! ? It was set up on the grass at the entrance to the gallery rather than inside, at the request of its designers - the Brisbane Campfire Group - and it featured a cattle truck stocked with Aboriginal artworks which were produced on site by the artists themselves and sold to anyone who wished to buy. All Stock Must Go! challenged among other things the perception of overseas buyers that Australian Aboriginal art is ‘takeaway’ art, and it drew attention, through the presence of Black artists painting cross-legged on the grass, to the reality for Aboriginal people of having to produce art for survival. The cattle truck, later dismantled and sold piece by piece, made reference to the cattle trucks used to move Aboriginal tribal people to reserves.
But most surprising of all was the Queensland Art Gallery’s connivance in a subversive act directed partially against itself. The refusal to place the installation within the walls of the gallery was a statement of outsiderness directed against the traditional practices of appropriation and decontextualistion by museums and art galleries both here and around the world. ‘We are invited to enter the museum but we choose to stay outside.’ (Margo Neale, APT2 catalogue, p.10)

Now it is possible, though perhaps not probable, that such a piece of political art directed against its host gallery would be condoned by the current gallery administration. It happened in 1996 with the help of indigenous curator Margo Neale but we have not seen its like since in any of the following four Triennials. What we have seen instead is a steady diminution in quality and diversity together with a move towards video viewing alcoves and away from the interactive installations that were enjoyed in the first two APTs. There were so many of these interactive artworks that the Queensland Art Gallery took on the atmosphere of a fun fair and resounded with chatter. People walked about with smiles on their faces and got into conversations with strangers about what they were seeing and doing. The National Committee formed to decide curatorial philosophy for the inaugural APT had clearly opted to make museum art friendly, to welcome people and make them want to come back again.

Heidegger suggests that an artwork has to be true to its name. That is, it must work. This seems a fair enough statement and if we agree with it, we should be able to ask of any given piece: is this working or is it unemployed? Does it give us joy or surprise through its formal arrangements? Does it have meaning for us, resonate with our experience of life or act to change it in some way? When we sit in a video alcove watching out-of-focus flickering images of grass which someone has taken with a hand-held camera while walking through the same grass, does it work for us in any of the above ways? If it doesn’t then it isn’t an artwork. It’s as simple as that. It may resonate for the next viewer, though in the case of the out-of-focus grass, it’s unlikely he or she will be in the majority.

In the catalogue foreword for the inaugural Asia-Pacific Triennial, Doug Hall tells us that the exhibition was designed to highlight ‘the dynamics of change, identities, and even twentieth century cultural dislocation.’ (My italics. APT1, p.6.) By the fourth APT, which also marked the launch of the opening of the new gallery GOMA, the aim had shrunk to revealing ‘the depth and diversity of individual expression.’ (APT4, p.12.) In the catalogue of the sixth APT now before us, Tony Ellwood makes no general claims for the show at all except to identify without comment the video of Reggae music, the Mekong River works and the North Korean exhibit, as being its key features.

The current exhibition is not entirely bereft of political art but there is less of it and it tends to be low-key so that often you don’t know it is meant to be political unless you take the trouble to read the accompanying placard. Political art that needs explaining, I would suggest, is not political, or at least not political enough to cross cultural boundaries and have meaning for an Australian audience.

All art does not have to be political of course. It simply has to work, but in many cases the exhibits in APT6 do not work, at least for me. There are a lot of video installations with very few people watching them, or watching them to the end, like the one of rickshaw drivers lying still and exhausted on their rickshaws. We get the point, the poor fellows are exhausted, but there’s not much motivation after a while to continue watching a moving film in which nothing moves. There’s a canopy of what looks like photocopy paper suspended by metal clips above the elevators which I didn’t know was an artwork until I learned from the catalogue that it was. There’s a wonderful old wooden house from the Sichuan Province that the artist has had dismantled by Chinese labourers and shipped to Australia for reassembly. It has real presence but is it an artwork or should it more appropriately be housed in an anthropological museum as an artefact? (Duchamp, eat your heart out.)

On a recent visit to GOMA I got into conversation with a member of the security staff while we waited for a lift. I told her I had enjoyed the interactive work called Liminal Air and she said that she had been invited by the artist, just after he finishing installing it, to try it out and that she loved it too. I wasn’t asking her any questions but she told me that the hanging photocopy paper above the escalators looked better at night when the light shone through it, making it ripple and look like a crocodile’s back. And she said that the theme of the current APT was domestic objects and repetition. I thought that sounded right and asked if it was the official theme. Oh no, she said, that’s just how it seems to me.

Everyone gets something different from art and this woman had found things I hadn’t. Perhaps I’m just a griper. Perhaps it’s the best APT ever. I doubt it though. Most of us lack the necessary tools to discriminate thanks to the failure of successive Queensland governments to address the issue of primary school art education, so most of us have to take what we can from visits to our public galleries. We will always take something away but we could take a lot more.
People know what they like. Who doesn’t? That’s one thing we can still be sure of despite being deprived of the proper tools to understand visual language. We know what we like, but because we feel we don’t know enough about ‘Art’ and therefore have perhaps failed to understand some vital point, we’re unlikely to speak up about our opinions. It’s too easy, from the standpoint of enforced ignorance, to make a fool of ourselves. We the public, products of the Queensland school system, know our place. In the case of the current APT, I would suggest, there is something to speak up about, but nobody is speaking. We have been sold a pup in return for our taxes when we could have had a fabulous beast. And by that I don’t mean a stuffed elk.

Labels: APT, blog contributor, Julie Kearney, reviews

Imagine the scene if you can. You’re at the Art Gallery of NSW, or the Museum of Contemporary Art, or perhaps at the “National” Gallery of Victoria, for an opening party. It’s the standard fair: art world people, drinks, canapés, speeches. After a couple of hours the doors are thrown open. The public streams into the gallery, all smiles, many of them extended Islander families, and head towards a stage area en mass. Reggae superstar O-shen comes on and the place goes crazy – the band kicks in, dreads flying – it’s like the second coming of Bob Marley. Not only is the band great, the crowd totally into it, but so are the art people – and even crazier – all the galleries are still open, drunk people wandering around looking at art, museum guards smiling, no doubt mentally totting up the overtime. A grand dream? Too many of Brisbane’s infamous trumpet reefers? No – this really was the opening party of the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial. All the usual art world talk of “inclusivity” and “reaching out to the community” usually amount to very little. This time GOMA and the APT made the egalitarian gesture into something real. This is how all major gallery openings should roll. [Note to the 2010 Biennale of Sydney – maybe think of combining with All Tomorrow’s Parties? You can only hope to match the fun of the APT.]




The APT exhibition proper opened to the public on Saturday morning. It made recording some of our interviews tricky. While we were in the middle of interviewing New Zealander artist Robin White and her Fijian collaborators Leba Toki and Bale Jione, people gathered around, listened quietly, walked into shot, stood in front of the camera, and took photos. The end of the interview was a write off, the sound obliterated by another NZ artist, Rohan Wealleans, screaming from the adjacent gallery. It was a performance involving a canoe. Wealleans performance was described to us by some onlookers as “showbizy” and “like a 1st year art student’s idea of a performance”. We missed it ourselves but can attest to its volume. We cannot attest to the exact identity of the performer. It was said that Wealleans, who we’d wanted to interview for our APT special, was too sick to travel to Australia and had sent his identical twin brother in his place. Yeah right. We’ve seen Adaptation and we know how that works.

Chinese artist Chen Quilin’s family home was demolished to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. All the people from her home town have been scattered to other cities, relocated, lost in the greater Chinese population. Many other towns and villages met the same fate and the sadness of losing a family home to the waters was compounded by the fact that many of the former citizens were obliged to destroy their houses with little more than a hammer. One of Chen’s pieces for GOMA is a complete reconstruction of a house from a flooded area – in fact, the house comes from a village that neighboured Chen’s, a place where she had played as a child. Accompanying the installation is a video that documents in dream-like sequences the hopes of the relocated villagers. It’s poetic, moving and rather beautiful. Talking to Chen through an interpreter it was humbling to discover an artist whose reasons for making her art were so clear, forthright and deeply emotional. Many of the artists we have spoken to such as Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmian, White, Toki and Jione – and many others – talk about their work in a manner that is both direct and uncomplicated.



What is the name of the director of the Gallery of Modern Art? His name is Tony Ellwood. Tony Ellwood. As in Jake and Ellwood, we’re on a mission from God etc. TONY ELLWOOD. Thank you.

Labels: APT, public galleries

The 5th Asia Pacific Triennial opened the brand new Gallery of Modern Art in 2006. It was a stupendous event. Interstate art lovers came to witness the cutting of the red ribbon, the brass band at the entrance playing God Save The Queen and the glorious sight of men throwing their toppers into the air. Hoorah for Modern Art! Hoorah for Brisbane!

Three years later and the media day for APT6 is a much smaller affair. The speeches - while delivered by a robust line up of dignitaries - somehow doesn’t quite match the fun of last time. Tony Ellwood, boss of GOMA, makes a silky smooth speech that is, for the listener, rather like having your fur stroked by an open fire. Some dude from corporate sponsor Santos explains why they have signed up for a 5 year support deal for GOMA and mentions some things that we couldn’t quite hear – or see. It is a professional hazard of covering big art openings to have your sight line spoiled by roving camera persons looking for a groovy angle, but it’s quite another for a man in a yellow shirt to stand right in front of you and then discover that said gentleman is wearing a yellow shirt that features life-like portraits of him in the nude, semi nude and he has images of his face on his shoes. Perhaps the man from Santos said something interesting, who knows, but the bloke in the yellow shirt was looking away from us, and giving us THE FINGER AT THE SAME TIME [see picture]. Then it was the turn of Anna Bligh to officially open the APT. How quaint to visit a state where the Premier is still the same Premier as yesterday. Good lord. Bligh, who polled in Queensland as the worst premier in 30 years, still manages to deliver her speech with warmth and a low key sense of sangfroid – a rare quality in any politician.



Your choice of travel reading does much to set the scene for your experience of another place. Our selection - largely an unconscious decision plucked at random from an ever-growing pile of unread books - was Ian McDonald’s 2004 novel River of Gods. It couldn’t have been a better choice. The novel imagines India in 50 years time and evokes the super-density of Asia and the street-level hyper reality of contemporary Indian street life. The region – however one wants to define it such a loose and Eurocentric notion - represents a present so wildly at odds with Western sensibilities that it’s more suggestive of a future than any science fictional possibility. The APT is like the 3D walk-in version of River of Gods. Thukral & Tagra’s installation of a wallpapered room replete with sculptures, a TV playing YouTube clips, bespoke furniture, a table tipping on its end, busts of the artists that protrude through the walls, shelves containing images of the artists painted on consumer goods, a small photo of Paris Hilton [and much much more] is almost impossible to take in as a collection of discreet objects. Rather, the whole room is an assault on the senses, partly a play on consumer culture, part a celebration of celebrity. Its lack of manners is charming at every level.



Kohei Nawa’s PixCell-Elk #2 is the work on the cover of the APT catalogue. It's the cool binary to T&T’s hot aesthetic clutterverse. To walk into Nawa’s pristine white room and see a taxidermied elk covered in glass and crystal balls is an eerie and unsettling experience – it feels like perception itself is being subtly tweaked. It also suggests SF, but in a smoother and more familiar mode. The artist denies the SF connection saying he imagines the usual experience of SF to be more a disjunction, a shock, like when the alien bursts out of a chest. His installation is meant to be a smoother transition, Our camera is set up in the room with the artist and translator and, when we ask his views on his own work, he is like many artists we talk to at the APT - torn between the desire to create a certain experience but just as keen to avoid an overly proscriptive reading. This is the floating world of contemporary art, and there’s no use complaining about it.

Labels: APT, Art Life TV show, public galleries, sci-fi

Yoshitomo Nara [left] and Hideki Toyoshima: YNG
Nara [Yoshitomo] and Hideki [Toyoshima] of GRAF are YNG. They both wear sky blue t-shirts and blue jeans. They are a TEAM. Nara wears vintage red trainers and a Revolver period Beatles cap, Hideki wears black trainers but no cap. They both speak English perfectly but prefer to answer questions in Japanese. Happily GOMA has a translator on staff, and soon a very nice young woman named Shioko arrives and does a fantastic job. Everyone nods and smiles. Question: “Nara – the Ramones are a constant reference point in your work – what is it about them that is important to you?” Answer: “Ha ha! I was in high school when they released their first album. I am very old. I am 50. Perhaps like you?” Question: “What is the purpose of putting a studio on the back of the van?” Answer: “There is no purpose.”

It used to be that we could easily tell who was a member of the art world art. There was a dress code – especially in Brisbane. Men wore jeans and western shirts, or perhaps a suit with pointy shoes and a thin tie. Women wore flat shoes and brightly coloured sleeveless tops with matching skirts. Many people seemed to wear cool eye glasses. Nowadays it’s hard to tell who is who – everybody wears more or less the same thing and the proliferation of facial hair – beards for men [and even for some women] - has cruelled what was a very easy game. Dan from DAMP sports a Hawaiian shirt and suit, wears a hat and has a very neatly trimmed beard. Nat [formerly of Nat & Ali and now in DAMP again after many years away] wears a gold top with a tiger owl on it and says she wants to look like someone famous. Kylie looks like your classic image of an artist from Brisbane, but she too is from Melbourne. Damn you! At the top of their plinth we discuss what their project – is making a place for people to meet the work? Or is it the whole process? DAMP are masters of the evasive answer – they give very good interview. We ask if they have ever been on TV before – has Sunday Arts come knocking? It seems they haven’t and so we commend their skill at only giving answers to questions they wish had been asked. It’s like interviewing politicians. We ask a blunt question – is DAMP a cult? Hmmm. Maybe.

Friday is Media Launch Day and that means lots of people flying in from interstate to look at art and enjoy GOMA’s incredible offering of finger food. Our last visit in 2006 was memorable mostly for the superb quality of the buffet lunch. Freeloaders everywhere hope that one day GOMA be awarded a Michelin star or two.


Brisbane... bike city
We may have been hasty in considering Brisbane a dump. That opinion was mostly based on a) experiences in “the Valley” [a topographical impossibility since “the valley” has no appreciable hill from which to see it], b) parts of the city [making a harsh judgement on Brisbane because of the volatile street kids you encounter in the Mall is rather like judging the whole of Sydney based on the people you see on George Street on a Sunday afternoon] and c) the stinky weather. This view is both unkind and unfair. All of ese doubts were swept aside when we got a look at the city’s incredible cycle paths built along the river. Walking back from GOMA we saw dozens of people whizzing by on handsome bikes and could only wish that we had brought the GIANT Perigees with us.



Tomorrow: Subodh Gupta, Kohei Nawa, Monir Farmanfarmaian, Ayez Jokhio and the Aquilizans.

Labels: APT, Art Life TV show, Brisbane, public galleries

Greetings from the sunshine state. The first thing you see out the window of the aircraft as it descends into Brisbane are mud flats. This isn’t meant to be symbolic, it’s just the way it is. In a similar fashion outside the Gallery of Modern Art is a permanently-sited sculpture by Scott Redford, a big bit of glitzy neon vintage Gold Coast signage that promises NO ABSTRACTIONS. It’s an empty promise of course, but it is appealing.

GOMA is a beautifully presented gallery with absolute water frontage, stunning city views, light filled galleries - many with ensuite bathrooms – and it’s only a minutes’ walk to nearby cafes, restaurants and Brisbane’s busy CBD. Two doors down is the heritage-listed Queensland Art Gallery, a definite fixer-upper with huge potential that would suit either young families or perhaps couples looking for a challenge. Both contain art. All of GOMA has been given over to the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial, with small portions of QAG [piano bar, water court, adjacent galleries] similarly dedicated.



We’re on a preview walk-through to see the highlights. And they are very highlighty. Shirana Shahbazi’s gi-normous painting/photographs line the walls of GOMA's Long Gallery and they overlook Yoshitomo Nara’s tiny mobile studio, the collaboration between the Japanese painter better known for his knife-wielding little girls and the Osaka architects GRAF. Together they took a Nissan campervan and stuck a wooden house on the back. On the top is one of Nara’s little girls holding a mic and yelling HEY HO LET’S GO! The immediate reaction on seeing this is to grab our imaginary air guitars and – heads down - crank out the first few bars of Blitzkrieg Bop.

GOMA’s galleries are filled with sounds of getting ready – hammers, saws, the beep-beeps of slowly reversing orange trucks. Among all the activity we see the work of numerous brand name artists whose work looks fabulous, albeit missing wall texts and bearing WET PAINT signage. At the end of the main gallery is the second biggest plinth we have ever seen. It appears to be made of marble and stands some 150 meters high. As you get close you discover it’s a sham. Inside, the edifice turns out to be hollow and full of detritus from the 15 year career of Melbourne art group DAMP. It looks like a club house inside, with crappy share-house furniture, a kettle and many mugs, t-shirts, to-do lists and assorted junk arranged just so. The idea is that you climb up to the top of the plinth via an interior stair case and once at the top, have a conversation. About what?



TEAM Art Life are in Brisbane to make a TV show. The program will be another in our series of shows where we stand around pretending to look, and then sometimes get caught in the act of actual looking, and then we talk to people about their art and what they think will happen when people look at it. The Art Life at The APT will screen on ABC1 in early February 2010. Later today, we’re meeting DAMP and then the curatorial manager of the APT Suhanya Raffel, then on to Mr Nara and Graf, and then we will go outside lie in the long grass and listen to the gentle sounds of Pacific Reggae.

Labels: APT, Art Life TV show, public galleries