the art life

Todd McMillan, swim 4 (from the series ague), 2009
C type photograph, 131.67 x 87.78cm
Courtesy GrantPirrie.

A new exhibition by young artist Todd McMillan opens at GrantPirrie next week. The show is notable for a very special reason – the show is a celebration of failure.

Earlier this year McMillan attempted to swim the English Channel but he didn’t quite make it. He swam until he got tired. He then abandoned the attempt for the safety of a boat... still in sight of the shore.

This new series of video works carries on from other recent McMillan videos that have seen the artist endlessly and pointlessly hitting golf balls down a driving range somewhere in Germany, or in another where he stumbles around on crutches with a plaster cast on one leg. Failure is his theme.

You’d be forgiven for wondering why an artist would take on failure and indeed, why it would be worth watching. Isn’t art supposed to be about success? The popular measure of artistic merit is a demonstration of the artist’s ability to use craft skills – to paint a portrait that looks like the subject, to take a lovely photograph, to convincingly chisel a head in stone – these are the things that make people say, wow, I wish I could do that.

Failing to swim the English Channel is something that everyone can do. Or fail to do... No special skills are required not to be able to do something. We generally like to enjoy looking at things being done by people who have the ability to do unusual things in the same way we appreciate a monkey using the telephone. That is a very special skill, and it’s noteworthy. Oh look – the monkey is wearing pants!


"Pray... for... Mojo."
McMillan is notable as a successful failure and his work is being taught in high schools as part of the Kaldor Projects video art package. But he’s just one of a whole generation of younger artists who strive to fail. The Melbourne-based performance video artist Anastasia Klose celebrates the fact that she has failed in romance, has failed to get a decent job or to make a decent living from her art. Another artist of note is the young Sydney painter Tom Polo, who combines frank admissions of failure with the ambition to win.

There are many other examples of failure in contemporary art and it must be said that these examples are of intentional failure, an ironic kind of activity that isn’t truly a mistake, or a disaster, since the artists do manage to finish their works, exhibit them and, in some cases, sell them to people who appreciate failure when they see it.


Tom Polo, Me, 2009.
Watercolour and pencil on paper
24 x 32 cm.

The roots of this trend towards disgrace are found in the rich soil of Australia’s artistic legacy. Older artists such as the painter Adam Cullen or the performance artist Tony Schwensen have tackled the cold toed comedy of Samuel Beckett who, after all, wrote an entire play about a lead character who fails to show up. Blame for the popularity of the failure theme should also be placed on UK artist David Shrigley who has parlayed his inability and unwillingness to draw "properly" into art stardom.

There may be another reason why being crap is so popular now – and that’s the ugly tendency in Australian culture to revel in triumphalism. One need only think of the absurd and unreasonable expectation of success at every level of sporting competition to realise just how deep the need to win runs in the Australian psyche.

The much touted ANZAC spirit - based on an event that can be best characterised as a noble failure - is an exception that it is also sadly out of date. It’s not about how you play the game these days, it’s about winning.

Australia’s attitude to winning and losing is best summed up in the stunning victory of ice skater Steven Bradbury at the 2002 Winter Olympics. Bradbury, who’d managed to get into the final after a series of improbable strokes of luck, won a gold medal from last position when all the other competitors literally fell over. Bradbury is now a folk hero.

Todd McMillan’s inability to swim the English Channel is far more interesting that had he actually done it.

Being a winner, a success, or a top sportsperson or artist, is incredibly overrated. To happily fail is an admission of the essential frailty of the human condition. We all should strive to fail again, and to fail better.

This op ed appeared in a slightly different form here.

Labels: op ed

It has been fun in recent years to make the occasional gentle dig at Edmund Capon, the director and chief curator of the Art Gallery of NSW. Capon is a consummate professional and an astute media player. He happily appears on television to promote gallery flagship events like the Archibald Prize or to mock himself in a faux-documentary with The Chaser. He seems to be a man like Barack Obama, one who appears to be having far too much fun in the top job.

On the other hand Capon has been away more than a few months of late, sojourning in London and Paris, jetting back into town occasionally to take care of management issues. He is also said to be the ultimate Rudd-esque micro-manager, popping up in the furthest and loneliest corners of the gallery during his strolls. But more important than any managerial quirks is the fact that the gallery has prospered and expanded under his stewardship to become one of the glittering success stories of Australia's cultural institutions.

Since Capon arrived from London in 1978 to take up the post, the gallery has grown with the addition of galleries, cafes and restaurants, while expanding its green presence over the nearby freeway and its sculptures into the Domain.

And having only a modicum of continuing funding coming from the State Government, he has made friends with the city's leading art benefactors, philanthropists, art-friendly corporations and international lending institutions to keep both the gallery in the black and the punters walking through the doors.

It's just a pity his time is nearly up. At 69 he can't have much time left before retirement beckons. The speculation is that he can go whenever he likes, perhaps within a year, or maybe he'll work out his contract as he sorts out his legacy and his official farewell - rumoured to be a mega-exhibition. But before he goes, and we get swept up in the sentimentality of the occasion, now is as good time as any to turn our minds to what the gallery might be like under a new director.

There will be a mighty tussle for Capon's job, with no shortage of aspirants among Australia's gallery directors; there is also the better-than-even chance that an overseas candidate will be chosen, as is the traditional route.

What is more interesting is how the public face of the gallery would change. The gallery of the pre-Capon era is but a distant and dim memory but the impression is of a gallery far less interested in pleasing crowds and more dedicated to contemporary art.

Speaking from a self-interested position, we would love to see the gallery exhibit contemporary art more consistently and be less driven by prizes. While exhibitions like the Anne Landa Award for Nnew Media and Video are something to look forward to, more survey shows of contemporary art and exhibitions culled from permanent collections are alternatives to biennial hoopla.

Perhaps the development of the gallery's new space for contemporary art using the multimillion-dollar gift from the art philanthropist John Kaldor will help make this a reality. We can only hope.

More important, however, is that the gallery is literally sitting on one of Sydney's major cultural assets — an asset yet to have its potential fully exploited. That is the Domain Theatre, the gallery's fully equipped cinema currently used for its film programs and public lectures.

Attempts to create a cinematheque in Sydney at the Museum of Contemporary Art came to nothing after a long and tortuous saga that was closely linked to that gallery's ongoing funding problems. Brisbane's newly opened Gallery of Modern Art features a state-of-the-art cinematheque that has an extensive and lovingly curated program of films that attracts art tourists from Sydney and Melbourne.

The Art Gallery of NSW's modest film and video screening program is testament to the hard work of dedicated staff with a deep love of and commitment to cinema. It would be great to see those efforts rewarded with more resources to turn a shoestring operation into something of which Sydney could be proud.

We wish Capon well in the future and have no wish to send him off on a rail. It's just interesting to think, while the current arrangement is fine, there are certain aspects of the old dame that might just be better off under new management.

This op ed orginally appeared here.

Labels: article, op ed, public galleries