Hooray for the Twenty-first Century
Olafur Eliasson | The Cubic Structural Evolution Project I’ve been to GoMA quite a few times in the last few weeks; somewhere up around the four or five times mark. I had plans to go again on Saturday, but a combination of laziness, busy-ness, and the spectacular, premature death of my laptop got in the way. UGH. Before you ask, no, I am not obsessed with the 21st Century exhibition, and, yes, I do have a gremlin problem - I really need to sort that. More to the point, I have actually been attending Saturday lectures at GoMA. Very accomplished of me, right? I know. Accomplished is my middle name. That’s why my initials are SAD. Really. If you are in Brisbane I would wholeheartedly encourage you to attend one of these lectures before they’re all over (which is v soon). They’re run by Dr Mark Pennings, who is a senior visual art lecturer at QUT. There has been a series of four lectures by Dr Pennings on contemporary art, and we are currently halfway through a series of four interviews with GoMA curators. Allegedly, you’re able to watch the lectures/interviews post-fact on the 21st C blog but I have been unable to track them down on there. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try though. Go on, try. I dare you. The third in the lecture series was my personal favourite, focussing on entertainment and participation in contemporary art, which is something that I find very fascinating. I’m somewhat reluctant to admit it, but I tend to get a bit… grumpy-old-person? when it comes to having fun in a gallery. It’s not very cool of me, I know. But those who have been reading this blog for a while will be the first to back me up when I say that I think that art should and can be enjoyed by everybody, but that I do think that there is a difference between enjoyment and ‘fun’ per se. There is also a difference between enjoyment and, say, screaming children. Or… I don’t know, talking (loudly) on a mobile phone in a video-installation room. Just my humble opinion. Is it okay for art to be fun? Should there be a slippery-dip in the foyer of an art gallery? Are rooms full of balloons really to be reserved for the kiddy zone at Ikea or is the gallery an appropriate place for them? Should we all sit around making white Lego buildings instead of looking at and being moved by art? Why must we be at the centre of absolutely everything? Why can’t we appreciate something that is outside of our own amusement? I don’t want to go all Marxist on your ass (I would never do that, by the way), but the answer, simply put, is capitalism. Galleries need money to acquire works and fund international exhibitions, and the best way to get that money is by playing host to works that pull the crowds. Works that pull the crowds also pull the big-business sponsors, and the big-business sponsors ensure that the gallery can then go ahead and host that Surrealism exhibition from the Pompidou Centre later in the year. Know who’s funding the 21st Century exhibition? Santos is the major sponsor, followed closely by Fairfax. Interesting, huh. Reminds me of my Oil Art piece a number of months back. The funny thing is, if you go across to the Queensland Art Gallery, a mere 100m across the concourse, suddenly there is a whole other vibe going on. Things are quiet, coffee isn’t to be consumed in the gallery, people even shoot disapproving looks at you if you walk a little too heavily. Somehow, it seems okay to run and scream at GoMA, but not so much okay to, say, breathe heavily, at QAG. There are a whole bunch of works in the 21st Century exhibition that are primarily about the experience and enjoyment of their audiences, and Carsten Holler’s Left/Right Slide is perhaps the most obvious (and visible) of these. I don’t mind the slide so much; I think it’s a nice touch that it makes a zippy whizzing noise as people go down it. Another example would be Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Room, and actually I’ve always loved this piece as well. It made an appearance a few years ago (I can’t remember if it was an APT exhibition or as part of the general collection). If you didn’t brave the queues to experience this one, this is what it looks like inside: It actually reminds me a little bit of that Odani Motohiki piece I saw in Tokyo last November. But as I’ve heard a number of people comment, when you have so many of these works all in one place it does take on a bit of a theme-park quality, a series of one-line jokes. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, and, you know, these are post-modern times; can’t all go around staring at stripes anymore. Something that I did contemplate during and after the lecture on participation was whether these artists, who are so heavily focussed on experience-based works, are doing so in a critical way. I’m just not sure. 21st Century is a great exhibition. Don’t get me wrong, I do very much enjoy most of these more experiential works, or at least appreciate what they’re doing. And the exhibition also has a heap of slightly more subtle works that are worth talking about. My favourite work of the exhibition is probably Jana Sterbak’s video installation work, From Here to There. The piece features six ‘channels’ of film viewed from the perspective of a dog taking a trip on a ferry and through the snow in wintry Canada, set to heart-rending classical music. It is actually quite the emotional roller-coaster, as you transfer human emotions onto the dog’s experiences: fear (of heights), outrage (left in car), curiosity (what is that spiky animal - bite it) and simple joy (rolling in the snow). From here to there 2003 was filmed by Stanley, a Jack Russell terrier fitted with lightweight medical camera equipment. We see Stanley’s curious, restless perspective multiplied and reconfigured in video projections as he capers across snow and through bush on the banks of Montreal’s St Lawrence River. This ‘cyborg’ dog blurs the boundaries between human and animal, nature and technology. The installation is not only a lesson in canine perception, but also is a panorama represented in time and motion. Along the banks of the river and across snowy plains, a kaleidoscope of patterns are revealed through the austere winter scenery. There is also an excellent piece by Fiona Hall that you may have seen before, entitledTender. It features 86 accurate representations of birds nests, created with shredded US $1 notes. In the painstaking and very beautiful creation of these nests, Hall draws attention to the fact that when our natural ecosystems are invaded and eroded, money is an ineffectual substitute. There is also an incredible still life sculpture by Australian Ricky Swallow… Ricky Swallow | Killing Time | 2003-4 … and a rather impressive installation by Tobias Putrih: Really, it is a great exhibition and I do think you should go. Just maybe try to remain outwardly calm? That would be great, thanks. The 21st Century exhibition is on at GoMA until 26 April.
