the art life

Hey Folks,

Just a quick (and final!) reminder that Not Quite Art FINALLY goes to air TUESDAY night [Oct 16]on the ABC at 10pm for the next three weeks.

The Age's Green Guide have listed NQA is this week's PICK OF THE WEEK and according to Jim Schembri, "Not Quite Art is the freshest, most illuminating, thoughtful and funny locally made arts program in years." (Ok, so that may not be the most competitive category going around, but still!)

Over at The Sydney Morning Herald Robin Oliver has nominated "this extremely watchable series" as their SHOW OF THE WEEK. They also printed this excellent story about it in the TV Guide.

Now, if all that sounds like it's carefully selected and mad crazy positive well it is. For the sake of balance I should warn you that over at The Australian Giles Auty described my views as "resolutely juvenile", said that I was "play[ing] the part of a disillusioned teenager on television" and that I should be congratulated for "being granted 90 minutes of good TV time to explore his grievances against the adult world."

Well, you can't win them all!

Anyhow, if you are in Melbourne, please come along to our LAUNCH PARTY at:

Horse Bazaar,
397 Little Lonsdale Street,
Melbourne

from about 9pm (Tuesday 16th) - the show is on at 10pm. If you aren't in Melbourne watch it on TV!

Afterwards, feel free to email me and let me know what you think.

Thanks,

Marcus.

Labels: personalities, tv show

TRACEY MOFFATT

Portraits

+

The Beautiful Human Face
PRIVATE VIEW THURSDAY 5 JULY, 6-8PM
Exhibition dates: 5 July– 28 July 2007
8 Soudan Lane (off Hampden St) Paddington NSW 2021 Sydney Australia


Tracey Moffatt, Lloyd Moffatt is my brother from Brisbane, 2007.
From the series Portraits.
Archival ink on rag paper, 73.5 x 53.5 cm

Lately I’ve been making portraits I really like making them and I want them to be my on going project for a while.

So far I’ve been photographing people who cross my path from the art, fashion, entertainment, business and political worlds, as well as family and friends or whom ever I think is very original and great looking. Except this will be a problem and my portrait project will never finish because I think everyone has the potential to be great looking!

The twelve people I show here are open human beings; look at how they are all smiling up a storm. These people are all laughing at my jokes. Sometimes I had to work hard and crack jokes to get them to smile. These portraits are in a way a mirror of myself, because the gleam in the eye you see here is my gleam reflected back at me.

I shot the portraits paparazzi style straight on with a simple digital flash camera at art exhibition openings, book launches, fashion shows and glamorous parties in New York, London, Milan, Sydney and Melbourne, oh and on the Sunshine beach Australia (my brother Lloyd), throughout 2006-2007. The idea was to capture people at their very best, at public events. At parties everyone’s energy is high and everyone is dressed up and polished and willing to pose. One afternoon I did try to photograph some people in my cramped New York loft, but afternoon is when I get the usual artist’s (women’s) low energy depression and yearn for chocolate. These stilted afternoon portraits shot in natural light turned out lousy and it wasn’t because of my willing subjects but because of ME. To shoot such luminous portraits I need the buzz of a social event around me. I mysteriously pick up on the buzz and transfer my energy to the subject. It is really very interesting.

I’ve cropped the face showing only three quarters of it, not the full face. I’ve discovered that this three quarter cropping is in fact everyone’s most flattering angle. I’ve tilted everyone to the right and it’s as if they are peeking playfully around a doorway at me. In some cases I played God and switched people’s sides. For example if a person’s happiest side turned out to be their left side I digitally flipped it over to the right side and used it. Who is to notice this? The great mystery of the human face is that when we beam unselfconsciously one side is in fact happier than the other. Our faces are not symmetrical, one eye is larger than the other, our hair is thinner on one side than the other, and our mouth can change dramatically from one side to the other.

On the computer I added bright coloured paint splatters in the background because I wanted the visual feel to be like when one of those confetti guns go off at a party. For each person I tested out various coloured backgrounds and strangely only one colour seemed to sit with each person. For example a red background just didn’t work for my Sydney art dealer Roslyn Oxley, because of her fair skin but instead turquoise blue like her eyes helped to anchor the picture. I can’t wait to make more portraits and to continue my journey into the mysteries of the beautiful human face.

Tracey Moffatt, 2007


DOOMED

Tracey Moffatt’s video collage, Doomed, features depictions of doom and destruction – war, violence and terror – as they appear in cinema, one of our entertainment options. In collaboration with Gary Hillberg, with whom she made Love (2003), Artist (2000) and Lip (1999), Doomed comprises cut-and paste editing techniques in a highly entertaining and black-humorous take on the bleak side of our current psychological landscape. Moffatt’s film looks at both entirely fictional and reconstructed disastrous events. Each scene carries a particular cargo of references. They occupy their own unique symbolism and filmic territory – the poignant, sublime and epic, the tragic, the B-grade and downright trashy. The accumulation of scenes, however, within Moffatt’s own essaying, creates a narrative whole comprised of parts. Not only does Moffatt play within the ‘disaster’ genre, re-presenting representations, she revels in it. Moffatt points at how the viewer is involved in filmic narratives through the emotionally hook, by the promise of imminent disaster, an important narrative device.

Moffatt’s film itself is crafted with introduction, body, finale – a presentation of the form of filmic entertainment, as well as ‘art as entertainment’. The soundtrack builds and peaks – emotive, and a central device in journeying through sequence to climactic effect. Music manipulates, and is itself thoroughly entertaining. It is important that the title ‘Doomed’ has the quality of the not yet destroyed. It is a description that is applied on individuals, families, lovers, politics, and nations – an observation made from the outside and yet containing the possibility (read hope) that situations can be salvaged.

Naomi Evans, 2007

Tracey Moffatt is one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists as well as being an artist of international significance. Since her first solo exhibition in Sydney in 1989, she has had numerous solo exhibitions in major museums around the world. Working in photography, film and video, Moffatt first gained significant critical acclaim when her short film Night Cries was selected for official competition at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. Her first feature film, beDevil, was also selected for Cannes in 1993. In 1997, she was invited to exhibit in the Aperto section of the Venice Biennale. A major exhibition of Moffatt’s work was held at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York in 1997/98 which consolidated her international reputation. Recently, comprehensive survey exhibitions of Moffatt’s work have been held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and the Hasselblad Centre in Goteburg, Sweden. A new monograph, ‘The Moving Images of Tracey Moffatt’ by Dr Catherine Summerhayes, is soon to be published by Charter Publishers, Milan.

Tracey Moffatt was recently the recipient of the 2007 Infinity Award for art by the International Center of Photography, New York. Infinity Awards are given for outstanding achievements in photography by honoring individuals with distinguished careers in the field and by identifying future luminaries.

Labels: commercial galleries, exhibitions, hyperreality, personalities

Well Fancy That is our ongoing series of excerpts from the writings of some our favourite critics, journalists and curators. We take a little slice of their latest musings and post them here - usually without comment - for your consideration. This past weekend offered a remarkable change of pace. Both the Sydney Morning Herald's John McDonald and The Australian's Sebastian Smee are in Europe taking part in a once-in-a-decade ' grand tour' of Europe's summer art exhibitions - The Venice Biennale in Northern Italy, then on to Germany for the Basel Art Fair, Documenta in Kassel and the Münster skulptur projekte 07 in Münster.

Both Smee and McDonald have offered readers their thoughts on Venice and, perhaps predictably, neither liked what they saw. Both then promised further reviews as they travelled around the continent... But instead of another head-to-head, readers of the weekend newspapers were offered a special treat. McDonald reported from Kassel for the SMH, but The Oz instead chose to commission Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, the tireless boss of the Museum of Contemporary Art. One could not have hoped for a better contrast in writing, attitude and outlook.

On the left, the plucky Scott, and on the right, The Esteemed Critic...

McDonald: "In terms of sheer scale and variety, Documenta is no match for the Venice Biennale, where the creative director plays a crucial role but the bulk of the art is chosen by participating nations. In Kassel, following the example set by the event's founder, Arnold Bode, Documenta is selected by an all-powerful artistic director working with a team of advisers and assistants. In 52 years, Documenta has come a long way from Bode's earnest survey of avant-garde painting and sculpture of the Cold War era. This is my third Documenta since 1992 and each has seemed more pretentious and megalomaniacal than its predecessor."

Macgregor: "The scale and scope of Documenta make it arguably the most significant platform for contemporary art in the world and the announcement of each curator is eagerly anticipated. For Documenta 12 this year, Roger Buergel and his partner Ruth Noack were something of a surprise choice: their previous curatorial practice was highly regarded but not as widely known as that of their predecessors. Rather than a clearly defined theme, they put forward three philosophical questions as organising principles. Is modernity our antiquity? What is bare life? What is to be done? This last question is in many ways the most significant. It is clear from the exhibition that the overriding objective is still educational: how to make an exhibition first and foremost for the people of Kassel, and how to create a context in which people can come to an understanding of contemporary art in all its complexity. This concern for the audience, especially those who don't belong to the art world, is a hallmark of Buergel and Noack's curatorial approach. A previous exhibition of theirs, 'Things We Don't Understand', was an attempt on a smaller scale to look at the ways in which the viewer approaches art today."

McDonald: "An advisory board of "40 local experts" was put together discuss Documenta in relation "local mindsets and topics". A large number of junior curators were invited to Kassel to do internships, including Russell Storer from the MCA. Consultants and colleagues gave advice from many different parts of the world and almost 100 art magazines were asked to grapple with the three "leitmotifs": "Is modernity our antiquity?": "What is the bare life?" [a line of inquiry that apparently stretches from the concentration camp to the hippie communue] and "What is to be done? The club of participants boasts a final membership of more than 650. If everyone was part of the process, who would be left to complain?"

Macgregor: "One of the first things [done] was to establish an advisory group of local people who were not art professionals, who were involved in discussions about the show from the outset. A team of educators is leading groups and a series of "palm groves" has been installed: groups of chairs where visitors can take time out to sit and contemplate or hold group discussions. The visitors' guide is lightweight and designed to be carried through the exhibition. There are no wall texts: the emphasis is on encouraging a direct response to each work. Whether this strategy succeeds in its goal of focusing visitors primarily on the art is an interesting question for visiting curators and museum directors, who are dealing in their own institutions with the demand for instant information in this age of immediate communication."

McDonald: "The fun begins when one tries to make sense of the idea behind the show. "The big exhibition has no form," Roger and Ruth tell us. "This trivial fact made us seek to combine precision with generosity." A small thesis could be written about the way curators use the word "generosity" but it is still startling to find them proclaiming Documenta's "inherent formlessness". This does indeed act as a justification for anything at all: minimalist works by John McCracken, Charlotte Posenenske and Poul Gernes; feminist polemics by Mary Kelly and Jo Spence; stuffed toys by Cosima von Bonin, a stuffed giraffe by Paul Friedl; pictures of babies by Iwie Kulik and several other artists; photos of chewing gum by Alina Szapocznikow; Inuit drawings by Annie Pootoogook; '70s performance videos by Eleanor Antin; an "electric dress" made by Tanaka Atsuko in 1956; and so on. Many of these works seem to have been around for 20 or 30 years but, since the show also includes Persian drawings from the 15th century, there is no point in worrying about what is or is not "contemporary".

Macgregor: "The work of several key artists is shown in different sites and these keynote artists exemplify different strands within the show that weave, intersect and sometimes clash across the five buildings. There are striking contrasts, for example, between the complex figurative paintings of Chilean-born Australian Juan Davila that tackle a range of issues, questioning history and the construction of cultural, political and sexual identity, and the formal aestheticism of American minimalist John McCracken; between the delicacy of the exquisite drawings and photographs of Nasreen Mohamedi, who was born in Pakistan and died in India in 1990, and the striking use of pared-down industrial materials in the sculptures of Charlotte Posenske. A satisfying aspect of this Documenta is the inclusion of smaller works, drawings and collages in particular. In the Schloss Wilhelmshohe, with its magnificent historical collection of Rembrandts and Vandykes, some contemporary works are placed among the historical collections, others in a separate space The earliest works are far from contemporary: 14th to 16th-century drawings and paintings brought back to Germany from Persia, China and the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, historical pieces are interspersed throughout the venues, to make a point about forms migrating across geography and time."

McDonald: "Some works are obviously more appealing than others but to identify highlights in this cauldron of goulash would be mere dilettantism. In such shows, one tends to seize on some work that is less mediocre than most and imagine it is a masterpiece."

Macgregor: "The majestic drama of a James Coleman video with its 40-odd minute soliloquy by Harvey Keitel contrasts with a quiet yet gripping reflection by Amar Kanwar on the experiences of women and the aftermath of trauma and suffering. This last work highlights an important aspect of the exhibition: its humanity and lack of cynicism. It is a global exhibition that speaks powerfully about the local."

McDonald: "The other artist who seems specially favoured this year is Juan Davila, who was placed at Roger's right-hand side during a press conference the size of a rock concert. Davila's crude, scatological paintings are distributed througout Documenta, where they can shock and titillate audiences who are new to his trademark brand provocation. Simryn Gill, by contrast, has a low-key installation of old truck parts reconstructed from tropical plant and animal matter. It is badly displayed in the AuePavillion (pronounced "Ow") - a vast, sprawling greenhouse that added €3 million ($4.75 millior to the budget of €19 million)."

Macgregor: "The most contentious building is the one for the 21st century, a temporary structure modelled on greenhouse technology. This is far from the neutral white box expected of the modern art museum, but each work is given generous space, and the vistas created between works give visitors the space to pause, reflect and discuss. Simryn Gill's Throwback is here, shifting the meaning of forms and materials by re-creating, in tropical and other natural materials, the parts of a Tata truck destined for the scrap heap in India. So is a comment by Dmitry Gutov on life in the urban landscape: he has constructed fences from discarded materials and incorporated snippets of literary texts."

McDonald: "Forget about the bloated auction market; art is not about money or ownership [...] it's about self realisation and social action. They favour a brand of education that confuses rather than clarifies; an aesthetic that favours the intellect over the eye. 'We all start out as idiots in the face of contemporary art,' says Roger, Happy are the idiots who get to be idiots on a professional basis."

Macgregor: "'Art makes experiences of a special kind possible,' Buergel has said. 'One may talk about these experiences, but one can also demonstrate them visually; in other words, show them. Here the medium of the exhibition can become the basis of a new way of showing, a new way of seeing.' This new way of seeing is not framed by market values or cultural identity, or by definitive didactic statements. Yet it returns to the original proposition of Documenta as an educative tool for a wide public. The response of the audience after the professional preview days will be the true test of Documenta 12's success."

Labels: art criticism, old media, personalities

"Revered … but Benjamin has questioned the value of his landscapes."
Photo: Quentin Jones, SMH.


Not everyone can write like Jack Marx. And fewer still can do it for The Sydney Morning Herald. Commissioned to write the text for a book published to coincide with Jason Benjamin's new solo show at Melbourne's Metro 5, Marx siezed the opportunity to unleash his inner Gonzo. Here are the first two paragraphs of the SMH front page story:

"SOMETIME in the winter of 2006, I became quite convinced that the Sydney artist Jason Benjamin was not long for this earth.

He had hired me to write the text for his monograph, What Binds Us, and thus I'd spent weeks in his pocket, during which time I had witnessed the 35-year-old's descent into a mine of inexplicable neurosis and despair that would surely end with death. The only question was whether it would be by his own hand or mine. I'd have been happy with either."

Near death! Everything is on the line!! The artist may die!!! Unfortunately, the story that followed didn't quite live up to this corker of an opening. Given the tough job of writing about Benjamin, Marx went to the painter's studio, asked some questions, then sat around for few hours. At one point things got quite tense:

"One day, after I'd commented positively on one of his works in progress, he took up his brush and, with nary a word, destroyed the picture - surely the most self-sacrificial "f--- off" in the history of either art or journalism. During another difficult evening, Jason doodled my likeness on the back of a beer coaster as he answered my questions. The monstrous result left no doubt as to how he viewed his interrogator at that point in time."

The "monstrous result" was a picture of a guy wearing a hat... One can easily sympathise with Benjamin, suddenly struck with the realisation he's got a lot of work to do before the show and a bloke in a hat turns up to ask him questions. As the deadline for the show loomed, Benjamin started to have second thoughts about the book - did he really need a text after all? Couldn't it all just be pictures? Meanwhile, the artist was going through Van Gogh-like emotional turmoil:

"More worrying, however, was his diminishing enthusiasm for Jason Benjamin, a creeping self-loathing that tumbled out in an increasingly fraught and shapeless series of late-night telephone conversations, during which he revealed he'd been sleeping in his studio ("the chamber", as he was now calling it), going days without seeing his wife or children."

Luckily for Benjamin, he's a professional and got the job done, but sadly for Marx, this also meant in the end there was no story, no suicide and no murder. Instead, the SMH story concludes with Mrs. Benjmain ruminating on her husbands obsessions:

"Jason's wife, Annie, speaks of "the bad time" last year, as if referring to some beaten disease. She still wishes he saw more of his family - he's in the studio from the crack of dawn to the dead of night. Not even she is allowed in there."

Labels: old media, painting, personalities

For those of you who have always wanted to live like a successful millionaire artist but just didn't have the ackers, well, now you have the chance to live just like Tracey Moffatt - and in her house. In a surprise email to The Art Life, we can no almost exclusively reveal that Moffatt's Australian residence is up for rent - and it's a steal!

Dear Roslyn Oxley artists and art lovers,

I would be thrilled to have any of you stay in my Sunshine Coast house. It is very peaceful there and the beach directly across the street is beautiful and stretches forever. Below is the link for the house just click on it. The Century 21 agents are very nice and helpful.

All the best,

Tracey Moffatt

From the low low price of $1,490 a week during the off season to a a cool $3,500 a week during Christmas, you too can enjoy all the amenities of Moff's architect designed, gun shaped seaside pad. The house with stunning ocean views boasts: 1 Queen bed - 1 Double bed - Fully equipped kitchen - Laundry facilities - 1 Bathroom - Powder-room - Ocean Views - Balconies - Bath - Airconditioned - Ceiling fans - TVs - DVD - Stereo - BBQ - Carport. As the Century 21 web site explains, the house has:

"Superb Ocean and Natural Landscape Views with Direct Beach Access. This sophisticated brand new beach house offers quality and every modern convenience. Only minutes walk to miles of unspoilt beach. 34 Wavecrest is stunning and private, the perfect combination for the ultimate holiday escape. Pet friendly on application."

If you're thinking of heading up to Noosa for the Xmas season, you'd better hurry as Moffatt's beach shack is booked solid from December 15 2007 to February 7 2008.

Labels: hyperreality, personalities, real estate

"We made love this morning: how many people can say that? But she can turn from a sweetheart into a Medusa in a nanosecond. In the past, we used to to totally poison our lives. She would say horrendous things about my art, things not even a discourteous critic would say. Even now she does it, and I feel like saying, 'Get lost, you bloody Bavarian peasant. How dare you!' But I don't, because although her criticism is totally subjective, and to a great extent pedestrian, I am an artist of the people. I believe in keeping in touch with the common wisdom, and that's what she articulates..."

Charles Billich, on his relationship with his wife Christa, 2 of Us, Good Weekend, April 14, 2007.

Labels: bad art, old media, personalities

Is it really a year since Tracey Moffatt’s last Oxley exhibition? Just last August we wandered in to the gallery for a taste of her new series Adventure Story and marveled at the incredible number of people in the streets, jammed on to the balcony and waltzing around inside the big space like landed gentry in a Jane Austen novel. So here we are again, a year later, and the imminent opening of Moffatt’s Under the Signs of Scorpio at Roslyn Oxley 9 Gallery this Thursday from 6pm to 8pm, be there, be part of the crowd!

Moffatt has been working hard in her New York apartment and despite its small size she’s used it as a stage setting for her new, theatrical works in which she embodies the essence and spirit of 40 women born under the sign of Scorpio – from Hilary Clinton, Sally Field and Indira Ghandi to Billie Jean King, Shane Gould and Doris Lessing. The full explanation by the artist of the new work was sent out to journalists and the Oxley Gallery mailing list in the form of a rambling and incoherent press release which we reproduced here in full last month. Here are its first two paragraphs of that press release just to refresh our memories:

My photo series, Under the Sign of Scorpio, depicts me appearing as forty well-known extraordinary, women from history and popular culture, all born under the astrological sign of Scorpio. Since I was born on November 12th and am also a Scorpio, I have been intrigued about what makes the Scorpio tick. It is such a powerful and intense sign: Scorpios can ‘cross over’ into dark worlds and come back unscathed. They are fearless and listen to no-one. I know that I often stare at people with their mouths moving and I am amazed that they are actually talking and giving me advice; I always have to say “Sorry, I didn’t catch that”.

The shooting of this Scorpio series, as well as the printing, has taken me six months. Six months taking in the entire New York winter of 2005. Six months cooped up in my small New York loft with Miyuki, my faithful assistant. (Miyuki has put up with my excitement over the making of this new work, plus all my whining and insecurities, which would greet her every morning as she walked in the door.) The actual shooting of each of the famous Scorpio characters would take two minutes, but the thinking and planning would take a couple of weeks. For example, becoming Georgia O’Keeffe required me to take on her ‘attitude’. It isn’t easy to present ‘attitude’ with your back to the camera. I thought about her morning Kimono-like dress, and what she would be doing with her hands (she’s admiring them, of course).

It is an extremely hard piece of writing to read in its entirety. It jumps from place to place, idea to explanation, from gossipy girl talk about her house and friends and then back to her fannish catalogue of Scorpio women she no doubt looked up on the internet and said “oooh, she looks good” and then added them to her “to do” list. Perhaps we have always missed the sense of humour in Moffatt’s work, perhaps we just don’t get the jokes, but we have always taken her artistic project to be one of high seriousness even when – such as in the last series – she was delving into high camp. Either way, this latest press release is an egregious mistake. Like last year’s embarrassing artist’s statement in which she condescendingly described her travails making the work in “dear Brisbane”, this should never have been allowed out.

On the other hand, someone obviously thought it was a good idea and one that a compliant media would lap up without question. Moffatt has a publicist whose job is to ramp up media interest in everything the artist does and feed information to magazines and newspapers who are happy to support the mythology of Moffatt as Australia’s leading artist. Any article would obviously include mentioning her work’s auction records, her movies, quotes from high profile admirers and the links between her ethnicity and the subject of identity in her work that binds all her disparate pieces together. It should have come as no surprise that the Sydney Morning Herald’s Spectrum ran a sycophantically unquestioning piece on Moffatt and the new work under the title The Secret Lives of Tracey Moffatt.



Tracey Moffatt, Hilary R. Clinton, archival pigment ink on acid-free rag paper 43.2 × 58.4cm.Courtesy Roslyn Oxley Gallery.

Written by Samantha Selinger-Morris the piece touched on every single one of the standard points of a Moffatt article but opened with a mistake. Stating that Tracey Moffatt rarely gives interviews, the writer clearly overlooked Peter Hill’s Spectrum interview with the artist last year [and which, if memory serves, opened with the same gambit]. We then dutifully trudged through the opening paragraphs in which the author mentions Something More and Moffatt’s auction record of $227,050 before launching into her CV of films including her feature film Bedevil. Elsewhere the author describes Moffatt’s love of dress ups when she grew up an Indigenous child in a white family, but before we get to that, there is a paragraph that is rather curious:

[Moffatt will] say she's comfortable "that journalists and writers can go to town and say what they want without my interference or controlling nature", but quite benign comment on her work has been known to anger her, as her long-time friend Reg Richardson discovered when he gave a talk about her work at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery five years ago. "She was there, and she told me I had told them too much," he recalls. "She never tells you if you're right or wrong. She likes to maintain the element of mystery."

Ahem. We got into trouble from Moffatt’s PR person last year when we said that she personally controls – and vetoes – unflattering coverage by refusing to allow magazines to reproduce her work unless she has approval of the articles. The PR lady, speaking to us via Comments, claimed that this was not true although we had direct, first hand experience that this was the case...
Reg Richardson gets another mention, this time as a high profile ‘friend’ [with no mention of the fact that it was he who paid the big bucks at auction for Moffatt’s work] and a claim is made for “record breaking” attendance figures supposedly set by Moffatt’s MCA retrospective. For the record, Moffatt’s 2003/2004 exhibition is the second highest ranked exhibition in terms of attendance at the MCA with 108,671 people through the door while it is Ron Mueck’s show in 2002/03 that had 110, 871 people attending making it the most popular show.

All of that aside, it’s the statement about Moffatt trying to “maintain an element of mystery” that’s the most perplexing. Here she is apparently not given to granting interviews while lifting the veil in public. It’s an inconsistency not lost on the author:

She's agreed to be interviewed because we share the same star sign. "I thought, well, she's probably a little twisted anyway to begin with," she says. "Scorpios are not afraid of intensity, not at all. We actually think it's normal and we don't understand people who aren't."

This explains Moffatt's interest in one of the feistiest women in the series.
"What do you think of the Hillary Clinton one, tell me?" she asks. Her low, lipped voice has a slightly nasal quality, as though she has consorted only with Yiddish speakers during her past six years in New York. "What do you think she's doing in it?" she presses.

I look at the image of Moffatt with her head thrown back, wearing a blonde wig and oversized black sunglasses. She stares meaningfully up to the heavens, bathed in a beatific yellow light. I say it looks as though Hillary is wondering how she'll manage to nab the American presidency.

"Ohhh, brilliant!" says Moffatt, sounding pleased. "That's exactly it. That's what I'm trying to say in that photograph."

Moffatt's desire to be understood is the first of several surprises in our long conversation. When, days after we speak, I read the transcript of our interview, Moffatt's intimate disclosures - on everything from her love life to her traumatic childhood and deep-seated shame - seem like breadcrumbs she's dropped on purpose in order to be discovered.

Just at the moment it looked as though the article might be on to something, it changed tack into a description of how the artist made the works. According to the article, Moffatt “transforms” herself into these women through:

…gargantuan amount of Photoshopping, clever wardrobe choices and, most importantly, by nailing tiniest but most distinguishing of visual cues. With a demure turn of the head, she is instantly the French doyenne Catherine Deneuve. With a stern stare and arms crossed just so, she becomes Vogue editor Anna Wintour.

Would it be too reductive to point out that the image of Hilary Clinton looks nothing like the actual woman? Moffatt’s work has always been a mirage of intentions in which the audience has had to unravel just what - if anything - the artist was saying. With Adventure Series last year it became obvious that Moffatt was starting to run out of steam – referencing your own work, especially going right back to Something More [albeit with a bigger budget] - simply served to reveal how conceptually thin her works are. Dressing up as Hilary Clinton may indeed slot nicely into the perception that Moffatt’s work is about examining identity but as Joan Cusack said in Working Girl, you can dance around in your underwear all you like but it doesn’t make you Madonna. What we have then is Moffatt as Hilary Clinton and like any actor playing a role, we have to ask, just what is she bringing to this persona?

We have for a long time struggled with the notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in art. Since we are reformed relativists we are tempted to throw around absolutes as though there was some higher value to which art can be compared while knowing full well that artist’s choices are entirely subjective. We were once asked why video art and photography aren’t compared to mainstream cinema and advertising? Why is that they aren’t seen as part of the same spectrum? Good question, we thought, and one that needs an answer. Artists work from a much reduced production base; they simply don’t have the money to take on the production values of Hollywood and the world of advertising. In the final analysis, however, it should be the idea or concept that stands out beyond production values. Good ideas are free and if you can express them then art can take on anything.

Moffatt has been one to utilise the talents of others to help her achieve her vision. From her film and video works to the casts of her big photo series to the backdrop painter who gave most of the life to the Adventure Series images, there works have achieved a slick gloss that many have found appealing. But now, with Under The Sign of Scorpio, Moffatt working away in her little studio with reduced production values, has laid her ideas bare. There may be some people who find these works aesthetically appealing with their hammy acting, bad wigs, garish colours and crappy Photoshopping. We however do not and are sorely tempted to just label them bad but we know that is subjective. What is far more disturbing is that now that the production gloss is gone her ideas are there for all to see – and she has none. This sense of exhaustion is one that the artist shares:

Moffatt is moving on, creatively and personally. In what is perhaps symbolic of her desire to finally separate herself from the shame of her childhood, she is, at 44, planning on giving up the alternative personas that have been a constant in her work.
"I don't even want to do it any more," she says. "I've had it. This is the last time I'm going to do it. It's too ... it's very hard work, very hard. Performance is very hard to do. I'd much rather direct it than do it."

She's also planning on leaving her beloved New York - at least for half of every year - to come home.

"My theory is that in Australian culture it's Australian to tease and put down, and it's American to build you up." she says. "So I find it refreshing to live in America. [But] I miss Australia. I miss the great food, the weather and my friends. And I miss the humour. So, spiritually, I have to be in Australia more. There comes a time when you know you just have to be."

She will be living in a beach house being built for her - in the shape of a revolver - on Castaways Beach on the Sunshine Coast.

For the first time, she'll have her very own studio.

Labels: announcements, personalities, press releases

From the distance of the other side of the road it looks just like a regular advertisement on a billboard. You can’t really tell what it’s an ad for until you get stuck in traffic or pass closer to the billboard on its dangerous Anzac Parade location.




Up close it soon becomes apparent that John McDonald, esteemed art critic for the Sydney Morning Herald, is now moonlighting in ads for Quicken [seen here with his daughter Ruskin and son Peter Jr.] We were a little perplexed why McDonald would be doing in an ad for an accounting product until we gave the Australian distributor a call. The product in question turns out to be an automated art critique program that the esteemed scribe can leave running to produce his weekly pages for Spectrum while he catches up with the kids. Seen here reading aloud from a bound edition of Modern Painters: Reflections on British Art, Quicken is quietly steaming away in the background: F1 [Sarcasm], F2 [Appeal to common sense], F3 [Attack the MCA], F4 [Deplore lack of skill in contemporary art], F5 [William Robinson is a genius], F6 [Attack Mike Parr] etc etc etc.

Labels: art criticism, personalities

[Tracey Moffatt] now spends much of her time in New York, but is in Australia three times a year, and keeps closely in touch with the Australian art world. Since 1997 Moffatt has been represented by Sydney’s prestigious Roslyn Oxley 9 Gallery. The price of her work now ranges from $1,100 to $25,000.

And soon she will have a pied-a-terre in Australia, designed by Australian architect Gabriel Poole, who is known for his lightweight houses created specifically for subtropical weather and Southeast Queensland. Her house will be in the resort town of Noosa, an hour and a half north of her hometown of Brisbane. Moffatt freely admits that she "can't stand Noosa with its hustle and bustle, but I adore all the nature that surrounds." Her house will sit next to the ocean, propped up on stilts and featuring solar heat, and a curved roof. Most quirkily, the house actually resembles a pistol from a certain perspective. In fact, Moffatt says, when she consulted with Poole about the design a year ago: "I asked him to make me a shiny metal gun poking out over the water. He burst into laughter." […]

Showing me around her cosy-apartment-cum-studio, located on 10th Avenue in the heart of New York’s Chelsea gallery district, she points out good-naturedly that Australians would find the space tiny, but by Manhattan standards it is decent sized. She works in a space that doubles as a living room; on the walls hang works by Aboriginal artists – a large painting by Emily Kngwarreye, and smaller paintings by Elizabeth Nyumi and Eubena Nampitjin from the Balgo desert area. Moffatt herself is of Aboriginal descent – “I would die without my Aboriginal art around me.”

- Tracey Moffatt: New Work in New York, Sarah Douglas, Australian Art Collector, Issue 33, July-September, 2005.



Computer drawing of Tracey Moffatt's soon-to-be-built beach house in Noosa. Courtesy: Barbie Corp.

PRESS RELEASE
Marie Curie Tracey Moffatt

UNDER THE SIGN OF SCORPIO

PRIVATE VIEW THURSDAY 4 AUGUST, 6-8PM Exhibition dates: 4 August – 27 August 2005

At a moment’s glance - My photo series, Under the Sign of Scorpio, depicts me appearing as forty well-known extraordinary, women from history and popular culture, all born under the astrological sign of Scorpio. Since I was born on November 12th and am also a Scorpio, I have been intrigued about what makes the Scorpio tick. It is such a powerful and intense sign: Scorpios can ‘cross over’ into dark worlds and come back unscathed. They are fearless and listen to no-one. I know that I often stare at people with their mouths moving and I am amazed that they are actually talking and giving me advice; I always have to say “Sorry, I didn’t catch that”.

The shooting of this Scorpio series, as well as the printing, has taken me six months. Six months taking in the entire New York winter of 2005. Six months cooped up in my small New York loft with Miyuki, my faithful assistant. (Miyuki has put up with my excitement over the making of this new work, plus all my whining and insecurities, which would greet her every morning as she walked in the door.) The actual shooting of each of the famous Scorpio characters would take two minutes, but the thinking and planning would take a couple of weeks. For example, becoming Georgia O’Keeffe required me to take on her ‘attitude’. It isn’t easy to present ‘attitude’ with your back to the camera. I thought about her morning Kimono-like dress, and what she would be doing with her hands (she’s admiring them, of course).

Being Indira Gandhi was again researched and thought through. An Indian woman theatre director in New York’s East Village suggested I dress in white muslin, and ditch the idea of a coloured sari. I have also placed Indira on a mountain top. As a result my picture hopefully has a holy spiritual quality.

Lee Krasner was also a challenge. I riffled though my wardrobe (most of the costumes used are from my wardrobe) and found a 1960s sundress, totally perfect for Lee Krasner on holiday. I wanted Lee Krasner in the afternoon sun looking relaxed, as opposed to all the grumpy serious shots taken of her in the New York art world of the 1940s and ‘50s.

MyScorpio series pays tribute to a vast array of women. I’ve portrayed myself as Roseanne Barr, Goldie Hawn, Whoopi Goldberg (all comic geniuses); Hillary Rodham Clinton (to become the first American woman President); Shere Hite (sex report writer, I’ll never forget how she stormed off an Australian current affairs television show in the 1970s when the host was a sexist bastard to her). Marcia Langton and Oodgeroo Noonuccal (both Australian Aboriginal intellectuals and political activists and heroines to me); Tina Brown and Anna Wintour (brilliant English magazine editors); Fran Leibowitz (wit like no other); Edith Head (Hollywood’s most successful costumier); Marie Dressler (superb character actress: watch the film Dinner at Eight (1933) and wait for Marie’s final sizzling line to Jean Harlow); and Billie Jean King (the most alive tennis player ever).

In my portraits I have tried to capture their spirit and likeness, but only “at a moment’s glance”. It is almost like the moment when you see a famous person in a restaurant. Everyone is craning their necks to get a glimpse, only to end up with a fleeting view of the back of the celebrity as they exit into the VIP room.

I shot the photographs with a simple digital camera in my loft against a bed sheet curtain, and in my cramped awful bathroom. I then added the high-key supernatural coloured landscape backgrounds to the images in Photoshop on my computer. Rather than a formal portrait, I wanted a very pop, almost comic book quality. I propose that all of these women are ‘pop figures’, they are a part of the landscape of popular western culture.

I’ve been ‘Warholian’ in my artistic approach. Like the working class Andy Warhol, I’ve been a fan of great talent all my life, and I mean ‘fan’ in the nerdy sense of the word. I watch films and documentaries, read biographies, look people up on the Internet, buy memorabilia, and collect magazine articles. For example, I recently tore out a photograph of Lauren Hutton from New York Style magazine because it was so happy. Lauren once said in an interview “I willed myself to be beautiful”. (She said this after being asked why she became the top fashion model in the world when she hadn’t had a nose job or had the gap in her front teeth fixed).

This brings me to the subject of willpower, psychic ability, and – God forbid I mention it – witchcraft and magic. It is my theory that ‘talent’ is a supernatural force that cannot be explained. This also applies to astonishing athletic ability. Nadia Comaneci’s gold medal-winning perfect scores at the 1976 Montreal Olympics could be put down to the young Romanian gymnast’s intensive communist athletic training from age six. Yet despite her hard work and practice, there is always the other ‘thing’ that we can’t deny about Nadia: her ‘X factor’, the ‘unexplainable’.

It has been said that the actress Vivien Leigh, in her intensity, would practically “crawl across broken glass” to prepare for a role. When we watch her now in Gone with the Wind (1939) or A Street Car Named Desire (1951) we can almost believe it. I interpret this expression “to crawl across broken glass”, to mean that Vivien was able to ‘dig deep’, to go ‘across to the ‘dark side’ of her psyche like a brave Scorpio.

The other smouldering actress in A Street Car Named Desire is Kim Hunter as Stella. My favourite scene with Kim is at the end of the film, when she reassuringly and with beautiful tenderness talks the crazed Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) outside and into the arms of the psychiatric nurses.

Margaret Mitchell, American southern belle and author of Gone With the Wind, was also brave. Margaret was writing about her own history, which she had researched thoroughly since she was a journalist. But her ability to put pen to paper and produce the novel’s larger-than-life characters must have been like a powerful unknown force working through her.

Marie Curie, along with her physicist husband, discovered polonium and radium in 1898. I’ve read how she slaved in the laboratory and grew physically sick from working with dangerous minerals. For two years, during summer heat waves and the dead of winter, she stirred a huge boiling cauldron of “pitchblende”. For a long time the Curie’s efforts failed, but Marie had a type of psychic vision and kept repeating “it’s got to be there, I know it is there”. Marie can be viewed as a sort of acceptable turn-of-the-century scientific witch. She helped to find something that had never been seen before because she somehow believed that it was ‘there’.

There is also the common expression when talking about a great singer’s voice that “the magic was there” – for example, Mahalia Jackson, who had the “voice of God”. (Aretha Franklin has said that she tried to emulate Mahalia). This is said because on occasion, the ‘magic’ sometimes isn’t ‘there’. This is because ‘talent’ and the ability to make ‘magic’ comes and goes. In a recent documentary, Joni Mitchell talks about staying up late at night to write songs. It is “only when the blarney is running” (she gestures to the air) that she finds that she isn’t “tripping over her tongue” and everything starts to flow and she can produce her exquisite lyrics.

I have depicted the brilliant psychoanalyst Frieda Fromm-Reichmann in a convulsive state in front of the “dark side of the moon”. Frieda, (who married and divorced Erich Fromm, who wrote the The Art of Loving), was able to cure schizophrenia. There is a famous novel about her called I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg, based on an actual case in the 1950s where Frieda cures a teenage girl. Part of Frieda’s ‘treatment’ was to enter into the world of the schizophrenic mind, and bring the patients back to ‘reality’. Unfortunately Frieda was never able to ‘pinpoint’ how she achieved such positive results, since her treatments (mainly dialogue with the patients without the use of drugs) only worked over a period of years and consisted of ‘give and take’ and making mistakes. Sometimes patients would violently attack Frieda. The ‘Scorpio Frieda’ had the core strength to grapple with and confront unknown frightening energies.

In speaking of frightening energies – at this stage I have told very few of the Scorpio women that I have included them in this photo series (I have met about eight of them). The last thing one should do is flatter a Scorpio; they immediately get suspicious, and depending on their mood, will hate your guts for it. It has taken me years to learn to graciously accept a compliment. Growing up in the rough-and-tumble Australian suburbs, I was often mocked for my escapes into fantasy. (At sixteen I was still playing dress-up pantomimes with eight year olds.) Today, a wide-eyed art student will come up to me and gush “Are you Tracey Moffatt? I liked your last exhibition”. I usually choke a little and say “thank you”, and then crack a joke to deflect any further discussion of my work.

It is possible that my fears of offending any of the Scorpio women (or friends and relatives of the deceased Scorpios) in my series are unfounded. Recently, at the National Museum of the American Indian here in New York, I trailed after Wilma P. Mankiller (Chief of the Cherokee), and breathlessly told her that I had made an artwork about her. Wilma gave me the biggest smile and said: “Great, invite me to the show”.

Tracey Moffatt, 2005

Other Scorpios in my photo series not mentioned in my essay are: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, early American women’s rights activist whom I depict boxing. Anne Sexton, the confessional poet and self-confessed ‘witch’. Louise Brooks, the divine silent screen star; Björk, wonderful original pop star; Bonnie Raitt, the best white woman on slide guitar; Bibi Andersson, the Swedish actress. (See Bibi in the film Persona (1966) and die.) Shane Gould, the Australian swimmer who won three gold medals at the 1972 Munich Olympics at age fifteen, then gave it all up for a spiritual life and family. Geraldine Page: when you see her act in the film Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), you begin to think that she must have been the greatest actress in the world. Dorothy Dandridge, Black and Beautiful 1950s Hollywood movie star. Doris Lessing, terribly honest South African writer. Catherine Deneuve, the French actress, always mentioned with a sigh because everyone has been in love with her at some stage. Actress Ruby Dee: I portray her dancing in a fire and ice cave, since she projects these elements in the searing film A Raisin in the Sun (1961). Grace Slick, ‘60s psychedelic pop star from Jefferson Airplane. She once said she wanted to slip LSD into President Richard Nixon’s tea at the White House, “so he could see reality”. Actress Sally Field: watch the film Norma Rae (1979) and see Sally standing on the factory table holding a cardboard sign that reads “UNION”.

Labels: art politics, personalities, press releases

The 51st Biennale of Venice is like the Royal Easter Show when it was still at Moore Park, only there are no thrilling rides, no side show alley and no fairy floss. There are pavilions, however, and show bags and folks down from the country in strange clothes that time forgot. There were a record number of participating countries this year and were numbered in a handy short guide one could buy for 6 Euros. Australia was first at Number 1 and ended with the Peoples Republic of China at Number 55.

A prize is awarded to the country whose artist is [according to a secret criterion reported to involve the intervention of the Holy Spirit and some heavy back room drinking sessions] the most significant. This year the prize went to Annette Messenger whose ostentatious and over-scaled works filled the French Pavilion in the same way the way the Atlantic filled the Titanic, except the artist used old cushions, train sets and billowing silk instead of icy water. The delicate act of transubstantiation that results in a pile of old rags becoming a metaphor of great complexity sank under the burden of all the meanings projected onto it.

Australia was represented by Ricky Swallow [born near Melbourne] and raised in the glare of attention, nourished by the rich milk of the public purse and now representing all the aspirational ambitions of a parvenu culture. Admittedly, the Australian Pavilion has been receiving considerable international press attention but as the International Herald Tribune reported it was for “the coup of having Cate Blanchett give the opening remarks“, which concluded with her observation that Swallow’s work was proof of the richness and diversity of contemporary Australian culture. Given the preponderance of old master Dutch Still Life references and shallow quotes from American Pop traditions it seemed to the largely European audience that she was reading from a script work shopped by the Australia Council that had been designed to paper over the void that has opened up between Australia as a multicultural paradise of yesteryear and the darkness of a decade of John Howard's rule.

Blanchett may have believed what she said but it does not make it true. Swallow’s works individually possess some idiosyncratic charm but as the prominent German dealer Joerg Johnen (Johnen & Schoettle Gallery Cologne and Johnen Gallery Berlin) remarked, when exhibited in this quantity were “old fashioned, like some arts and crafts product that should have been carved in Oberammergau”. Johnen is a highly respected dealer with an international reputation, a background as an art historian and a stable of respected, innovative artists such as Thomas Ruff, Jeff Wall and also for the easy money the notorious wood carver– Stefan Balkenhohl. What makes his observation of more than passing interest is that in February Johnen was interested in Swallow, having seen his work reproduced in the magazines [that coincidentally carry advertisements for the galleries that exhibit it]. Johnen was disappointed and in this he had an abundance of very good company as not one European or American curator we spoke with found anything of real merit in the works or their Gold Coast boutique-like and overly precious installation.

There was a lot of hand made, wood based work at the Biennale both in the Arsenale curated by Rosa Martinez and in the Giardini where the older national pavilions are established. Getting the most attention was Israeli artist Guy Ben-Ner whose highly poetic tree house, assembled from turned furniture elements that, like Swallow’s sculptures, evoked a residual Baroque memory because of their elegant curves and complex joinery. The Israeli pavilion was carpeted with a heavily patterned petite bourgeois rug that reinforced the sub text of a film projected in the upper part of the exhibition area that showed the tree house being assembled by the artist as an elaborate, rather obvious metaphor for the “squatting” of the occupied territories by Jewish settlers. The work was amusing and the artist wore a hilarious fake beard and laboured mightily on his edifice.


Gilbert & George.

There were several heavy weight stars lighting up their respective national pavilions with Gilbert and George at the British and Ed Ruscha at the American. There is something simple and elegant about the work of Ruscha - like a vodkatini - they are best when composed of two basic ingredients – text and image. His project titled The Course of Empire was a sure hit, just like a dry martini at cocktail hour. The paintings were not really challenging and one was very much like the other – large expanses, cinematic space with the words floating above the image like a corpse in a Los Angles swimming pool.

Gilbert and George at the British Pavilion were what you would expect – they were there, they were accessible and they were great. We would normally look upon an opportunity to comment on their work as an exercise in obsequiousness, however even the great have their bad days. In the British pavilion the crowded, slightly cloying atmosphere generated by the almost wall-to-wall photographic collages reminded us of Walter Pater’s description of the Mona Lisa’s eyes – ‘a little wear’ G&G;’s attempt to contemporise topically their [now well known] images of slightly dangerous looking youths by the addition of Arabic textual components retroactively cheapened their earlier works. The installation of the Ginko series was oppressive – almost like some floral deodorant used to mask the odour of fatigue and creative exhaustion. They are great artists, tested by time – innovative, challenging and they will survive. Watching them work the crowd outside the pavilion was like observing a preternatural phenomena being replicated in a test tube and we could not but help think that one work of incontestable authority on a wall would have deepened the mystique time and the media have deposited on the singing statues as a form of everlasting patina.

There was a lot of film work present some of which deserved the attention it received and some which did not. Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij at the Netherlands Pavilion projected a film and called it an installation. Technical problems distorted the sound made sitting through its 40 minutes more than a little tedious but it was a smart white Dutch tale of power, corruption and commodity exchange in English. The Dutch accent in qualified English sounds South African and feels like you’re being sold cheap diamonds. Everyone we spoke to liked it and the circle of admirers around the curator Martijn van Nieuwenhuysen was a direct testament to its popularity. The much more enjoyable Luxembourg entry – a film shot in suburban Luxembourg utilizing a reconstructed Venice of dry canals and occasional snow flurries - was equally popular. Its protagonists were a curator, and artist and a collector, there were scenes of impressively complex dialogue but as it was in English with a French accent it seemed somehow polished with an easy sophistication.

There were several really exemplary pavilions. Singapore’s pavilion was curated by Eugene Tan who proposed a work by Lim Tzay Chuen that would have involved excising a 70 ton sculpture of a winged lion [the symbol of Singapura or Lion City] and removing it to Venice. The operation - code named MIKE – didn’t happen. Instead the pavilion consisted of two purpose built lavatories of extravagant proportions, impeccably stylish and sumptuously appointed an oblique reference to the hygienically obsessive, brand conscious and incredibly prosperous condition of the island. This brilliant and subtle attention-getting strategy resulted in one of the few endless quews at a pavilion. The piece was a curatorial favourite, a conversation starter and crowd puller whose opening was used to announce Singapore’s intention to begin its own Biennale next year.

Another pavilion attracting attention was the Austrian artist Hans Schabus who had constructed a mountain over the pavilion’s existing roof structure evoking an alpine peak. It was quite incredible to climb within this fantastic compilation of tar, wood and nails and to gaze out over the Giardiani from the latched viewing windows scattered at various levels. Its sequestered encapsulating atmosphere implied the attic in Kafka’s The Trial and reminded the viewer of Austria’s proximity to the East.

The Romanian pavilion was left empty by artist Daniel Knorr as a metaphor for Eastern Europe’s flight from its own history towards association with the west was also deservedly popular. Traces of the pavilions former activities remained in paint stains and irregularities in the wall and a reader [that time will render invaluable to post colonial studies] was published to commemorate the act and was available free to all visitors.

The Thai pavilion also contained a work of incredible beauty called Those Dying Wishing to Stay, Those Living Preparing to Leave which consisted of a lecture to an audience of dead people laying upon mortuary stretchers. Lithuania’s pavilion featured a large overview of films by Jonas Mekas. While we were there we saw the prodigal Simon Rees who now works for Lithuania’s Contemporary Arts Centre captivating Nicholas Serota [Tate Gallery director] with the people skills those of us who know Simon greatly miss. As Simon remarked later “It’s really strange how things start to happen for you in a completely different way when you actually live in Europe.”

There was a lot of light but attractive work as well. You know the stuff we mean – conceptually sound, well executed and conscious of the critical relationship between the work of art and the environment in which it is acknowledged as such. Most characteristic of these and probably the most picturesque was the work of Jorge Macchi representing Argentina. Installed in the Old Oratorio of San Filippo Neri alla Fava was a blue trampoline, which replicated exactly the curvilinear shape and size of the baroque ceiling painting above it.

In the Arsenale in an independently curated program titled Always a Little Further, compiled by Rosa Martinez were traces of what would have normally been considered ambitious new forms of practice. There were certainly some wonderful things and some astonishing unexpected inclusions beginning with some long overdue international attention for the Guerrilla Girls. Some of the most interesting inclusions were those were political activism was translated into highly aestheticised encounters with the present day and the fact that some places are a lot nicer than others.

Regina Jose Galindo video works of earlier performances in which she shaved her body or walks between the Police headquarters and the Ministry of Justice with a basin of blood, which she used as a novel form of ink pad to colour her feet while walking, leaving as she passed bloody foot prints in commemoration of the women killed in places like Mexico or her homeland Guatemala. This was accompanied by film of a hymenoplastic surgery or the recreation of the virgin’s membrane prior to marriage, often by backyard butchers, with fatal consequences.

For many the surprise inclusion was of the Australian born performance artist Leigh Bowery. He was accorded an enormous area on the central axis of the Aresnale indicating his importance as a pivotal figure in the crossover between art and life that was the exhibitions underlying thematic. If you are from Sydney it was a familiar sight. In 2003 the Museum of Contemporary Art devoted not inconsiderable resources to the development of what is acknowledged as a milestone show of international significance. Take a bow Russell Storer for advocating Take A Bowery, as almost everything in the Venice installation began its life as a component of the MCA project, and the slides provided by Sydney closely referenced by the curators providing the template for the installation in Venice. The individually cast mannequins which Grahame Rowe utilized as the central display mechanism in his seductive design for the show, the relationship between the Fergus Greer photographs and the separate sculptural “looks” - as Nicola, the Widow Bowery calls them - and the strategic use of the large quantity of remaining video material successfully articulates the essential nature of a body of work that has become hugely influential. Bowery is acknowledged internationally as quite possibly the most original and authoratative artist to have emerged from Australia in the last 30 years with a number of prestigious museum projects planed to promote that legacy.

Strange it is indeed how these things work out- Australia did manage to produce a much sort after art star at the 51st Biennale of Venice - a great original, taken seriously in his own terms and not those injected into the work like some form of steroid. Ironically, he was also from Melbourne. Let the sunshine in.

Labels: art politics, international exhibitions, personalities

Over at Roslyn Oxley Gallery we went to see the Tracey Emin show and we were curious, especially after all the nasty things we said about her. We had never actually seen anything by her in the flesh (so to speak) and were intrigued to see what it was like in RL.

Let’s also state up front that we are disposed to like Emin’s work. We actually find her drunken, sluttish behaviour aappealing and when we sit back and remember ourselves at our worst, most hyper-emotional state, we feel nothing but sympathy for her. It could be us falling over and making a spectacle of ourselves in public. It could be us signing beer coasters in pubs, it could be us with a cast on our wrists and a broken finger, drunk on British TV, slobbering on about wanting to be with our friends. Besides, it’s not every day you can go to a Sydney gallery and see a serious show by a big name international artist.

Only that wasn’t quite what we got. The Emin show is a rag tag bunch of prints, framed Polaroids and stuff she threw together for Oxley dating back to 1997. It’s not a cohesive show in any way, but there are things in there that are brilliant and things that are incredibly shit.

On the plus side are the drawings and the watercolours. Yes. Very nice. The appliqués are kind of funny and we really, really like all the bad language and shouty stuff in the text.

“DON’T LOOK FOR REVENGE, it just happens, if you don’t like it then go an fuck your self don’t take it out on me.”

Or

“Is Anal Sex leagal”

There’s a fluidity and honesty to Emin’s work that makes you blush. She really means it and we have to respect that level of hysterical exhibitionism. On the down side is her adoption of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. This is clearly a mistake. Munch, for all his ahead-of-his-time qualities, has been consigned to the same embarrassing teenage bedroom wall of history as Claude Monet’s Water Lilies and that photo of the tennis player woman scratching her naked arse. Emin’s attempt to draw some kind of parallel between her crazy, fucked up life and her abortions with Munch’s painting is just embarrassing (see her video installation of a work called Homage To Edvard Munch and All My Dead Children, the walls of the second exhibition space at Oxley painted blood red!). In another work, the paucity of Emin’s aesthetic sense comes into full view; badly done painting; Munch’s The Screamfrom a calendar pinned next to it; in front, a school chair and a gas mask; on the wall, a lithograph and a Polaroid. Holy cow!

The curious thing about Emin’s work is how much it fits in with Australian art of the last decade or so. Jenny Watson’s Ballroom Series came to mind, and a couple of Emin’s works on canvas have a passing resemblance to the text pieces of Adam Cullen (circa 1997). But the interesting thing to note is that Australian Grunge proves itself to have been (and continues to be in the work of Cullen and Hany Armanious) a highly aesthetisized approach to art making. Emin, on the other hand, is just really, really bad at making objects.

We are not against the idea that art could be purely the product of an idea. Visual aesthetics don’t have to enter into it. But they inevitably do because, aside from some curator deciding that a particular work of art is important and buying it for a museum, the career of an artist is largely driven by someone liking their aesthetic vision, ie, buying it. It’s the only way you can live with art. It has to continue to seduce and surprise you.

At this point we belched and realised we had been suffering from indigestion and gas. It was time to leave.

Labels: commercial galleries, personalities, reviews

It’s that time of year again with the return of the Archibald Prize for Portraiture for 2004 and another raft of stories about artists getting their entries in on time. But if you’re an artist and you’re entering a painting into the competition, any media interest in your work will disqualify you from winning.

If there’s a camera anywhere near you, run for the hills. With 7.30 Report camera crews roaming the streets looking for artists with a canvas or two, ABC radio talking to regional artists and the Sydney Morning Herald wringing as many features out of the annual extravaganza as they can, you’d think someone would pick a winner.

Laura Matthews, for instance, was photographed with her subject Bettina Arndt in the Herald and the odds are very long that she’ll even get in, let alone have a chance of winning. Media coverage of your work is the kiss of death. We don’t know why, it’s just the way it is.

At least Matthews had a decent subject for her portrait as many artists don’t seem to be able to even understand the rules. One hapless artist was photographed arriving with a pop art style portrait of Colonel Sanders, willfully ignoring the fact that the Archibald rules stipulate that the subject of the painting be both living and Australian, known to the artist and that the subject "is aware of the artist's intention..."

The SMH also covered the arrival of Evert Ploeg’s portrait of Jana Wendt which, it claimed, was still wet, the artist staying up late into the night to finish it. Unfortunately for Ploeg, the artist who won the 1999 People’s Choice award for his portrait of Deborah Mailman, the gallery may actually insist (as they do in the rules) that paintings arrive dry.

Self-aggrandisment can also gain a bit of media coverage for your entry, such as with artist Henry Mulholland who is no slouch in coming forward to big-up his own annual entries. Mulholland, who talks good art talk to that insufferable bore Sally Loane, just happened to mention on Loane’s 702 mid morning radio show that he was entering a portrait of AFI Award winning film editor (The Boys, The Bank) and Surry Hills identity Nicky Meyers. Mulholland’s chances of getting in are slim, let alone being hung, but we celebrate his entire back catalogue, such as this mention on the late (and unlamented) The Arts Show.

The ABC also sets up shop at The Archibald with radio host and giggle-on-command expert Richard Glover moving his mic down to the Art Gallery of NSW. It’s fun for the whole family.

But the prize for the funniest coverage of the prize, however, goes to ABC Radio Gold & Tweed Coasts Queensland for their coverage of an entry by Brendan Abbott, AKA The Post Card Bandit (immortalised in a TV movie of the same name by Tom Long) of his lawyer Christ Nyst (part time lawyer, novelist and full time self publicist).

Although Adam Cullen had entered a portrait of Mark ‘Chopper’ Read a couple of years ago, this was the first time AGNSW director Edmund Capon could remember an entry into the prize by someone who couldn’t attend the opening due to their incarceration at Her Majesty's Pleasure.

"I don’t know that we’ve had many Archibald submissions emerging from the penitentiaries yet.” But Capon sees no reason why there shouldn’t be more. “I’m absolutely sure being in jail is no impediment to your artistic genius. After all, you know, if you’re going to be locked up, what better thing to do than paint your fellow inmates?"

Labels: Archibald, art prize, old media, painting, personalities

The Art Gallery of NSW organised the screening of Matthew Barney’s entire Cremaster Cycle. It was no mean feat. Barney is notoriously reluctant to allow his films to be seen divorced from the usual accompanying exhibitions of photographs, drawings and sculptures. It’s a little bit like a passion play that has to be accompanied by the essential votive objects, and Barney likes to keep tight control over how his work is seen.

But somehow AGNSW Curator of Contemporary art Wayne Tunnicliffe arranged for all the films to be screened on a single day, on two Saturdays this month. In fact, the two all-day sessions were completely sold out and a third screening for this weekend has been hastily added to the schedule.

We don’t know how long the Domain Theatre at the AGNSW has been able to screen films in 35mm, but the quality of the projection and the sound were both very good. The only major drawback to the event was the fact that while the projection facilities may have been upgraded, the seating hasn’t. If they are expecting you to sit through seven and a half hours of surrealism, they could at least hand out a few cushions.

Rising and arriving at the AGNSW at the obscenely early hour of 10.30am for the screening of Cremaster 1, we were sitting near the back watching the assorted art crowd arrive and fight over seats.

The AGNSW certainly know their audience, the screen showing a slide for the gallery’s Contempo art society, the groovy club for art lovers in their 20s and 30s. Although that ruled out The Art Life straight away, we noticed that the average age of the Cremaster screening would fit in nicely with the demographic and would probably join up if it weren’t for the fact that Contempo sounds like a piece of furniture from IKEA.

Sipping on our take-away coffee, we noticed a lot of fresh young faces – people who looked eerily reminiscent of art world identities 10 or 20 years their senior. Thus we saw the new Gary Warner, the new Richard De Souza, the new Zwinead Roarty. Then we saw the real Zwinead Roarty and realised the entire world was at the screening.

Roarty, one time curator of The Lizard Lounge art exhibitions at the Exchange Hotel, was joined by assorted luminaries such as tactile RTA sculptor Richard Goodwin; experimental filmmaker and title design boffin Janet Merriweather; a contingent of MCA people including curator Russell Storer and perpetrator and sculptor Andrew Sunley Smith; that nice young man with the cricket pad fetish from the Wild Boy art crew; veteran film writer Tina Kaufman; and artists Tony Schwensen and Justene Williams. Acknowledged by Tunnicliffe in a pre-screening thank you, were AGNSW patrons who had helped finance the screenings, Jeff and Viki Ainsworth.

Along with the notables were notables of tomorrow – various callow young men, girls with Lulu haircuts and guys with heads shaved because they choose to shave their heads, not because they have to. Sitting next to The Art Life was a young man with a shaved head, topknot of hair, ear-piercings you could fit a dinner plate in, tattoos and a leather notebook in which he was writing, “Flesh remembers, my flesh remembers…”

Before we could read any further, the lights went down.

Labels: cinema, personalities, public galleries