Jo Higgins

May 24, 2014

Review

REVIEW: Sleepers Awake, MCA C3West Project, Bungaribee

Jo Higgins

May 24, 2014

Review

Last night I went out to Blacktown to experience the MCA’s latest C3West commission, Heather and Ivan Morison’s Sleepers Awake. The C3West initiative has been running since 2006 and is a partnership project connecting artists with non-arts government organisations and businesses around Greater Sydney.

Which is why projects like this are compelling in the ways they seem to authentically connect local audiences, communities and artists, but also in the ways they uncouple ideas about where art can be made or expected, who that art is for and what function it serves. So I was excited to experience it.

In truth I also had a vested interest in the work of Ivan and Heather Morison, and this work in particular. At one stage Sleepers Awake was slated for installation in Peckham as part of the South London Gallery’s consistently brilliant SLG Local program. For reasons that now make sense (large, illuminated hot air balloon in densely residential, busy, occasionally unsafe, corner of London…) the work was never realised there but out in Blacktown, set amongst the expanse of Bungaribee at Western Sydney Parkland, it has all the room it needs to breathe and exist.

Over the course of the last two weekends this illuminated beacon has risen at dusk and kept extraordinary company with a community performance festival. Last night we saw a short film and spoken word performance by a local Sudanese poet reflecting on his experiences as a refugee in Australia. It was raw and honest and incredibly powerful to hear these awful experiences articulated so poetically. Then there was a performance by two young musicians from Minto and a “neo-burlesque” dance troupe taking on Picnic at Hanging Rock. We left before the end of the programme but there was B-boying and an Indonesian dance demonstrations to come after that.

It really did feel like a community festival – and I don’t mean that derivatively. I say it because the Western Sydney artists, performers and musicians who featured on the stage were joined by obviously local families who turned up with picnic blankets and pillows and small children in pajamas. Their voices, their neighbours, their territory. Us blow-ins were the novelty really.

Reflecting on the way Sleepers Awake existed within this incredibly unpretentious environment – which was also literally expansive and increasingly cold and dark – I keep coming back to the idea of the google map pin. Except here the pin is enormous and illuminated – shining this mesmerising, benevolent, warm light on the parkland and the performance space and the picnic area. It said: this is somewhere, this is worth knowing/exploring/visiting, this place and these experiences and these people exist. Maybe that’s heavy-handed and emotional or naive but I think it’s a testament to the way a great work of public art – even or especially a temporary one – can provoke a new way of thinking about and negotiating a space, geographically or intellectually.

Mark Wallinger, Zone, Munster Skulptur Projekt, 2007. — Mark Wallinger, *Zone,* Munster Skulptur Projekt, 2007.

In some ways it reminds me of Mark Wallinger’s work at the 2007 Munster Sculpture Project in Germany. Zone was a three-mile long, fishing line-thin, taut cord that traced the route of the old city walls that once encompassed this ancient German town. The cord though, was strung meters in the air – cutting through buildings and around lamp posts and trees – and was only visible if you really looked for it – and even then you wouldn’t always see it. But knowing it was there, there was a conscious sense of realising you were either inside or outside this demarcated zone and not knowing what the difference was either way. It was an exercise in spatial awareness, in moving through space, in the act of marking one space out as different from another and moving fluidly and unknowingly between the two. A collapse of boundaries you know to be fundamentally invisible.

Well, anyway – those were my impressions. I’m just incredibly glad we made the effort to go and applaud the MCA on the ambition and success of this latest C3West project.

REVIEW: Christian Boltanski, Chance, Carriageworks

Jo Higgins

January 12, 2014

Review

Christian Boltanski, The Wheel of Fortune, 2011-2014 — Christian Boltanski, *The Wheel of Fortune*, 2011-2014

I had the opportunity to attend the opening of Christian Boltanski’s Chance last week and to clap eyes on the man himself. I’ve written elsewhere about his ongoing and intensely moving work Les Archive des Coeurs but Chance, in its first Australian outing, proves just as contemplative and yet another deft expression by the artist of the randomness of life.

Reels of black and white photographs of the squished faces of Polish newborns, taken from newspaper announcements, stream through an enormous metal structure like a factory assembly line.

The inconsequence of these independent ‘miracles’ when thrown together en masse is made all the sharper when a bell rings and the projector shudders to a halt, highlighting one random baby, which, regardless, still looks much like the next. Is this one human, singled out, destined for greatness? Notoriety? History? Or will the filmstrip crank back to life and commit them to obscurity once more? Wheel of Fortune indeed. It would be cruel if it wasn’t depressingly true.

Other elements that make up Chance include Last News from Humans, two huge scoreboards at either end of Wheel of Fortune. These counters are constantly ratcheting up huge numbers in red and green respectively. How Boltanski has got his hands on these statistics I don’t know but the flux of life is brutally quantified by this livestream of numbers totalling all the deaths and births taking place around the world in that moment.

And lastly there’s Be New. This work reminds me of his earlier work Les Suisses Morts, where identikit faces are assembled from the photographs of dead Swiss. Here the dead Swiss are intercut with the Polish newborns, their foreheads, eyes and mouths flickering like fruit in a slot machine. It’s up to the visitor to hit stop and thus create their own unique portrait – one of a possible 1.5 million combinations.

Christian Boltanski, Be New, 2011-2014. — Christian Boltanski, *Be New*, 2011-2014.

All these works have enormous potential to be quite morbid and certainly depressing but Boltanski himself describes all his work as a desperate attempt to preserve

life and there is something beautifully epic about these narratives of life and in/significance and chance that is quite humbling.

Until 23 March.

The problem with 'Australia'

Jo Higgins

September 20, 2013

Review, Musings

So I went to the press preview for 'Australia' at the Royal Academy on Tuesday. I'm writing a review for Artlink and for a couple of weeks now I've been worried my instincts (that it would be disappointing, conservative, terrible... that my snobbery and cultural bias would cloud my objectivity...) would get in the way of me looking at the show with an open mind.

And so I tried. And I failed. Because it really isn't great. Does it warrant the casual racism and vitriol dressed as criticism it's receiving in the British press? Well, no. But it's not great. It's not even very good. I'm going to need to let my thoughts percolate for a while yet in the hope that something by way of coherent argument emerges. Because right now it's just an exasperated mash of frustrations.

I can't believe this is the same institution that hosted the seminal Sensation back in 1997. I mean, where's all that curatorial chutzpah gone?

What a missed opportunity. National Gallery of Australia, I'm blaming you too.

A round-up: Miles Aldridge, Somerset House; Katharina Fritsch, Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square; Michael Landy, ‘Saints Alive’, National Gallery

Jo Higgins

July 28, 2013

Musings, Review

Yesterday I took in a couple of exhibitions in and around central London. What follows is more a collection of immediate responses than any sort of at-length review. Take from them what you will…

First up, Miles Aldridge, ‘I Only Want You to Love Me’, Somerset House, 10 July – 9 September 2013

Miles Aldridge for Vogue Italia — Miles Aldridge for *Vogue Italia*

A career retrospective of sorts of the fashion photographer Miles Aldridge, this tight show was bright and shiny and visually stunning with lush, saturated colour and a highly strung sense of pop.

Aldridge’s creative collaborations with Italian Vogue in particular are pretty impressive – he conjures these dark, female domestic narratives and tableaux, working initially from sketches and stories, which Vogue then dress in high couture. Think super-saturated plasticised Stepford Wives and a compelling, creepy beauty.

From here, it was a short walk to Trafalgar Square to see Katharina Fritsch, Hahn/Cock, Fourth Plinth, 25 July 2013 – 2014.

Katharina Fritsch, Hahn/Cock, Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, 2013-2014

The latest Fourth Plinth commission was unveiled in Trafalgar Square this week, Hahn/Cock by German sculpture Katharina Fritsch. There’s a lot of mileage to be had in this work in the form of cheap gags but as an obvious metaphor for all the other male posturing going on in Trafalgar Square – from statues to street performers – it’s a straightforward enough work to appreciate with enough visual bang to be an effective addition to the Square.

And what with giving Boris Johnson the chance to make a complete, well, cock of himself by not being able to say the word ‘cock’ on its unveiling, well that was just a free gift with commission really.

Lastly, a visit to see Michael Landy, ‘Saints Alive’, National Gallery, 23 May – 24 November 2013

Michael Landy has been at the National Gallery since 2009 as the eighth Rootstein Hopkins Associate Artist. Bringing his interests in assemblage, destruction and the story of things to bear here, Landy’s seven mechanical sculptures bring to life the deaths of several saints including Jerome, Thomas, Francis of Assissi and Catherine of Alexandria who are portrayed elsewhere in the gallery in paintings by artists including Botticelli and Carlo Crivelli.

These larger than life sculptures are animated by the pushing of pedals and pulling of levers and there’s something quite shocking about seeing Saint Jerome thump his fibreglass chest with a heavy rock in the hope of quietening his impure sexual thoughts, never mind Apollonia reliving her torture by yanking her teeth out with a pair of pliers.

There’s a great beauty to the sculptural, mechanical elements of these works and Landy’s preparatory collages, which decorate the walls of the first hall, are just exquisite. It’s well worth a visit.

REVIEW: DOCUMENTA 13, Kassel, Germany

Jo Higgins

October 30, 2012

Review, Musings

9 June – 16 September 2012

Two weekends ago I went to Documenta with the ghost of my 27 year old self.

In 2007 I was living in Sydney, single, ostensibly broke, working at the University of New South Wales and in desperate need of inspiration.

And so I went on a pilgrimage to Germany, to Documenta, the five-yearly international contemporary art survey that began in 1952 amid the social, political and historical carnage of WW2 as an attempt to reconnect with the lost ideals of the enlightenment.

Enlightenment was what I was after. It wasn’t what I got. I hated Documenta 12. It was obtuse, smug, difficult, glib and frankly, bloody hard work. My most distilled moment of the three days I spent in Kassel was sitting at a tram stop, in the sunshine and having a curiously calm, philosophical conversation in my head about WHY it was that I had decided to dedicate my career to contemporary art and WHY was it again that I thought art was important and WHAT the fuck am I doing if this is the measure of contemporary art today.

That sort of thing.

It was a bit confronting but, strangely fascinating at the same time. And useful too. Because after Kassel I went to the profoundly brilliant Munster Sculpture Project (that happens but once a decade) and fell totally in love with public art and its potential to transform unexpected encounters into something profoundly moving/provoking/delighting/extraordinary.

Fast forward five years and I am back in Kassel and determined not to let Documenta defeat or overwhelm me.

Pierre Huyghe, Untitled, 2012 — Pierre Huyghe, *Untitled*, 2012

And do you know what, it didn’t. It surprised me, inspired me, delighted me, occasionally made me roll my eyes, moved me and challenged me. Clearly we’d both learnt from last time.

I travelled to Germany on my own but colleagues from work were also there on a pilgrimage and so we had an intense, over-stimulated, delightful 36 hours seeing A LOT of art.

Thinking back over everything we saw (and there was a lot we didn’t get to see) I’m not sure I could articulate any one curatorial agenda but there was a beautiful cadence across the venues and many of the works as they explored ideas of history, memory and site and when I flick the mental flip card of images still lingering in my mind it’s those works that really had something to say beyond their existence as a work of art, that I remember most clearly.

Obviously every piece of art does this to some extent, or at least tries to, but the most successful ones, to me at any rate, transcended the object or experience to offer some sort of philosophical, intellectual or personal experience.

The plan of attack was a well-marked map, a personal list of must-sees and a goal to see as many of the off-site spaces as we could manage, while also seeing the Friedericianum, the Neue Galerie, the Hauptbahnhof and Karlsaue, the park. Pilgrims before us had advised that the Orangerie and the documenta-Halle were weak and the ones to ditch if time became an issue. Which of course it did. Sunglasses, notebooks, guidebooks at the ready, these were just some of my highlights (in no particular order):

Ceal Floyer, Til I Get it Right, 2005

Country singer Tammy Wynette’s soulful song of the same name, cut and looped to play only the refrain: a melancholic, heartbreaking but quietly comedic paean to the unending frustration of being an artist/lover/writer/(insert being of choice here).

Geoffrey Farmer, Leaves of Grass, 2012

Hundreds of shadow puppets made from fifty years of Life magazine illustrations, arranged in chronological order. A nostalgic, delicate, awe-inspiring wander through history, popular culture and the evolution of photojournalism. As Farmer observes, “Even when you show so much you also, in the end, show so little.

Susan Philipsz, Study for Strings, 2012

A haunting, quietly devastating sound piece at the end of one of the platforms at the old train station, Philipsz’s Study for Strings takes composer Pavel Haas’ 1943 work of the same name, that was written while a prisoner at the Terezin concentration camp. The original score has long since been lost – Haas died at Auschwitz – and Philipsz recreated fragments of the work that was filmed being played by the Terezin String Orchestra for a propaganda film in 1944. These fragments of music are played from different speakers out across the tracks and Philipsz’s work makes the agonising, aching history of this location almost tangible. One of the major suppliers of WW2 armaments is just north of the station and in the early 1940s this Hauptbanhof was the site of three major transports of Jews from the Kassel district to concentration camps. Composer Pavel Haas was just one of them. Elegiac, understated and so incredibly powerful as you stand there in the sunshine, completely unable to comprehend such horror.

Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, Alter Bahnhof Video Walk, 2012

Another work at the old train station, and one of the most popular given the hour-long wait to experience it, Alter Bahnhof Video was a guided, completely immersive video tour of the Hauptbanhof. Following in the artists’ footsteps, Miller’s observations, recollections and own experiences and responses to the space guide you around the building, where fact and fiction, history and the surreal collide to create this truly extraordinary experience. There really aren’t words.

Ryan Gander, (I Need Some Meaning I Can Memorise [The Invisible Pull]), 2012

The much talked about “windy room” – I’m not going to say that Gander’s conceptual piece was a breath of fresh air – but it was a brisk breeze. Literally. Gently pushing you from one room to another, throughout the ground floor of the Friedericianum, Gander’s cool gusts of wind had a quietly funny Germanic efficiency to them. Intellectually, it was an effective metaphor for a career in contemporary art: pushed by something you can’t quite grasp under the guise of art in the direction of something (hopefully) meaningful.

Pierre Huyghe, Untitled, 2011-2012

Pierre Huyghe’s strange but strangely compelling work is in a scrubby part of the Karlsaue, an enormous Baroque park by the Orangerie, normally used for composting. You wander around, it’s slightly apocalyptic and a little bit surreal – a hungry dog with ribs like a xylophone and a bright pink leg scavenges with its pup, a man works on the compost pile (turns out he’s part of the work too). Elsewhere, one of Joseph Beuys’s famous 7000 Oaks from Documenta 7 in 1982 has been uprooted. And then, in the middle of this quasi-wasteland, in a small dirt field, is a sculpture of a reclining lady, her head obscured by a hive of bees. There’s no narrative, no one way to explore the area and no one way to understand it. If at all. The guidebook describes it as “objects without culture” and that’s probably the most intelligent way to describe it. Fantastically bizarre is another.

Anri Sala, Clocked Perspective, 2012

Another work in the Karsraue, Anri Sala’s exquisite piece is a response to the 1825 painting by G. Ulbricht in the astronomical-physical cabinet of the Orangerie. In Ulbricht’s painting, the castle in his landscape has had a gimmicky mechanical clock built into the front that keeps real time, though the front-on clock piece is necessarily at odds with the side-on perspective of the building. Sala’s work is this clock, in sculptural form, as it should be in the painting – in perspective and keeping real time despite the skewed dial, thanks to an elliptical gear. It’s such an elegant, clever work.

Tino Sehgal, This Variation, 2012, Grand City Hotel Hessenland

I still haven’t got to see Tino Sehgal’s work in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall yet (…yet! Soon!) but have read quite a bit about his performance/intervention works and so was curious to experience his work at Documenta. Sehgal doesn’t believe in documenting his works – they exist for a time and place only – and This Variation was created for the disused ballroom of the Grand City Hotel Hessenland. The whole thing takes place in the dark, the light flickers occasionally but otherwise it’s you, the emergency exit signs and some vague shadowy shape shifters, a mix of shuffling audience members and performers. To an acoustic collection of hums, plonks, whizzes and churning pistons, the performers sang a medley of Beach Boys classics that then shifted to animalistic, tribal beat-boxing and a conversation about the relationship between virtuosity and production. It’s hard to tell as you sit there in the dark if you’re an unwitting performer or a passive audience member and the dark offers no respite from the anxiety of proximity to the work. I don’t know what it meant, I’m not sure how it was supposed to make me feel but it was an exhilarating, immersive, strange experience.

Emily Jacir, ex-libris, 2010-2012

Emily Jacir, ex-libris, 2010-12 — Emily Jacir, *ex-libris*, 2010-12

For two years, Jacir made regular visits to the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem and took a collection of photographs on her phone of the books and their inscriptions. The books she photographed were designated ‘Abandoned Property’ and were just 6000 of 30,000 books looted from Palestinian homes, libraries and institutions by Israeli authorities in 1948.

It’s a powerful alignment of education and knowledge with liberation and an intimate, quietly political statement on the costs of looting. And by translating some of the inscriptions into German and English and posting them on billboards across Kassel, Jacir deftly asks a number of questions about the nature of restitution. I just loved this work for so many reasons.

REVIEW: Sleepers Awake, MCA C3West Project, Bungaribee

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REVIEW: Christian Boltanski, Chance, Carriageworks

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The problem with 'Australia'

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A round-up: Miles Aldridge, Somerset House; Katharina Fritsch, Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square; Michael Landy, ‘Saints Alive’, National Gallery

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REVIEW: DOCUMENTA 13, Kassel, Germany

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