Jo Higgins

August 30, 2017

Writings, Review

Skulptur Projecke Münster 2017

Jo Higgins

August 30, 2017

Writings, Review

I think the Munster Skulptur Projekt might be my favourite international art event. A deeply thoughtful, once-a-decade, whole-of-city sculpture project that began in 1977, it refreshes a curiosity about public art and public space and a critical lens, whichever direction you look (“is that a park bench or is that a sculpture?”) as you treasure hunt your way all over the city on foot and by bike.

Seminal works from earlier iterations - Claes Oldenberg, Bruce Nauman, Dan Graham, Rosemarie Trockel, Ilya Kabakov - remain dotted across the city in this gradual accumulation of permanent incursions in the cityscape, with temporary works turning up in lakes, Asian grocers, community gardens and tattoo parlours.

I was lucky enough to come 10 years ago and so it’s a fascinating benchmark of your own life as well over a 10 year period - remembering who I was and how I felt at 27 and how it feels to be here, now 37. Wondering if I’ll get to come again when I’m 47.

I’ve spent the last few days riding all over the city and for better or worse, these are just some of the works that have lingered in my memory.

Mika Rottenberg, Cosmic Generator, 2017

Mika Rottenburg’s work perplexes me – in a knotty, compelling, deeply absorbing way. It resists a didactic translation – all you have to work with is slippery associations, surreal visuals and moments of strange humour – but if you give into it, a narrative does emerge and it is unsettling. There are things said about borders, about food and conspicuous consumption, labour, value and globalisation. The film element of Cosmic Generator is like a deep dive into the bowels of someone who garnished their tacos with some LSD. It explores an underworld – literally and intellectually – of mass production. People dressed as tacos and archetypal businessmen crawl through tunnels, towards or away from what we don’t know. Strange details punctuate throughout – the gaudy painting on the wall of the Chinese restaurant comes to life and the Ibis shits a golden egg while the deer vomits hi-vis yellow.

The camera pans through the shop-room after shop-room where bored Asian women are illuminated and/or buried in inflatables, fake flowers, lights and tinsel. It’s gloriously weird and the scenes are punctuated by close-ups of the smashing of coloured lightbulbs. To get to this 20-minute film, you have to enter through an otherwise-ordinary, though not abundantly stocked, Asian supermarket that carries elephant ceramics and blow-up pineapple tubes and tinsel and a faint sense of despair. It’s a useful framework and in moving through the store to the backroom that hosts the films you become an unwitting part of this whole transaction. And the bare shelves and unkempt store only heighten the gaudy excess of the film’s shop interiors. As a whole work/experience, it stays with you, even as you plough through countless other works in the course of the Project – wrestling to draw together all of your impressions and responses.

Aram Bartholl, 5V, 2017

I have to admit that my initial impression – based only on an image of the work – was that Aram Bartholl’s 5V was a strange affectation. So I’m glad I read about it before experiencing it. Despite the obvious technical expertise required to create the work – a campfire-generated phone charger – there is something staggeringly simple, elegant and poetic even, about Bartholl’s work. Connecting the world’s oldest innovation – fire – with its newest – the Internet and mobile communication, Bartholl challenges us to reimagine or remember communication as a space and encounter and as a consequence of community coming together around a fire; not as a series of tweets, texts or emojis. As a measure of how far we’ve departed from this old form of coming together and communicating, it was fascinating, and sad, to observe my own hesitation and quiet fear about approaching the work and having to talk even to the MSP invigilator. Though the smell of an open fire is so instantly familiar and comforting. I wasn’t expecting to like Bartholl’s work so I’m thrilled that it surprised me the way that it did because I really loved it.

Ayşe Erkmen, On Water, 2017

Ayşe Erkmen’s On Water is a treat, especially after several thankless kilometres biking through the industrial outskirts of Munster. A submerged pedestrian bridge that connects two sides of a large canal, visitors can cross the bridge and stroll from one side to the other and from a distance you appear as if walking on water, hence the title. Several things struck me while making my way across the back across.

The first, a sense of despondency that a risk-averse city like Sydney would never allow such a thing – no guard rails, no excess of life flotation devices, no lifeguards – and the second, a sense of possibility – to entertain the idea of what might happen if you did step off – that nanosecond where you did stand on water before plunging into the cold and rather unappealing canal – the risk and the folly and the faith. It was a brief, if intoxicating thought. The two sides of the canal are actually quite different – one very industrial, the other gentrified with a boardwalk and bars – so the incentive to cross and explore the other side is little to none, otherwise – and yet, historically, I imagine they worked in simpatico. My only criticism, if it could even be called that, was the deep and uncomfortable impression of the steel mesh bridge underfoot. Not even the cold refresh of water on red hot tired feet could distract from the pain. But perhaps with the temptation to step off and walk out onto the water being right there, a constant reminder of keeping your feet somewhere solid is no bad thing.

Pierre Huyghe, After Alive Ahead, 2017

Pierre Huyghe’s After Alive Ahead has been receiving countless plaudits but I can’t help but wonder if this is the art world illuminati overcompensating for the fact that Huyghe’s strange, abandoned environment in the old Munster ice-rink is beyond their grasp. Because it was certainly beyond mine.

Past encounters with Huyghe’s work have been highly memorable – his Frieze Projects aquarium in 2011, where a lobster took up residence in the skull of a Brancusi bronze sculpture; even his wonderfully bizarre environment at 2012 documenta – with its pink-legged dog and hive of bees-as-beard on a reclining marble statue, all in the wilderness surrounding Kassel’s lake. But After Alive Ahead felt disjointed and as empty as the part-excavated rink. Apparently there were peacocks who were meant to inhabit the space, but they became too traumatised and had to be removed. The connections between the absent birds, the crater-like surface of the rink, all muddy puddles and lumpen stalactites, and the illuminated fish tank at the centre were resolutely unclear and the introduction of an app, which projected hovering black pyramids on a camera screen was baffling. It seemed to promise a narrative – or at least a navigation of the space in some way – but I was left feeling like I was either not using it properly or using it properly and completely missing the point.

The whole experience, instead of feeling organically weird, felt stymied and staccatoed. Apparently an exploration of ecosystems, cell reproduction and cancer growth, After Alive Ahead ultimately felt overthought and a bit contrived. It made for a disappointing, unmemorable experience.

Te Tuhi Talks

Jo Higgins

July 26, 2017

Events

I’m off to Auckland next week to do some work with Te Tuhi. I worked with their Executive Director Hiraani Himona during my time at the South London Gallery and I’ve been doing some consultancy with Te Tuhi over the last six months, talking about their informal learning programs and plans for the future, which has been really exciting. I’m going to be spending some time working with their team before giving a talk as part of their public program series, Te Tuhi Talks on Wednesday 2 August.

This hour-long talk will focus on peer-led learning and partnership projects and reflect on my experiences working on the Louis Vuitton Young Arts Project in London; piloting Kaldor Public Art Project’s Regional Youth Engagement Program; and on my current role as Young Creatives Coordinator at the MCA. The talk will be followed by a workshop with youth educators and public programmers from across New Zealand, which I’m also really looking forward to.

New role: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia

Jo Higgins

April 2, 2017

News

I am so excited to be starting a new role this week at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.

As Young Creatives Coordinator I am going to be managing all their youth-led programs, including their Young Guides and the MCA’s Youth Committee, who are responsible for programming the Museum’s flagship event for young people 12-18, GENEXT.

GENEXT has been running since 2005 and is the only program of it’s kind in Australia - both in terms of longitude and scale (upward of 600 teenagers attend this five-times yearly event) , but also in terms of its informal, peer-led learning approach. It’s a program I’ve been following since before I left London so it feels like a bit of a dream to be running it now.

I’ll also be responsible for programming their monthly Lights On Later workshop series. There’s so much to look forward to.

Oh, and getting to work in such an iconic location, right on Circular Quay, under the gaze of the Harbour Bridge and across from the Sydney Opera House is also not going to suck.

Louise Paramor profile for Art Collector magazine, issue 78

Jo Higgins

January 19, 2017

Writings

I had the opportunity to interview Louise Paramor for the latest issue of Art Collector magazine. I really loved exploring her work and so appreciated the chance to write about it.

You can read the profile here.

Craft Council UK – Make:Shift conference, Manchester, 10-11 Nov, 2016

Jo Higgins

December 1, 2016

Musings, Events

Last month I had the opportunity to attend the Craft Council UK’s biennial Make:Shift conference in Manchester, as part of my work with the Australian Design Centre.

The focus, as Creative Director Annie Warburton noted, was to “showcase an extraordinary array of disruptive innovation taking place throughout craft but also interrogating, to what end?”

The keynote addresses, panel discussions, presentations and conversations were focused around the impact of craft innovation in three spheres: social innovation, environmental sustainability and wellbeing. They joined makers and designers with scientists, technologists and academics because, as Warbuton noted in her opening address, “community, connection and collaboration is what brings breakthrough” and it is vital to locate craft practice within 21st century innovations. “Traditional skills are just a different kind of technology and as important as high-end technology. Makers have always worked with new materials, transforming production processes along the way.”

Mark Miodownik, Professor of Materials and Society at University College London, gave the opening keynote address. It was a lively and fascinating discussion of materials in relation to the culture of making. He noted the creative tension and slight distrust between art and science, which he argued can be useful in helping to identify different views, outcomes and processes and cited his hilarious experience on the BBC4 show Chef v. Science as an example of this conflict. In the words of chef Marcus Wearing, “At the end of the day [making anything] is about love, care and understanding.” It’s not about scientifically recreating mashed potato just because you can.

Miodownik also unpacked some of our easy assumptions about new technology being better technology – citing the fact that despite its increasing prevalence, carbon is not a recyclable material and that solar cells, while allowing us to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, have nevertheless been designed with little care – they are objects stuck on roofs and not integrated into our lives. Miodownik argued that animate materials are in fact the future and cited the example of self-healing concrete roads, which was a provocative and exciting thought. Miodownik concluded by saying that, “the act of making is about growing our humanity” and that social consciousness through making will enable us to solve some of the problems facing us today.

In the afternoon, there was an engaging discussion on the use of digital technologies in craft education with Drummond Masterton, Head of Sustainable Product Design at Falmouth University and jeweller Sarah O’Hana.

O’Hana works with titanium and steel and was invited to undertake a PhD at Manchester University as part of the engineering department, exploring the use of lasers and titanium.

The experience led to a new body of work that sought to explain new research to new audiences through wearable objects. O’Hana talked about the creative disruption her presence brought to the engineering department and cited a failed experiment that left the engineer despondent and O’Hana excited, because its effect on the titanium offered new aesthetic and creative possibilities.

Masterton talked about the importance of language, particularly in a learning environment, and its ability empower or inhibit. For instance, an engineer does things precisely, using materials in the ways they are intended, but if you call them a craftsperson they suddenly have permission to take more risks, experiment with technology and uncover news ways of using machines and applying knowledge. He noted than even when teaching students today about 3D printing and other available technologies, there remains a persistent desire to still learn and understand ‘traditional’ ways of making. He argued that when it comes to technology (as both a tool and an industry) there needs to be a model with the use of technology that enables risk-taking and that this isn’t currently the case. His point – “technology won’t solve problems, people will.”

In discussing the crisis in craft education in the UK (and arguably everywhere) O’Hana reitered Masterton’s point, and argued that while it was important to have specialisms, the craft education sector must invite other cultures, such as architecture and IT communication, into our own culture to help understand and communicate need and value. Craft, she said, is bad at articulating its value to other sectors.

Highlights of the second day include the conversation between Daniel Charny, founder of creative cultural consultancy From Now Own and curator of the 2011 V&A exhibition The Power of Making and Hannah Fox, Silk Mill Project Director at Derby Museums.

The conversation was centred around the research Charny had undertaken for his report on the cultural role of maker spaces, which set out to articulate the differences between engagement with or engagement through making and what these means in terms of local communities but also crafts-based skills development. Makerspaces were discussed in the context of other making spaces – residencies, project labs and museums, and while the conversation made no fast conclusions about the future of maker spaces, there was a general agreement that the popularity of makerspaces was a reflection on a perceived lack of other spaces in which to informally make and learn and that, in the context of the work undertaken at the Silk Mill in Derby, it is vital that museums expand their perspective around what they can be and what they do.

Skulptur Projecke Münster 2017

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Te Tuhi Talks

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New role: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia

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Louise Paramor profile for Art Collector magazine, issue 78

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Craft Council UK – Make:Shift conference, Manchester, 10-11 Nov, 2016

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