19th Biennale of Sydney
The title of the 19th Biennale of Sydney was taken from a quote by playwright George Bernard Shaw: “ Imagination is the beginning of the creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will”. Curator Juliana Engberg travelled the world, meeting over 90 artists whose work is featured across five venues and covers every conceivable medium. Instillations and performances and inhabit the cavernous spaces of Cockatoo Island, photographic series line the walls of the MCA. An open theme has allowed for a variety of works that appeals to a wide commercial audience, abolishing the elitist aura that once surrounded the Biennale. But in as an event that is sometimes criticised for being more about spectacle and less about content, is there room for such thematic ambiguity?
Engberg developed schemes for her venues based on the character of those spaces. Cockatoo Island was “fantasy and feral, anarchistic energies” those elements are captured in several artworks around the island. The standout works were Eva Koch’s I am the River (2012), a towering video projection of a waterfall, Yael Bartana’s lavish video work Inferno (2012), Mikhala Dywer’s delicate, site-specific installation The Hollows (2014) and Sonia Leber and David Chesworth’s confronting audio piece This is Before We Disappear From View (2014). It wasn’t apparent on the day but upon later reflection, something was missing. Whilst all the works on the island possessed at least one of the characteristics Engberg wanted to feature, there was lack of cohesiveness. Whilst certain sections felt unified, for example, almost the entire Convict precinct of the Upper Island was dedicated to video works, I missed the ...
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... equipment for video works for the exhibition. In terms of success as a contemporary art event, the inclusive nature of this Biennale should be applauded; it was a very enjoyable day out. The artworks were of exceptional quality and the represented artists were of great calibre. However, there is a proportion of works that are over three years old and have already been shown at major exhibitions, including other Biennales. Having such a broad and widely interpreted, subjective theme, a sense of cohesiveness and overarching narrative was compromised. Whilst the passion and exuberance of Engberg is evident in her curating and her desire to take risks and explore is admirable, the 19th Biennale of Sydney somewhat lacks the unified nature an exhibition should have. Whilst the works themselves are brilliant in their imagination, the narrative leaves a lot to be desired.
The 21st Century appears to be headed towards a future of vast corruption and exploitation as a result of the often inhumane and uncivilised individuals who, over the years have become desensitized to poverty, war, consumerism, racism, mental illnesses and political corruption. As the world moves towards further democracy, and decentralization it is vital that art is given the opportunity to stimulate people’s awareness, participation and judgment. Arts purpose is not only to be a fulfilment of society’s visual needs but is needed be utilised as a function to alert people to society’s problems. Australian born George Gittoes, works within war zones to create confronting paintings, film, photography and prose that frequently portray man’s inhumanity to man. Gordon Bennett, also Australian, paints images that depict his own self questioning about his identity and the injustice towards Aboriginal Australians since the time of settlement.
“The documentary tradition as a continually developing “record” that is made in so many ways, with different voices and vision, intents and concerns, and with each contributor, finally, needing to meet a personal text” (Coles 218). Coles writes “The Tradition: Fact and Fiction” and describes the process of documenting, and what it is to be a documentarian. He clearly explains through many examples and across disciplines that there is no “fact or fiction” but it is intertwined, all in the eye of the maker. The documentarian shows human actuality; they each design their own work to their own standards based on personal opinion, values, interest and whom they want the art to appeal to. Coles uses famous, well-known photographers such as Dorthea Lange and Walker Evans, who show the political angle in their documentations and the method of cropping in the process of making the photo capture exactly what the photographer wants the audience to view. In this paper I will use outside sources that support and expand on Coles ideas with focus on human actuality, the interiority of a photograph, and the emotional impact of cropping.
In eight quasi-connected stories, Susan Vreeland delivers a fictional lesson on aesthetics. Set amidst human sorrow and historic chaos, the narrative follows an imagined Vermeer painting from the present day through 330 years of its provenance--beginning with its willful destruction in the 1990s and concluding with its inspired creation in the 1660s:
Before beginning our discussion on the chosen Australian surrealists, background discussion of surrealism, its influence and impact, is necessary. Surrealism is the first international art movement in Australia. In fact, European surrealists perceive Australia as a “surrealist place” because of its vastness, its distance from the other continents and its appeal as a “down under”. When the surrealist movement b...
s a conceptual artist, Willem Boshoff challenges his viewers to consider the interplay of words, textures and visual elements, and in the case of Prison Hacks/Prison Sentences (2006, installation of black Zimbabwe granite slabs; Constitutional Court, Johannesburg) it’s important to take into consideration not only the name of the work and its execution, but the materials used and the location in which the work is installed, as all have bearing on the ultimate meaning and, consequently, the choice of name. It can also be argued that the decision to change the name of the work is also part of the overall presentation of the installation and the understanding that one can gain from discussion of this discourse.
Gregory Crewdson once said “I love the experience of cinema- being enveloped in a complete world of another’s imagination. I love the quality of film- how it can capture so richly the color and light of a scene. And I love photography - for what it leaves unsaid for it is from this that we can start to spin our own imagination.” Crewdson accomplishes the both the most intriguing and frustrating aspect of art; he poses a question yet refuses to reveal the answer. It is the unanswerable question that leads the viewer to study the work and spend hours contemplating its meaning.
What is ‘Art’? Does the term describe a tangible object, experiential event, process, technique, medium, or creative skill? Does it imply attractive decoration, pleasant arrangement, and sound financial investment - or can art provoke, be unattractive, make people uncomfortable, and be fleeting? Today, Art is subjective, open to interpretation and encompasses the spectrum of the visual, literary, dance, and musical humanities - often overlapping one another. As such, Art and its practice can be all of the above and more. Post World War II, Modernist theories were waning and a general dissatisfaction was building in the United States and other westernized countries that ultimately led up to the cultural and social revolution of the 1960’s. The period also parallels a rise in relative wealth and subsequent mass consumption of commodities, education, and cultural activities within all the socioeconomic classes. Personal expression became acceptable and art practice exploded to include multiple fields of activity that Rosalind Krauss likens to “an extraordinary practice in elasticity”. Interest in ecology, performance, process, alternative materials, a loosening of social mores and experimentation with altered states of reality contributed to the rise of what is now known amply as Postmodernism. Civil rights, the anti-war movement, rise of feminism, and a political movement left of center created egalitarian entrances for many into various fields of study including Art. Nevertheless, similar to the current state of Western Civilization, not everyone appreciates an open multiplicity of voices often differing in viewpoints from safer, more conservative ones. It is in this context that artists Robert Smithson and Richard Serra bega...
This act of creativity involves effort, toil, inspiration, failure, and is accompanied by the scorn and criticism of others who do not understand, as Arthur Koestler puts, the bisociative connection the artist makes in his inspirati...
Robertson, Jean, and Craig McDaniel. Themes of Contemporary Art: Visual Art after 1980. New York:, Oxford UP, 2013.
Anne Zahalka cleverly presents her intentions and interests in the world clearly throughout her artworks, more specifically her series ‘Welcome to Sydney’. Through the creation of this series Zahalka was interested in the changing multicultural nature of Australian society, closely drawing the audiences attention to the cultural frame. She effectively does this by portraying the subjects with dignity and respect by deliberately positioning them in an area in which they connect with. In doing so, Zahalka acknowledges her own experience, as the daughter of immigrant parents has influenced her conceptual practice. She uses cultural symbols to show the individuals are different, yet making them as one being put into Australian locations. In the image ‘Guangan Wu, Market Gardens, Kyeemagh’ a chinese immigrant stands in a panoramic landscape of market garden...
In 1915 the concept of “readymade” art was introduced by Marcel Duchamp when he took an ordinary snow shovel and painted the title In advance of the broken arm. He had previously turned a wheel up-side down and attached it to a stool, creating a piece he called Bicycle wheel. This was also considered a “readymade.” A “readymade” by Duchamp is “an ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist.” Duchamp produced many of these “readymades,” but it his readymade entitled Fountain that we will be discussing here. Duchamp’s Fountain originated from a urinal that he with two other friends purchased from a plumber, took to his studio, and turned it on its backside. He painted the pseudonym “R. Mutt” on it, and submitted it to the Society of Independent Artists in an exhibition. Duchamp took an everyday item and submitted it as art. His Fountain was a readymade that would become the most influential piece of art of the 20th century. Society ponders Duchamp’s meaning behind his artwork. What is it? What does it represent? What did Marcel Duchamp mean by this piece? Is it art because he chose it as art? The art world is so ostentatious that it will over analyze anything that is put in front of them, when in fact; there is no meaning at all. Marcel Duchamp chose this piece as a practical joke on the Society of Independent Artists. It is in my judgment that just choosing an object for display does not constitute it to be art.
Jones, Jonathan. “Yoko Ono show at Guggenheim Shines Light on Pioneering Conceptual Artist”. The Guardian. 13 Mar. 2014. Web. 1 May. 2014.
Aboriginal art is widely associated with the primitive and primordial nature of the Australian Indigenous culture. However, as it has become more popular globally, one must consider the authenticity of the Aboriginal art sold on the contemporary market. Eric Michaels essay, ‘Bad Aboriginal Art’ (Michaels, 1988) exposes his concerns with how we define certain art as being genuinely ‘Aboriginal’ and questions what external influences exploit and influence the validity and authenticity of Aboriginal art. The essay summons readers to question what they identify with Australian culture and whether or not White Australians have disordered the meaning of Indigenous art.
... over time – and the viewer’s personal experience, essentially her history. This gets very near to a common sense perspective – what we look at, and what we think about what we see has much to do with who we are and what we have experienced in life. Thus, art may be described as an interaction between the viewer, influenced by her experiences, with the work of art, inclusive of its history and the stories built up around it over time. When we look at art, we must acknowledge that the image is temporally stretched – there is more to it than meets the eye at present. What we learn from Didi-Huberman’s approach is to give this temporal ‘tension’ its due. Didi-Huberman describes and defends the importance of of how we look at artistic works: images that represent something determinate, while always remaining open to the presentation of something new and different.
artist: “The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question” (Joyce 185). ‘What the beautiful is’ does not refer to what objects are considered be beautiful, but to the elements that are involved in calling s...