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| KOALAS, KANGAROOS, SURFERS AND “THE LORD OF THE RINGS” Alise Tīfentāle It's hard to describe Australia and New Zealand as truly exotic lands in the context of art: the traditional art of the Australian Aborigines and the Maoris in New Zealand can be counted as ethnographic material, while all other culture and civilisation was created by immigrants from the Old World (including the convicts sent from Britain in the 18th and 19th century - something that people still joke about). The physical distance and the colonial status that has existed almost up to the present allows Europeans to regard Australia and New Zealand as absolutely (rather than relatively) provincial, as completely out in the sticks and truly the end of the earth, marked on the map of contemporary pop culture only as the birthplace of Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave. Things have changed somewhat since the appearance of that wildly popular and impressive trilogy directed by Peter Jackson - the fantasy film masterpiece "The Lord of the Rings" (2001-2003, based on British author J.R.R.Tolkein's novel, which was actually written mostly during the Second World War). It was New Zealand that could furnish real-world locations to serve as the backdrop for the adventures of the protagonists in Tolkein's fantasy world. It seems the film is the best-ever advertisement for New Zealand, portraying it as one big tourist attraction. And it's quite possible that a large section of filmgoers get the impression that in New Zealand you really can come face to face with hobbits, elfs, orcs and so on. | |
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| In view of all this, I was very curious to see an exhibition with the intriguing title: "High Tide. New Currents in Contemporary Art from Australia and New Zealand". The exhibition, curated by Magda Kardasz and Simon Rees, was shown at the beginning of the year in Warsaw, and from 2 June to 13 August at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius. Of course, it's easy to take a sceptical view of exhibitions where the country the artists live in is chosen as the main element. Does it have any significance? But in a way it does, since how else can artists with names that don't sound European, or from colleges that are not on the prestigious list, enter the contemporary art scene? It's not for nothing that, from time to time, art from one particular region comes into fashion. After all, we ourselves have experienced a situation of this kind, when all that was post-Soviet suddenly held an interest for Western theoreticians and collectors, and on this same basis, contemporary art from Iran, India and elsewhere has suddenly become unexpectedly modern, experiencing its "15 minutes of fame". Celebrity corner As you might expect at this kind of exhibition, several internationally known figures have been included on the list of artists. And just as predictable is the absence, at such promotional exhibitions, of the most recent and most outstanding works by the invited art celebrities (since these have most likely already been purchased and are now in some museum or private collection, or are waiting for a buyer in a commercial gallery). One of the first works seen by the viewer was Patricia Piccinini's hyperrealist object "Gameboy Advanced" (2002), where we have two child figures leaning against a wall playing a "Gameboy" game: it's only that their faces are too aged for their childlike physique. Then we had the video installation "Swell" (2000-2002), also by Piccinini. Within a small, delimited space, we see a projection on three walls of waves on the water and a swaying horizon - an impression as if the video camera had been thrown into the middle of a stormy ocean and were being mercilessly tossed by the waves. The wave motion was shown markedly slowed down, the water surface appearing as a viscous, unfamiliar substance with a will, personality and intentions of its own. Regardless of whether the water was actually filmed or digitally constructed, it is the slow motion that actually played the main role: this effect, something you could never see with the unaided eye, changes the essence of the simplest, most ordinary thing. Piccinini's work has been shown at biennials and art fairs, and reproduced countless times in art journals, and her name has been written into the history of art in the same chapter as Ron Mueck and various other "wax figure" artists. It's only that, prior to this exhibition, it seems I hadn't paid enough attention to the fact that Patricia Piccinini lives and works in Melbourne, while Mueck was born in Australia, but moved to Britain. Interesting, isn't it? Tracy Moffatt (born in Australia, lives in New York) works with video and photography. In one of her most recent works, "Under the sign of Scorpio", a series of digitally reworked photographs, the artist has created self-portraits by exploring the images of various famous people born under the sign of Scorpio. In this exhibition we see her work "Up in the sky" (1997): 25 decoratively arranged black and white offset prints of photographs, each photograph in a wooden frame. The pictures showed various inexplicable shots from a non-existent road movie. Likewise regularly featured in the catalogues of contemporary art fairs is the work of Callum Morton (born in Canada, lives in Australia). Morton's sphere of interest is the study of urban settings, in the form of models, as well as both miniature and sizeable installations, and photos. Morton plays around with elements of the contemporary globalised, impersonal environment. In his hands, a building designed by Mies van der Rohe turns into a terrace house, while the most ordinary multistorey hotel becomes a lofty temple, and so on. Morton will be representing Australia at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. For the exhibition in Vilnius, he'd prepared a special "architectural happening" in collaboration with Danius Kesminas, a Lithuanian artist from Australia, which was intended to reflect links between Vilnius and Melbourne. On the day I visited the exhibition, the only evidence of the happening was a sound installation, the idea behind which I wasn't able to decipher. A brief interlude For the "High Tide" exhibition, the curators had selected works by 34 artists, most of which constituted run of the mill contemporary art, not particularly significant or interesting in its own right. Cosmopolitan and standardised. As with Nike trainers, for example: it makes no difference what continent, country or city you buy them in. Actually, it's expected that artists in Australia and New Zealand (as in Latvia) will aim and strive to be "like artists in London, Berlin and New York". It's only that, by doing so, they immediately become boring. At the same time, the exceptions do stand out better against this background. Thus, for example, beyond all good and evil, and quite literally irresistible, is the work "Jim McMurtry", by Michael Parekowhai (who lives in New Zealand): an enormous inflatable hare (or rabbit), dozing in a carefree pose in the middle of the room. This figure, measuring 3½ x 5 x 4 m, was originally made for the 2004 Gwangju Biennale in Korea. The work is also convenient for transporting from continent to continent: when the exhibition's over, the hare can be folded up and put in one's pocket. Somewhat reminiscent of those inflatable attractions that inhabit the park landscapes of Riga in summer, McMurtry is at least a superbly hand-crafted piece. An excursion in a souvenir shop But the best is yet to come: several works reflecting local colour, offering something that might be dubbed exotic in Europe. However, even these works contained only as much exotica as we see in a souvenir shop - although, to me, this seems significant in itself, since it does appear to reflect nuances of thinking that justify a visit to a pageant of art from the region of Australia and New Zealand. Who'd have thought that artists living in Australia have an interest in playing around with kangaroos and koalas? Louise Weaver, an artist living in Melbourne, draws the viewer into her world of handicrafts, a paradise of knitting and crochet. Proudly displayed in a glass box, like some kind of Ferrari model, is a red kangaroo adorned with beads and flitters. In another corner of the room we see a small, cosy scene from a world of crocheted little animals, with a miniature projector representing the sun. Another artist from Australia, Kathy Temin, presents photos and video of young people dressed up in costumes who imitate koalas mating. This work, shown in New York, at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre during the 2001 residence, has travelled various exhibition halls in Europe and the USA, starting with the Manifesta 1 Contemporary Art Biennial (1996). And, of course, how could we do without "The Lord of the Rings"! This phenomenon of 20th/21st century culture was the main focus of the work "Mythopoeia - there and back", by New Zealand artist Daniel Malone. The original version of this work was shown in Auckland in 2004, in combination with a film festival "Forgotten Silver", curated by Malone. Malone takes an ironic look at New Zealand's new image as the backdrop for "The Lord of the Rings", playing on the film's role in the life of the local people, as an element of pop culture and a brand, and the possible influence on their dignity and self-esteem (something that's hard for us to gauge from a distance). There are various imitation souvenirs and curiosities from the film, warning signs from the film set and a photocopied poster attesting that New Zealand has received an award as the "Best supporting country in a motion picture", rephrasing the Oscar award for best supporting actor. And finally, my personal favourite. We had the koalas, kangaroos and "The Lord of the Rings". So, what's left? Surfing! Youth films and TV series glorifying the healthy, suntanned body, adrenalin and a fetish for extreme sports: the dream of the global surfer lifestyle, which also includes the Australian beaches, so perfect for surfing. Before I had time to consider all this, I was presented with a video projection of a bikini-clad beauty down on her knees in a bedroom, using a hand saw to saw in half a surfboard, which made a very distinctive and appalling sound. After a brief struggle, she succeeds. The girl gets to her feet and, as she leaves the shot, hands the saw to the next beauty, who comes into the bedroom with a new surfboard and repeats the process. In the next sequence, two youths compete as to who'll saw through their surfboard quickest. And so on... All the surfboards have the word "Dead" inscribed in big letters. This was the work "Dead Board" (2004-2005), by Brisbaine-resident artist Scott Redford. Perhaps this Australian has finally had enough of the rest of the world regarding his country as a land of inane, empty-headed surfers? The author himself explains that the main idea behind the work was to ridicule the surfing lifestyle and the surfboard as an eroticised fetish. Redford works with video, photography, painting and other media, and he's happy to flirt with various taboos, gay pornography included, deliberately mixing artefacts from high and low culture, and makes free use in his art of anything that comes to hand. All in all, one might say that the only thing missing in "High Tide" was some reference to that Australian cult film "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" (1994, director: Stephan Elliott). Then we'd have seen everything that we in our continent associate with Australia and New Zealand. I doubt whether any of the works in this exhibition are going to become world-scale cult items, but at least "Priscilla" has not lost its significance in the local context: scheduled for October in Sydney is the premiere of a musical based on the film. | |
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