MCA, Tate and Qantas Announce Eight New Australian Artwork
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
[Sydney, 3 April 2018] Elizabeth Ann Macgregor OBE, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Left: Juan Davila, Love, 1988, Tate and Art Australia (MCA) and Dr Maria Balshaw CBE, Director of Tate, today announced the Museum of acquisition of eight new artworks in their International Joint Acquisition Program for Contemporary Art contemporary Australian art, supported by Qantas. Now in its third year, the partnership Australia, donated through the Australian between Tate, MCA and Qantas continues to enrich both museums’ holdings of Australian art, Government’s Cultural helping Australian artists reach global audiences. Gifts Program by the artist and with the Ranging from an early moment in the history of Australian contemporary art through to recent support of the Qantas Foundation, 2018 work, the depth and diversity of Australian art practice is represented in this third round of acquisitions. It includes works by artists who forged new ground in Australian contemporary art, Right: Maria paving the way for others, through to that of younger artists. Fernanda Cardoso, On the Origins or Art – Actual Size II Maratus The early works of Maria Fernanda Cardoso and Rosalie Gascoigne reveal how everyday Volans Abdomen, readymade materials can be transformed into extraordinary poetic assemblages and sculptures. 2016, Tate and the Museum of Juan Davila’s Love (1988) painting is a prescient commentary on the AIDS crisis as a global Contemporary Art phenomenon, whilst his also acquired massive Yawar Fiesta (1998) explores the impact of colonial Australia, purchased policies on indigenous peoples through satiric intertwining of contemporary politics and art jointly with funds provided by the historical references including European history painting, Latin American modernism, American Qantas Foundation pop and Aboriginal art. 2018 Also included in this round of acquisitions are Blue Reflex (1966), an early painting by Ian Burn, considered one of the key voices in the development of conceptual art in Australia, and Kangaroo Blank, a 1988 painting by Imants Tillers, whose work from the 1980s, along with that of Davila, is part of an international dialogue about appropriation and postmodernism in painting. To date – halfway through the five-year program – twenty works by twelve artists and artist partnerships have been acquired for the Collections of Tate and MCA, a grouping of artworks t which reveal and convey something of the complexities of Australian society, as well as the richness Left: Imants Tillers, of contemporary art practice across the country. Kangaroo Blank, 1988, Tate and Museum of The acquisitions are by artists from a range of cultural backgrounds, including prominent Aboriginal Contemporary Art artists Vernon Ah Kee, Richard Bell, Gordon Bennett and Judy Watson. These, along with works by Australia, purchased artists such as Juan Davila, Peter Kennedy and John Hughes, Helen Johnson and Imants Tillers, pose jointly with funds provided by the difficult questions about Australian history and society, or in the case of Susan Norrie’s video work Qantas Foundation Transit (2011), focus our attention on international events and their impact upon the ways we think 2018 about the world. Right: Rosalie Gascoigne, Just as significantly, the first three years of the program saw acquisitions across a variety of media, Habitation, 1984, from video through to painting and printmaking, reflecting the expanded material basis of Tate and Museum of contemporary art. Contemporary Art Australia, donated through the MCA Director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor OBE, comments: “The acquired works are part of an Australian international artistic dialogue, as are the artists – some having been born, lived for significant Government’s Cultural Gifts periods of time, or worked and exhibited extensively outside of Australia. They connect with related Program by Martin experiences represented by other artists internationally, highlighting both the particularities of Gascoigne, and with Australian society and culture, as well as its interconnectedness with global forces.” the support of the Qantas Foundation, 2018 Maria Balshaw, Director of Tate, says: “The variety and quality of each year’s joint acquisitions show how successful partnerships like this can be. Working with the MCA has enabled us to learn from their expertise as well as to build on our own. With the support of Qantas, we are beginning to transform the way Tate can represent the exciting contributions made to contemporary art in this region.” Qantas Group Chief Customer Officer, Vanessa Hudson, concludes: “As Australia’s national carrier, we are extremely proud to support this unique acquisition program that helps showcase the best of Australian art to the world and which also contributes to reshaping the understanding about contemporary Australian art internationally.” Media images accessible here. Media Contacts: Myriam Conrie. P: (02) 9245 2434 / 0429 572 869. E: [email protected] Stephanie Pirrie. P: (02) 9245 2417 / 0430 517 722. E: [email protected] About the International Joint Acquisition Program Made possible through a $2.75 million corporate gift from the Qantas Foundation, this ground-breaking collaboration announced in 2015 is enabling an ambitious five-year joint program through which a range of major artworks by contemporary Australian artists will be acquired for the collections of MCA and Tate, owned and displayed by both institutions. About Ian Burn and Blue Reflex (1966) Ian Burn was born in 1939 in Geelong, Victoria. He lived and worked in Sydney up until he died from an accidental drowning incident at Pretty Beach, NSW, in 1993. He was a conceptual artist, curator and writer who spent the first part of his career working in London and New York, where he worked with a collaborative group who produced the publication Art-Language. Returning to Australia in 1977, Burn became involved in the Art Workers Union, a political and social platform that championed artists’ rights and helped change the landscape and expectations under which artists worked in Australia. Key exhibitions include The Field, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (1968); 1968, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (1995); and Artists Think: The Late Works of Ian Burn, MCA, Sydney (1996). Burn also curated many important exhibitions in Australia looking at the relationship between art, language and politics. The surface of Blue Reflex (1966) recalls the glossy paint job on a car, transposed from the aerodynamic curves of a speeding vehicle to the still surface of a painting in a gallery. In his use of automotive paint applied by airbrush to a plywood base, Burn has purposely created an object that betrays no sign of the hand of the artist. Unlike his previous monochrome works, Blue Reflex eliminates the textured weave of canvas and the grooved strokes of the brush. Its shiny, mirror-like finish reflects the environment around it, and those who view it. Glimpsing themselves in the patina of the high-gloss paint, the viewer momentarily becomes a part of the artwork. In this use of reflectiveness, Burn expands upon the modernist idea that an artwork should be about the conditions of its own production. Kazimir Malevich manifested this idea when he created the monochrome and non-objective painting, Black Square, in 1913. Rather than reflecting an external reality, Malevich’s painting redefined art as an object that could be concerned only with itself, with its own medium and materiality. Similarly, in Blue Reflex, Burn argues for a critical awareness about what art is, how it can be perceived and what role and function it plays in society. About Maria Fernanda Cardoso, and Corn Cob Coil (1989), Corn Drawings (1985-89) and On the Origins of Art I-II (2016) Maria Fernanda Cardoso was born in Bogota, Colombia in 1963, and currently lives and works Sydney. She employs unconventional and organic materials ranging from preserved starfish and emu feathers to live fleas in the creation of her sculptural works, finding inspiration in the natural world. Her work explores the natural world and its interdependence with the human world through the use of plant and animal materials in sculptures, installations and videos. She has exhibited widely through numerous solo and group exhibitions. In 2003, she had her first solo show at the MCA, Zoomorphia: Maria Fernanda Cardoso, and in that same year, her work was selected to be shown at the 50th Venice Biennale, in the Colombian Pavillion. In Corn Cob Coil (1989), Cardoso has threaded hundreds of dried corn cobs on lengths of wire as a vestige of the fertile soil from her home town, Bogota. Her sculptural cables of dried husks evoke the central importance of corn in everyday pre-Hispanic and Hispanic Colombian life and the diversity of economic and cultural uses to which it can be put. Through this choice of material, Cardoso infuses the visual languages of minimalism and conceptualism with a specific reference to her country of origin. Corn Drawings (1985-89) are a documentation of works that have lived through a cycle of growth and decay. Using the gallery as a place of cultivation as well as display, Cardoso ‘grew’ works on paper from corn seed on paper and water, documenting their passage from dried seed to seedling, planted into the shapes of hands and feet, or the letters of the alphabet. In the work, the artist incorporates not only these atmospheric elements of the gallery but also the element of duration: the seeds must sprout in their own time as they transform themselves from potential energy to released energy, growing from one material into another. In On the Origins of Art I—II (2016), Cardoso explores the art forms of the animal world through the mating rituals of a tiny Australian spider, the Maratus, an eight-eyed spider commonly known as the ‘peacock spider’. Like peacocks, the male Maratus has developed a complex system of courtship display that exhibits its prowess as a dancer, musician and visual artist.