THE HUMOURS THE HUMOURS This exhibition and catalogue were produced on Kulin Nation land. Monash University Museum of Art acknowledges the Wurundjeri and the Boon Wurrung of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of these lands and waters, and pays respect to their Elders, past and present. Charlotte Day: Foreword 3 Hannah Mathews: Introduction 7 Sophie Knezic: Doubled up: non-coincidence and the comic body 11 Zoë Coombs Marr: On analysing analyses of humour 23 Jarrod Rawlins: My account of the funny-art problem: Lol 27 Gabriel Abrantes 32 Barbara Cleveland 36 Matthew Griffin 38 Mary Reid Kelley with Patrick Kelley 42 Glenn Ligon 46 Mika Rottenberg 52 Artist biographies 55 List of works 59 Acknowledgements 61 1 Foreword Charlotte Day ‘I was only joking’ can be used to defuse But what about the role of humour in the the impact of an uncivil comment, but time of US President Donald Trump? As it hardly ever does. Jokes are often American comedian Maria Bamford has where prejudices find safe harbour, and written: ‘Ironic racism, ironic sexism, ironic it is often the recipient who couldn’t or anything unjust – it all seems terrifying wouldn’t take the joke who is deemed a now. The stakes are too high’.1 Yet there bad sport or wowser – the one with a thin is no doubt that comedy is experiencing skin. The truth of the matter is that jokes, a resurgence in Trump’s America and more often than not, have a serious side. that it provides important rebuttal to a presidency gone awry. Paradoxically, jokes and humour, as well as being the preserve of social aberration, Humour in art has a history, with André are powerful forms of ‘good’ critique, Breton’s Anthology of black humour a challenging power and authority and classic of particular relevance here. It cutting through prejudices and rhetoric. was the Dadaists and Surrealists who They can provide insightful social embraced absurdist humour after World commentary and appraisal. Australia’s War One, followed later by Pop artists and own Kath and Kim – comedians Jane Fluxus. To quote Breton: Turner and Gina Riley – with their extraordinary wordplay and exploration of [Black humour] is the mortal Australian class and ‘aspirationalism’, are enemy of sentimentality, which hard to beat: seems to lie perpetually in wait – sentimentality that always appears Kim: I want to be effluent, Mum, effluent! against a blue background – and Kath: You are effluent, Kim! of a certain short-lived whimsy, which too often passes itself off On a more serious note, humour can be as poetry …2 a way to deal with the most adverse or tragic of circumstances. Jewish humour, Many women artists have used humour to favouring irony and satire, is a perfect maximum effect, too. The no-holds-barred example. Sigmund Freud explained how irony of The Guerilla Girls’s 1988 poster, self-mockery is a coping mechanism The advantages of being a woman artist, against oppression and has played an is a perfect example: important role in empowering and uniting threatened communities. Working without the pressure of success. 3 Being included in revised I would like to thank Hannah Mathews versions of art history. for conceiving of an exhibition of such vision and integrity and for introducing a Not having to undergo the number of artists to Australian audiences embarrassment of being called for the first time through some of their a genius. most significant and captivating projects. Also thank you to Acting Curator Elise The humours has been curated by Routledge, who has given invaluable MUMA Senior Curator Hannah Mathews. support and careful consideration to It has been conceived within a period the realisation of this exhibition and of political turmoil and increasing accompanying publication. disillusionment with many of the structures and beliefs that underpin Thank you to all the artists and the Western democratic capitalism. It looks representative galleries we have worked for new ways to approach the issues that with. Also, a special thank you to confront us, using humour for comedic contributing writers Zoë Coombs Marr, and acerbic critique of the labour market, Sophie Knezic and Jarrod Rawlins, who patriarchy, gender performativity, artificial have each addressed the relationship intelligence and race. between humour, comedy and art from their distinctly different but equally MUMA is very pleased to present The informative and compelling perspectives. humours with Melbourne Festival, and is very grateful to the festival for 1 Maria Bamford in Elise Czajkowski, ‘16 comedians on the role of comedy during a partnering with us to commission for the Trump administration’, Vulture, 19 January exhibition Matthew Griffin’s new body 2017, accessed 29 August 2017, www.vulture. of work. Barbara Cleveland has also com/2017/01/comedians-on-the-role-of- comedy-under-trump.html. made a new commission, Bad timing, 2 André Breton, ‘Lighting rod’ [1939], trans. for this exhibition supported by our Mark Polizzotti, in Anthology of black humour, MUMA Contemporaries. City Lights, San Francisco, 1997, pp.xiii–xix, reproduced in Jennifer Higgie (ed.), The artist’s joke: documents in contemporary art, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2007, p.47. 4 5 6 Introduction Hannah Mathews The humours is an exhibition of recent Spanning moving image, sculpture, works and new commissions by five performance and photography, many of the artists and one artist-led collective works in the exhibition focus on the body that considers the role of humour in as a key site and vehicle for the delivery of contemporary art. Rather than offer a humour. Expanding upon contemporary compendium of funny art, the exhibition art’s engagement with performance and looks at some of the comedic and performativity, these works foreground absurdist strategies that contemporary the body as both tool and social agent. artists use – such as physical delivery, In Mika Rottenberg’s installation, the timing, exaggeration of scale and exaggerated forms of the all-female cast scripted dialogue – to reveal more serious draw attention to the absurdity of gendered concerns about the politics of gender, labour conditions under neo-liberalism. race, labour and technology. Matthew Griffin’s new video commission employs his characteristic institutional Today, humour is understood as a social irreverence to penetrate both the body currency. Our ability to laugh and make and the site of the gallery. Using drone others laugh represents something of and green-screen technology to perform ourselves and manifests our relationships lo-fi magic tricks, he explores, tongue- with our surrounds. But the term ‘humour’ in-cheek, the affect of exposure as used originated in the fifth century BCE as a for comedic outcome. Glenn Ligon’s diagnostic formula in medicine. Identified multi-channel video installation of Richard by the Greek physician Hippocrates, it Pryor’s 1982 performance Live on the referred to the equilibrium of the four Sunset Strip (distributed on album and bodily fluids (blood, black bile, yellow VHS) sees the American comedian muted bile and phlegm) collectively known as in his bestselling performance. Ligon the humours and believed essential to simultaneously highlights the ongoing good health. Several centuries later, this lack of voice given to African Americans model was extended to define the four and focuses our attention on the physical personality temperaments (phlegmatic, dexterity of Pryor’s delivery; a stand-up sanguine, melancholic and bilious), performance with equally comic and which were employed by Shakespeare political punch. and others in their representations of contemporary life. Both models proposed While a sense of humour is an innate an innate connection between the body human quality, comedy is a craft, an art and its behaviours. form, a discipline – something undertaken with skill and knowing. It is also a means through which to raise challenging ideas 7 and socially taboo topics. Indeed, where In addition to the works in the exhibition, would we be in these Trumpian times three texts have been commissioned without the contributions of comedians to consider humour from three distinct and late-night talk show hosts like Tina perspectives. Art critic Sophie Knezic Fey or Stephen Colbert who provide researches the history of humour and, much-needed political critique? Some through a discussion of the artists and argue that this type of commentary is artworks in the exhibition, considers its ineffectual, passive. But what would the enduring relationship to the body via media landscape look like without these the physical metaphor of doubling up. alternative voices striving to pin-point Comedian Zoë Coombs Marr shares her truths in a volley of rhetoric? We can thoughts on the difficulty of analysing consider the political satire of the late humour and what happens when things New Zealand born Australian comedian go wrong on stage. And curator and art John Clarke in this tradition.1 Whether historian Jarrod Rawlins contributes a parody, pastiche, slapstick, joke, stand- meta-text on the problem of writing about up or skit, comedy comes in many the relationship between art and humour. shapes and sizes. It is devised to appeal Referencing the formulaic structure and to our sense of humour and often to tropes found in many a comedy act (and transgress boundaries. art writing), his text shares something of the complexity of a joke explained. Other works in The humours attend to the textual and temporal strategies comedy In The humours, funny and serious uses to unsettle our preconceptions. moments are intricately and inseparably Mary Reid Kelley’s monochromatic film entwined. The exhibition is less a laugh- (made with her partner Patrick Kelley) a-minute proposition than it is a space to recounts the Greek myth of Dionysus, consider how humour can function as a supplanting the text of a well-known fable social interface that liberates us to confront with word plays and puns that re-establish challenging, complex and sometimes the female voice in this male-dominated unspeakable ideas.