Dark Heart: Adelaide Biennial There Are Many People Who May find This Year’S Adelaide Biennial, with Its Title Dark Heart, Foreboding
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Dark Heart: Adelaide Biennial There are many people who may find this year’s Adelaide Biennial, with its title Dark Heart, foreboding. This is, however, in line with the Art Gallery of South Australia director Nick Mitzevich’s belief that the “underbelly of contemporary culture” needs to be explored. By Jonathan Thomson Caroline Rothwell, Cascade, 2013, UV stable structural PVC, 252 x 200 cm. © Caroline Rothwell. Courtesy the Artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne. Photograph: Jenni Carter. 42 ASIAN ART NEWS MAY/JUNE 2014 delaide, the beautiful capital of South Australia, is ringed with parklands and blessed with a Mediterranean climate and a delightful hinterland of rolling Ahills, tranquil woodlands, extensive vine- yards, and superb beaches. It is renowned for the range and quality of its wines and fresh produce, which in turn support ex- cellent restaurants and a wealth of niche gourmet food producers. One of its main boulevards, North Terrace, is possibly the finest stretch of civic architecture any- where in the world. The noted art his- torian Lord Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) once justifiably called it “the nicest small city in the world.” However, another com- mentator, who as a resident might have a more perceptive insight, describes it just as eloquently as “the sick fuck capital of the world” because of its seemingly very high numbers of deviant sex crimes, child disappearances, and grisly murders. The most notorious example in recent years was the series of murders that resulted in Ian Strange, Landed, 2014, installation. Photograph: Jonathan Thomson. bodies being deposited in barrels in a dis- used bank vault in the nearby small town that of the immediately preceding cen- Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula of Snowtown. turies, picked up the term again during are characterized by gloomy settings such This bleak background has in- the Italian Renaissance. Giorgio Vasari as ruined castles, mysterious violent and formed the theme of the current Adelaide (1511–1574) was the first to label this ar- supernatural events, and a general atmo- Biennial exhibition (March 1 – May 11, chitecture “Gothic,” to suggest that it was sphere of degeneration and decay. 2014), curated by the Art Gallery of South barbaric. Death is central to the gothic Australia director Nick Mitzevich. This is Just as the barbarian Goths were imagination but the gothic vision of death the first time that a director of the gallery the dark “other” of classical civilization, is profoundly ambiguous. In her room has taken on the role of curator of the in the 17th century Age of Enlightenment for Dark Heart, Victorian artist Julia de Adelaide Biennial. Mitzevich has titled that was also known as the Age of Reason, Ville has created an extraordinary vision his exhibition Dark Heart: he is on record the entire medieval period was retrospec- of a child’s nursery. Her black-and-white- as saying that he wanted to “explore the tively envisioned as the “Dark Ages” and striped bedroom is full of stuffed toys, but underbelly of contemporary culture.” characterized by religious fanaticism and unlike the commercial soft toy animals The result is a darkly gothic ex- superstition in which an irrational fear that occupy every other child’s room, hibition. Gothic is a term that evokes of witchcraft, sorcery, and Satanism ran de Ville uses real taxidermied animals images of death, destruction, and decay. rampant. Gothic literature of terror in- dressed in an array of exotic costumes. It implies something that is dark, cluding such classics as Mary Shelly’s The display includes an alpaca rocking macabre, morbid, menacing, and horse, a number of tiny piglets on pedes- monstrous. Ironically, it is tals with beaded skins and lace wings, a its negative connotations cat posed in an eerily human-like manner that have made it such a and dressed in black Victorian finery, and popular symbol of re- a cast-iron cot that holds a dead rat and bellion for youth sub- a porcelain doll dressed in a christening cultures. The word gown. A mobile made with a blackbird itself derives from the on a twig and bejeweled animal hearts Latin Gothicus, which and birds eggs rotates slowly above means of or pertaining them. to the Goths, being the Outside the nomadic warrior tribes in- entrance to the gal- habiting the forests of northern lery a burning subur- Europe in the 3rd century. The ban home appears to Romans regarded the Germanic h a v e fallen from the sky tribes such as the Goths and Vandals as to become embedded in the foot- barbarians and this image was definitive- path. Modeled by artist Ian Strange on his ly established when the Visigoths sacked own childhood home in Perth, it offers Rome. Henceforth the Goths became passers-by a taste of the theater that notorious for being wild and danger- Julia deVille, Victorian Cat Mummy, 2012, cat, awaits them inside the gallery. A lamp on ous and carrying death and destruction glass, linen, sterling silver, antique lace, Victorian the porch is left on night and day as if to before them. Artists and architects, who baby boots, Victorian baby’s cape, 15 x 77 x 60 cm. deter burglars, or to suggest that, despite © Julia deVille. Courtesy the Artist, Sophie Gannon preferred the architectural forms of clas- Gallery, Melbourne and Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane. appearances, somebody is at home. sical antiquity from Greece and Rome to Photograph: Terence Bogue. The use of black is of course de MAY/JUNE 2014 ASIAN ART NEWS 43 rigueur in an exhibition of this type. Sally Smart uses it as a room-size chalkboard where various jottings seem to identify the linkages between the cut collages, photographs, and prints that comprise her installation exploring the body. Tony Garifalakis uses it to partially obliterate the faces of 85 world leaders, transform- ing some of the most visible power bro- kers on the planet into a cadre of faceless men. Dale Frank uses it to add a dramatic element to his abstract paintings made up of swirls and eddies of varnish. Perhaps the most effective and novel use of black is by Caroline Rothwell who makes large format “paper-cuts” out of sheets on heavy-duty PVC. Unlike traditional paper- cuts, Rothwell does not remove the excess material entirely, but leaves it dangling in a series of concentric tendrils that drape the surface of the work and accumulate in piles on the floor beneath it. In what might be a reference to the environment, Sally Smart, The Choreography of Cutting, (Spring) (detail), 2013–14, installation, mixed media, dimensions variable. © Sally Smart. Courtesy the Artist and Breenspace, Sydney and Greenaway Art Gallery, they suggest simultaneously the possibil- Adelaide. Photograph: Anthony Whelan. ity and the impossibility of returning this lished in 1990, is staged by the Art Gallery umental through marble. His Someone material to its original state. of South Australia to coincide with the died trying to have a life like mine refer- A similar sentiment is conveyed by biennial Adelaide Festival of Arts. It is ences an incident in 2013 when 28 life Brook Andrew who appropriates images dedicated solely to presenting contempo- jackets were found washed up on a beach of Aboriginal people made by a 19th- rary Australian art. Adelaide’s dark past is of the Cocos and Keeling islands off of century naturalist and represents them one strand of the Australian psyche that the coast of North Western Australia. No as large-format silkscreen prints printed is probed in this thoughtful and engag- boats were ever reported missing and no in black on a glittering gold background. ing exhibition but there are other dark distress calls were ever made and so no The intention is perhaps to give these aspects of it that are examined in less search was ever undertaken but it was works the same sense of majesty as reli- overtly Gothic ways. thought by some concern groups that gious icons. Traditional Aboriginal work these must have come from a stricken is represented by the Kulata Tiuta Project, lex Seton is a virtuoso sculptor vessel carrying illegal asylum seekers. which presents an array of hand-carved who makes exquisitely carved The truth will never be known, spears made by men from the Amata marble objects. He flaunts the but when Seton crafted his 28 utterly life- community. These works are suspended supremely difficult qualities of like lifejackets in solid marble with nylon from the ceiling and dare visitors to walk his chosen material with insou- webbing straps, his use of metaphor beneath their densely packed points. ciantA ease. He is a realist sculptor who could not have been clearer. The issue The Adelaide Biennial, estab- transforms everyday objects into the mon- of asylum seekers has galvanized public Above left: Tony Garifalakis, Untitled 13 (from the series Mob Rule), 2013, 85 enamel on offset print, 27 x 19.5 cm each. © Tony Garifalakis. Courtesy the Artist and Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide. Above right: Brook Andrew, Australia I, 2013, mixed media on Belgian linen, 200 x 300 x 5 cm © Brook Andrew. Courtesy the Artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne. 44 ASIAN ART NEWS MAY/JUNE 2014 opinion in Australia in recent placements of works for the decades. Both major politi- Adelaide Biennial. Victorian cal parties share similar views sculptor Brendan Huntley’s about the expulsion of boat ar- quirky figurative ceramic heads rivals but it remains a conten- are brightly colored, deliber- tious issue with many seeing it ately clumsy, naive, engaging, as indicative of a society that and bizarre. He has made them has hardened its heart to the of hand-made, vessel-shaped plight of others.