20th Biennale of Sydney 'The Future Is Already Here - It's Just Not Evenly Distributed'

Words: Jonathan Rae

Images: Jonathan Rae

It's the 20th time the internationally acclaimed Biennale of Sydney has run.

The show is curated by Stephanie Rosenthal and presented at a bunch of places around central Sydney known as 'embassies'.

The works on show encompass everything from found objects, video installations, kinetic sculpture, performance 'art' to more traditional mediums such as painting.

Rosenthal's concept for the curation of exhibition was to assign each embassy an idea of thought. For example, the Cockatoo Island venue was assigned 'Embassy of the Real' and the Carriageworks venue 'Embassy of Disappearance'.

This Biennale may be big on thought, but the ideas translate poorly in the work on show. Although each location is assigned an idea or concept, there appears to be no cohesive message or aesthetic at each location besides what we are told we are supposed to feel through vague didactics.

There are a lot of Instagram-bait works that rely on scale - like that of Lee Bul's installation that can only be described as a deflated looking circus tent mixed in with some hot air balloons and fairy lights (a far cry from her previous intricate and complex works) or William Forsythe's pendulum room. Otherwise, a lot of the work fails to stand out.

The banality of the curation is even more amplified on Cockatoo Island and at Carriageworks where the gallery space and architecture is often more interesting than the work on offer. The pieces on show often rely too heavily on buzzword loaded didactic panels and fail to convey the ideas the curator had hoped to express. It falls into something akin to university student work, loaded with supposed concepts, unloaded with presentation and execution.

Basically, the banality of the works and ideas leave the viewer with a rather flat feeling at the 20th Biennale of Sydney. If this is what the idea of the future feels like, I want off this ride.

Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei at National Gallery Victoria

Words/Images (35mm film): Saskia Edwards

There’s something kind of overwhelming about being in the presence of great artwork – that pangs you in the sternum and shortens your breath. You know that you’re looking at something that some exceptional person, who really sees things, created. That’s certainly true of Ai Weiwei and Andy Warhol at the National Gallery of Victoria. In a way, it’s oppressive because you want to absorb it and appreciate it all.

However, this is probably truer of Ai Weiwei’s works. Of course, Andy Warhol’s commentary on consumerism is strengthened by the fact that his own works were mass produced. But once you’ve seen his same pieces three, four, five times, it doesn’t feel very interesting. It’s kind of like taking a photo in front of the Eiffel Tower. In comparison, Ai Weiwei’s skill and aesthetic is much more intriguing. Plus it’s imbued with the political activism that Weiwei is known for. Overall, Weiwei’s works are much more dynamic and compel contemplation in a way that Warhol’s no longer do.

Throughout the exhibition, it’s hard not to question why these two artists were put together.  There are seemingly obvious, but meaningless, links – both artists look at Mao, flowers or mug shots. There doesn’t really feel like a point to the pairing. Sometimes it’s interesting to see the contrast between their treatments of a subject. However, I don’t think either artist enhanced each other.

What I think I took away from the exhibition was a greater appreciation for Weiwei. You really get the sense that he’s a great artist. His work shows his broad range of interests (sculpture, photography, painting), his clever approach and his cunning examination of China’s politics and culture. But more than that, he’s brave. Ai Weiwei is brave in a way that Andy Warhol never was. He stands chest ballooned against one of the most authoritarian governments in the world and his work doesn’t bow to the trends of the art world. If you walk away with anything from this exhibition, it’s the understanding of the unrelenting and humble fearlessness of Ai Weiwei. Yeah, that’s bravery.

Julian Meagher 'Alone in the Sun' at Edwina Corlette Gallery

Words: Saskia Edwards

Images: Jonathan Rae

I think everyone has had a moment where they become conscious, and feel very acutely, that they are a product of their parents. Maybe it’s your same fear of cats as your mother, or that you like your toast slightly burnt like your father, or that you’ll always vote Labor because they told you that’s what’s right. 

But more than these obvious, more tangible things, your parents can deeply and permanently instil in you your values, opinions and beliefs. And it’s only when you're spraying your neighbour’s Tabby with your garden hose do you realise it.

But what about their parents? And your parents’ parents’ parents? How has that influenced you?

Well, that’s what painter Julian Meagher is looking at. 

“I think we can all see traits of ourselves in our mum and dad and, then I’m looking at further, well they’ve obviously got their parents in them as well,” he told me.

“We all must inherit something and as a nation, we have these shared traits as well - our love of drinking, our love of the beach, our identity, what makes us who we are?

“And I think as you get older, you start to look back and ask, ‘Why am I, who I am? Why do I have these values? And why do I react in these ways?’”

The hero piece of this series, ‘Alone In The Sun’, is a shadowy image of a group of turn-of-the-century women. They pose for a photo in an austere style with seemingly transparent faces. It has the same feeling as Jane Campion’s ‘The Piano’. It’s eerie and also distant. These women are Julian’s ancestors. 

“I was at christmas dinner and I looked at the wall and there was the really powerful ghost-like image of these women from the early 1900s and I said, ‘who’s this?’, and she [Julian’s mother] said, ‘It’s your great-great grandma who lived out in the bush’.

“I’d never seen this image and they were so ghostly, it was such a powerful image.”

Julian also looks specifically at the relationship between drinking in Australia and our ancestry. 

“I started looking at broader things around masculinity and Australian identity years ago with drinking culture and things because I like painting bottles.”

In this series there are paintings of bottles, some fallen, others acting as vases for native Australian flowers. They are symbols for our uniquely Australian relationship with alcohol.

“In other countries, for example in Italy, if you get too drunk, you dishonour the family, in Australia the more drunk you get, the more honour you bring.

“Our Prime Minister holds the record for sculling a beer, our famous cricketer David Boon holds the record for drinking 52 tinnies on a flight to London. They’re our heroes.

“It’s very engrained in our culture because Australia’s very isolated, it’s all about how tough you are, how stoic you are.”

It’s worth noting here, that Julian hasn’t always been an artist. In fact, he’s still a registered doctor. 

“The switch is easy, having a career as an artist is the hard part.

“I think it’s way harder to be an artist than to be a doctor to be honest.

“To keep creating the works, it’s such an unstable career. Art is very difficult financially, particularly in early years and it’s a very, very tough road and it’s quite a solitary thing.”

His works are influenced by his medical career. His painting is very clinical. He’s “no wild, crazy artist”. And it is evident in his clean, precise works, that really do examine history, drinking and identity.

So, are we ‘Alone in the Sun’? Really, we’re not alone. We’re the combination of thousands of ancestors, people we’ll never know, but who have shaped us.

Slavs and Tatars' 'Mirrors for Princes' at the Institute of Modern Art

Words: Saskia Edwards

Images: Jonathan Rae

When you walk into the ‘Mirrors for Princes’ exhibition by the art collective Slavs and Tatars you’re surrounded by a cacophony of voices. There are six different languages marbling together, including the Aboriginal language Yuggera. They’re coming from mirrored speakers dispersed around a luxuriously carpeted room. In fact, the voices are reading the Kutadgu Bilig, written in the 11th century by a Turkic author. It’s a part of medieval literature and a form called ‘mirrors for princes’. Apparently, they can best be described as self-help books for incoming royals. But the texts still raise issues relevant today - including the separation of church and state.

The second part of the exhibition is a dark surreal room with evocative luminous sculptures: glass tongues, long blonde hair, combs. It’s meant to be a comment on the concern around grooming expressed in the ‘mirrors for princes’. And it does create an unsettling feeling of intimacy and fetishisation.

The Slavs and Tatars collective is interesting in itself. They fuse together world cultures, particularly European and Asian areas. They started out nearly a decade ago. Since then, they’ve produced exhibitions, books and lecture performances everywhere from MoMA to the Pompidou. 

Enough talk, take a look:

/APT8/ The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial at the Qld Gallery of Modern Art

Words: Saskia Edwards 

Images: Jonathan Rae

“One thing that was really apparent to me and also very beautiful were the amount of saffron robes.

“It was almost as if the landscape was orange, that you couldn’t go to any parts of South East Asia without seeing this colour orange in your periphery and in your vision.”

That’s according to Cambodian-born American artist Anida Yoeu Ali, who’s described as one of the ‘rockstars’ of the APT8.

Her work at the exhibition centres on Cambodia as she takes on the persona of the Buddhist Bug.

Anida Yoeu Ali dresses as the Buddhist Bug in a long spiraling tube with feet sprouting out at its tail end. It’s somewhat Alice in Woderlandian - like the blue caterpillar. Of course, the fabric is that same vivid saffron that’s so evocative of Asia, Cambodia and Buddhism.

While being distinctly Buddhist, the bug also wears a sort-of hijab. As Anida says, it references the “Islam that my parents carried back to the U.S. with them that they preserved for me and then my rediscovery of Cambodian Buddhism”.

Anida left Cambodia when she was five years old. She lived through the Khmer Rouge, a period of Communist rule in Cambodia remembered for genocide. And this has resulted in dysphoria for Anida, with her life riddled with “war and the displacement and the refugee identity”.

However, Anida is not dwelling on the past.

“I felt this very palpable energy among my colleagues among the artist community in which there felt like a critical mass in which the artist community was finally addressing the present moment and not just locked in the time, in referencing the past, the past trauma. 

“So to me it was a really exciting part and I knew we had something special that intersected with the reign of progress and modernisation and urbanisation that’s happening at a tremendous rate in Cambodia while the level of poverty increased.”

Beyond a performance piece dressed as the Buddhist Bug, Anida presented a film as part of the exhibition. It follows the bug for a night in Phnom Penh.

She begins at a carnival where the rides drench her in neon light. And then she rides around the busy streets of the city, her head poking through the roof of a took-took. She goes past a market and to a nightclub. There she finds young Cambodian women - some “empowered”, others not - dancing in mini skirts and tank tops with old white men.

All of this captures something very elemental and visceral about Cambodia. On one hand it seems to show the progression of Cambodia and how it has been thrust into the luminous modern world. But also it reveals how the nation is still growing. People are still largely on bikes and scooters. There’s an insidious invasion of Western culture. And, in a way, it still has that wild untamed beauty of Asia - where food is cooked on the side of the road, traffic is monstrous and anything could happen.

As a whole, APT8 has a great focus on the Pacific. There’s an abundance of oceanic art. Often, it’s in a contemporary style, with live tattooing, performance art and photography. But it’s all weaved together with traditional icons. Plus, on the opening weekend there were a few people in ethnic dress - often part of installations - wandering around the gallery.

Of course, there’s more at APT8 than a person can really absorb. But take time, it’s worth it.

Niqui Toldi’s Unbeing exhibition at Junky Comics: girls and anxiety

Words: Saskia Edwards

Images: Jonathan Rae

In Niqui Toldi’s illustrations there’re lots of girls - short hair, long hair, smoking, angry, pierced, bound.

But really, all these girls are Niqui. They’re like a self-portrait - a manifestation of how she feels and is. And they’re a way of grappling with her own life and self-identity. 

She says: “it’s just sort of a way for me to deal with how I’m feeling internally because I’m not always good at externalising how I feel to other people.

“It’s sort of a way for me to separate myself from being too vulnerable at the same time. It’s being vulnerable but without being completely vulnerable.

“Because it’s not always necessarily completely obvious that they are almost me.”

The girls seem sad at times, self-destructive, lost, with hands anxiously clasping at the ground or onto a cigarette or a match or a scalpel. And they do really display anxiety quite well - where nothing bad is happening immediately but you’re trapped sitting there half naked smoking and feeling helpless with a whirlwind in your brain.

This ‘Unbeing’ series looks at the last year of Niqui’s life. 

“A lot of things happened - a relationship I had of four years had just ended, my grandmother who lives alone and I’m her only blood relative... had a stroke so I’m her main contact.

“Then I was getting more responsibilities at work and it was the first year I’d been medicated and properly diagnosed for my anxiety.

“So it was a huge collection of all these things happening in the one year.

“I just started to deal with it - started drawing it.”

But it’s not that easy. Putting on a solo exhibition was a big deal for Niqui. 

“Because of my anxious nature and shyness I’ve always been really reluctant and I almost hold myself back.

“So this is the first time that I’ve really let myself put myself out there.

“Even last night at the launch, it was exciting and I was nervous and people had started coming in.

“And maybe five people had come in that I didn’t know and I just started crying up the back, which is really ridiculous because this is a really good thing, this is a fun time.”

Of course it went really well. People sardined themselves into Junky Comics, admiring what I guess they thought were imaginary sirens. 

If you really think about it, Niqui’s works remind you of the true purpose of art. They show that out of anxiety, self-doubt and heart ache you can make something. And it can be beautiful.

Robert MacPherson 'The Painter's Reach' at GOMA

Words: Saskia Edwards

Images: Jonathan Rae

At times while walking through Robert MacPherson’s ‘The Painter’s Reach’ show, you feel like you could be at your local grocer, or driving through a small town somewhere like the Granite Belt. 

The exhibition revels in the everyday. There’re signs with mundane and sometimes surreal messages splashed onto them - always in the bold, imposing and rusticated style of MacPherson. Many of the works have a dry, rough feeling about them, much like the nature of processed wood and some of Australia’s landscape. And objects of everyday life are celebrated like benches, shirts, dry cleaning.

More than 40 years of MacPherson’s career is explored in this retrospective. It looks at his process, obsession with the medium of paint and social commentary. That includes a reflection on the history of “miracle drug” M & B 693 to treat gonorrhoea.

But throughout Robert MacPherson’s works there seems to be something inherently, and evocatively Australian. Each of his works conjure up a memory, understanding and distinct feeling of what Australian life is.