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.

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:

Michael Parekowhai: The Promised Land at GOMA

Words: Saskia Edwards

Images: Jonathan Rae

What is the promised land?

It’s that milk and honey elysium. That prophesied paradise. And it’s something that’s written into our history, mythology and self perception.

You’ll find it at the end of 40 years of walking, at the end of the world, at the end of your life or in a new city, a new country, a new person. 

Over the last 26 years of practice Michael Parekowhai has navigated his way through through this idea and how deeply it streams through our sense of identity.

Maud Page is the Deputy Director of Collections and Exhibitions at GOMA and curator of Michael’s current exhibition there ‘The Promised Land’.

“You can look at that [the promised land] historically, you can look at it in terms of political terms now and there’s a lot of that kind of talk happening in political campaigns.

“But essentially, the promised land, because it looks back at history, it really is the way we might also remember our collective history and remember where we’ve come from.

“So for New Zealand and Australia that might encompass someone as famous and known as Captain Cook.”

And Captain Cook certainly acts as a centre piece for the exhibition. A three-metre tall stainless steel Cook sits in the middle of a room. The sculpture reflects the objects on the walls and as an observer, an image of yourself; distorted and warped in his own shape. And it forces the onlooker to meditate on how interwoven this person is with our own identities and perhaps, with a solemn look on Cook’s face, the reality of what attaining the promised land means.

Maud says through this piece Michael is “looking back at history and making a bit of a comment as to how we commemorate and what we commemorate and then looking at the ways we as individuals might be able to position ourselves in that history”.

Scale plays an integral role in the impact of Michael’s work. The sizes he chooses are no accident, they’re perfectly conceived to have the most impact.

“When you’re near it [the statue of Captain Cook], he’s sitting down, so you’re near it you’re almost awed by it but it’s not quite tall enough to be awed,” says Maud.

“And it’s not quite small enough for it to be an intimate relationship.

“So he just finds that exact middle ground.”

As you walk through the exhibition, Michael’s use of blank space is also apparent. He can make you feel like you’re compressed or claustrophobic walking through tight spaces or in a wide, open almost isolating expanse.

“He loves the sense that how we might breathe within the gallery, how we might physically encounter artworks and the effect that that scale has on us,” says Maud.

“So instead of being in his practice previously at a human scale, he might bring them right down to maquette size and create a completely different feeling.

“Or he might upsize some of the things that we’ve only ever seen very very small, like the small Cuisenaire rods that were used to teach kids or to teach Maori language in the late 70s and early 80s.”

Michael’s sculptures are also laced with a kind of humour - a sarcastic wit. You can see it in his elephant, tipped on its head, a seal holding up a piano and giant pick-up sticks at the foot of a ballerina.

“He is looking at colonialism, he is looking at social issues such as the employment of Maori people or the position of say Maori battalions in WWI and when they came back from the trenches back into New Zealand, what happened to them,” says Maud.

“So they’re things that are extremely visceral and very contested and the way that he brings humour into them means that he can actually make a comment on them, but also not appear too didactic, which is something that I particularly love in his practice.”

Through his shiny, playful and at times confronting sculpture Michael invites us to think about our sense of self and how that’s inseparably linked to the legend of the Promised Land.

Quick Look: Chicks on Speed at Milani Gallery

Words: Saskia Edwards 

Images: Jonathan Rae

Chicks on Speed are really about the clash in electroclash.

They’re about a clash of music, fashion, art and feminism.

The ensemble is led by Alex Murray-Leslie and Melissa Logan who come together in a synergy of synthesised Technicolor.

Writer Douglas Coupland described the pair as “living in a post Koonsian world with a curated 21st century lifestyle, where everything is art and everyone can be an artist and even non-art is art by default: a Readymade!”

It all stems from the late 90s when the duo met in Munich as Fine Arts Students. From there their brand of neon multimedia art spawned. It includes their rise in the 2000s as an electroclash band, fashion endeavours and installation art.

We went to their exhibition at Milani Gallery to see what their latest opus looks like - including their Max Kibardin collaboration electric guitar shoe, the e-shoe.

David Shrigley and existentialism at NGV

Words: Saskia Edwards
Images: Jonathan Rae
Original Artwork: David Shrigley

A sculpture of a naked man that intermittently blinks and then urinates into a bucket is hardly the image that springs to mind when thinking of existentialism.

While David Shrigley’s works may not fit the classic manifestation of existentialism - think Kafka and Nietzsche - they do force an inner contemplation of life.

Or more, they confront you with the banality of human existence.

It’s hard to look at Shrigley’s works without feeling a sense of humourous nihilism.

His current exhibition at NGV includes drawings, paintings, sculpture, animated videos and artist books.

NGV Director Tony Ellwood said: “David Shrigley is one of contemporary art’s most unique conceptual artists; his works are renowned for their humour and ability to convey in stark black and white the most complex as well as trivial moments of human experience.

“David Shrigley: Life and Life Drawing is the artist’s first comprehensive Australian exhibition and is sure to delight his avid fans in Melbourne and beyond.”

Shrigley’s exhibition at NGV also includes a two tonne clay sausage that’s gradually becoming arid and cracked over the course of the display. The installation looks like intestines wormed around each other. Perhaps it’s a comment on the matter of our bodies - that while each of us see some divinity within ourselves we’re really just flesh and bones. 

But there’s some relief in knowing this. And seemingly that’s where the humour lies. Ultimately, we’re just irrelevant beings with a meaningless existence all destined for the same fate. But it releases the pressure of making something out of everything - it leaves you free to enjoy life for what it is.

As Adrian Searle said: “Shrigley’s work is very wrong and very bad in all sorts of ways.“It is also ubiquitous and compelling.

“There are lots of artists who, furrowing their brows and trying to convince us of their seriousness, aren’t half as profound or compelling.” 

Down the rabbit hole

Words and Images: Saskia Edwards

Film Photography: Ren Scurville

Lance De Los Reyes and Rose Eken’s works seem very different.

One uses broad, untamed strokes on canvas, while the other creates meticulously intricate sculpture.

But, what they do have in common is that this is the first time they’re both going it alone in New York City.

The pair are both having their first solo exhibitions at The Hole, New York. 

The gallery’s Assistant Director Krysta Eder says despite the obvious contrasts between the artists, the works match.

“So basically both artists are more emerging artists.

“...So Lance has been making paintings for a long time but this is also his first gallery exhibition.

“So we thought they’d be a good pairing together and actually the ceramics and the paintings kind of complement each other both in colour and kind of the elemental references.”

Initially, as you enter The Hole, you’ll see thirteen large oil works from Lance. His works seem to capture visceral emotion - the paintings aren’t unnecessarily complicated and instead present more a raw and vulnerable spectrum of feeling. Looking at his paintings, it appears as though his whole process is driven by instinct.

In fact, Krysta says Lance works on the floor on raw canvas.

“Another thing I can say that’s pretty interesting is he’s a very fast painter.

“Where it is kind of, I don’t want to say inspiration, but maybe that is the right word.”

One of Lance’s key works in his Standing on the Shoulders of Giants series is a large work depicting a mythical wolf-like creature on a deep red textural background.

“For example this large red painting here when we came into the gallery was just one large red canvas and then we had the entire show hung except for this work and it was just red. 

“And then the next morning I came in and this was what he made. Which is amazing. I mean it might be the highlight of the show.

“...But it’s just very meditative. You know he kinds of sits on it for a while. He brought this here intended to be hung but without having anything on it because he wasn’t ready yet.”

Adding to the overall elemental character of Lance’s pieces are a pile of rocks in the middle of the gallery. The objects appear to reinforce Lance’s work as connecting with the very deeply natural and almost temporal parts of human existence.

In comparison, Rose’s sculptures are far more detailed. The Remain in Light exhibition provides an almost scientific arrangement of items associated with punk culture. Each piece is made from clay, painted and glazed.

“They take quite a lot of time, they are very meticulous especially when you put something in the kiln it shrinks down a little bit and she wants to make them as true to life as possible,” says Krysta.

“So she actually has to create them larger than they are anticipating the change in shape after they’re thrown.”

Rose’s works force you to contemplate things you may usually ignore; the folds in a cigarette packet, the tactility of a crushed can or the design of a bottle of soda. 

“These are things, little relics of what you see after you leave a bar or show just laying around, but she kind of captures them.”

The objects are arranged in size order. It’s almost like what an anthropological study of 21st century culture will be in the future.

“The matches, everybody loves matches,” says Krysta.

“When I go anywhere and they have take away matches everybody wants them, even if you’re not a smoker.

“There’s something about taking the matches. It’s a cool little object. I think she just does it so well. It seems so real.

“And the burnt match tips where there’s even the one piece where the sulphur had burned the tip off. I mean that’s just a fragile as they would be in real life, they just don’t leave the soot.”

And, if I can take a big leap here, Rose’s works seem to symbolise something further. That is, that we’re surrounded by so much that we don’t fully appreciate and only through recreating each piece in fine art do we acknowledge things we are often so flippant towards. Perhaps that could be said about everything we take for granted.

Either way, both exhibitions encourage deeper introspection about life, emotion and modern existence.

Being Female at The Hold

Images: Jonathan Rae

Words: Saskia Edwards

Artwork: Heidi Stevens and Carolyn McKenzie-Craig

What is it to be female?

In the 21st century it goes beyond the basic physiological elements that make up the gender - hips, breasts, the womb. To be a modern female, women have to fulfill a myriad of expectations.

Women are expected to work, to be ambitious, to be independent, while still being caring, and maternal and beautiful and feminine and basically encapsulate everything Beyonce has set unreasonably high standards for. 

Heidi Stevens’ soft pastel sculpture captures the 21st century female experience.

“Contemporary feminism has come so far as far as women can have jobs and get an education and birth control - all of the larger things that we all know about.

“But on the flip side I feel like not only are we able to, we’re expected to, but we’re also expected to retain our female role as caregiver, not just to children, but to the community and elderly parents.

“And we’re meant to earn as much as our male partners, but also be the caregiver and take on all these extra roles as well as domestic duties and all of that.

“So I feel like there’s a dualism there; we’ve got a lot more options, but we’re still grounded in the expectation of our biology and our history.”

Heidi’s sculptures were created in a matter of minutes and as Heidi is a new mother they are aptly titled While the Baby Sleeps. The works, perhaps as a result of the timeframe they were created in, seem to peel back experiences to their rawest form. The colours and shapes are at the essence of an emotion or experience - the vagina, birth, love, fighting, motherhood. 

There is also a series of Heidi’s photographs at The Hold. Heidi comes from a photographic background and has used the medium throughout her practice. 

“I’m quite fascinated with the language of commercial photography - high end fashion images and how they’re selling a particular lifestyle or branding.

“So I kind of highjack that, lighting and the way I print my work and present it, so that I can attract a viewer that maybe wouldn’t look at my work if they just knew the raw content about it being dissatisfaction with the contemporary world as a female.”

Heidi ultimately makes a comment on what it is to be a woman in all its banal shared experiences engrained through centuries of stereotypes. Being a woman in the 21st century is a contradiction: soft yet hard, beautiful yet tough, a nurturer and a leader.

Callum Morton’s ‘The Other Side’ at Sydney’s 2014 Biennale

 
Images: Jonathan Rae

Words: Saskia Edwards

Callum Morton’s ‘The Other Side’ modernises the entrenched image of a ghost train.

Revellers aren’t plunging into the ominous jaws of a giant skull fit with all the quintessential tacky graffiti adornments.

Rather, a miniature train enters a giant Google home page screen and hurtles into the depths of virtual reality.

“There was kind of an image of a little train going inside that portal, so this kind of lo-fi version of virtual reality,” says Callum, who's also the Head of Fine Art at MADA.

“There was a sense, I suppose, you could go with a ghost train ride into a skull and go through the mouth of a skull and do the kind of thing that’s typical of those kind of rides and I didn’t want to do that.

“I wanted to I guess collage or update that image, if you like and what is the contemporary ghost train ride look like, what are the kind of portals you go through.

“And I suppose the internet was one of those.”

Once passengers enter into the Google screen the same bewildering fear typical of any ghost train ensues.

Passengers are cloaked in a tumultuous, and at times claustrophobic, cavern of visual and audio tricks.

“I wanted to do most of all was to put the person not through the theme park language of skulls and skeletons and all that kind of stuff, but to try to do it with smoke, lights and sound.”

Viewers emerge from the chaotic journey after an abrasive series of strobe lighting effects and haunting musical scores.

The artwork took over a year to come into fruition, from development to the actual engineering.

The pre-existing track at Cockatoo Island was the ideal platform to realise Callum’s fascination for fusing modern art and theme parks.

“I’ve always been interested in the idea of theme parks in relation to contemporary art. I guess my practice tries to be inclusive of all sorts of spheres of cultural production, popular culture.

“I sort of draw on lots of things: cinema, theatre, literature, architecture, design, theme park design, I love world expos.”

The installation is embodies of the idea of liminality: as a threshold is crossed in order to go through a transitional process.

Preliminarily, the Google façade presents viewers with an identifiable symbol – searching, the internet and a necessary tool for modern existence.

But once they’re submerged into the liminal terror of the ghost train, views are forced to reconsider their connotations with the internet and its potentially destructive force. It’s a restructuring of knowledge.

The postliminal emergence from the track creates a conceptual change to people’s view of the internet, now more aware of its danger.

It poses the question: in an era dominated by the internet, is anyone looking out for you on the other side?

Cockatoo Island is also home to a series of other sculpture pieces at Sydney’s Biennale.