1980s Re-Mix – Critical Culture.

1980s Re-Mix – Critical Culture.
Gary Willis
Leigh Bowery, ‘The Metropolitan’ - Collection of the N.G.V.
This is the first presentation from Max Delany, recently appointed
senior curator of contemporary art at the National Gallery of Victoria (N.G.V.)
Max’s experience with contemporary Australian art is both deep and wide –
having been the director of Gertrude Street Contemporary Art Space, curator of
Heidi Museum of Art before becoming the founding director of Monash University
Museum of Art. Delany’s ‘MIX TAPE 1980s: Appropriation, Subculture, Critical Style’
provides substance to Tony Elwood’s comment earlier this year for ‘Broadsheet –
1
Melbourne’; ‘I can’t ask the community to get behind me if I’m not getting
behind them’.1
The space committed to this exhibition spans the north–side galleries
on the top floor of Federation Square and offers two separate entrances.
Coming up the escalators, I entered galleries via Leigh Bowery’s ‘The
Metropolitan’ outfit, so named after Bowery wore it for the opening of Lucian
Freud’s retrospective, at the Metropolitan Museum N.Y. in 1993. Freud’s
retrospective at ‘The Metropolitan’ featured a number of Freud’s paintings of
Bowery. Being shy of openings, Freud invited Bowery to attend the opening on
his behalf, which Bowery did, en–regalia, wearing the outfit now known as ‘The
Metropolitan’. Although Bowery was an exemplary artist he did not come out of
art school in fact he dropped out of fashion at R.M.I.T. in his first year and
headed off to London – for good. In London, Bowery made his way as a drag–
queen and costumier, working with the Michael Clark Dance Company and
others. Although Bowery was an artist of the highest order, he had little or no
presence within the conventional art world until he was ushered into Anthony
D’Offay Gallery in London, to present his costumes and himself for a one–week
performance in 1988. Although Bowery was infamous within the London gay
underground his work would have been unknown to all but a small fraternity
within the Australian art world. If Bowery was taken under Freud’s wing, it was not
because he was an artist as such, but rather because he was just Leigh Bowery.
Thus Bowery’s ‘The Metropolitan’ stands as the silent ‘door bitch’ at
the entrance of the NGV ‘Tape Mix 1980s’ exhibition ushering us into the back–
end of the exhibition where the Popism manifesto finds fulfilment as the
boundaries between art, fashion, design and music evaporate. Via this entry we
pass a stack of T.V. sets each playing a different selection from Molly Meldrum’s
1 Dan Rule, ‘Man on the Ground’, Interview with Tony Elwood, the new director of the N.G.V.,
Melbourne, Broadsheet, 8th January 2013;
http://www.broadsheet.com.au/melbourne/arts-andentertainment/article/man-ground (accessed 25th May 2013)
2
‘Count–Down’, offering a ‘Rock–Quiz’ style introduction to the period. For a more
nuanced introduction of the tastes of the time, some of the artists have been
invited to offer ‘tape mixes’ which are piped through out the galleries and
available from the head–sets dangling from the exhibition walls. Selections
include tracks by ‘INXS’, ‘The Divinyls’, ‘Iggy Pop’, ‘Nick Cave and the Bad
Seeds’, ‘Blondie’, ‘Talking Heads’, ‘Split Enz’, ‘Lipps Inc.’, ‘Telex’, ‘Boy George’,
‘The Human League’, ‘Spandau Ballet’, ‘Visage, ‘James White & the Blacks’, ‘The
Residents’, ‘The Warumpi Band’, ‘No Fixed Address’ etc. Thus the musical tastes
of the artists set the frame for the show.
For those who weren’t there in the day, quick glimpse at one of films
on offer in the video lounge, ‘Dogs in Space’, starring Michael Hutchence and
Saskia Post, by Richard Lowenstein, will give you a taste for the times. Set in the
drug–fuelled Melbourne rock scene, ‘Dogs in Space’ offers an appropriate
introduction to the extravagances of a generation that spawned AIDS and Gen
Y’s, for whom the sub–cultural ethos of the 1980s might seem somewhat
excessive. Gen Y’s might do well to remember that for most artists of the 1980s,
‘T.V. was for being–on – not for watching’ and the critical cultural discourses of
the day happened somewhere between the studio and the gallery and usually
behind closed doors. Unlike popular culture and fashion however, visual arts
literacy is not a given rather it is a hard–won understanding contingent upon a
familiarity with the cultural references of the times. I am still learning.
3
Popular Culture is Culture
‘MIX TAPE 1980s: Appropriation, Subculture, Critical Style’ at NGV – Installation
– Federation Square.
Entering, as I did through the second gallery first, I immediately
encountered a couple of my favourites from the period; Marc Newson’s
‘Lockheed Chaise Lounge’ displayed on a dias of lime green in front of a black
wall with one of Dale Frank’s early drawings, ‘The appealing eyes of the
blacksmith facing the tyrant’. I must confess I always liked Frank’s evocative early
work. In the day, they coped a bit of shtick for their titles, which sometimes
extended to a short paragraph but served to engage literary/critical types in a
closer encounter with the work. Franks’ drawing is great, although I have not
been such a fan of the later formalist blobbing, for which he is now famous (and
probably rich).
A turn of heal and I was met by a pride of fashionistas. The exemplary
Jenny Bannister, whose work of the 80s extended the boundaries of fashion into
a mode of wearable art – parallels could be drawn to Bowery’s contribution to
sub–culture. The definitive Katie Pie, the popular Plain Jane and on the other side
4
Sara Thorn, Sirens, Abyss studios and Martin Grant, whose work sits elegantly on
the verge of the times. Peter Tully’s black leather, silver–studded kaftan delimits
his earlier encoded plastic insignia. Kate Durham’s definitively ‘new wave’
‘Earrings’ & Susan Cohn’s rhomboid ‘Breifcase’ as faux corporate armoury
reminded me of ‘Workshop 3000’ which Cohn co–founded with Marian Hosking
in the early 1980s.
Then to David McDaimid’s posters for the Aids Council, the 1986 ‘Gay
Mardi–Gras’, the 1988 ‘Safe Sex Ball’ and the omnipotent Juan Davila, this time
represented by his print ‘For God and Country’ which reads W–O–G; produced a
couple of years after ‘Wogs out of Work’ opened at the Universal Theatre, Fitzroy
in 1987.
I peeped into the next gallery to note photographic collections
looming; Tracey Moffatt’s strikingly original ‘Something More’ images embedded
with pent–up Aboriginal ambitions, and went on to spend a little time with
Moffatt’s film ‘Night Cries’. Technically, ‘Night Cries’ was not released until 1990, is
a short film produced with the assistance of the Australian Film Institute. I must
confess I don’t like watching films in an art gallery; film obliges a time–based
commitment regardless of your interest or the merit of the work.
‘Night Cries’ takes up where the 1955 film ‘Jedda’ left off. In Moffatt’s
film the young Aboriginal ‘Jedda’ (played by Marcia Langton) has grown up
and become carer for her white adoptive mother. It is ‘staged’ in that all
landscape references have been constructed as if sets for a play. ‘Night Cries’
offers an abstract of the frustrations and longings of the stolen generation, for
whom life under a white value system becomes a sort of sentence, despite the
salve of Jimmy Little’s ‘Telephone to Glory’.
Back to the photographs; Julie Rrap’s feminisation of ‘Christ’ offers a
manipulated self–portrait photograph contained within in a crucifix structure,
Farrell & Parkin’s ‘St. Jerome in Penitence’ floods with reference to the old
masters; Goya, El Greco, Durer, George de La Tour, etc. Anna Zahalka’s update
of Max Dupain’s Bondi Beach theme, this time with young Asian ‘The Surfers’ and
Middle Eastern families as ‘The Bathers’, Ann Ferran’s ‘Death of Nature’ offers a
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tableau of falling women from a series entitled ‘Carnal Knowledge’; Polixeni
Paperpetrou’s portraits of some of the artists of the period such as ‘Sam Angelico’
the magician, famous from the ‘Flying Trapeze Café’ and ‘The Last Laugh’
cabarets. Here, I paused to acknowledge the significance of affirmative action
politics, which have come to define subsequent times; Aboriginal art, Women’s’
art, Gay art and Multi–culturalism before turning back to re–enter the exhibition,
this time through the main entrance.
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Popism and ‘Second Degree’
Art & Text,1982 – 1984, Editor, Paul Taylor.
AH HA – Of course arriving through the main entrance – Popism’s ‘Hall
of Fame’ – Paul Taylor’s favourites are lined in tribute to the curator whose
sensibility defined the era. An era demarcated by the inauguration of
appropriation and the fraught discourses concerning Australian identity or rather,
as Taylor argued; its lack. Addressing ‘The Provincialism Problem’, signalled by
Terry Smith; Australia’s subservience to hierarchies of international influence,
Taylor rejected any Antipodean idea of Australian cultural identity and opted for
a tactic of radical superficiality. 2 Thus liberating Australian artists to engage a
post–modern strategy of Second Degree, where power & authority are
referenced within a meta–text encoded with other cultural reference points, to
effect a subcultural act of subversion.3
2 Terry Smith, ‘The Provincialism Problem’, in ‘Anything Goes Art in Australian 1970–80’,
Melbourne, Art & Text; p 46.
3 Paul Taylor, ‘Popism; The Art of White Aborigines’, ‘What is Appropriation’, Ed. Rex Butler,
Brisbane, I.M.A. & Power Institute, 1996: Pp 85 – 87.
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Of course critical post–modernist discourses were already in play all
around the globe. Two aspects of these developments could be exemplified by
artists such as Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman on the one hand and painters
such as Julian Schnable and David Salle on the other, to reference only the
North American situation. Taylor took his theoretical references from ‘October
Magazine’, Roland Barthes and Dick Hebdige to argue that Australia had no
authentic culture, no native tongue, and Australian artist’s best bet was to opt
for mode of cultural cannibalisation, to develop a multi–valent vocabulary which
subverted international imperatives into a meta–text to signified a sub–culture;
Australian artist as D.J., cutting–up, mixing and scratching pre–given cultural
codes, reconfiguring references to a different beat.
The
Australian
exemplars
of
the
genre
of
Second
Degree
appropriation being Juan Davila and Imants Tillers, whose work offered a
deconstructed approach to the art. Other artists subvert their references on the
basis of an expectation that their cultural codes have already become common
knowledge, building sub–language systems out of predetermined cultural
vocabularies.
John Nixon, the director of the infamous ‘Art Projects’, extended a
minimalist, conceptual lineage in the appropriation a constructivist aesthetic;
specifically the work of Kasimir Malevich & Alexsandr Rodchenko. Interestingly a
recent survey of Nixon’s work, revealed just how little his work has changed over
the years. Although there are no repeats, Nixon’s works from 1980 are almost
indistinguishable from works produced thirty years on; in 2010.
Jenny Watson, is represented by one of her ‘Cinderella’ paintings,
‘Crimean Wars’, where Cinderella (aka Watson) is pictured returning home to
Crimea St in St. Kilda from a heady night at the Crystal Ballroom. I imagine Nick
Cave screaming bedlam into the microphone whilst the Bad Seeds pump grind–
core back stage. ‘Crimean Wars’ employs broad slashing brush strokes evoking
the emotional pitch of the turbulent times and culture wars that marked the
post–punk 80s.
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Peter Tyndall’s cool ‘graphic cultural consumption production’
extends a conceptual lineage into the domain of painting. Ubiquitously entitled
‘A Person looks at a work of Art – Someone looks at something’. Tyndall’s work
grounds the viewer in the existential act of ‘looking’ and owes a conceptual
debt to John Cage, whose mission was to bring his audience into the silent act of
listening. I might have preferred to see his ‘Slave Guitars’.
Howard Arkley, ‘Tattooed head’, synthetic polymer & pencil, 1988
Howard Arkley is represented by two displays of his work. On one side
of the wall the earlier dot matrix paintings, with his ‘X’, ‘T’, ‘W’ and ‘V’ chairs,
which evoke a cool De Stijl sensibility. On the other, his ‘Tattooed Head’
reminiscent of his famous portrait of ‘Nick Cave’ that hangs in the National
Portrait Gallery. Arkley’s later work has a sense of originality, almost at odds with
the Second Degree manifesto.
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Juan Davila, ‘Ratman’, oil on canvas, 1980.
Davila’s ‘Ratman’ directly references Sigmund Freud’s case of the
obsessional ‘Ratman’ who projects his own fears of rats eating their way through
his anus and onto his loved ones; his father and his fiancée. I noticed a number
of school children stopping to point out the ‘rude bits’ and giggling
conspiratorially, before shuffling onto Philip Brophy’s D.J. bar. Although ‘Ratman’
is a profound work, it seems almost modest by Davila’s standards, whose later
works go onto taunt homophobic Australian culture with a painterly mode of
psycho–sexual art terrorism. Davila’s early work invariably presented a Neo-Pop
tableau, a catalogue of Who’s Who in Davila’s artworld, leaving the viewer to
decode the implications of his references, with titles such as ‘Art I$ Homosexual’.
Interestingly, Davila’s work stands an ambiguous position in relation to the Popist
distain for ‘message art’. Despite its expressionist conceit, Davila’s highly
sexualized and savage socio-political canvases appear to mask a highly
intellectual and deeply humanist sensibility.
Tillers work exemplified the Second Degree manifesto. His ‘Quest; I the
speaker’ features a commanding Nixon/Malevitch cross at the center of an
image from the Japanese architect/artist Shusaku Arakawa image of some sort
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of magnetic field, radiating light across an upside down image of the Basilica of
St Francis of Assisi. Beside it Tillers has appropriated Colin McCahon’s 1982
painting ‘Untitled’, which marks quote from ‘Ecclesiastes’ produced for the
Sydney Biennale in the same year. Tillers names a tension in McCahon’s work
appropriate to his own concerns as an artist which sit between the search for
meaning, the desire for transcendence and a persuasive and immovable
skepticism. ‘It is this aspect of McCahon, I find most relevant to today’, Tillers
explains. A quick look at his C/V and you recognize Tillers was one of the artists
who defined public perceptions of Australian art to an international audience
during the 80s. Tillers trained as an architect, his paintings are image–driven. His
appropriations advocate the Second Degree charter championed by Taylor.
Richard Dunn is represented by a series of doubled canvases. Both
sides utilise formalist, although contrasting approaches to the process of painting.
On one side, hard edge constructivist diagonals present as new wave
abstraction, on the other, realistically rendered ‘Tools of Coincidence’ evoke the
utilitarian side of a constructivist equation. Both buttress the significance of
Nixon’s constructivist proposition. Stieg Perrson’s raw black oil paint and gold leaf
‘Let 100 Flowers Bloom’ seems almost poetic in contrast to Dunn’s formalism.
Perrson’s painting suggests a romantic sensibility more akin to a Mike Brown’s
‘The Miracle of Love’ than the dispassionate irony we expect of Taylor’s Popism.
Linda Marrinon’s early work confronts us with a heartfelt expressionism we might
expect of Art Brut. Although there is an ironic amateurism advocated by Taylor,
her staged emotionalism seems ambiguously out of kilter with the self–conscious
disavowal of expressionism espoused by the A&T mob. Vivienne Shark–Lewitt’s
work is wry and acerbic. I always associate her images with the sort of literary wit
we expect of the ‘New Yorker’. If I remember correctly, Shark–Lewitt’s name was
appropriated from a New York art critic of the 80s. I liked the way she reclaims
the illustrative for art with a droll nonchalance. I remember Jeff Gibson’s prints
pasted around the streets of Sydney in the late 80’s as a series of posters;
‘Shyster’, ‘Charlatan’, ‘Imposter’, etc. entitled ‘Pop Connoisseur’ At the time I
read them as a sly Duchampian act of self–promotion; as the Art Gallery of N.S.W.
puts it, ‘Gibson plays fox to his own gun’. Robert Rooney’s work was always cool,
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in the detached sense; whether it be his hard–edge paintings of the 60s, or the
documentation of the subtle monotony of the daily processes of his life in the 70s.
During the 80s Rooney was working from secondary sources, particularly mass
media images, reminding us that originality is a myth and art is produced
through the process of manipulating cultural coding and affecting of choice. I
didn’t notice any work of John Lethbridge or anything from John Dunkley–Smith,
both favourites of Taylor’s at one time?
Maria Kozic, The Birds; Vivienne Shark Lewitt, ‘Untitled’1988; Jeff Gibson, ‘Pop
Connoisseur’, street posters, 1988.
Maria Kozic’s work is featured in ‘MIX TAPE 1980s’ on a number of
levels. Most dramatically her ‘Birds’, present a psychologically menacing flock of
stuffed black plastic birds, becoming one of the few sculptural works in the
exhibition. I remember the birds fondly; they were hung at head height in her
show at Reconnaissance Gallery in 1981. Her ‘Self–Portrait’ betrays what might
be considered a gothic sensibility by today’s standards, ‘loveable, abject &
perverse’. As if encased in a body of a ‘zombie’, her ‘Self Portrait’ features an
anatomic mask which appears to expose the raw musculature and skeletal
infrastructure of the skull and its between the camera and Kozic’s anxious eyes.
Her painting ‘Head’ is an illustrative interpretation of what appears to be an
image from a splatter movie; a male head is smashed against a brick wall – red
and grey matter proceed as graphic line work. Kozic’s work is also apparent in
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her collaborations with Philip Brophy, as one of the band members of àáà (TSK–
TSK–TSK), having designed and produced a number of the graphics for their
productions, including, ‘What is this thing called Disco?’
Philip Brophy, Maria Kozic, David Chesworth, Clifton Hill New Music Center;
Graphics, sound tracks and record bar.
Brophy’s contribution to the ‘MIX TAPE 1980s’ exhibition is seminal. His
unassuming D.J. counter is a popular site within the exhibition space, where
viewers can muse over his albums, promotional material for collaborative events
and films. Interestingly Brophy’s work with TSK–TSK–TSK, the Clifton Hill New Music
Centre, David Chesworth (Essendon Airport) and others (such as Robert Randall
and Frank Bendinelli) has meant that his significance as one of the prime movers
in the Popism phenomenon has been discreetly camouflaged. Brophy
graduated from La Trobe University School of Music and identifies as a
musician/artist/filmmaker/designer/academic. Brophy was one of Taylor’s co–
conspirators in the Popism program, both being in their early 20’s when Taylor
launched A&T. Brophy would have been 22 & Taylor 23. Heather Barker &
Charles Green argue it was Brophy’s review of Hebdige’s book ‘Subculture: The
13
Meaning of Style’, commissioned by Taylor for the first issue of A&T, that
effectively wrote the Popism manifesto.4
Hebdidge is a British cultural theorist whose theory of subculture was
derived from his study of the Teddy Boys, Mods, Rockers, Skinheads & Punks in the
late 70s. Post–war socio–economic conditions in Britain meant the only way British
working class youth could signify their resistance to mainstream culture was
through symbolic representation; dress, hairstyle, drugs and music. Developing his
theory of subculture in relation to the French post–structural theorists, Hebdige
differentiated sub–culture from counter–culture and detailed how subcultures
gain power from in the midst of oppression. However, as entrepreneurs find ways
to commodify their culture, as Malcolm McLaren did with ‘The Sex Pistols’, the
resistant force of their rebellion is leached. Hebdige himself went onto become
the dean of cultural studies at Cal. Arts.
Regardless of what form it takes, Second Degree subverts the
common tongue and originality is submerged as cultural code within a pre–
formed language systems,
‘In this synthesis of pre–existing modes, it is not the intrinsic worth of the signs
that is important but rather the new relationships which are set up between
them … this constructed nature of meaning presents a radical challenge to
conventional notions of originality and personal expression and associated
modernist ideas of ‘pure’ signification’.5
Taylor insists that the objective of second–degree is neither erotic nor
political but rather is a tactical strategy, who’s objective becomes to shift
meaning, shaft memory and open up an unchartered polysemy; it was this art
that Taylor characterised the art of Second Degree. Many artists and arts
theorists would agree with Taylor’s thesis on the dynamic function of art.
4 Heather Barker & Charles Green, No More Provincialism: A&T; P 8.
http://emajartjournal.com/past-issues/issue-5/ (accessed 31st May 2013)
5 Paul Taylor ‘Australian New Wave and the Second Degree’ in ‘Anything Goes – Art in
Australia 1970–1980’, Melbourne, Art & Text, 1984; p 158.
14
As many of A&T’s detractors have pointed out, appropriation is not
exactly a new phenomenon within the visual arts. Appropriation has a deep
history, which extends as far back as the origins of art itself; the Roman
appropriation of ancient Greek culture offers an obvious example, the Italian
Renaissance another. Duchamp might serve as an appropriate reference point
for the subversive power of A&T’s conception of Second Degree although Taylor
and Brophy identified with a post–Warhol generation.
In his book on Mike Brown, ‘Permanent Revolution’, Richard Haese
identifies what he calls ‘the complex cultural syndrome’ that post–structuralism
represented in Australia. Haese affirms Taylor and Brophy’s position; regardless
what subject matter the image base might suggest, ultimately Second Degree
art represents neither libidinous instincts nor social politics but the primacy of
language itself. All forms of expression are deconstructed to an assemblage of
signs where expression is mediated through the processes of cultural signification;
ultimately art presents as language. Thus, the artist is not the heroic origin of
originality and individuality that modernist mythology and mass media would
have us believe, rather the artist becomes one of many participating in the
ongoing process of reconfiguring cultural denotation.6
Curiously, Taylor’s conception of ‘Second Degree’ is not far from
Heidegger’s who argues the ‘truth’ that art offers inevitably advances by way of
a ‘double conceit’, for it is ‘only within the context of mutual disinterest that the
work of art is able to step into the light of its own shining’.7 For Heidegger, art is
always entails this double–act and it is only this double conceit that has the
power to affect regime change. 8 A&T did in fact, effect regime change. If
nothing else Delaney’s curatorial selection stands as testimony to Taylor’s impact
on 1980s art. Tactically, A&T facilitated their theoretical predecessors and
6 Richard Haese ‘Permanent Revolution; Mike Brown and the Australian Avant–Garde 1953–
1997’, Melbourne, Miegunyah Press, 2011; p 220.
7 Krell, Martin Heidegger; Basic Writings, London: Routledge and Kegan, 1977; p 173.
8 Ibid; p 183.
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mentors through publication; giving them just enough rope to hang themselves,
and then sidelined them, incanting Margaret Plant’s line ‘the critic passes with
the style they espouse’. In this way A&T dispensed with Patrick McCaughey, Terry
Smith, Anne Stephen, Suzanne Spunner, Janine Bourke, Ian Burn and Charles
Merewether to name just a few, along with the artists these critics supported and
affected a radical shift in the cultural landscape of Melbourne art of the 1980s.9
To its credit A&T ushered in a new generation of artists and theorists,
arguing for a more rigorous intellectual discourse around art practice. Taking its
cues from ‘October’ magazine A&T engaged the fashionable French academic
philosophers; Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault & Louis
Althusser dismissing most Australian academic theorists as ‘irrelevant, boring and
just plain old–fashioned’. In the end Taylor positioned himself as ‘the critic as
artist’, placing the power of his own word above the objects of his critique,
revelling in his status as agent–provocateur. In a Popist apoplexy, the politics and
English literature academic, Stan Anson, writing for ‘Meanjin’, critiqued A&T’s
intolerance of rational criticism as indicative of a fundamentally conservative
institution and accused Taylor of shifting the theoretical goal posts to suit his own
ambitions. 10 Taylor dismissed his critics with all the arrogance of youth and a
cavalier disregard; ‘I am very fond of contradicting myself.’11
Adrian Martin argued that A&T has to be understood within the
context of its own vibrant culture, which Martin characterised as marked by a
‘militant dilettantism and amateurism’. What it is important to recognise is ‘how’
A&T ultimately opened a way forward for a new development generation. As
Barker & Green point out; it is remarkable that they had such an impact of
9
Heather
Barker
&
Charles
Green,
No
More
Provincialism:
A&T;
p
6.
http://kirkbrideplan.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/barker-green-on-art-and-texttaylorpostmodernism-in-australia-copy.pdf (accessed 27th May 2013)
10 Stan Anson, ‘On Being Difficult; The Conservatism of Art & Text’, Meanjin Vol 42, No 2, June
1983; Pp 203 – 214.
11 Barker & Green; P 11.
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Australian art of the day, but it is important to recognise the strength of the
support systems, which enabled their leverage within the Australian artworld of
the day. A&T was facilitated by ‘astonishingly generous funding’ from Visual Arts
Board. They were deeply networked into other state funded sites such as ‘Art
Projects’, ‘Clifton Hill New Music Centre’ and ‘George Paton, Ewing Gallery’ at
University of Melbourne. Further, A&T was furnished with an office and facilities by
Prahran(C.A.E.), where many of the A&T favourites taught. Taylor had won the
support of the Tasmanian College of Art, Monash University and McCaughey,
who had just taken up his position as the new director of the N.G.V. It as
McCaughey who facilitated the young Taylor’s opportunity to curate the Popism
exhibition and on a scale that affronted proprietorial rights of some of the more
deeply entrenched curators – a rare privilege. I can only hope Delany will be
facilitated to write such a history by Elwood?
Barker and Green provide us with a map of A&T’s power block;
flanked by Judy Annear, Shark–Lewitt and Davila, Taylor mediated between ‘Art
Projects’(Nixon, Watson, Tyndall etc.) ‘The Clifton Hill New Music Centre’ (Brophy,
Kosic, Chesworth, etc.) and the ‘Crystal Ballroom’ (Watson, Nick Cave etc.). It is
important to recognise that this is level of support and funding required to instate
a cultural institution such as Taylor had created in A&T. Holding court from his
infamous ‘Beverly Hills’ apartment in South Yarra, Taylor swanned about in his
white MG–A ‘as willing to embrace a good pair of shoes as a good painting’.12
Shark–Le Witt recalled how ‘Paul could heap scathing, withering and merciless
contempt on anything or anyone he deemed “second rate” or what he referred
to as a “know nothing”’. 13 Unfortunately for many, that included just about
everyone else. The challenge facing his contenders was the hegemonic culture
that A&T set–up, in effect marginalising all but a theoretically aligned elite. Taylor
was not an advocate of pluralism.
12 Ibid P 9
13 Ibid P 6
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Mike Brown, Manifestations, acrylic on canvas, 1982.
For a generation who had inherited a Warholian detachment and cut
its teeth on punk disaffection, A&T subtly damned anyone not in their scene.
Here is the real problem implied in Smith’s ‘Provincialism Problem’, which is not so
much a tyranny of distance implied in the ‘centre-periphery’ discourses as much
as ‘group theory’. Despite the similarity your aesthetic, if you are not a part of the
scene it is unlikely that you will ever be ushered into the ranks as ‘one of the
gang’ on the basis of your art, unless you have earned your stripes as part of that
gang. Despite Mike Brown’s long history of collage, appropriation and his histoiric
use of Pop iconography, Brown was never cool with the Popism crowd, he was
twice their age for a start, but Rooney puts the situation more bluntly, for the A&T
crew ‘Brown was nothing but a boring old hippy’.14 The issue is not necessarily
with the work. Some aspects of Brown’s work might have fitted the theory, but
Brown didn’t suit the scene.
In his later years Brown became one of the recipients of a Keating
Award, enabling him to overcome the poverty, which bedevilled the later stages
14 Richard Haese; p 225.
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of his life. In this regard we understand the canonisation of Brown’s work, where
his work has become the focal point of some five exhibitions around Melbourne;
all entitled ‘Like Mike’. Delany’s placement of Brown’s work in the midst of the
Popism galleries might seem inappropriate, however it serves to usher us into the
next gallery where another spectrum of artists opens up.
Video lounge – no video art
Lyndal Jones, ‘Prediction Piece #7’, Performance 1984.
Before moving on I, settled back into the video lounge for a bit. Its
selection of five videos covers a broad spectrum of bases including;
experimental film, socio–political feminist film, the post–punk pop/rock scene,
fashion parades as well as performance art. It presents five screens. I have
already mentioned Lowenstein’s film ‘Dogs in Space’ – a separate screen was
committed to Lowenstein’s trailer for ‘Dogs in Space’ entitled ‘Living on Dog
Food’, which owes a nod to Iggy Pop and takes a closer look at Melbourne’s
post–punk music scene. As a filmmaker, Lowenstein won several ‘Count–Down’
awards during the 1980s for best promotional video; including 1983, ‘84 & ‘85.
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On the next screen two artist’s performance videos are looped. The
first is a documentary video of Jill Orr’s performance ‘She had Long Golden Hair’,
presented at the Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide in 1980, where Orr has
her long golden hair ritually cut–off. It opens to the sound track of a male choir
chanting ‘witch, bitch, mole, dyke ... etc‘ as the audience takes turns cutting off
sections of her hair, the soundtrack goes on to detail stories of abuse against
women. The camera was fixed by the E.A.F. staff, who took no directorial
responsibility for the footage. Despite its recent re–mix and re–mastering by Anne
Marsh & Elena Galimberti, the video quality is poor.15
Lyndal Jones’s ‘Prediction Piece #7’ is one of a series of ten
‘Prediction Pieces’ that Jones staged from 1981 – 1991. These performance,
projection, presentations explored the way Jones approach the idea of future
during the course of the 1980s. They were widely presented; ‘Prediction Piece #7’
was performed at the Los Angeles Olympic Games Festival in 1983 and the
Edinburgh Festival in 1984.
‘The theme of Lyndal Jones' works is prediction in its various manifestations
from science to astrology. Jones never seems to privilege the rational over
the magical, or vice versa -- both are seen as houses for wonder about the
categories of space and time. This kind of leveling appears in a very
particular cultural moment at the background of which, are ideas like the
`death of the author'. For Roland Barthes, this death involved a recognition
that the origin of a text was not to be found in the private consciousness of its
author but in the structures, which organize the language that gives it
expression.’16
Then there is a selection of videos from the Fashion Design Council
showcasing a selection parades from the period, for the interest of the
fashionistas.
15 Anne Marsh, ‘Performance Art & its Documentation – A photo video essay’;
http://www.academia.edu/3370153/Performance_Art_and_its_Documentation_A_Photo_Video_Es
say (accessed June 13th, 2013)
16 Kevin Murray, 'Lyndal Jones at sea' Art Monthly 59, (May 1994): Pp 21-22.
20
Finally, Helen Grace’s short film, ‘Serious Undertakings’, which uses a
number of graphic effects to intervene in what appears to be a documentary
concerning the challenges facing women regarding the conflicts of motherhood
and what counts as ‘serious’ cultural production. Funded by the Women’s Film
Fund, ‘Serious Undertakings’ won the A.F.I. award for ‘Best Experimental Film’ and
Sydney Film Festival award for ‘Best Short Film’ in 1983.
Curiously, the selection of videos does not cover ‘video art’ in the
specific sense. It is worthy of note that it was exactly in the juncture between the
late 70s and the early 80s that some Melbourne artists made a shift from
performance to video art, as an art form in its own right. Whilst there are many
crossovers, it is a mistake to imagine that filmmakers, musicians, pop–stars and
performance artists share the same raison d’etre, media or vocabulary. Their
work often comes out of very different conceptual traditions and can often
manifest profoundly different forms.
On this point, I remember an evening with Ulay and Marina
Abramovic in 1981, when few video art people shared a meal and some video–
tapes in Melbourne. Whilst I was fascinated by their work, especially Ulay’s 1975
action (with Marina on camera) entitled; ‘There is a criminal touch in art’, which
documents their theft of Hitler’s favourite painting, ‘Der Arme Poet’ (The Poor
Poet) by Carl Spitzweg, from the Neue Nationalegalerie.
At the end of the evening, I remember Marina saying she was
amazed by what was going on in Melbourne in terms of video art. Marina’s
comment came as a bit of a surprise considering what we had seen of their work.
They were already globe trotting superstars by then, so when Marina said they
had seen nothing comparable to the video art being produced in Melbourne in
the early 80s, any where in the world we were surprised. Curiously, I saw no
recognition of these developments in the video lounge, which I think constitutes
a significant omission.
21
A draught of painting
Rosslynd Piggott, Tattoo, oil on canvas, 1986–7
To his credit Delaney, has prised open the constricting frame that A&T
imposed upon the 80s, to include a few artists that might have otherwise been
neglected. Although A&T was big on text and the slide between theory &
literature as exemplified in Derrida’s notion of deconstruction, it gave little
22
credence to the significance of painting as language and its capacities to slur
the space between idea and ontology. Slipping across the suspended walkway
between exhibition spaces I back tracked into the second gallery where I found
another slice of Melbourne art, this time in the back corridor; a draught of
painters. Gareth Sansom, Peter Booth, Vic Majzner, Jon Cattapan, Jan Nelson,
Tim Jones and Scott Redfern were all represented by graphic works. Needless to
say it would have been great to see one of Sansom’s paintings or Booth’s
‘Painting 1982’. Eventually the drawings gave way to the territory of painting itself.
Today the very act of painting is often read as a reactionary manoeuver in
relation to the highly politicised push toward theory and public culture.
For those who were painting in the 1980s, they might remember there
was another aspect of the post–modernist discourse which, in face of the de–
skilling and de–sublimation that attended the endgames of post–modernism,
made a return to painting as language. These painterly modes are not
concerned with an art of reproduction, image based–collage or socially
determined iconography. Here, the painter enters the language of paint itself
with the objective of engendering poetic response to the world.
Whilst modernist painting was predominantly concerned with formalist
abstraction, the 1970s offered a conceptual shift toward art as idea. However
within the myriad of options that opened in the name of conceptual art;
installation, action, performance, video, text and theory; what Taylor recognised
as ‘Anything Goes’ conditions of contemporary art, another range of options
opened up for painters. Essentially although painting had come to the end of its
capacity to invent itself as a ‘new’ medium, for many this opened the possibility
for painting to reclaim the vocabularies which had been lost in the ‘triumph of
abstraction’ opening the way for painters to reclaim image in painting and
reconsider painting as a language system in its own right. All modes of painting
were suddenly liberated from the tyranny of international abstraction; mytho–
poetic modes of classical painting, representation and realism, early–modernist
modes of poetic deconstruction, de–sublimated gestures as well as formalist
modes of delimiting space. Simply put, post–conceptual painting had reached
23
its limit and the only way forward, for a painter, was to turn back and work with
the extraordinary breadth of vocabulary that painting offered. This conceptual
shift was critical to the very idea of post–modernism, a de–nomination which has
fallen from currency. Precedent for this revised approach to the language of
painting had been already been signalled in the 1960s. We can see it in the work
of Cobra painter Asger Jorn, Pop artist Robert Rauschenberg, German
expressionist Georg Baselitz, and of course this lead was taken up across the
globe by the Neo Expressionists, the French New Figuration, the British New
Romantics, the Italian Trans–Avant-garde, and of course New York New Wave.
What these modes had in common was a drive toward painting as a complex
and poetic system of language in its own right.
Piggott’s ‘Tattoo’ is representative of one end of this shift, where
painting reclaims its imaginative capacities. A body marked by tattooed hearts
hangs somewhat theatrically in a carefully staged illusory space. Piggott makes
no attempt to mask either the illusionism of the image or it’s painting. It is not
derived from a photograph, I think it unlikely that it draws reference from
anywhere but Piggott’s own imagination. No doubt there would be references,
which could be cited; Frida Kahlo perhaps, Magritte maybe, Giorgio De Chirico
possibly? Although Piggott’s painting might evoke a surrealist past, it belongs to
the specific period known as ‘post–modernism’, where after the history of
painting had come to its end the painter returns to painting as a language
system; painting as vocabulary, rather than genre aesthetics or a signifier of
period style.
In this realm art did not degenerate to an adjunct of the text but
draughted its own hard–won poetic language, a haptic phonetic system
capable of demarcating the artist’s existential relationship with the world about
them. Unfortunately many of the artists who took this approach found their
practices challenged in the wake of the economic crisis of the late 80s and
marginalised by the hegemonic push toward text, theory and the ‘anything goes’
conditions of public culture.
24
Cattapan’s attempt to make sense of the death of his sister through
the process of drawing, also offers a good example. His marks do not fall to the
photographic, but rather they return to modes of marking, which extend a
synthetic cubist, poetic approach to image making first established by Braque
and Picasso. Samsom’s drawings include cartoon–esque markings direct from his
surrealist imagination as well as graphic patternations that signify a modernist
perspective, clearly belong to the post–modern condition of contemporary
painting. This mode is not dependent on the ‘look and put’ of realism, much less
the generic imprint of photo–media, not even the fractal realism of analytic
cubism, in Sansom and Cattapan’s drawings marks move toward image but drift
askew in a bid to catch a wave of poetic association. Although this is but one
approach to reinvigorating the art of painting, it is one that became increasingly
marginalised with the rise of the theory bunnies; a time when the politics of
theory stridently displaced the language of painting.
Moving along the corridor I found a few canvases from the ROAR
painters who launched their group studio on Brunswick Street Fitzroy about the
same time as A&T published its first edition. Unfortunately for ROAR, they came to
characterise the exactly sort of artist A&T and its entourage stood opposed to;
whose stated preference for the art of text, reproduction and popular culture.
A&T had little interest in painters of the bohemian ilk.
Many of the ROAR bunch emerged from the painting dept. at R.M.I.T.
about the same time and shared a deep love of the haptic language of
painting. ROAR developed an integrated art/studio/lifestyle where effusive
expressionism and bohemian camaraderie had an infectious impact on its
community. When Vogue magazine launched an article on the revitalized
Melbourne art scene in 1982, it was ROAR studios and Reconnaissance Gallery
that Vogue referred to when their headline exclaimed: ‘Oh to be in Melbourne
now that the Renaissance is here’. The ROAR house style is signified by a poetic
approach to the canvas, which drifted in and out of figuration, tabling glimpses
of their bohemian encounters and insights, in thick paint often using intense
25
colors straight from the tube. ROAR celebrated synthetic Cubism and the
Antipodean painters.
We can see this in Sarah Faulkner’s canvas ‘You bite my back and I’ll
bite yours’, which aside from offering its own poiesis, evokes a hint of early John
Percival. David Larwill was the most successful of the group. His painting ‘Justice’
has marked a clear ‘No’ in the midst of his semi figurative calligraphy. Mark
Howson’s ‘Mid–Summer Nights Dream’ is typical of the ROAR approach to
painting. Imaginative, painterly marks open up a poetic space, which does not
reduce to a literal translation, but belongs solely to the process of painting, in the
way that Derrida argues philosophy is embedded within the linguistic challenges
that belong to literature. A more comprehensive exhibition of ROAR artists would
have to include Pasquali Giardino, Mark Schaller and Jill Noble amongst others.
Thankfully, the ROAR painters are represented by paintings, although
their canvases seem tucked away as if protected from the possibility of more
comprehensive appreciation. Peter Ellis’ painting ‘Tableau’, straddles the image
– abstraction divide where his images might appear collaged they firmly belong
to a painterly tradition, which evokes reference to the Antipodean logic of Sid
Nolan’s ‘Italian Crucifix’. Ellis embeds the tools of psychological deconstruction
into the surface of his painting.
Turning a corner, more paintings. This time with room to step back and
appreciate. Here there the line between influence and appropriation begins to
breakdown as painters explore neo–expressionist modes of painting; Anselm
Kiefer, Helmut Middendorf, perhaps Elvira Bach. Another Jan Nelson, this time a
painting, ‘Hazardous Beauty’, thick paint figurative references, nicely handled.
An early Jan Murray, new wave plane images ‘Almost Colliding’, all handled with
a loose quasi–figurative hand. Gordon Bennett, puts an aboriginal spin on the
Tillers’ trope, appropriating Mimi figures from Managrida artist, Crusoe Kuningbal,
and embedding them into an image of an executive ‘perpetual motion’ toy. The
painting is denser, layered perhaps glazed. Tony Clark, one of the ‘Art Projects’
artists, is represented by his spotty diagrams of the ruins of Imperial roman
temples alongside his somewhat abbreviated appropriations of the neo–
26
classical landscape. References to Lorrain & Poussin are made but such allusions
can be misleading. Clark’s citations are minimal. In the early days of painting
they might be might be called a sketch or a cartoon for a more complex
undertaking. Clark’s challenge is no doubt conceptual.
Geoff Lowe’s oeuvre is represented by ‘The Man from the Ironbark’; a
casually painted image of a witty re–staging of Banjo Patterson’s poem of the
same name – is that Nick Cave standing in for the Man from the Ironbark?
Stephen Bush, is represented by a photorealist image of a tractor, finely
rendered in sepia tones. ‘The Cultivator’ parodies a bygone era, perhaps when
painting was a rigorous and formal process. I recognise his technical
achievements are not to be taken lightly, they remain the work of a younger
painter who is still proud of his hard won virtuosity. His later work takes up more
complex
challenges.
It
was
Goya
who
remarked,
after
long
life
of
draughtsmanship and craftsmanship that he was just beginning to understand
how the process of painting worked. He was in his 70s at the time.
The inclusion of one of John Brack’s late tableaux’s is a pertinent
inclusion. His finely rendered trick of faces and hands acknowledges the
conceptual conundrums common to cultural representation that any artist faces.
His technique is compelling but doesn’t overpower the pertinence and
significance of his imagery.
Dale Hickey, another recipient of the Keating award, presents a studio
tableau entitled ‘Pal & Pilchards’ as if Dale too, like Iggy Pop, had been living on
dog food. In complete contrast to Brack’s articulation of the infinite possibilities of
cultural representation, Dale Hickey offers black on black crush; perhaps quoting
Malevitch and the existential state that comes of long hours in the studio. Dale
was one of my lecturers at P.I.T. in the early 70s. I remember him raising a
question of stamina; ‘do you have what it takes to persist with your practice
when, no matter what you do, no–one will be interested?’ Curiously the 1980s
were a time when interest in art abounded and many prospered from their
practices.
27
Then there is the fabulous drawing by Bernard Sachs, ‘Fathers & Sons’,
I found it indefinable, grand, drawn out of a long–winded encounter between
the artist, the charcoal, an erasure and the cotton rag. References might be
drawn to Frank Auerbach’s drawings, except the de–sublimation of such an
effort puts an end to referential theory – thank you B.
The Main Drag
From here I doubled back again to the take in work in the gallery
behind Popism galleries, where the space opens up to an elegant spread of
some of the other names that have come to define the 1980s.
I enjoyed Paul Boston’s ‘Fish House’, which might have equally been
called Fish Trap, because it sets up a conceptual trap to stop the mind fishing.
Incidentally, I consider the ability of a work of art to trap thought a great virtue.
Paul’s deeper inspiration comes from his long association with Zen Buddhism. As
Paul said of his own work ‘I think a great painting … would be like a hole in
28
meaning … everything else is reading very clearly and exactly, but this thing
becomes unreadable, but very engaging.’17
Robert Hunters’ work engenders a similar effect, although Hunter’s
oeuvre belongs to a minimalist lineage. The subtle patternations of white–on–
white, give rise to the faintest suggestion of colour, before being gently phased
out. The mind gets busy trying to track where the colour ends and Hunter’s faint
fields begin to glow with a luminous emptiness. Hunter was another recipient of
the illustrious Keating Award, in the ‘Creative Nation’ program initiated in 1994.
To his credit, Keating not only put considerable funding into new media and
creative industries but he also recognised art as a separate field and gave it his
own unique blessing – his own name.
Robert MacPherson’s ’20 Frog Poems’, coupled with the billy cart,
‘painted the colour of my favourite bird’, makes a compelling combination that
activated my own boyhood memories. However, in face of the ubiquitous
Readymade and its reductive legacy, I often find myself gasping for more
complex airs. I bawk at the idea of a de–skilled and dumbed down culture that
prides itself on its simplicity, however elegant and worry that the artists whose
trajectory continues this legacy might find themselves displaced by the rise of
more rigorous disciplines.
Narelle Jubelin’s cottage industry of buttons and lace with petit–point
cotton and string collections is quaint in a crafty kinda way, but the crafty
appropriation equation becomes more complex when the NGV throws in a few
pre–dynastic Egyptian Urns. This is no Duchampian double–take on our concept
of authority. The Jubelin’s work projects an institutional authority such that its title
‘Trade Delivers People’ has me flummoxed. It suggests some sort of ironic twist on
the affects of globalisation. Whose people is Jubelin trading here? One thing is
clear Jubelin’s own trade has delivered her work into exhibition at the Tate in the
UK, with the blessing of the N.G.V.
17 From an unpublished interview with Ashley Crawford; Charles Green, ‘Peripheral Visions’,
Sydney, Craftsman House, 1995; p 53.
29
Mike Parr’s ‘To Be Done with the Judgement of God’ is a multi–
panelled series of drawings, in which Parr engages a doubled process of
exploring his own image (Parr’s endless self–portrait project) and the medium of
drawing. In these drawings Parr drifts from literal modes of representation into
expressive modes of mark making, commonly associated with the abstract
expressionists, and then off into other more imaginative processes common to
the surrealist project. The scale of the work is impressive, as a series they are
commanding.
Becoming a mini–model of the N.G.V. collections, Delany’s selection
presents some of the distinctive furniture of the times. Susan Cohn’s ‘Timber &
Aluminium Chair’ offers an industrialised upgrade on Arkleys’ X’, ‘T’, ‘W’ & ‘V’
chairs. Johannes Kuhnen ‘Center Piece’, befits a board table. Both Cohn &
Kuhnen are associated with Denton Corker & Marshall.
The publication display case accompanying the exhibition offers a
comprehensive collection of magazines from the 1980s; Ashley Crawford’s
‘Tension’ and ‘Virgin Press’ were there, Michael Trudgeon’s ’Crowd’ as well as his
‘Fast Forward’ Audiocassette. ‘Praxis’, ‘Pataphysics’, ‘Photofile’, and ‘LIP’. Of
course Nixon’s ‘Anti–Music’ and ‘Pneumatic Drill’ flyers. Brophy’s ‘New Music’,
Kozic & Brophy’s ’Stuff’ & ‘Things’ zines. The Sydney contingent is represented by
‘Art Network’, magazine set–up by Ross Wolfe, who went onto become the
director of the Australia Council, when Richard McMillan took over editorial
responsibilities. Ross Gibson’s, ‘On the Beach’, Ross is currently Professor of
Contemporary Art at Sydney University. It came as no surprise that there was no
copy of the precocious ‘Art and a Texta’ in the cabinet. ‘Art and a Texta’ was
the magazine set up by a bunch of young poets who were sued for
appropriating the appropriation hegemony. The real problem is that they
weren’t quite smart enough.
John Walker, the British painter, is represented by a painting ‘Infanta’
from his Australian series entitled ‘Oceania my Dilemma’, painted while he was
artist in residence at V.C.A. One could say ‘Infanta’ is an appropriation of
Velazqueth’s ‘Las Meninas’, painting of the little princess, Margaret Theresa, but
30
here’s the problem. Artists in general, but painters specifically have always
appropriated, referenced, been influenced by other artists. Picasso did a vast
series of paintings based on ‘Las Meninas’, as well as whole series based on ‘The
Rape of the Sabine Women’, appropriated from Jacques–Louis David, who had
appropriated it from Peter Paul Rubens, who had appropriated it from Nicholas
Poussin,
who
had
appropriated
it
from
Giambologna,
before
whose
appropriation it was already a popular theme in 15th century art. Picasso was not
only noted for his appropriations, but famous for stealing ideas from other artists
studios. John Berger referred to him as ‘a vertical invader’, because he
appropriated both the subject matter and the method of painting, not
necessarily concurrently.18
Brent Harris’ ‘The Curtain Torn’ belongs to an early period where his
work seemed to be, like Tillers, influenced by both McCahon and Nixon. This is
not one of his best, I prefer his later more graphic work myself, where his
influence seems to have switched toward the yBa painter, Gary Hume.
Susan Norrie is represented by an elegant white–on–white text based
painting ‘Peripherique’, where the power in the painting is counterpointed by
the power of the text. Personally, I would have loved to see something from her
1986 ‘The Sublime and the Ridiculous‘ series, but perhaps the NGV were not lucky
enough to get one of those Sydney paintings. Norrie’s work shifts ground
regularly, which enables her work to move on and reflect her changing times,
without falling into the endless repeat syndrome that seems to have dogged
some artists. If you have a look at her C/V you will see that it hasn’t done her
career any disservice.
Judy Watson’s work is from the late 80s; ‘Black Ground’. Her work
exudes a mysterious air and evokes all the magic and mysticism I associate with
traditional Aboriginal culture. Natural pigments and charcoal are ground into the
canvas, whilst a striking monolithic structure is inscribed across the top in white
18 John Berger, ‘The Success and Failure of Picasso’, 1965, reprinted Vantage Books, New
York, 1993; p 72.
31
pastel. Much is made of Watson’s origins, from far north–western Queensland,
although she studied at the at Toowoomba College of Art, just west of Brisbane.
Her work opens the way to the next gallery where other indigenous work awaits.
Outback and Beyond
Coming into the back of the second gallery we enter via the few
indigenous works on exhibition. Whilst I couldn’t profess to admire the work, I am
respectful of the Walpiri women’s paintings of the ‘Jurkurrpa’ (Dreamtime). Most
of those women come from a region on the N.T. – W.A. border, not far from
where the last people were discovered who had never set eyes on a white
person, as late as 1964. Douglas Lockwood’s book ‘The Lizard Eaters’ details
those encounters. Most of these Walpiri women were born between 1925 – 1945
and western concepts of art would have little relevance to their experience of
the world. I could imagine the entire back gallery committed to art from such
out–stations
–
Utopia,
Papunya,
Yuendumu,
Balgo,
Hermannsberg
and
Pitjantjatjara. Although Papunya painters began in the early 1970s it wasn’t until
the 1980’s that Central Western Desert painting really kicked off; albeit with
considerable institutional funding.
I was genuinely taken by the Jarinyani David Downe’s painting ‘Jilji’
(ceremony in Sandhill country) and loved the way the ceremonial headdresses
appeared as if they had lifted the dancers way above the horizon line as if long
brown ‘kulpidji’s’ (ceremonial objects imbued with well–being) had transported
them into a transcendent state.
Rosalie Gasgoine’s ‘Inland Sea’ serves to introduce the extraordinarily
harsh territory where some Aboriginal people survived. In the context of the
exhibition it did little more for me than accelerate the barren experience of the
back gallery, which seemed somewhat awkward and sparsely hung, as if an
after thought.
32
Jan
Senberg’s
Mt
Lyell as ‘Copperlopolis’
might been
more
appropriately hung in line with Mary Martin’s ‘Beyond Metropolis’, another work
on the theme on Iron ore and the mining territories, and both in the context of
Fred Williams’ ‘Pilbara’ landscape. Perhaps they might not have looked so out of
place had they all been hung together.
As it was, these three mineral
landscapes looked somewhat inappropriate wedged between documentary
photographs and the Aboriginal paintings.
Sue Ford’s photographs read as journalism; they offered little for me, I
moved on quickly. Micky Allen’s unassuming snaps of ‘La Perouse’ in 1980, ditto.
Perhaps they will become important historical documents, but is this the role of
publically funded art? OK, the suburban, quasi industrial site of the Cook’s first
landing, but Micky he has done better work, and there have been so many
works that could have held that space denoting the issues of Aboriginal land
rights and government claims on their land. I cannot imagine it is a matter of the
work or availability?
Personally, I loathe reading text in galleries, so needless to say I didn’t
spend much time trying to decipher Bonita Ely’s copious ‘Murray River Punch’
notes. In my defence, I saw this piece when it was first presented in 1980 at the
George Paton, Ewing gallery. I appreciate Ely’s ‘Murray River Punch’ remains
pertinent; a potent cocktail of human faeces and urine, superphosphate,
insecticide,
chlorine
de–oxygenated
water
topped
with
heavily
salted
European–carp flakes. Given the current issues around the Murray Darling water
rights, it is a pity Bonita wasn’t there to give us another serving. There wasn’t
much irony in this piece thirty years ago but that is what I liked about it in 1980.
33
Omissions & Deletions
Ulay (with Marina Abramovic), ‘There is a criminal touch in art’, performance
video, Neue Nationalegalerie Berlin – 1975 19
I realise that most of the works included in the ‘TAPE MIX 1980s’
exhibition were from the N.G.V. collection, which would no doubt have its gaps.
Obviously there are also limits of space as well as the curatorial issues of critical
significance.
However, I did not see anything from Arthur Boyd’s notable ‘Australian
Scapegoat’ series, presented in the Australian pavilion for the 1988 Venice
Biennale. I was surprised to find nothing from Bill Henson, whose work was critical
to 1980s photography, nor any John Lethbridge, one of Paul Taylor’s favourites. It
looks like John Dunkley–Smith has suffered the ‘Tall Poppy’ fate? I was surprised
not to see any of Elizabeth Gower’s work, less so Lindy Lee or Mathius Gerber
19 Ulay (with Marina Abramovic), ‘There is a criminal touch in art’, Performance action, Berlin
1975. http://www.ubu.com/film/ulay_action.html ; (accessed 10th June 2013)
34
who are Sydney based. Two other women artists with active profiles in the 1980s
worthy of mention would be Mirka Mora or Deborah Halpern. The Aboriginal
area could have been enhanced by anything from Utopia, Papunya, Yuendumu,
Balgo, Hermannsberg and Pitjantjatjara. I won’t list names but Emily Kngwarreye
is an obvious omission, having been the only Aboriginal recipient of the illustrious
Keating Award. Then there are the urban Aboriginal artists, Trevor Nicholls, Fiona
Foley? A Tim Johnson might have served to bridge to the territory between the
Aboriginal landscape and the mining landscape represented by Senbergs,
Williams & Martin. No Rick Amor, Godwin Bradbeer, John Young, Peter Westward
or Steve Cox who were all active during the 1980s. Representation of the ROAR
group would have been enhanced by the inclusion of Pasquali Giardino, Mark
Schaller and Jill Noble. Of course my friends ask after my laminated plastic works
and videotapes from the ‘Diagrams 4 Clones’ exhibition 1980, not to mention the
eight subsequent series produced in the 1980s. No doubt I wasn’t invited to the
right parties either.
A socio–political group of considerable significance during the 1980s,
which might be fated to terminally be overlooked in the annals of contemporary
Australian art, was the politically strident Australian Cultural Terrorists (A.C.T.). The
A.C.T. group, who remain to this day anonymous, stole Picasso’s ‘Weeping
Woman’ from the NGV around the 2nd August in 1986. The theft of the Picasso
was a political act in protest at the impoverished state of funding for
contemporary art in Melbourne; best understood in contrast to the sums of
money spent on international acquisitions – such as Picasso’s ‘Weeping Woman’.
The A.C.T. demanded; ‘a 10 per cent increase in arts funding and an annual
prize for painting ‘open to artists under 30, consisting of five prizes of $5000 each
… if, at the end of seven days our demands have not been met the painting will
be destroyed and our campaign will continue.’ Apparently an art prize for
emerging artists was announced shortly after the return of the Picasso.20
20 Patrick McCaughey The Woman in Locker 227. Sydney Morning Herald, 16th August, 2003.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/15/1060936055098.html; (accessed 10th
June 2013)
35
McCaughey’s tale the theft begins on Monday 4th August 1986 when
its loss was discovered by the NGV guards. The painting had apparently been
replaced by the ransom note from the A.C.T., sometime over the weekend;
probably Saturday evening 2nd August. The guards presumed the work was on
loan to the N.G.A. (Canberra A.C.T.) and took no further notice of the note. The
news hit the papers on the Monday. Anna Schwartz was quick to implicate Mark
Howson, one of the ROAR group, in the theft. There have been suspicions that
Schwartz’s lead was a ‘red herring’, designed to put the media off the track. To
this day the media continue to position Howson in the midst of the affair,
although Howson has always maintained that his interest in the affair was
innocent. The case remains unsolved although there are persistent suggestions
that the A.C.T. group were much closer to the artworld cognoscenti than N.G.V.
might like to concede.21
Interestingly, on Monday night 4th August 1986 in Sydney, Martin Munz,
the director of the Tin Sheds Art program at University of Sydney launched their
tiny (1m x 1m x 1m) AVAGO Gallery, with an exhibition of Juan Davila’s work the
very evening that the news of the Picasso theft hit the Sydney papers.22
The work Davila exhibited at AVAGO gallery was entitled; ‘Picasso
Theft’, you can see the it pictured in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s book
‘Juan Davila’ produced in conjunction with the major retrospective of Davila’s
work at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, the National Gallery of
Victoria, Melbourne, and Davila’s representation at ‘Documenta 12’ in Kassel,
21 ‘Rewind; Interview with Justin Murphy’, Patrick McCaughey, Margaret Symonds, Jan
Senbergs, Mark Howson; ABC, Radio National 19th September 2004.
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/rewind/txt/s1199862.htm; (accessed 10th June 2013)
22 Anne Howell, ‘Avago at Tin Shed, a modest chance for wackier works’, Sydney Morning
Herald, June 8th 1989, p 12.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1301&dat=19890608&id=HDZWAAAAI
BAJ&sjid=6-cDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2897,3039834; (accessed 10th June 2013)
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Germany in 2007. Whilst there is no suggestion that the work exhibited was
anything but a copy of the stolen painting, it seems uncanny that a copy of
Picasso’s painting was painted and shipped from Melbourne and exhibited in
Sydney within 24 hours of its theft from the N.G.V.23
Notably, Davila’s painting, entitled ‘Picasso Theft’, immediately
became the object of second attack by the A.C.T. The night of its opening the
glass window of AVAGO gallery was smashed, the ‘Picasso Theft’ painting was
stolen and another note was left by the A.C.T.; this time identifying themselves as
Artist’s Confronting Terrorism. The note read; ‘We have stolen the Picasso from
AVAGO gallery. We have no demands but to be acknowledged as artists; We
ask the question ‘Where does art End?’ Theft for art’s sake – A.C.T. – Artist’s
Confronting Terrorism’. 24
The N.G.V. director and one of the trustees, McCaughey and
Senbergs, made it clear that all they wanted was the return the painting,
intimating that prosecution would be unlikely. They suggested the Picasso could
be left in a luggage locker at say; Spencer Street station or Tullamarine airport
and that would be that. The Picasso was returned, via locker(No. 227) at Spencer
Street railway station, a week later. 25
23 Museum of Contemporary Art, Juan Davila, 2006, Melbourne, The Miegunyuh Press: p 109.
24 (Sydney Morning Herald, 1989)
25 (Sydney Morning Herald, 2003).
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