hobART: Art Gallery of New South Wales

Showing posts with label Art Gallery of New South Wales. Show all posts

Thursday, July 5, 2012

18th Biennale of Sydney: a walk on the island

My contribution to Ewa Partum's courtyard installation

I spent last week traipsing around the Sydney Biennale – an exhibition that seems to be growing larger every year. The popular Cockatoo Island is used as a site for the 3^rd event running, as is Pier 2/3, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), and a new addition: Carriageworks. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the botanic gardens, which is disappointing because many of my favourite works from the last biennales were sited there.

Ricardo Lanzarini, Cockatoo Island

The artworks on Cockatoo Island this year are, on the whole, far more in dialogue with the site than previous years. We’re so used to viewing art against ‘neutral’ white walls that the constructed environment of the Modern museum has almost become invisible. Comparatively, when art is placed in complex semiotic sites where the surrounding environment is very obvious and at risk of overwhelming the art, it’s important that artists and curators take this into account. Four years ago, I commented on the Biennale’s promotion of ‘more than 30 site-specific’ artworks supposedly on Cockatoo Island. As a buzzword, site-specific art makes for good press releases, however punters are confused when the works don’t actually relate to the site. This year’s Cockatoo Island artworks include some site-specific artworks, but far more that are suitably installed in dialogue with the site without being strictly site-specific. For instance, Ricardo Lanzarini’s drawings in a utilitarian-looking room on the top of the island are clustered near the pipes, doorways and other existing features (The artist also has a series of intricately drawn books made from cigarette papers displayed at the AGNSW).

The roofless structure that houses Tiffany Singh's installation

Also notable is Tiffany Singh’s colourful wind chime artwork installed in an oddly-shaped roofless structure on the western end of the island. From the outside, the bamboo chimes are barely audible, yet within the sandstone walled structure, accessed by a small opening that requires the viewers to crouch on entry, the hundreds of chimes clatter loudly with the movement of the wind. On a sunny day, the dark shadows cast by the grid of coloured chimes and reverberating sound completely surrounds and involves the viewer

Tiffany Singh, Knock on the Sky Listen to the Sound

In keeping with my obsession with artworks that construct the lives of fictional people within exhibition spaces, I appreciate Iris Haussler’s He Dreamed Overtime, sited in a cracked sandstone house on the top island. However, when I challenge the invigilators on the story of the mysterious island caretaker, it is obvious they needed a bit more lying practice.

Iris Haussler's He Dreamed Overtime (installation shot)

Nicholas Hlobo, Ingubo Yesizwe

Peter Robinson, Gravitas Lite

I also enjoy Nicholas Hlobo’s kelp-like installation, Ingubo Yesizwe in the Docks Precinct, where it’s initially unclear whether the mound of sewn black rubber, slumped on a boat ramp, is an artwork. There’s no fancy lighting or plinths here.

Peter Robinson’s epic mound of carved polystyrene chains, which sit on, around, and within the rusty machinery in the Industrial Precinct, also relates nicely to the site, the (for now) white plastic contrasting with the darkened waste. Once I get over my initial ‘yeah, so, you can carve a chain, so what?’ (yes, I’m petty), it’s clear that in its scale and material, the installation is very successful. Nearby are Philip Beesley’s Avatar-like hanging objects, Hylozoic Series, which react to the viewers’ touch and movement.

Philip Beezley, Hylozoic Series (detail)

As one of my friends remarked, the island is populated with ‘floaty’ artworks. Adjacent to Beesley’s work are Ed Pien and Tanya Tagaq’s hanging fabric and rope mazes (supposedly representing rain), and Monika Grzymala’s installation completed with the Euraba Artists and Papermakers, which looks like seedpods being blown away in the wind in suspended animation. While these three installations aren’t site-specific, they sit comfortably in the tall warehouse spaces

Erin Manning, Stitch in Time - A Collective Fashioning, installation shot

Li Hongbo, Ocean of Flowers

The ‘floaty’ artwork by Erin Manning, on the other hand, looks like something unfortunate washed up from Byron Bay, where scraps of hanging fabric and tulle surround a project table set up with thread and needles. The work on the warehouse floor below – Li Hongbo’s Ocean of Flowers - is more considered. The clusters of colourful accordion paper sculptures form a cartoon-like landscape though which viewers are allowed to walk. Later, we are shown the shapes that form the basis of these happy looking objects: guns and bullets. To be honest, I’m disappointed that the work can’t just be about the objects, that it had to be made out of war-associated objects. Like Pien and Tagaq’s artwork, the installation is made more complex than it needs to be.


The basis of Li Hongbo's paper sculptures

Jonathan Jones, Untitled (Oysters and Teacups)

As with the 2008 biennale, the iconic island tunnels are used for site-specific artworks. Clustered around the bend in the Dog-Leg tunnel, Daan Roosegaarde’s light poles interact with the viewers’ movement. Jonathan Jones’ ubiquitous geometrically arranged fluorescent lights are also triggered by our passage through the shorter Tunnel 1 (his other artwork is pictured left). Jon Pylypchuk’s Esky miner creatures digging away at the northern end of the Dog-Leg are a humorous addition to the cave-like annex.

Jon Pylypchuk, Spend the Rest of Your Life Mining this Death and it Will Only Bring You Dispair

Near the entrance to the tunnel is part of Fujiko Nakaya’s moody fog sculpture, which follows a similar work by the artist exhibited in the 1976 Sydney Biennale. (Now for some trivia:) The 1976 work was renamed and installed site-specifically in the sculpture garden at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra – a place that, unlike Cockatoo Island, probably doesn’t need any more fog.

Looking out of the warehouse towards Fujiko Nakaya's fog sculpture (clouds extra)

Pinaree Sanpitak, Anything Can Break, MCA

As I wrote earlier, the Biennale includes a substantial number of works, and while the island’s scale to an extent relieves the perception of overcrowding, the MCA is not so lucky. Crowding aside, the MCA’s exhibition is pretty disappointing. The comparison between the excellent exhibition of the museum’s acquisitions on level 2, and the underwhelming and congested biennale installation on 1 and 3, is pretty indicative.

The Biennale exhibition at the AGNSW is separately titled In Finite Blue Planet, complying with the art world’s current love of separ at ing wo rds (and its rarely for obvious reasons). Evidently, the exhibition’s focus is on environmental concerns, however, there seems to be far stronger threads relating to craft, labour and work. Gao Rong’s trompe l'oeil life-sized domestic interior diorama is painstakingly hand embroidered, Hassan Sharif’s installation consists colourful piles (each a separate artwork) of obsessively wrapped found objects, and Nipan Oranniwesna’s fragile City of Ghost is an intricate map formed with scented baby powder (I witness a child write his name in it on the biennale’s second day. Good luck, invigilators). Then there are the delicate cut-outs: Yuken Teuya’s Notice-Forest: Six Jewels carved out of branded paper shopping bags, and Jorge’s Macchi’s altered world map.

Hassan Sharif, various works (1985-2007)

The star of the biennale is Cockatoo Island, which has been the case for the last three events. Then again, perhaps it’s as much to do with the spectacular machinery and nostalgic industrial fetish as the art itself.

...and maybe the Island Bar.

Friday, December 9, 2011

The New Museum Architecture (updated)

I started forming this list in a previous post this year following a visit to a number of galleries in Rome, which all showcased innovative architecture while retaining novel elements of the site's original function, such as slaughterhouse or factory. I noted that the identity of many new museums is very much connected to this new style of architecture, yet the declarations of ‘innovation’, ‘difference’ and in some cases ‘challenging the notion of the white cube’, are ironically very similar. While I wrote the original post in May, the ideas had been brewing for quite some time, particularly the notion of rust fetish in architecture. Since I wrote the post, I’ve collected a number of images to illustrate my point, and rather than add them to the old post, I thought it’d be preferable to dedicate a whole post to the features of new museum architecture.

Art Gallery of NSW

Before I start on the new museum architecture, I’d like to highlight the epitome of the old/traditional museum architecture – the neo-classical sandstone building. This could be the National Gallery in London, the Modern Art museum in Rome, or the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. The latter is a classic sandstone portico entranceway similar to that of a Greek temple, is flanked by bronze statues of horses and their riders, and surrounded by the greenery of the city’s domain and botanic gardens. Before the viewer even steps inside the gallery therefore, the very exterior of the gallery has suggested notions of reverence and devotion. I’ve examined the semiotics of the AGNSW for my PhD and could bang on about it for pages, but I’ll save you and move on to the contemporary stuff. I just want to emphasise the fact that art institutions have always conveyed messages through their architecture; the new museum style may look different but the intentions are not all that dissimilar. While the newer white-walled galleries appear relatively neutral and unobtrusive in comparison to the distinct and heavy aesthetics of the older galleries and exterior, this neutrality is merely a façade, an illusion.

I’ve been to more than one lecture or specialised tour led by Museum staff, where they’ve stressed that “we’re not the usual white cube gallery”. One such gallery was the Istanbul Modern. Their reasoning? The gallery, which has prime views over the Bosphorus, used to be a shipping warehouse. They’d retained the exposed pipes on the ceiling, emphasising their presence by painting them red. Yet, their walls were white, the painting areas neatly partitioned off, and the video works were tucked away in what might be called a ‘black cube’. The gallery used the same strategies of neutralising the space as most contemporary art galleries. What I found most interesting was the anxiety about being labelled a ‘white cube’ space, and perhaps the misconceptions about the term. I think it also explains the popularity of industrial to art centre conversions, where original features are retained. By retaining original pipes, machinery, railway tracks, roughly hewn wood pillars, scarred walls, they distance themselves from the most literal interpretation of ‘the white cube’, and the ideology explained in Brian O’Doherty’s influential text. But maybe industrial nostalgia is the new ‘white cube’? The art world has a rust fetish.

Here are some of the features of the new museum:

1. Angles. Not right angles, other angles.

NGV Australia, Melbourne

Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne

MAXXI, Rome

Guggenheim, Bilbao

Tel Aviv Museum of Art (source: VISI)

staircase, CaixaForum Madrid

2. Floating (or unlikely) staircases.

MAXXI, Rome

Macro, Rome

cage staircase, Istanbul Modern, Istanbul

Spiral Staircase, MONA, Hobart

3. The walls are mostly white, even if they’re self-aware of the white. Sometimes they’ll have a few coloured walls just to show that they’re slightly subversive.

GOMA, Brisbane

Macro, Rome

The red to break up the white, Macro, Rome

4. (speaking of which...) A touch of red.

MAXXI, Rome

Ceiling, Istanbul Modern

5. Sexy concrete: polished for the floor; brutally raw or curved for the walls/exterior.


MAXXI, Rome

Istanbul Modern

Cer Modern, Ankara, Turkey

The Tel Aviv Museum of Art (source: VISI)

6. At least one ridiculously large room, which will often accommodate small objects. You will look up at the skylights or beams on the roof (oh, so far, far away) like you would in a church. The room will make you feel insignificant and humble. Art is god.

Macro, Rome

Olafur Eliasson, The Weather Project. © Olafur Eliasson. Photo © 2003 Tate, London

Olafur Eliasson, The Weather Project (2004), Tate Modern, in the turbine hall

7. They have toilets with weird sinks. You may or may not get them to function. (I wish I'd taken a photo of the Macro sinks, but I feel a bit uncomfortable taking photos in bathrooms)

Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Brisbane

8. The building has an industrial past, popular past functions include slaughterhouses, factories, power stations or shipping warehouses:


Macro (ex-slaughterhouse, Peroni factory)

Istanbul Modern (ex-shipping warehouse)

Detached, Hobart (ex-Church)


Cer Modern, Ankara, Turkey (ex-railyards)


Tate Modern, London (ex-powerstation)

okay, it's not a gallery per se, but Cockatoo Island's a popular venue for the Sydney Biennale (ex-shipyards, gaol). It's similar to the Venice Biennale's arsenale in this way. The use of industrial structures for temporary exhibitions is a whole other post...

Carriageworks, Sydney, multi-arts centre (the old Eveleigh Rail Yards)

Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA)

Matadero de Madrid, old municipal slaughterhouse

CaixaForum Madrid (former electric powerstation). A fantastic mix of rust, old brick, and living wall

9. Exposed plumbing or other functional parts of the gallery (also to show awareness of the white cube shiz)

Pompidou, Paris

Istanbul Modern

MONA, Hobart

10. Rust fetish. If the rust was not already part of the building prior to its current function as a gallery, ‘new’ rust is manufactured. Rust fetish not only refers to literal rust, but also aged features in general - old machinery, crumbling bricks, old graffiti...