I saw five exhibitions in Hobart from Ten Days on the Island’s visual art program. The standard was very high.
Evolution
Patricia Piccinini
Curated by Juliana Engberg
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart
The pick of the bunch was the much feted Patricia Piccinini, in a survey of her works. Something that has amazed me about her work over a number of years has been the ability for the pieces to seem somehow familiar and fleshy and yet after a moment of thought I feel my stomach turning as something isn’t quite right. Genetic modification has that same feeling – we recognise the shapes, colour and expressions but yet it feels wrong and alien. I admit when I see someone who has an amputation or some sort of body difference I feel myself staring at it with fascination.
She has worked with the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery to install a few of her works inside the museum exhibits – so next to wombats and tassie devils were these strange creatures – this was genius. It was asking the question of what is future and what is past, what is preserved and what is extinct.
Aniwaniwa
Brett Graham and Rachel Rakena
The Barn, Rosny Farm, Hobart
The Kiwi exhibit Aniwaniwa was beautiful and made me remember what is amazing about lying down to watch something. I felt myself completely relax across the chest Because I was no longer having to hold myself up. This immediately put me in a good mood and allowed me to intake the material bodily without having to think too much about it. The five channel video and sound work seamlessly drifted from abstraction to live action without any problem at all, the haunting Maori vocals gluing the work together. Sometimes all five circular screens would sync up and then they would fall out again…very beautiful – no wonder it was the NZ representative at the Venice Biennale in 2007.
Hospitality
Icelandic Love Corporation
CAST Gallery, Hobart
The Icelandic Love Corporation was a must see for me – I am going to Iceland next year so seeing some work that was similar to Deadpan was a good move. THEY WEREN’T THERE! I was so disappointed, it felt like they were going to be there – I think perhaps they did something at the opening and that is all – boo hoo. The work seemed empty of something (maybe I was pining for their presence and it killed it for me.)
You Are Home
Lee Kuo Min and Chen Hsing Chung, Hongjohn Lin, Ella Raidel and Yuan Goang-Ming
Curated by Dr Megan Keating
Plimsoll Gallery, Tasmanian School of Art, Hobart
This collection of Taiwanese artists media work was very familiar to me. The photography was of Treasure Hill a soldier settlement area in Taipei which has now been opened as cheap studios for artists as the soldiers from Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist Army all start to get old and die off. When i was there in 2006 it was starting to become a battleground between these old soldiers and the younger new generation artists. The mix of old and new in these photos was amazing, a society caught in the past yet has been the leader in cheap and modular new technologies that have driven the infotech boom we are all benefiting from today. An amazing triptych video work (three channels of three cameras side by side moving at the same pace) a visceral moving experience. This is the type of video work I love – it is performative in that the audience becomes a performer as they are moved with the motion of the camera. (See video here)
Ruined
Ross Bolleter and Teresa Beck-Swindale
A series of old smashed up or degraded pianos are displayed in a room for playing, when I was there a whole bunch of children were delighting in the cacophony of ruined instruments. Their stories meant that these items once destined for a suburban or small town tip were now celebrated and played no matter how many keys were missing.
