Socially Acceptable
My biggest pet peeve in New York City is watching men (and women) of all walks of life, hack and cough, then swiftly discharge a slimy wad of saliva on the sidewalk as passersby narrowly attempt to avoid its path. Despite my repulsion for this most sordid act, saliva is the product of Ana Prvacki’s innovative performance at the Sydney Biennale this year in which she produced gallons of saliva through a solemn flute solo. The bodily fluid—known for its medicinal properties—is then used as a healing salve. Though her actual saliva cannot legally be used, Prvacki has worked with a chemist to create wet wipes infused with her music-derived painkiller that were distributed at her performance at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art in June. The event was reviewed in the The Sydney Morning Herald and images of her performance can be seen on the 2008 Sydney Biennale website.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Prvacki’s performance in view of the upcoming exhibition, theanyspacewhatever, at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, organized by Chief Curator Nancy Spector, which will open this fall. The show addresses artists whose conceptual and social practices in the 1990s are frequently defined by the term “relational aesthetics,” a phrase coined by Nicolas Bourriaud in his collection of essays by the same name (originally published in France in 1998). Art: 21 artist Pierre Huyghe (Season 4) as well as Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Forester, Douglas Gordon, Carsten Höller, Jorge Pardo, Philippe Parreno, and Rirkrit Tiravanija are included in the forthcoming exhibition. Though I am eager to see how this ambitious project is executed, I can’t help but question the institutionalization of such practices. Aren’t they inherently in opposition to such institutions? And where do artists like Lygia Clark, Jeremy Deller, William Pope L., and Ana Prvacki fit into this dialogue?
Pierre Huyghe Performance at the Sydney Biennale
On Thursday, Jul 10, Art21 artist Pierre Huyghe (Season 4) will discuss the thoughts and processes behind his work including his latest project for the 2008 Biennale of Sydney, A Forest of Lines. The conversation with Biennale Artistic Director, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, begins at 5:30pm.
A Forest of Lines begins midday on July 9 and runs through midday July 10 at the Sydney Opera House. Featuring music by Laura Marling, the piece has no beginning and no end, no division between stage and audience, and no specified direction or path. Recommended viewing time is 10-15 minutes per person.
The website describes the piece: “From the entrance at the top of the hall, you see a valley obscured by clouds. Someone is walking between the trees and singing. Her lyrics draw the audience, who are wearing headlights, into the forest. Her song tells of how to find a way out. By tracing the experience from the Concert Hall back to the nurseries and the growers of the trees, back to a real place elsewhere, the song teaches us how to reach a special place in an Australian forest.”
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Revolving Revolt: 16th Biennale of Sydney
From June 18 through September 7, the 16th Biennale of Sydney: Revolutions - Forms That Turn presents the work of 180 artists , including 50 newly commissioned projects. The exhibition “articulates the agency embedded in forms that express our desire for change.” Among the 180 artists are Art21’s Allora & Calzadilla, Mark Dion, and Pierre Huyghe all featured in Season 4 as well as Bruce Nauman (Season 1) and Paul Pfeiffer (Season 2). The Biennale of Sydney is taking place across the city in multiple venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cockatoo Island, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Pier 2/3, Artspace, the Sydney Opera House, and the Royal Botanic Gardens.
For those not in Australia, one can still view the online venue, revolutionsonline. Each visit to the venue presents a new series of works that include film, audio, images, interactive works, live streaming performances, texts and links to existing websites. Works are continuously uploaded to the venue, creating an ever-changing constellation.
Shahzia Sikander and Tim Hawkinson at MCA Sydney; Art21 videos on view
On view at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Sydney, Australia are two major exhibitions by Art21-featured artists: Shahzia Sikander and Tim Hawkinson. In conjunction with both of these shows, Art21 video profiles on each of these artists are running on a loop in the museum’s Resource Room.
Shahzia Sikander opened last month at the MCA and includes a major site-specific work which the artist created directly on the gallery wall.
Sikander’s work is characterised by its precision of line and delicacy of touch: from tightly structured miniature paintings to larger, more loosely formed watercolours in which pigments stain and bleed into one another. Historical tradition meets contemporary interpretation, incorporating both figurative and abstract elements. Since 2001, Sikander has also worked with digital animation, setting her miniatures into physical motion. Images break apart and reform in new hybrid permutations, while sound adds a further dimension.
Sikander was recently granted the prestigious MacArthur Award last year. She was recognised by the MacArthur Foundation for “merging the traditional South Asian art of miniature painting with contemporary forms and styles to create visually compelling, resonant works on multiple scales and in a dazzling array of media.”
Shahzia Sikander is on view at the MCA until February 17, 2008.
Yesterday, Art21 featured artist Tim Hawkinson (Season 2) opened his first Australian exhibition, Mapping The Marvelous, at the MCA.
Hawkinson has received widespread recognition for his ingenious constructions of everyday objects, often large-scale kinetic and sound-producing works, whose intricate and playful constructions engage with the human body and portraiture, incorporating mechanical components and materials such as latex, plastic, cardboard and string.
Showcased works are sculptures, photo collages and drawings from the mid 1990s to the present, all of which refer to the obsessive human need for order and containment, using maps and charts, volumes and measurements to document the world in all its excess.
The exhibition introduces Hawkinson’s extraordinary new creations—among them a bat created from shredded black plastic bags and twistie ties—as well as inflatable self-portraits, monstrous beings and fantastical structures that chatter, whistle, rotate and spin.
Mapping the Marvelous is on view through March 5, 2008.
