utopia – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition: ‘Art Nouveau. The Great Utopia’ at Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Exhibition dates: 17th October 2015 – 7th February 2016

Among the artists exhibited are: Emile Bernard, Edward Burne-Jones, Peter Behrens, Carlo Bugatti, Mariano For-tuny, Loïe Fuller, Emile Gallé, Paul Gauguin, Karl Gräser, Josef Hoffmann, Gustav Klimt, Fernand Khnopff, René Lalique, Elena Luksch-Makowsky, Charles R. Mackintosh, Madame D’Ora, Louis Majorelle, Paula Modersohn-Becker, William Morris, Alfons Mucha, Richard Riemerschmid, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Louis C. Tiffany, Henry van de Velde.

Anonymous photographer
Sports at the beach in Wyk on the island of Föhr
Sanatorium Carl Gmelin, c. 1912
Collection The Ingwersen Family
© Fotoarchiv Ingwersen Wyk

What a memorable exhibition!

The presentation of the work is excellent, just what one would hope for, and the works themselves are magnificent – objects that you would hope existed, but didn’t know for sure that they did.

Particularly interesting are the use of large historical photographs of the objects in use in situ, behind the actual object itself; the presence of large three-dimensional structures (such as the Erkerzimmer for the Hotel Gallia in Nice, 1894-1900) built in the gallery; and the welcome lack of “wallpaper noise” (as I call it) that has dogged recent exhibitions at the National Gallery of Victoria (eg. the ongoing Andy Warhol / Ai Weiwei exhibition). It is so nice to be able to contemplate these objects without the additional and unnecessary “noise” of competing wallpaper behind each object.

The work itself reflects the time from which it emanates – visual, disruptive, psychological, technical, natural, beautiful and sensual – locating “Art Nouveau in its historical context of ideas as a reform movement with all its manifold facets and extremes. Adopting a particular focus on the relationship between nature and technology, [the exhibition] illuminates the most varied disciplines, ranging far beyond the movement of arts and crafts and reaching as far as the history of medicine and the technology of film-making… The ideal of superior craft in contrast to industrial articles collides with the commercial idea of competition and the marketing strategies at that time. Therefore the exhibition project manoeuvres at the intersection of utopia and capitalism.”

One of the most vital periods of creativity in all fields in recent history.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Paul Gauguin (French, 1848-1903)
Manao Tupapau (The Ghost of the Dead awakens)
Manao Tupapau (Der Geist der Toten wacht) | Manao Tupapau (The Spirit Watches Over Her)
1894
Lithograph on zinc sheet
Sheet: 30.6 x 46cm
© Kunsthalle Bremen – Der Kunstverein in Bremen

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Lying Female Nude
Vienna, 1914-1915
Pencil
37.6 x 57.1cm
© Wien Museum

Anne Brigman (American, 1869-1950)
The Wondrous Globe
1912
Photogravure (from Camera Work)
21.1 x 19.9cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

George Méliès (French, 1861-1938) (Regie)
Le Voyage dans la Lune | Die Reise zum Mond | Voyage to the Moon
France, 1902
16 Min.
© BFI National Archive

A Trip to the Moon – the 1902 Science Fiction Film by Georges Méliès

A Trip to the Moon (French: Le Voyage dans la Lune) is a 1902 French silent film directed by Georges Méliès. It’s considered one of the first science fiction film.

A Trip to the Moon ( Le Voyage dans la Lune) is a 1902 French adventure film directed by Georges Méliès. Inspired by a wide variety of sources, including Jules Verne’s novels From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, the film follows a group of astronomers who travel to the Moon in a cannon-propelled capsule, explore the Moon’s surface, escape from an underground group of Selenites (lunar inhabitants), and return to Earth with a captive Selenite. It features an ensemble cast of French theatrical performers, led by Méliès himself in the main role of Professor Barbenfouillis, and is filmed in the overtly theatrical style for which Méliès became famous.A Trip to the Moon was named one of the 100 greatest films of the 20th century by The Village Voice, ranked 84th. The film remains the best-known of the hundreds of films made by Méliès, and the moment in which the capsule lands in the Moon’s eye remains one of the most iconic and frequently referenced images in the history of cinema. It is widely regarded as the earliest example of the science fiction film genre and, more generally, as one of the most influential films in cinema history.

Fernand Khnopff (Belgian, 1858-1921)
Mask
c. 1897
Gypsum, mounted
18.5 x 28 x 6.5cm
© bpk, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Elke Walford

Installation photographs of the exhibition Art Nouveau. The Great Utopian Vision at Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Damon & Colin (Maison Krieger)
Erkerzimmer for the Hotel Gallia in Nice
1894-1900
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Installation photographs of the exhibition Art Nouveau. The Great Utopian Vision at Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Peter Behrens (German, 1868-1940)
Salonflügel aus dem Haus Behrens | Salon grand from house Behrens, Darmstadt
c. 1901
Execution: J. P. Schiedmayer Pianofortefabrik, Stuttgart; Intarsienwerkstatt G. Wölfel & Kiessling
Palisander, mahagony, maple, cherry and walnut, burl birch, partly coloured red, lapis lazuli and mother of peral inlay
H. 99cm x B. 150cm x 192cm
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Köln
© Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG) would like to dare a quite new approach to the epoch of the Art Nouveau in its exhibition project Art Nouveau. The Great Utopia. In contrast to the period about a century ago, when Art Nouveau was le dernier cri, it can be seen today not just as a mere historical stylistic era, but can open up parallels to complex phenomena familiar to visitors from their own experience: scarcity of resources and issues of what materials to use, precarious working conditions and consumer behaviour, the trade-off between ecological and aesthetic considerations in manufacturing processes or the desire for stylishly elegant, prestigious interior furnishings. These are just a few of the aspects which emerge as central motives common to both the reform movement of the years around 1900 and for the decisions facing today’s consumers. The exhibition has therefore been chosen in order to bring out as clearly as possible in this new setting the roots of the ideas and motives which informed Art Nouveau. The new presentation still revolves, for instance, around the World Exhibition of 1900 as an international platform of modern design. Furthermore the flight away from European industrialisation and the march of technology to imagined places of yearning such as the Middle Ages or nature is highlighted.

A further aspect is the change in the way people experienced their bodies in the fashion of the rational dress reform movement and modern dance. The exhibition project will attempt to locate Art Nouveau in its historical context of ideas as a reform movement with all its manifold facets and extremes. Adopting a particular focus on the relationship between nature and technology, it illuminates the most varied disciplines, ranging far beyond the movement of arts and crafts and reaching as far as the history of medicine and the technology of film-making. The exhibits can be read as artistic positions that address technological innovation as well as theories from Karl Marx (1818-1883) to Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). The ideal of superior craft in contrast to industrial articles collides with the commercial idea of competition and the marketing strategies at that time. Therefore the exhibition project manoeuvres at the intersection of utopia and capitalism. Visitors will be able to see paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints, posters, books, tapestries, reform dresses, photo-graphs and films as well as scientific and historical medical apparatus and models.

Text from the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg website

Rudolph Dührkoop (German, 1848-1918)
Kopf mit Heiligenschein | Head with Halo
1908
Platinotype
21 x 16cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Gabriel Charles Rossetti (English, 1828-1882)
Helena von Troja | Helen of Troy
1863
Oil on mahogany
32.8 x 27.7cm
Hamburger Kunsthalle
© bpk, Hamburger Kunsthalle
Photo: Elke Walford

Paula Modersohn-Becker (German, 1876-1907)
Kniender Mädchenakt vor blauem Vorhang | Kneeling Nude Girl
Worpswede, 1906/1907
Oil on canvas
72 x 60cm
© Landesmuseum Oldenburg, H. R. Wacker – ARTOTHEK

Unknown photographer
Ein Bogenschütze “Naturmenschenkolonie” bei Zürich | Archer “Naturmenschenkolonie” near Zurich
Naked archer, member of a nudists’ community in Zurich, Switzerland
1910
From Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, Nr. 34, 1910
© Ullstein Bild

Ferdinand Hodler (Swiss, 1853-1918)
Die Kindheit | Childhood
c. 1894
Oil on canvas
50 x 31cm
© Städel Museum – U. Edelmann – ARTOTHEK

Elena Luksch-Makowsky (Russian, 1878-1967)
Adolescentia
1903
Oil on canvas
172 x 79cm
Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Wien
© Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Wien

Atelier d’Ora (Dora Philippine Kallmus) (1881-1963)
Rotes Haar | Red Hair
1911
Gummidruck
38 x 28.2cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Alfons Mucha (Czech, 1860-1939)
Salon des Cent
Paris, 1896
Lithograph
63.5 x 46cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Alfons Mucha (Czech, 1860-1939)
Salon des Cent
Paris, 1897
Lithograph
63.5 x 46cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Eugène Grasset (Swiss, 1845-1917)
Print: G. de Malherbe, Zinkätzung
Ausstellungsplakat für eine eigene Ausstellung im Salon des Cent | exhibition poster for his own exhibition at Salon des Cents
1894
Stencil
60 x 40cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Verm. Albert Londe (French, 1858-1917)
Hysterischer Anfall (Bâillement hystérique) | Hysterics
Silver print
9 x 12cm
Bibliothèque de Toulouse
© Bibliothèque Municipale de Toulouse

Albert Londe (1858-1917) was an influential French photographer, medical researcher and chronophotographer. He is remembered for his work as a medical photographer at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, funded by the Parisian authorities, as well as being a pioneer in X-ray photography. During his two decades at the Salpêtrière, Albert Londe developed into arguably the most outstanding scientific photographer of his time.

In 1878 neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot hired Londe as a medical photographer at the Salpêtrière. In 1882 Londe devised a system to photograph the physical and muscular movements of patients (including individuals experiencing epileptic seizures). This he accomplished by using a camera with nine lenses that were triggered by electromagnetic energy, and with the use of a metronome he was able to sequentially time the release of the shutters, therefore taking photos onto glass plates in quick succession. A few years later Londe developed a camera with twelve lenses for photographing movement. In 1893 Londe published the first book on medical photography, titled La photographie médicale: Application aux sciences médicales et physiologiques. In 1898 he published Traité pratique de radiographie et de radioscope: technique et applications médicales.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Paul Gauguin (French, 1848-1903)
Vase mit Selbstbildnis | Vase with self-portrait
1889
Stoneware, engobe, copper and oxblood glaze
19.5 x 12cm
Designmuseum Danmark, Kopenhagen
Photo: Pernille Klemp

Ernst Haeckel (German, 1834-1919)
Discomedusae – Scheibenquallen | Scyphozoans
Table 8 from Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur, Leipzig und Wien
1904
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Eugène Feuillâtre (French, 1870-1916)
Vase “La Mer”
c. 1900
Cloisonné enamel, gilded copper
37.5cm
Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris
© Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris

The goldsmiths and jewellers of the second half of the nineteenth century constantly strove to perfect and develop the techniques of enamelling for artistic purposes. Eugène Feuillâtre, who headed the Lalique enamelling workshop before opening his own workshop in 1897, specialised in enamel on silver. The dilatation of the metal and its reactions with the colouring agents made this technique difficult. But it allowed Feuillâtre to obtain the blurred, milky, pearly tones that are so characteristic of his work. Feuillâtre’s use of colours illustrates his ability to choose materials to suit the effect he wanted. He is one of the craftsmen whose talent swept artistic enamelling to a veritable apotheosis about 1900.

Daum Frères (Hersteller | Manufacturer)
Vase in Kürbisform | Vase formed like a pumpkin
Nancy c. 1909
Cameo glass, mould blown, etched and cut
29.2 x 11.7cm
Düsseldorf, Museum Kunstpalast
© Museum Kunstpalast – Horst Kolberg – ARTOTHEK

Louis C. Tiffany (American, 1848-1933)
Pond Lily-Lampe | Pont Lily-lamp
New York, 1900, execution around 1910
Favrile glass, Bronze
57cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Albert Klein (German, 1871-1926)
Irisvase
1900
Execution: Königliche Porzellanmanufaktur, Berlin
Porcelain with glaze and sculptural decoration
61.5cm
Bröhan-Museum
© Bröhan-Museum
Photo: Martin Adam, Berlin

William Morris (British, 1834-1896)
Decoration fabric Strawberry Thief
London, 1883
Execution: Morris & Co., Merton Abbey/Surrey, 1883
Cotton, indigo discharge print, block print, 3-coloured
518 x 98cm, Rapport 51 x 45cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

William Morris (British, 1834-1896)
Decoration fabric Strawberry Thief (detail)
London, 1883
Execution: Morris & Co., Merton Abbey/Surrey, 1883
Cotton, indigo discharge print, block print, 3-coloured
518 x 98cm, Rapport 51 x 45cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

René Lalique (French, 1860-1945)
Haarkamm | Hair comb
1898-1899
Horn, gold, enamel
15.5cm
Designmuseum Danmark, Kopenhagen
Photo: Pernille Klemp

Unknown maker
Tageskleid einer Suffragetten-Sympathisantin | Day dress of a sufragette sympathiser
England, 1905-1909
Studio work or self-made, cotton, canvas lining, machine-made lace
L. 143cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (designer) (Spanish, 1871-1949)
Damenkleid Delphos | Lady’s dress Delphos
Venice, 1911-1913
Label: Mariano Fortuny Venise
Pleated silk satin, silk cord, Murano glass beads
L. 148cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Carlo Bugatti (Italian, 1856-1940)
Stuhl | Chair
Milan, 1902
Oak, parchment, brass
98 x 48 x 48cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Karl Gräser (Austro-Hungarian, 1849-1899)
Sessel im Stil seiner Zimmereinrichtung auf dem Monte Verità | Chair in the style of his room furnishings on Monte Verità
Museum Casa Anatta, Monte Verità, Ascona, um Verità 1910
Unhandeled branches, wooden panel
84 x 66 x 60cm
Photo: Elena Mastrandrea
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

In the nineteenth century, Europe is shaken by the arrival of industrialisation which upsets the social organisation. This crisis is particularly felt in Germany where signs of rejection of the industrial world appear as early as 1870. Thus, in response to the urbanisation generated by a new organisation of work, Naturism appears. Attempting to flee the pollution of the cities, to create communities and “garden city” to live in harmony with nature. Those who share this view soon gather around the movement of Reform of the life (Lebensreform, 1892). The movement attracts followers of vegetarianism, naturism, spiritism, natural medicines, the Hygienism, the Theosophical Society, as well as artists.

In 1889, Franz Hartmann, German astrologer and Alfredo Pioda, a local man into progressive politics, both loving theosophical theories under strong Hindu influence, launched the idea of a “secular monastery” bringing together individuals “regardless of race, creed, sex, caste or colour. ” But nothing came of it. Eleven years later, he resurfaced with seven young men from good families, born in Germany, Holland, Slovenia and Montenegro, who landed in Ascona (Switzerland), attracted by the beauty of the place, its climate and possible telluric forces which the place would wear. The clan consists of Henri Oedenkoven (son of wealthy industrialists Antwerp), Karl Gräser (former officer of the Imperial Army, founder of the peace group Ohne Zwang, Unconstrained), his brother, the painter Gustav Gräser, Ida Hoffman (a feminist intellectual) Jeny and her sister, Lotte Hattemer (a beautiful young girl with anarchist ideas, breaking with a father who nonetheless supports herself needs) and Ferdinand Brune.

Spiritualist sects, pharmacists, nudists, philosophical circles, feminist movements, pacifists, socialists, libertarians, gurus, Theosophists, come together to form a nebula of more or less related interest, a band that will unite in a place that combines lifestyle and utopian effervescence. The hill is named Monte Verità, the Mountain of the truth. The group advocated free love, equality between men and women, they gardening scantily clad (or bare), alcohol was banned, meals consist of raw vegetables and fruits. As often, the ideal was overtaken by reality: after several months of reciprocity disagreement appears, especially between Henry Oedenkoven, who plans to open a place of cure, and the brothers Gräser. They who dedicate themselves to self-sufficiency and barter reject this conversion to money. Monte Verita knowns immediately two trends: the bourgeois dream paradise enjoying the modern comfort (water, electricity) and potentially profitable; and aspiration of returning to a liberated state of nature.

L.M.L.M. “Karl Gräser,” text translated from the La Maud La Maud website January 23, 2014 [Online] Cited 30/01/2016

Unknown photographer
Monte Verita
c. 1900

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (Scottish, 1868-1928)
Stuhl für den Argyle Tea Room | Chair for the Argyle Tea Room
Glasgow, 1897
Oak, stained
81cm x 60cm x 45cm
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
© Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
Steintorplatz, 20099 Hamburg

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Sunday 10 am – 6 pm
Thursday 10 am – 9 pm
Closed Mondays

Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg website

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Video: ‘Utopia’ by John Pilger (2013)

January 2014

Ashamed to be Australian…

John Pilger (Australian, b. 1939)
Utopia
2013

Wow, I heard about this video, but nothing compares to seeing and watching Australia’s sordid History and in-humane treatment of the first people. Given that the founding father Barton and recently Lang Hancock actively advocate for sterilisation of the blacks and half-breeds are both confronting and appalling. Denial of basic facilities like electricity, plumbing, good running water, adequate schooling, adequate health services, adequate shelter, transportation – even though these people are tax-paying persons, therefore they are required to have adequate facilities – special mention that this is happening still in 2019, informs thinking people how poor the rights of indigenous peoples are, and how in-humane the Government of Australia is, with regard to first nation people living on their traditional lands. NOTE: Trachoma and other preventable diseases are widespread with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, despite Australia being economically viable country, and these diseases can be prevented. Politicians are not doing enough – end of story.

Eunice Rongo Kizmaz’s comment on YouTube website [Online] Cited 19/01/2021

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Exhibition: ‘My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia’ at The Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Brisbane

Exhibition dates: 1st June – 7th October 2013

Tony Albert (Australia, Queensland b. 1981)
Girramay people
Sorry
2008
Found kitsch objects applied to vinyl letters
The James C Sourris, AM, Collection. Purchased 2008 with funds from James C Sourris through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

R U SORRY?

Do you feel FORGIVEN?

What do I have to feel sorry for
I only arrived here yesterday

I FORGIVE you for all the SADNESS and SORROW that COLONISATION has CAUSED

You gutless wonder

GUILT, GUILTY, GUILTLESS, GUILELESS, GUTLESS

The persistence of memory – how the past lingers and subverts

MEMORY – inflicting more DAMAGE on the already DAMAGED

(TIME) to MOVE ON… Nothing to see here

Marcus

.
Many thankx to the The Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Bindi Cole (Australian, Victoria b. 1975)
Wathaurung people
I forgive you
2012
Emu feathers on MDF board
Purchased 2012. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
© Bindi Cole 2012. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2013

Arthur Koo-ekka Pambegan Jr (Australian, Queensland 1936-2010)
Wik-Mungkan people
Flying Fox Story Place
2002-2003
Carved milkwood (Alstonia muellerana) with synthetic polymer paint and natural pigments
Commissioned 2002 with funds from the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Ron Yunkaporta (Australian, Queensland b. 1956)
Wik-Ngathan people
Thuuth thaa’ munth (Law poles)
2002-2003
Cottontree wood (Hibiscus tiliaceus), ibis feathers, bush string with natural pigments
Commissioned 2002 with funds from the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Jennifer Mye Jr. (Australian, Queensland b. 1984)
Meriam Mir people
Basket with short handles
2011
Woven polypropylene tape (blue with Australian flag motif)
Purchased 2011 with funds from Thomas Bradley through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation

Ken Thaiday Sr (Australian, Queensland b. 1950)
Meriam Mir people
Symbol of the Torres Strait
2003
Plywood, synthetic polymer paint, feathers, black bamboo, plastic tubing, fishing line
Purchased 2004 with funds from Corrs Chambers Westgarth through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Dinny McDinny (Australian, Northern Territory c. 1927-2003)
Marnbaliya people, Balyarrinji skin group
Kalajangu – Rainbow Dreaming came through Marnbaliya Country
2003
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
Purchased 2004
Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Sally Gabori (Australian, Queensland b.c. 1924)
Kaiadilt people
Dibirdibi Country
2008
Synthetic polymer paint on linen
Purchased 2008 with funds from Margaret Mittelheuser, AM, and Cathryn Mittelheuser, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
© Sally Gabori 2008. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2013

Wakartu Cory Surprise (Australian, Western Australia 1929-2011)
Walmajarri people
Mimpi
2011
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
Purchased 2012
Queensland Art Gallery
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
© Wakartu Cory Surprise 2011. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2013

Ruby Tjangawa Williamson (Australian, South Australia b. 1940)
Pitjantjatjara people
Nita Williamson (Australian, South Australia b. 1963)
Suzanne Armstrong (Australian, South Australia b. 1980)
Pitjantjatjara people (Collaborating artists)
Ngayuku ngura (My country) Puli murpu (Mountain range)
2012
Synthetic polymer paint on linen
Purchased 2012 with funds from Margaret Mittelheuser, AM, and Cathryn Mittelheuser, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Ruby Tjangawa Williamson is a senior law woman committed to fostering traditional culture. She began painting in 2000. Her distinctive works are acclaimed and she is regarded as one of Amata’s most significant artists. Williamson also weaves tjanpi (desert grass) baskets and makes punu (wood carvings) with pokerwork designs.

My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia is the Gallery’s largest exhibition of contemporary art by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists to date. The exhibition examines the strengths of the Gallery’s holdings and explores three central themes – presenting Indigenous views of history (My history), responding to contemporary politics and experiences (My life), and illustrating connections to place (My country).

From paintings and sculptures about ancestral epicentres to photographs and moving-image works that interrogate and challenge the established history of Australia, to installations responding to political and social situations affecting all Australians, the thread that binds these artists is their collective desire to share their experiences and tell their stories.

“Drawing on three decades of research, collaboration and Collection development, My Country, I Still Call Australia Home highlights the connection Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists have with country as both ‘land’ and ‘nation’, and features over 300 works by 116 artists from every state and territory,” Mr Saines said.

“Curated by Bruce McLean, a Wirri / Birri-Gubba man with heritage from the central coast of Qoeensland and the Gallery’s Curator of Indigenous Australian Art, the exhibition gives voice to artists who investigate historical and contemporary political and social issues. Many of these issues and works are confronting and controversial, and we are proud of the role our Gallery plays as a forum for discussion, debate and education.”

Mr Saines said the exhibition was divided in to three broad thematic strands that explore how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists depict the stories of their communities and highlight contemporary Indigenous experiences in Australia.

Press release from the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) website

Michael Cook (Australian, Queensland b. 1968)
Bidjara people
Civilised #13
2012
Inkjet print on paper
Purchased 2012
Queensland Art Gallery
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
© The artist

Michael Cook’s works depict an ethereal dreamworld, a timeless place that traverses both the colonial and contemporary worlds and is sustained on ‘what ifs’ and hypotheticals. It is a place of Cook’s own modern Dreaming. His central question is quite simple: what if the British, instead of dismissing Aboriginal society, had taken a more open approach to their culture and knowledge systems? This all-Aboriginal world is a sort of utopia where questions can be posed and answered without the complication of race – there is no black and white, no right or wrong. The figures within them are both conquerors and conquered. Through the use of images of Aboriginal people, often in roles opposite to the stereotypical, Cook ensures that an Aboriginal voice is ever-present.

Fiona Foley (Australian, Queensland/New South Wales b. 1964)
Badtjala people, Wondunna clan, Fraser Island
The Oyster Fishermen #1
2011
Inkjet print on Hahnemühle paper
Purchased 2012
Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Bindi Cole (Australian, Victoria b. 1975)
Wathaurung people
Crystal
2009
Pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper
Purchased 2011 with funds from the Bequest of Grace Davies and Nell Davies through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
© Bindi Cole 2009. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2013

Bindi Cole (Australian, Victoria b. 1975)
Wathaurung people
Frederina
2009
Pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper
Purchased 2011 with funds from the Bequest of Grace Davies and Nell Davies through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
© Bindi Cole 2009. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2013

Vernon Ah Kee (Australian, Queensland b. 1967)
Kuku Yalanji/Waanyi/Yidinyji/GuuguYimithirr people
Tall Man (still)
2010
Four-channel digital video installation from DVD
Purchased 2012
Queensland Art Gallery
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Gordon Hookey (Australian, Queensland/New South Wales b. 1961)
Waanyi people
Blood on the wattle, blood on the palm
2009
Oil on linen
The James C Sourris, AM, Collection
Gift of James C Sourris, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2012
Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Michael Riley (Australian, New South Wales 1960-2004)
Kamilaroi/Wiradjuri people
Sacrifice (portfolio) (detail)
1993
Colour cibachrome photograph
Purchased 2002
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Christian Thompson (Australian, Queensland/New South Wales/Victoria b. 1978)
Bidjarra/Kunja people
Black Gum 2 (from Australian Graffiti series)
2008
Type C photograph
Purchased 2008
The Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Warwick Thornton (Australian, Northern Territory b. 1970)
Kaytej people
Stranded (still)
2011
3D digital video: 11.06 minutes, colour, sound
Commissioned by the 2011 Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund
Purchased 2011
Queensland Art Gallery Foundation
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
© Warwick Thornton. Image courtesy the artist and Stills Gallery

Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA)

The Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) and Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) are located 150 metres from each other, on the south bank of the Brisbane River. Entrance to both buildings is possible from Stanley Place, and the river front entrance to the Queensland Art Gallery is on Melbourne Street. The Galleries are within easy walking distance to the city centre and South Bank Parklands.

Opening hours:
Daily 10.00am – 5.00pm

Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) website

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Review: ‘Jenny Reddin: The Art of Catastrophe’ at Anita Traverso Gallery, Richmond

Exhibition dates: 5th September – 29th September 2012

Jenny Reddin
Caught in an Effervescent Breeze
2012
Oil on canvas
122 x 122cm

“Each epoch dreams the one to follow, creates it in dreaming”

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Jules Michelet

“Each epoch dreams of itself as annihilated by catastrophes”

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Theodor Adorno

A star is born

The origin of the word catastrophe is Greek (kata + strophein) and its literal meaning was “overturn”. According to its definition, it is an event that causes trauma due to its capacity to destroy most of a community. Catastrophes are extreme events that affect a large number of victims in the affected community, and are easily identified as events that cause physical suffering.1 The use of words such as disaster (origin in the Italian word disastro (dis + astro, “bad star”)) and catastrophe create the idea of a “disaster taxonomy,” one which is based on the principle that there are variable emotional responses that depend on the type of disaster, the degree of personal impact, the size of the group affected, and the geographical and temporal range of the event.2 These pure words define the event itself and the havoc they wreak without incorporating the perceptions of the victims; in other words they are an objective reflection on the subjective performativity of the act itself.

Catastrophes fascinate humans as they clearly show them the limits of their own existence. The dystopian catastrophe challenges the temporal linearity of a utopian dreaming in which the darkness of the lived moment is illuminated by the anticipatory daydreams of the “not-yet-conscious” future. What catastrophe codes is a dialectical relation to Utopianism, a rejection of the holistic vision of an anticipatory consciousness of a utopian future. As Matthew Charles observes,

“The catastrophic signifies the dialectical intrusion of the whole of history (including the present in which it is represented) into the construction epoch, and by extension the whole of the epoch into the life of the artist, and the whole life of the artist into a particular work. Benjamin’s messianic account of the experience of truth imposes the theological concepts of the infinite, fulfilled and perfected state of the world into the immanence of finite, particular, existing phenomenon. In this way, the intrusion of the historical Absolute contributes to the catastrophic ruination of the work.”3

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As can be seen in the Jenny Reddin’s artist statement, the whole of the artist’s history is bound up in the creation of the work. The infinite possibilities of a subjective understanding of truth are bound together with the immanence of finite, particular, existing phenomenon, that of the art of catastrophe, the objective presentation of ruination, in the art itself. Reddin’s anticipatory daydreams become an anticipatory illumination as an image, a constellation, a configuration tied closely to the idea of the concrete / fluid utopic / dystopic landscapes of the body and the earth. Reddin’s paintings work at both a macro and micro level, a phenomenon that is cross-disciplinary like the phenomenon of catastrophe itself. The work reminds me of cellular structures at the micro level (cross-sections of diseased kidneys, the veins of the heart or scientific slides of blood cells) and of aerial views of the earth at the macro level (alluvial deltas and views of open cast mines). They balance beauty with serendipity, the manipulation of the “flow” of paint (from one point in time to many points) that captures light, the light of the cosmos and of the subconscious. These magnificent works of art have emerged from the artist’s life – much as Immanuel Velikovsky argued that the planet Venus is a former “comet” which was ejected from Jupiter – in an act of catastrophic creation. They are dreaming of the future and yet also dreaming of catastrophe.

Running with these ideas you might argue that these dream images are both an act of emergence and an emergency, a catastrophe. For some thinkers the sociology of emergences aims to identify and enlarge the signs of possible future experiences, under the guise of tendencies and latencies, that are actively ignored by hegemonic rationality and knowledge. For Ernst Bloch the concept of The Not Yet, “is the way in which the future is inscribed in the present. It is not an indeterminate or infinite future, rather a concrete possibility and a capacity that neither exists in a vacuum nor are completely predetermined. Subjectively, the Not Yet is anticipatory consciousness, a form of consciousness that is extremely important in people’s lives. Objectively, the Not Yet is, on the one hand, capacity (potency) and, on the other, possibility (potentiality).”4

Here the field of possibility has a dimension of darkness (disaster) as it originates in the lived moment whilst the sociology of emergences inquires into the alternatives that are contained in the horizon of concrete, utopian possibilities in order to identify therein the tendencies of the future (the Not Yet): the light of the future. Hence these images contain both emergency (of the catastrophe, of the lived moment) and an emergence (into the future). A (bad) star is born. I also believe that in this artist another star has been born, one that will shine strongly in future dreamings.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Braga, Luciana L., Fiks, Jose P., Mari, Jair J. and Mello, Marcelo F. “The importance of the concepts of disaster, catastrophe, violence, trauma and barbarism in defining posttraumatic stress disorder in clinical practice,” in BMC Psychiatry 2008, 8:68 [Online] Cited 22/09/2012

2/ Ibid.,

3/ Charles, Matthew. “The Future is History: Dreams of Catastrophe in Ernst Bloch and Walter Benjamin,” Proceedings of the No Future conference, Institute of Advanced Studies, Durham University, 25-27 March 2011 [Online] Cited 22/09/2012

4/ Anon. “Sociology of Emergences,” on the P2P Foundation website [Online] Cited 22/09/2012

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Many thankx to Anita Traverso Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs of the paintings in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Jenny Reddin
Ms. Broadhurst’s Poppy
2012
Oil on canvas
122 x 122cm

Jenny Reddin
A Shifting Reality
2012
Mixes media on linen
137 x 122cm

At the heart of a catastrophe there is a massive burst of energy. Jenny Reddin’s works seek to capture that energy in an alchemic process that involves the dissolving of pigments in various solutions and pouring the viscous mixes onto prepared structures. Due to the varying specific gravities the pigments drop out at different rates offering alternately dry, textured or smooth, mirror-like fields. This series presents works inspired by the natural phenomenon and the interaction of the human form, capturing the juxtaposition of the beauty of the Australian country with the ongoing cycle of natural catastrophe.

Text from the gallery website

I have been painting for around 14 years. At a time when I should have been at Art School, I was studying for a bachelor of business. When I should have been exhibiting my work, I was running a consulting practice and managing people. It wasn’t until my husband and I adopted a little girl from India that I was able to take the time to explore my creative side. I have been painting ever since.

Catastrophe plays an important role in my life. I am an idea, act, plan person in everything I do. It’s how I live my life and it’s how I paint. I had to make a decision early on in my painting career that I either learned to celebrate the spontaneous nature of catastrophes or go mad trying to paint in a conventional manner. I found also that it was becoming increasingly important for me to find my own style and form of expression. I would cringe when people would compliment me by telling me that a work looked just like a Fred Williams or a John Olsen.

To a large extent, I have had to learn to paint from the subconscious. The more deliberate and planned I am at the commencement of a work, the less spontaneous and evocative the result. I go through what feels like long periods where the works are muddy and unsatisfying and I have to rip off the canvas and start again. I usually find when I take the time to analyse why, I have been trying to force an outcome and then all of a sudden, as my consciousness steps back and my subconscious takes over, they work.

Catastrophe is a piece that was painted early this year. It is a good example of the elements that I am looking for in my work, drama and light. The dramatic effect is created by dissolving pigments in viscous solvent solutions and then pouring them onto prepared canvas supports. I often pour two and three colours together so that they bump into each other creating riverlets and craters as the pigments drop out of solution at different rates. Light is captured by manipulating the flow of paint to trap sections of blank, white canvas which to my eye increase the sense of drama and luminance of the work.

It’s hard to say who inspires my work because I am unaware of anyone else painting in quite the same way. What I take from other artists would be honesty and integrity from artists such as Andy Goldsworthy; simplicity of form from the likes of Anthony Gormley and Antonio Tapies; the love of limited palette from Godwin Bradbeer; the beauty of gesture and rhythm from Yvonne Audette and Susan Rothenburg.

Jenny Reddin’s opening speech at the exhibition The Art of Catastrophe

Jenny Reddin
Space within space within space
2012
Oil in linen
122 x 122cm

Jenny Reddin
Amillaria
2012
Oil on canvas
120 x 100cm

Jenny Reddin
Suspended Journey
2012
Oil on linen
138 x 97cm

Anita Traverso Gallery

PO Box 7001, Hawthorn North 3122
Phone: 0408 534 034

Anita Traverso Gallery website

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Review: ‘Emily Kame Kngwarreye: The Person and her Paintings’ at DACOU Aboriginal Art, Port Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 29th October – 6th December 2009

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (Australian, 1910-1996)
My Country
1996
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

“One can theorise about beauty all day, but words are weak and at day’s end one will go out into the blue and golden and multifarious world, and one will know with the responsive heart, before there is time for words, what is and isn’t beautiful.”

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Leo Rubinfien1

There are certain existential experiences in art one will always remember:

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The maelstrom of convulsive colours in the paintings of J. M. W. Turner at the Tate in London

Being alone in a gallery at the Louvre with six self-portraits by Rembrandt and embracing their inner humanity

Sitting in the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris and being surrounded by the elemental forces of Monet’s panels of Nymphéas

Listening to “Sorrowful Songs” from the Symphony No. 3 by Gorecki

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to name but a few.

Added to this list would be my experience of this exhibition of paintings by Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

It was a privilege to spend time alone with the work, just wandering around the gallery that is situated in an industrial estate in Port Melbourne. It is difficult for me to describe the experience such was the connection I had with the work, with the earth. I am emotional even writing about it. Standing in front of these paintings all pretensions of existence, all trappings of society, dissolve in colour, in presence.

I am a naturalised Australian having been born in England; I have never been to the far desert. This does not matter. What I felt, what I experienced was a connection to the land, to the stories that Emily has told in these paintings. We all come from the earth and return to it.

The paintings were painted horizontally (like the painter Jackson Pollock who intuitively accessed the spiritual realm) and evidence a horizontal consciousness not a hierarchical one. Knowledge is not privileged over wisdom. There is a balance between knowledge and wisdom – the knowledge gained through a life well lived and the wisdom of ancient stories that represent the intimacy of living on this world. The patterns and diversities of life compliment each other, are in balance.

Wisdom comes from the Indo-European root verb weid, “to see,” the same root from which words like vision come.2 In this sense these are “Vedic” paintings in that they are ancient, sacred teachings, Veda meaning literally “I have seen.”

On this day I saw. I felt.

Rarely do I have such an emotional reaction to art. When it does happen it washes over me, it cleanses my soul and releases pent up emotions – about life, about mortality, about being.

As Cafe del Mar in one of their songs, “The Messenger” sing:

“We,
We got the feeling of Mystery,
We got the touch of humanity,
I know, we can’t live forever.”

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Go and be touched.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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Thank you to Leanne Collier and DACOU Aboriginal Art for allowing me to reproduce the three large photographs of two Wildflower paintings and one My Country painting.

1/ Rubinfien, Leo. “Perfect Uncertainty: Robert Adams and the American West, (2002)” on Americansuburb X: Theory. [Online] Cited 22/11/2009 no longer available online

2/ Doczi, Gyorgy. The Power of Limits: Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art and Architecture. Colorado: Shambala Publications, 1981, p. 127

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (Australian, 1910-1996)
My Country
1996
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Emily Kame Kngwarreye is Australia’s most important and famous female artist. Hailed as a modernist ‘genius’, she has been compared to Rothko and de Kooning. An Anmatyerre elder from Utopia in the remote central desert region of the Northern Territory, Emily first took up painting on canvas in her late 70’s. She quickly became one of the leaders in the contemporary Aboriginal art movement, transforming her style several times during her short career of eight years. Today she is known as one of the greatest abstract painters of the 20th century.

This important exhibition of over 80 pieces covering all significant series and periods of Emily Kngwarreye’s artistic career is the first commercial retrospective exhibition to be held since she passed away in 1996. It gives the public an outstanding chance to view and purchase works in each of her styles. DACOU has retained numerous magnificent pieces over the years that will be included in this exhibition, such as rarely seen works from Emily’s Ochre Series, created with ochre and charcoal she collected from her country. On show will be the sister painting to the famous Earth’s Creation (also titled Earth’s Creation, 1994, 4 panels, 211 x 596cm) and just as splendid in colour and style.

Text from the DACOU Aboriginal Art website [Online] Cited 27/11/2009 no longer available online

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (Australian, 1910-1996)
Wildflower
1992
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (Australian, 1910-1996)
Wildflower (detail)
1992
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Inspired by her cultural life as an Anmatyerre elder Emily produced over 3000 paintings over the course of her short eight-year painting career. Her lifelong custodianship of the women’s Dreaming sites of her clan country and in particular her yam Dreaming is the driving force behind her work (Kame meaning yam seed). Her work displays an instinct created by decades of making art for private purposes, drawing in soft earth and ritual body painting. Strong lineal structures whereupon individual dots overlap lines and appearing within others trace the appearance of seeds, plants and tracks on her country.

Text from the University of Canberra website [Online] Cited 11/05/2019

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (Australian, 1910-1996)
Wildflower
1994
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

DACOU Aboriginal Art

This gallery has now closed.

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Exhibition: ‘Utopia: Qiu Anxiong’ at Arken Museum of Modern Art, Denmark

Exhibition dates: 6th February – 22nd November 2009

Qui Anxiong (Chinese, b. 1972)
Staring into Amnesia
2008

A dream has come true. ARKEN has opened the first of three contemporary art exhibitions under the heading UTOPIA.

The first UTOPIA artist is Chinese Qiu Anxiong (b. 1972). His work Staring into Amnesia (2008), an enormous original Chinese train carriage from the 1960s, is the principal work in ARKEN’s exhibition. Documentary video clips and poetic silhouettes have been added to the carriage taking us on a journey into China’s past, present and future.

In recent years Qiu Anxiong has received great international attention with his poetic and moving video works which span from big and complex installations to hand painted animated films. The exhibition is the first presentation of Qiu Anxiong’s works in Denmark.

Utopia and dystopia

Qiu Anxiong belongs to a new generation of Chinese artists who bridge Chinese culture and history and today’s globalised contemporary art. Cultures arise and perish, and the yearning for the perfect society is closely followed by the utopia’s antithesis: an oppressed, conflicted dystopia. In a poetic and sensual idiom Qiu Anxiong raises the issue of which new utopias may provide the clue for today’s globalised reality.

Text from the Arken Musem of Modern Art website

ARKEN Museum of Modern Art

Chinese artist Qiu Anxiong talks about his work Staring into Amnesia – the main part of ARKEN’s UTOPIA – exhibition.

Qui Anxiong (Chinese, b. 1972)
Staring into Amnesia
2008

A 25 metres long, 42 tons heavy Chinese train carriage stops in Arken Museum of Modern Art‘s unique exhibition space The Art Axis, ready to take the museum’s visitors on a journey unlike any other. A journey into China’s past, presence and future. Into deliberations of the good life and the good society. Of the dreams we have today – for ourselves and for the world.

In the 1960s and ’70s it ran in northeastern China. Ordinary Chinese people sat on the hard wooden seats and were transported to and from work, on family visits, tours and holidays. Now it stops in ARKEN’s Art Axis with the purpose of making Danish museum visitors think about the dreams and values that drive them and the world they live in.

The train carriage is the principal work of the first exhibition in the museum’s large-scale UTOPIA project. A project that is to raise the issue of the grand shared notion of the perfect society. Whatever happened to it? Does it still exist today? Have the international financial crisis and the American presidential election made it more topical? And if it does not exist, what has taken its place? Individual dreams of the good life, notions of globalisation, small enclaves of communities?

Opening on 6 February 2009, the UTOPIA exhibition is the first of three exhibitions of contemporary art shown in ARKEN’s Art Axis in the period 2009-2011 – one per year. Each exhibition presents a significant, international contemporary artist who explores art’s potential with regards to the notions of “the good life.” The first artist is the Chinese Qui Anxiong (b. 1972).

Qui Anxiong gave the train carriage an artistic makeover after it had ended its career as a means of public transportation, transforming it into the work Staring into Amnesia (2007). A work of art which invites us on a journey even though the carriage is motionless. A journey into China’s past, presence and future. For when the guests come aboard the train and sit down on the hard wooden seats, they journey through China’s history. Video clips of documentary and propaganda films from China from 1910 until today pass by the windows as fragments of memories alternating with silhouettes of everyday scenes: a girl waiting by a ventilator, two people playing chess, groups of people in processions, riots, struggles or celebration. What has been is juxtaposed with what is. And with the train as metaphor for movement in time, it raises the question of which destinations await us up ahead. Is the next stop Utopia? What do we hope will come, what do we dream of?

6,000 drawings – one movie – Staring into Amnesia is the chief work of the UTOPIA exhibition. It explores how humankind’s endeavours to create the perfect society through political and religious overall solutions, both historically and today, often result in the utopia’s antithesis: an oppressed, conflicted dystopia.

Another work in the exhibition is the animated film The New Book of Mountains and Seas (2006). The film consists of 6,000 drawings created by Qiu Anxiong in his small one bedroom apartment in Shanghai. It presents us with a mythologised version of the world today in which modern technology and nature merge: helicopters hover in the air like big birds, and black clad people fly like planes, crashing the Twin Towers in a drawn version of 9/11. In a poetic and dreamlike idiom, sharply contrasting with the depicted reality, the work explores the themes of religious and political conflicts characterising the global reality of our time. UTOPIA is supported by the Nordea Foundation.

Text from the Artdaily.org website