Friday March 29, 2024
Ah Queensland!
Feature

Ah Queensland!

By Joanna Mendelssohn
January 4 2007

To the outsider Brisbane is an odd city. Despite the presence of graceful older buildings, the dominant impression is of confusion and concrete as the winding river and irrational roads serve to disorientate. The never-ending building projects mean that the over-riding street noise is jackhammers. Then, across the river, the visitor sees an elegant combination of architectural harmony. Three buildings working together - the Queensland Art Gallery, the State Library and the new Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA in homage to New York's MoMA) - to create one of the most aesthetically pleasing man-made views in this country. The elegance of the combination makes the rest of the city look tawdry, so it is inviting to cross the Jolly Bridge for a closer inspection of GoMA, the natural leader of the trio.

The architects, Lindsay and Kerry Clare of Architectus, describe the building as "a pavilion in the landscape", but it can also be described as a giant lantern, its wide eaves, capped with a low rising roof, protecting it from the summer sun. Inside, the high ceilings, large and adaptable walls, and visual links with both the city and the other buildings in the complex make it a most satisfying place to look at art. After the over designed spaces of Melbourne's Federation Square and the 1970s neo-brutalism of Canberra's National Gallery, it is a relief to walk into a building that is designed to make most of the art it shows look good. The exhibition spaces operate on a grander scale than any other Australian art gallery, yet they still manage to create a supportive context for the art. Downstairs there is the biggest surprise of all - a whole floor of art created for children.

Queensland Art Gallery has a long tradition of lively education programs for children. In years past they have cooperated with schools to spread their particular gospel of art and cultural inclusiveness throughout the state. When Peter Jackson's King Kong was released, the gallery created an exhibition on art and monsters, which included screenings of the original 1933 film. For the last six years they have staged a successful children's program (Kids APT) to go with that other great Queensland innovation, the Asia-Pacific Triennial (APT). Because the fifth APT coincides with the opening of GoMA, the importance of children to the success of the Queensland Art Gallery's success is reinforced. From Justine Cooper's The Call of the Wild computer game to Eko Nugroho's postcard project, so much of the art has been made to seduce a younger audience.

The integration of children does not stop here. Ex De Medici has created temporary tattoos for the pleasure of young visitors and Sutee Kunavichayanont's Classroom upside down has an interactive project in the main exhibition space. The central importance of children to GoMA is not appreciated by all. On the night of the official opening two of the Grands Dame of contemporary art were tut-tutting at Tsuyoshi Ozawa's Everyone likes someone as you like someone. This is a gloriously physical tumbling piece, a giant mound of futon cushions placed at the reworked entrance of the old Queensland Art Gallery building. Here children are invited to climb and then draw their absolutely favourite person. If the ladies had stopped sniffing into their bubbly, they would have realised the total beauty of gallery's marketing strategy and why encouraging children to love art is one of the pillars of Queensland's cultural policy.

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The biggest cultural barrier preventing people from supporting arts organisations is that too many people feel that culture is "too elevated" for them. It seems to be assumed that art belongs to those who live on the rarefied gloss of the social pages. Those of us who actually work at the cultural coalface know this is a load of old cobblers. Most artists are poor. The reason they go to openings with rich people is because the food is free. The Queensland strategy is to encourage artists to mix with a more appreciative audience. If children aren't told that art is intimidating they are not intimidated by it. By giving children free and open access to art and also to some of the ideas behind making art, the gallery is creating the next generation of art audiences. This is one of the reasons why it has been politically possible for the Beattie government to support the building of GoMA. The gallery is genuinely popular. It relates to the people of Queensland, and puts Queensland on the map for interstate and international visitors.

Not every piece is so innocent. Masami Tereoka's giant wood block prints are a contemporary take on the demi monde tradition of Ukiyo-e prints. It is a world of condoms, hamburgers and the AIDS epidemic. In a similar vein, Sangeeta Sandrasegar's elaborate shadow image cut-outs tells of the sexually violent world of Phoolan Devi, the Bandit Queen. Sandrasegar is an Australian from a Malaysian-Indian background, as such she represents the new generation of artists from this richest of melting pots.

Many of the works in the APT relate to the political and cultural histories of the artists' countries, and it is in these that we get a sense of the evolution of the whole Queensland project. In the first APT, in 1991, Vietnam was represented by Nguyen Xuan Tiep's oil paintings, very academic, very much in the French salon tradition. They looked marginalised, almost provincial, compared to the sophisticated installations of Thailand's Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook and Indonesia's Dadang Christiano. Times change. By giving so many resources to the art of this region, Queensland has both announced a cultural revolution and encouraged it. Art very much a part of Asia's self confidence as it interrogates the consequences of the west's previous incursions into their land.

Ah Queensland!

Dinh Q Lê's video installation, The Farmers and the Helicopters, contrasts memories of people who hid in the fields from the American forces, with classic US film footage. After hearing the voices of those who saw the helicopters, Apocalypse Now will never look the same again. Some of Lê's work is deceptively pastel and could even be called pretty. As visitors enter GoMA they pass by glass display cases containing what looks like children's clothes for sale. But the cute baby clothes are designed for children with two heads or single limbs. Welcome to the Damaged gene, works created in memory of the long-term impact on Vietnam of the American war. These, however, are gentle compared with Tuân Andrew Nguyễn's insertion of himself as both the executioner and victim in a reworking of Eddie Adam's iconic photograph of the execution of Nguyen Van Lem.

APT 5 could be described as a confusing event as it integrates works acquired over the past fifteen years of exhibitions as well as those commissioned for this grand opening. But that integration is an indication of the entire project. Many of the artists who were marginal figures in 1991, '94, '97, 2000, and 2003 are now international giants, and the exhibition reflects this. The works of these artists, which entered the gallery's collection at the time they were first exhibited hang in triumph alongside the very new and that of international hero of art, Anish Kapoor, on loan from London. This is an interesting context for Kapoor whose work is more often seen in the standard international contemporary context of Europe or the United States.

As wonderful as these works are, their museum-like constraint almost serves as a distraction from the rest of the APT's exuberant pleasure in the all embracing environment where art is for doing and being as much as for seeing.

That sense of contemporary art as an act of total immersion is for me the genuine fresh direction of the Queensland adventure. The gallery is not conducting a retreat from the quiet meditative object or the purely cerebral so beloved of art theorists. But it is issuing an invitation for the world to come into art, to enjoy the party, to crack a bottle of champagne and to have some fun.

 

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