Goddess
It has taken John Howard a couple of decades to get his head around admitting to the reality of Australia’s geographic location. Meanwhile, the Art Gallery of NSW, driven by its director Edmund Capon’s personal passion for the art and culture of the region, has been there much longer. The Asian wing - with its Japanese styling - is physical evidence of that. Not that “asian” art is confined to the wing, however. Rather, the gallery’s ethos is about expansiveness rather than neat and dodgy cultural segregation.
It’s a bold thing to have done in the first place and a brave thing to continue to do given the traditional disinterest of the typical Anglo-Aussie gallery-goer (and average corporate sponsor) in any kind of Asian art. As John McDonald wrote recently in the Sydney Morning Herald, Capon and the AGNSW deals with a “general public that prefers something with ‘Monet’ in the title.”
Meanwhile, this summer’s major exhibition - the art of India wittily served up as Goddess - is something the gallery does particularly well: fashioning silk purses out of the sow’s ear of relatively meagre resources. And, in the absence of access to the kinds of blockbusters that do the museum circuit of the northern hemisphere, the gallery’s curators also tend to rely more on resourcefulness and imagination - as is the case with Goddess.
India is not only the source of endless frustration when you’re trying to call American Express, it is possibly the most diverse and (to the western ear and eye) most impenetrably complex series of cultures on earth. Never mind the minimalist approach of Mohammed and Allah or even God with his martyr Son and meagre battalion of miserable saints: the Hindu pantheon has a god, or godlet, for all occasions and moods. It’s either bewildering or it makes perfect sense: if we are made in God’s image, or want to get near some understanding of the deity - how better than to have religion represented by all facets of human existence in the form of diverse gods and goddesses?
However, to survey the entire God collective of the subcontinent,would be impossible in one lifetime, so Jackie Menzies, curator of Goddess, has zeroed in on a sub-theme - the females in the line-up - and even that makes for a dizzying range of possibilities. In this show are representations of goddesses, ancient and modern ranging from sublimely beautiful and simple statuary to vividly gaudy depictions of the frolicsome lives led by many goddesses.
Depicted are family outings, ritual dances, hunts and other pleasant activities. The detail is often humorous and minutely executed in glowing colours which are quite different from the gaudiness of some European religious art (Spanish, Russian for instance). It’s also eye-opening to realise how many goddesses there are and how familiar their names are - from the Great Goddess Devi, through Tara, Durga, Lakshmi, Parvati, Dakhini, Radha and the irresistibly thrilling Kali and so on.
Nepal and Tibet are also featured in the exhibition as are female Buddhas and virtually endless permutations of deities and meanings. It’s an exhibition that repays a couple of visits at least. Don’t get bogged down with the (excellent) information labels - do look at the amazing artworks, it makes all the difference.
Goddess, Art Gallery of NSW to January 28, 2007
