Mildura 1 - McClelland 0

      

Mildura 1 - McClelland 0

Kevin Mortensen: Objects in a landscape (detail). 1973

Mildura Sculpturescape 1973 - best in exhibtion

Image from Sculpturescape catalogue no credit provided, possibly Ken Scarlett

I became frustrated while comparing individual works shown in Mildura revisited: sculptures exhibited 1961-1978 5 September 2014 - 26 Jan 2015 Curator:  Ken Scarlett, Mildura Arts Centre and the 2014 McClelland Sculpture Survey and Award 23 Nov – 19 July 2015 Curator: Robert Lindsay, McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park. It was always going to be an unfair competition and Mildura revisited was so far ahead that it seemed appropriate to steer this short piece in another direction.

There can be no doubting that the Mildura Triennials were the great innovator of Australian open air sculpture displays, some 40 to 50 years ago, and the current McClelland version is but a pale, safe, bourgeois and sanitised example by comparison. The core difference is the strategies of the curators, Mildura’s Tom McCullough believed firmly in consulting with every branch of Australian sculpture and, in effect, devolving and democratising the selection process to the artists themselves. It was risky but also guaranteed that almost every significant Australian sculptor of the time enthusiastically participated in his shows. He had been well advised that winner take all competitions were demeaning and instead used his modest budget to acquire significant works or reward the better temporary works, resulting in an Australian sculpture collection that is almost second to none.

McClelland’s Award is acquisitive which really means that winning works cost the gallery substantially more than their actual worth. Lindsay also has an unfortunate mock collecting policy which allows past triennial participants to leave their work behind on permanent display thus confusing any notion of a curated collection.  He regularly accepts gifts of out of context works that were commissioned for other sites; this also devalues the few fine works that they have actually acquired.

Included in the opening events for Mildura revisited was an “In Conversation” session involving a group of the original, now old artists, these included Domenico de Clario who gleefully reminded us that theory based art practice had won the great battle in Australian sculpture that was slugged on the banks of the Murray so long ago. 

He treated the audience to a fine example of the theorist’s fundamental technique, borrowed in this case from the architectural profession, who, to convince clients to let them build impractical art galleries, disparage ideas of flexible/art friendly display spaces by repeatedly using the expression “White Cube” as if it is completely evil and devoid of any merit at all. De Clario deftly steered all who were listening towards the proposal that “site specific” was good and “white cube” was bad.

Since site has always had a crucial and dominating bearing on how any sculpture may best communicate its message it seems worthwhile to look more carefully at the display philosophies of both Mildura revisited and McClelland.

In 1973 Tom McCullough wrote in his introduction to the catalogue of Sculpturescape, an 8 hectare site between Mildura Arts Centre and the Murray River, “It has been a major experiment for a public Art Gallery to move a serious, selective exhibition away from a museum bound atmosphere as much as possible” ….and always honest, he included, “Of course, not all sculptors were interested in showing their works in a landscape of any shape or form. One artist wrote in declining our invitation, “a landscape is Sculptural, it does not need sculpture.”

McCullough’s landscape was in fact a ratty and confronting swathe of uncared for land that had previously been used as a Mildura tip. This did not seem to deter the artists, liberated, as they thought, from the stereotypical “White Cube” gallery.

Almost all of these artists failed to comprehend the powerful narratives of this tatty ex-tip scrub. And the more they scratched holes, scattered their rubbish, dumped large objects on it, bandaged trees or planted gardens, the more they vandalised this struggling landscape (beautifully shown in a remarkable B&W ABC Mildura Sculpturescape documentary that played constantly in the gallery foyer). Overtaken, as they were, by the sheer newness of this exhibiting experience nobody seemed to notice that works that claimed to be site specific were instantly compromised by being in close proximity to any number of other works and the site became general rather than specific. The old tip just swallowed up the art and made it all look like random rubbish; proving that, at least, this landscape did not need sculpture.

McClelland now displays its prize entirely in its own bush land which, in its own way, is just as strange as Mildura’s. It is a patch of dense, scrubby urban landscape surrounded by suburbs and is the kind of area where irresponsible people would illegally dump rubbish and unwanted vehicles. Robert Lindsay’s approach is to hack ersatz “white cube” display rooms in the bush and connect them with a path. His exhibitions force all works to be viewed passively from his ugly pathway that uses tan bark/woodchips as surface. Narratively speaking it is a gross insult to a forest to grind up its relatives for people to trample, dumped as they are, in full view of the living generation.

Given that most of the works included in the McClelland exhibitions would be more at home in a genuinely urban environment and rarely attempt to comprehend the McClelland context, the result is weird to say the least. There is always a preponderance of slick architectural jewelry and works that depict cute animals, vehicles and small buildings, these always swamp the hand full of genuinely engaging sculptures.

At the heart of both exhibitions, though separated by considerable time, is a human arrogance that interprets landscape as a resource that can be exploited by dumping art on it. The idea that we can change a place from ex-tip to sculpture park simply by saying the words and erecting a cheap fence, defies reason. It is this self-interested and convenient re-zoning that always causes the greatest number of problems. It is hard to fathom Lindsay’s logic for fencing his event off from the McClelland Sculpture Park especially when it wreaks “arbeit macht frei”.

Undeterred by this, artists throughout Australia, since the Mildura days, have repeated the same fundamental mistake by enthusiastically lobbying the controllers of any area of land for its use as sculpture, or “public art” display.

With Lindsay announcing his retirement it may be an appropriate time to encourage his successor to completely rethink the McClelland Award, bring it up to date, make it relevant and attempt to solve the complex range of issues involved with displaying sculpture in a variety of “landscapes”.

The first little task should be to correct the McClelland's title by making it either a survey or an award because it cannot be both unless it becomes a well curated invitational event.

Lindsay’s style of convenience out-door curating relies on ignoring many of the issues that affect both site and the sculptures displayed in it; this is in marked contrast to the way art is displayed inside the gallery where every minute detail is attended to.

We do not need concepts of the anthropocene, object oriented ontology and imagined realities to guide us towards identifying McClelland’s shortcomings as there are far more reliable approaches. A casual viewing of any of Monty Don’s great garden TV shows or even an evening at home with Grand Designs could be enough to set the new curators off on the right foot.

In trying to name the narratives of McClelland’s outdoor spaces I found myself wondering what this place could be if it was not an art gallery. Golf course came to mind, and so did reception centre, but neither of those took into account the current treatment of the landscape so I settled on a coastal camping ground with a better than normal office and shop.

These holiday sites are the only other example where gloomy living spaces are hacked into this kind of bush, open areas are minimally maintained and, for the short period of time when they are used, are littered with cars, boats, and other items of Bogan bling.

The 1970’s Mildura Sculpturescape style of open air sculpture display, still practiced by McClelland, has surely had its day. It must be time to start looking for models that offer both sculptor and viewer a much more rewarding contemporary experience that sets an example in terms of sustainability and allows each artistic proposition to be expressed according the artist’s own intentions. Doubtless many participants in these exhibitions have felt that their work has been most compromised by the very unsatisfactory way that it is obliged to connect with the ground. This is via the compulsory attachment of a brutally ugly concrete slab, surrounded by the outdoor equivalent of a muesli coloured shag pile carpet.

Matthew Harding: Void. 2014 McClelland Award winner.

Hacked bush, mock muesli shagpile and bling

image from Mclelland catalogue Mark Ashkanasy

40+ years ago Mildura was envied by sculptors throughout the world, McClelland claims “World Class” but cannot substantiate it, because to put things into very sharp focus, just 11.4 kilometres down the road is a garden park that was voted  ‘Landscape of the Year’ at the 2013 prestigious World Architecture Festival Awards (AKA Olympics of Architecture). The Australian Garden at the Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne, designed by Taylor Cullity Lethlean (TCL) and Paul Thompson, sets an example that the McClelland Sculpture Park must heed if it is to survive.

Lindsay’s current DIY approach should cease.

It’s time to call in the experts: the Landscape Architects.

Write a good brief that aims to convert McClelland into a genuine and effective “Sculpturescape”.

Have a well-advertised landscape design competition.

Win a few awards and all will be well again.

Cubism - why not?

Sanné Mestrom: a reclining figure

A dear and trusted colleague said to me, maybe a fortnight ago, "Hey, what's with Sanné Mestrom's interest in Cubism?"in relation to her recent "Weeping Women" sculpture commission at the Monash University Museum of Art. It's not the kind of question he usually asks. As far as I can remember he's never said anything like, "What's with this or that artist's interest in hyper realism, academic landscape painting, post-post-post minimalism, New York School abstraction, expressionism etc etc," and this has had me thinking ever since.

Out of all the art movements from the last 100 years why single out Cubism as being an odd one for a contemporary artist to become interested in? I personally don't think there is any good reason to banish cubism from the list of very "useful" isms, after all, it was, contrary to current propaganda, the movement that invented the most and had more fruitful spin-offs than any other.

Sanné Mestrom and friend recline and sit on a reclining figure

There was, however, a totally illogical lapse in Cubist thinking when it came to sculpture. In painting they argued that through cubism they could give more information than in "normal 2D realism" by showing aspects of all sides of an object, person or scene simultaneously, something that realist sculpture has always been able to do because, of course, it is, by its very nature, three dimensional!

But unperturbed by this the sculptors of the time simply adopted the Cubist style and tried to make complex 3D versions of it regardless of whether there was a good reason to do so or not. Sanné Mestrom takes quite a different path by thickening up 2D shapes until they become capable of standing on their own, they are, in effect, honest interpretations of the highly innovative collages so favoured by Picasso Braque and others.

Sanné Mestrom: a seated figure

We must not forget that these early Cubist collages were constructed from real ready made items that preceded Marcel Duchamp's interpretation of the idea.

Sanné Mestrom: a standing figure

Sanné Mestrom: a reclining figure with reclining, seated and standing women

Art Industry Ethics: declining?

Selfie at my exhibition Walking Women - Standing Monash

On one of my many trips to the United Kingdom I noticed an advertisement at a tube station, it said in very bold letters, "What we need is Standards", it made me smile and think how typically British! on closer inspection I noticed that it was an ad for The Evening Standard newspaper. But the idea that there should be a high level of ethical behavior, or standards in the artworld often haunts me because I get the distinct feeling that its getting worse rather than better.

Maybe its so bad that its time to create an industry watchdog or ombudsman/woman.

Unlike many of the articles about art ethics that concentrate on issues like plagiarism and shonky money stuff, my beefs are much more basic. At the top of my list of complaints is organisations that publish highly detailed briefs or lists of criteria for various projects or grants but then substantially ignore them during the selection process. Outside the artworld if a government agency advertised for a fleet of small cars and awarded the contract to a supplier of tractors or horses all hell would breakout and I'm sure the other tenderers would have some recourse to law to correct the mistake. 

Any prescriptive criteria list can be and should be judged objectively; claims that assessors have been less than diligent or lacking in professionalism should be taken to an independent arbiter. The simple way around this not to pretend that there is an object criteria list but admit that the process is entirely based on the subjective opinions of the expert panels.

OK over a lifetime in art you do see some pretty nasty things, like the curator who notices, after the published deadline, that they haven't got enough important artists applying for their project, so they ring up a few key people and promise them inclusion - not really the right way to do things Eh! But in some cases it gets even worse a year or so down the track, the artist that "helped" the curator out applies for inclusion in the current show, only to receive a blunt, group letter, knock-back. My view here is that common decency would require the curator to provide the artist with a decent and honest explanation, especially if the curator had sought and gained favours from the artist in the intervening period.

I'd go further in this case and suggest that a decent curator would personally contact the artist prior to application time and suggest (nicely) that the artist would be well advised not to apply this time. 

My personal big beef is emails, people who want something from you will reply instantly but as soon as you are no longer of interest to them they very rudely ignore you. It is strange that often, the most import, busiest people are the best mannered - I can't work that one out.

Mildura Revisited: a beautiful thing

Tom McCullough (center) at the opening of Mildura Revisited

For Australian Sculpture there was an extraordinary series of events running from the 60s through to the end of the 70s called the Mildura Sculpture Triennials (a less extraordinary version of the shows continued into the 80s).

For those that don't know, Mildura is a Victorian rural city located on the Murray River close to the borders of South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria, i.e. a very long way from anywhere.

It would be unthinkable for a small regional gallery to contemplate having the biggest, best and most comprehensive national sculpture shows, but that's how it was back then. You could argue that it was just a fabulous accident, the curator/gallery director Tom McCullough employed a technique that I'll call democratic curating, which meant that he asked the better known sculptors who they thought should be in his shows and then sent those suggested invitations to exhibit.The slightly unexpected result of this was that the sculptors from all over Australia + their students would go to Mildura to set up or even create their work. This made it unique and as much the wildest art party that could ever be imagined and the place in Australia were most new art ideas were exchanged. Whenever I'd travel overseas, which was quite often in those days, international sculptors would ask about things in Oz and of course I'd tell them about our democratic sculpture surveys in Mildura - put bluntly, they were insanely jealous.

To cut a long story short Tom's relationship with his employers deteriorated so in 1978 he resigned, leaving many sculptors deeply traumatized and Mildura just returned to "normality".

But 40 years on Ken Scarlett, Australia's "Mr Sculpture"now in his 80s, thought that Mildura was so important that he should curate a retrospective celebrating those wonderful times, a very major undertaking - and again many of the now old sculptors made the very long journey back to Mildura for the opening events, including me (8hr drive).

Ken Scarlett partially obscured by woman with dark hair & 

Kevin Mortensen, leather jacket, the sculptor who made made 

the most legendary works for Mildura 

Again I think something accidental occurred, you realise that very few artists ever get to see their youthful exuberance celebrated in this caring and sympathetic way, giving them a really beautiful reminder of their contribution to a nation's culture. Should happen more often - I reckon.

So close to the "outback" I drove further north along a ratty dirt road into the desert and came across this delightful little scene - or was it a truly masterful example of Mildura Sculpture Triennial site specific art?

Bet on the Archibald Prize online with Tom Waterhouse

I don't know what made me think of doing a Google search to see if you could bet on the Archibald Prize but I discovered you can with Tom Waterhouse. Personally I think there should be a lot more gambling on art competitions and a flutter on the Archy should be as common as one on the Melbourne Cup.It adds a layer of objectivity and possibly transparency to whole art game that is probably much needed.

The odds are amazing - currently Zoe Young with "Tora Bright" is heading the betting at $9.00, not bad for the favourite eh? But I wouldn't be putting my money there. Far better value with these.

Mike Barnard - Title: You beautiful fighter - paying $26 - out of the crop of "pale and interesting" style portraits included in this year's field this one looks the winner to me - interesting, mysterious and a touch of magic.

Natasha Bieniek -Title: Isola - paying $21- well pedigreed artist, interesting and arresting pic and just has something about it that may appeal to the judges.

Carla Fletcher -Title: Dan Sultan - paying $14 - so, well backed already, my pick of the bunch of works with an indigenous component. An artistically sophisticated work, definitely worth considering.

Juan Ford -Title: Channelling WC Piguenit, startled by a spectacular sunset viewed through a canopy - paying $31 - can't see why this one isn't up there with the front runners. Juan Ford is about as hot as artists get these days, good painting, interesting treatment of the portrait genre maybe a little out there for the judges but! Could argue that too little of the face is revealed but at that price worth a serious look.

Dapeng Liu -Title: Portrait of Cao Yin on blue-and-green landscape - paying $51 - by far the best of this year's Asian contingent, a very clever melding of East meets West, perfectly executed and seems deeply felt, some magic - at that price you'd be nuts not to consider it.

Heidi Yardley -Title: Julia deVille - paying $41 - very well pedigreed artist, pretty accomplished work, best of its type in this year's field, nicely priced, not really my cup of tea but must consider.

Sophia Hewson -Title: Artist kisses subject - paying $31 - Hot up and coming artist, seriously clever picture, well resolved, very original, touch of wit, nicely controversial, double portrait never easy, my pick! Judges may find it a little too much with pastel frame and all - but it would do the comp good if this one won!

Just a note: Signing up to Tom Waterhouse (https://www.tomwaterhouse.com/special-events/8220333/d/2014-archibald-winner-to-view-images-www-artgall) for a bet on the Archy does seem a little complicated but worth it!! Gamble responsibly. 

The last trees in the forest of art languish in the lake of acquiescent amnesia.

The last trees in the forest of art languish 

in the lake of acquiescent amnesia.

nooooooooooooo

Art and Architecture @ The Lyon Housemuseum

I went to this talk last Sunday, for an artist the opportunity to hear architects discussing the role of architecture in displaying art was a first for me, and I did get a few surprises, learned a great deal and came away with my head buzzing.

How do we condense the content of this event into a few words in a blog? As it happens quite easily, "neutral container" was rather disparagingly translated to "White Cube" which when uttered was usually expressed with an air of boredom. Whilst "active participant" was delivered with some commitment and excitement, clearly this concept was much more interesting to the architects and basically means a building that it is a full expression of the architect as artist. I'm old enough to remember being taught the history of art when it included architecture and have always believed it to be the most influential art. After all - architects make the spaces in which we live, work, relax and exhibit our art.

And of course no talk like this these days could ever omit mention of "starchitects" or Zaha Hadid herself, http://www.arcspace.com/features/zaha-hadid-architects/ more wonky walls than you could poke a stick at all justified by the success of buildings as a magnet for tourists and generator of collateral income, thus highlighting the major dilemma for the cities and institutions that propose new art gallery spaces but get seduced into funding these "bugger-the-art just look at the building" examples.

The concept of architecture as art was taken to the most extreme level in this talk not by an architect but by Jason Smith, Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Director, who very enthusiastically announced that he saw a great deal of merit in the idea of exhibiting no art in one building in his gallery complex and letting the building itself be the "art" on view (which was never the intention of the building in the first place). Incidentally there was virtually no discussion or acknowledgement that maybe artists themselves may have views and valid opinions on the spaces in which their work will be exhibited!

Of particular interest to me was the Lyon Housemuseum and the explanations of its founder Corbett Lyon, I too have something that could be called a "house museum" though it has never occurred to me to call it that before. It is architecturally significant, heritage listed and does impose itself quite markedly on any art that is exhibited in or around it. Lyon Housemuseum -  http://lyonhousemuseum.com.au/ 

I even have the insane Guggenheim sloping floor at the Cowwarr Art Space! a sculptor's nightmare and somewhat of a challenge for any art! Not with standing this I consider it a sort of blank canvas in which we can attempt to create ways to make art live. 

The heritage architects describe the Cowwarr Art Space (a recycled 1918 butter factory) as a Federation Arts and Crafts style building, and pointed out that this was a high minded socialist architectural movement that, in terms of industrial building, set out to create "beautiful" spaces that would encourage people to feel like working hard!!!The quality of the spaces are exactly what our visitors respond to most.

Now all this gives us a real clue to the development of a good and trusting relationship between art, architects and art gallery/museum architecture. Clearly the answer lies neither with the "white cube" nor the "active participant" approaches but possibly in a thoroughly sympathetic melding of both by embracing the idea that an architect could muster the skill, poetry and care for humanity to create spaces that actually encourage people to love art and the total art gallery experience. Architects win, curators win, artists are relieved and the general public audience win too. Nice I reckon.