Press and Editorial
The Extravagance of Art
21 June 2008Elizabeth Fortescue
» View The Extravagance of Art exhibition
The Biennale is a mix of artwork gems and the simply puerile
They used to make ships in Building 124, this derelict industrial hall on Cockatoo Island, which is one of the showcases for artworks in the Biennale of Sydney. William Kentridge, arguably the most prominent living artist in the event, agrees that Cockatoo is a perfect venue for his latest film works.
The island's state of grungy, flaking decrepitude harmonises with Kentridge's deliberately bakelite-era aesthetic. The rusted crane on a clifftop above Building 124 could have stalked straight out of the artist's famous artworks.
Energetic and dream-like charcoal drawings are a mainstay of Kentridge's body of work.
He makes a drawing and photographs it, rubs out some parts and re-works them, re-photographs the drawing, and so on until he has thousands of frames to make into an animated film.
These films give the illusion that the drawings are creating themselves on the screen.
Kentridge used this technique to create some of his filmic masterpieces, including Felix In Exile, Automatic Writing and Tide Table.
For one of his Biennale film works, titled What Will Come (Has Already Come), 2007, Kentridge has extended his signature technique.
Instead of making a film for flat-screen projection, he has made one for downwards projection on to a round tabletop.
Intriguingly, the animated drawings only pull into meaningful perspective when they are viewed in the cylindrical mirror that Kentridge has installed vertically at the centre of the table. The viewer is meant to stand close to the table's edge so that the images on the film inhabit the full height of the mirror.
Kentridge was inspired by 17th and 18th century optical games to create What Will Come (Has Already Come). He calls this work an anamorphic film, and is already making another one in his Johannesburg studio.
Kentridge enjoys putting his audiences in the position of having to complete his work themselves.
For example, in Telegrams From The Nose -- Kentridge's commercial exhibition on display at Annandale Galleries until July 19 -- director Bill Gregory is showing Kent-
ridge's stereoscopic photogravures.
Only when these are seen through special viewing devices do they resolve into three-dimensionality.
Kentridge enjoyed the challenge of creating What Will Come (Has Already Come).
``The way of drawing is so counter-intuitive and slow,'' Kentridge says. ``It's a bit like drawing on a computer. You draw as if you're drawing with a mouse. So you watch the screen and not your hand. So, here, I'd be looking at the cylindrical mirror, rather than looking at the sheet of paper I'm drawing on.''
What Will Come (Has Already Come) runs for eight minutes. Its theme is the Italian bombardment of Ethiopia with mustard gas in the 1930s. The title refers to a Ghanaian proverb. Does it refer to the cyclic nature of historical events?
``Cyclic with changes,'' Kentridge says. ``Each time it comes around, it's changed. Its difference reminds us of what used to be there.''
Kentridge made the film for an Italian exhibition and the mustard gassing in Ethiopia gave him an Italian-African connection to work with. Much of Kentridge's work has concerned subjects to do with apartheid and black rights in South Africa. His father, Sir Sydney Kentridge, represented Nelson Mandela in his earliest court trials.
Sir Sydney still practises law, although now in London.
What Will Come (Has Already Come) begins with dots of light in the night sky, evoking the flight of Italian bombers towards their targets. A bomber flies past, a
horse rises and falls like a carousel animal, a loudspeaker marches about officiously, a gas mask with an elephantine breathing-hose dances a ghastly jig as if it were circling a maypole.
Bodies on the ground tear apart and reconnect as the sounds of a fairground are heard.
Kentridge's other work in the Biennale, installed in a different room of Building 124, is a series of film projections for the 1920s Shostakovich opera, The Nose, based on the famous Gogol story. The films will be projected on to screens in a Metropolitan Opera production of the work in 18 months' time.
The powerful Kentridge survey exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in 2004 was curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the guest curator of the Sydney Biennale. Kentridge says Christov-Bakargiev knows his work better than he does.
``When we did the catalogue, she would write emails saying, `I see in this one article you said you did this work in 1986, and in this one other article you say you made it in 1988: which of you is lying?','' he says.
Christov-Bakargiev's Biennale is a sprawling event of mixed success. At its best it is inspiring, as in the Kentridge projections. At its worst it is annoyingly puerile, impenetrable and over-laid with art-speak.
Take the artwork sent to Christov-Bakargiev from Vienna by Hans Schabus. Untitled, 2008, is just an ordinary postcard depicting a Viennese ferris wheel, with a short greeting on the back. But the text next to the work grandly tells us: ``By contributing this simple postcard as his artwork, Schabus makes an ironic critique of the spectacular nature of many international art exhibitions in an age such as ours that has been dubbed `the society of spectacle'.'' Schabus's piece is on display at the MCA.
Sam Durant's billboards declaring ``200 Years of White Lies'' and ``End White Supremacy'' are fair enough comment, but should not have been mounted quite so provocatively on the front of the MCA building.
At the Art Gallery of NSW, irritating Biennale works include Kara Liden's narcissistic and trivial video in which the Swedish artist takes an iron bar to her pushbike.
Now to the best works. One of the most moving is the display at the MCA of photographs by Czech artist Miroslav Tichy, a former jail and mental home inmate who made his own cameras and took 100 photographs every day for years. The accompanying film of Tichy's life and work is fascinating.
Sharmila Samant's MCA installation, exploring the fatal impact of genetically modified rice on an Indian farming community, is beautiful and thought-provoking. Leon Ferrari's 1965 sculpture of Christ being crucified on a FH107 US fighter plane is also a knockout.
* The 16th Biennale of Sydney is on until September 7, admission free
» View The Extravagance of Art exhibition
The Biennale is a mix of artwork gems and the simply puerile
They used to make ships in Building 124, this derelict industrial hall on Cockatoo Island, which is one of the showcases for artworks in the Biennale of Sydney. William Kentridge, arguably the most prominent living artist in the event, agrees that Cockatoo is a perfect venue for his latest film works.
The island's state of grungy, flaking decrepitude harmonises with Kentridge's deliberately bakelite-era aesthetic. The rusted crane on a clifftop above Building 124 could have stalked straight out of the artist's famous artworks.
Energetic and dream-like charcoal drawings are a mainstay of Kentridge's body of work.
He makes a drawing and photographs it, rubs out some parts and re-works them, re-photographs the drawing, and so on until he has thousands of frames to make into an animated film.
These films give the illusion that the drawings are creating themselves on the screen.
Kentridge used this technique to create some of his filmic masterpieces, including Felix In Exile, Automatic Writing and Tide Table.
For one of his Biennale film works, titled What Will Come (Has Already Come), 2007, Kentridge has extended his signature technique.
Instead of making a film for flat-screen projection, he has made one for downwards projection on to a round tabletop.
Intriguingly, the animated drawings only pull into meaningful perspective when they are viewed in the cylindrical mirror that Kentridge has installed vertically at the centre of the table. The viewer is meant to stand close to the table's edge so that the images on the film inhabit the full height of the mirror.
Kentridge was inspired by 17th and 18th century optical games to create What Will Come (Has Already Come). He calls this work an anamorphic film, and is already making another one in his Johannesburg studio.
Kentridge enjoys putting his audiences in the position of having to complete his work themselves.
For example, in Telegrams From The Nose -- Kentridge's commercial exhibition on display at Annandale Galleries until July 19 -- director Bill Gregory is showing Kent-
ridge's stereoscopic photogravures.
Only when these are seen through special viewing devices do they resolve into three-dimensionality.
Kentridge enjoyed the challenge of creating What Will Come (Has Already Come).
``The way of drawing is so counter-intuitive and slow,'' Kentridge says. ``It's a bit like drawing on a computer. You draw as if you're drawing with a mouse. So you watch the screen and not your hand. So, here, I'd be looking at the cylindrical mirror, rather than looking at the sheet of paper I'm drawing on.''
What Will Come (Has Already Come) runs for eight minutes. Its theme is the Italian bombardment of Ethiopia with mustard gas in the 1930s. The title refers to a Ghanaian proverb. Does it refer to the cyclic nature of historical events?
``Cyclic with changes,'' Kentridge says. ``Each time it comes around, it's changed. Its difference reminds us of what used to be there.''
Kentridge made the film for an Italian exhibition and the mustard gassing in Ethiopia gave him an Italian-African connection to work with. Much of Kentridge's work has concerned subjects to do with apartheid and black rights in South Africa. His father, Sir Sydney Kentridge, represented Nelson Mandela in his earliest court trials.
Sir Sydney still practises law, although now in London.
What Will Come (Has Already Come) begins with dots of light in the night sky, evoking the flight of Italian bombers towards their targets. A bomber flies past, a
horse rises and falls like a carousel animal, a loudspeaker marches about officiously, a gas mask with an elephantine breathing-hose dances a ghastly jig as if it were circling a maypole.
Bodies on the ground tear apart and reconnect as the sounds of a fairground are heard.
Kentridge's other work in the Biennale, installed in a different room of Building 124, is a series of film projections for the 1920s Shostakovich opera, The Nose, based on the famous Gogol story. The films will be projected on to screens in a Metropolitan Opera production of the work in 18 months' time.
The powerful Kentridge survey exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in 2004 was curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the guest curator of the Sydney Biennale. Kentridge says Christov-Bakargiev knows his work better than he does.
``When we did the catalogue, she would write emails saying, `I see in this one article you said you did this work in 1986, and in this one other article you say you made it in 1988: which of you is lying?','' he says.
Christov-Bakargiev's Biennale is a sprawling event of mixed success. At its best it is inspiring, as in the Kentridge projections. At its worst it is annoyingly puerile, impenetrable and over-laid with art-speak.
Take the artwork sent to Christov-Bakargiev from Vienna by Hans Schabus. Untitled, 2008, is just an ordinary postcard depicting a Viennese ferris wheel, with a short greeting on the back. But the text next to the work grandly tells us: ``By contributing this simple postcard as his artwork, Schabus makes an ironic critique of the spectacular nature of many international art exhibitions in an age such as ours that has been dubbed `the society of spectacle'.'' Schabus's piece is on display at the MCA.
Sam Durant's billboards declaring ``200 Years of White Lies'' and ``End White Supremacy'' are fair enough comment, but should not have been mounted quite so provocatively on the front of the MCA building.
At the Art Gallery of NSW, irritating Biennale works include Kara Liden's narcissistic and trivial video in which the Swedish artist takes an iron bar to her pushbike.
Now to the best works. One of the most moving is the display at the MCA of photographs by Czech artist Miroslav Tichy, a former jail and mental home inmate who made his own cameras and took 100 photographs every day for years. The accompanying film of Tichy's life and work is fascinating.
Sharmila Samant's MCA installation, exploring the fatal impact of genetically modified rice on an Indian farming community, is beautiful and thought-provoking. Leon Ferrari's 1965 sculpture of Christ being crucified on a FH107 US fighter plane is also a knockout.
* The 16th Biennale of Sydney is on until September 7, admission free