Press and Editorial

Place of treats and torture

12 July 2008
John McDonald

» View Place of treats and torture exhibition

LAST week the suspicion was starting to grow on me that the Sydney Biennale - as with so many events in this city - is nothing more than an excuse for a party. Every time the Biennale popped up in conversation, someone would say: "Well, it was a great party!"

Not having been to the party, I was in no position to comment. I have, however, been to the party venue - Cockatoo Island - and was suitably astonished. Cockatoo Island is a textbook example of "the industrial sublime". This is our contemporary answer to the towering peaks, stormy seas and other natural phenomena that gave the Romantics their frisson of pleasure and terror. A more moderate variation was "the pleasure of ruins" that Rose Macaulay extolled in a best-selling travel book in 1953. Looking at the ruins of empires past, the British accustomed themselves to the idea that, by dint of historical necessity, their own great empire was destined to crumble. Little by little this noble pathos degenerated into mere tourism.

Nowadays nobody talks about empires, unless referring to business tycoons such as Frank Lowy. The pathos resides in the spectacle of vast warehouses and factories left to decay; heavy equipment covered in rust, stained concrete floors, cobwebs and broken glass. We feel the painful obsolescence of sites that once teemed with activity. The world has changed, the global economy and our working habits have changed. Warehouses and factories are being converted into apartments all over the city but Cockatoo Island remains in suspended animation.

It must have been an irresistible invitation for the artists of the Biennale to create a series of installations that make use of the atmosphere of these derelict structures. It works so well that the rest of the show, at the Art Gallery of NSW and other venues, seems a dull footnote to the main event. Pier 2-3 is particularly disappointing, with only three works in its cavernous interior - a facsimile of an old piece by the Futurist, Luigi Russolo; a single Western Desert painting by Doreen Reid Nakamarra that looks as singular as Uluru in the desert landscape; and a soundscape by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller that would work just as well on an iPod.

Getting on the ferry at Pier 2-3 and voyaging to Cockatoo Island, one feels like one of the revellers in a painting by Watteau, taking the boat to Cythera. On alighting, viewers find themselves in an environment where even the slightest, most ephemeral works are imbued with a strange vitality. The prime example is Susan Philipsz's voice singing a haunting version of The Internationale, usually heard in the form of a rousing Bolshevik chorus. This disjointed and wilfully amateurish performance - more like singing in the shower than on stage - echoes throughout the island's enormous Turbine Room. It is simple but effective, as is Jannis Kounellis's installation of sails that clambers from floor to ceiling in the same building, and aiPotu's visual gag of a canoe in the shape of a boomerang.

I suggested a fortnight ago that one could zip through the Biennale in a day but, while that may hold true for the other venues, the plan comes unstuck at Cockatoo Island. There is a lot more to see and it requires a greater investment of time. Some items, such as Peter Watkins's film, La Commune, (2000) would be better viewed in a cinema. It's also easy enough to find on DVD. This piece and some of the other fare turn the island component of the Biennale into a film festival held in a wasteland.

One of the most powerful presentations is Mike Parr's self-styled retrospective of performance films in the former sailors' quarters and naval academy. This large, utilitarian building is in a shabby state. It stinks of urine, mould and mildew but that's the least of its detractions. One wanders down a darkened corridor, listening to various grunts and groans issuing from each room, as though acts of torture are being performed within. This is exactly what is happening, although they are generally acts of self-torture - as we watch Parr hold his breath until he turns purple, stick his finger in a candle flame, have his thigh sliced with a scalpel, vomit on the floor, tie his face with fishing line and so on.

I was reminded of what Oscar Wilde said about torture: "It helps pass an hour or two." In this case, one would have to be a dedicated masochist to spend two hours watching Parr do diabolical things to himself. It's ugly and often pathetic but one could hardly imagine a more effective mise-en-scene. These films have a much greater impact in this environment than in the clean white spaces of a museum, where most have been screened in the past.

Naturally these acts of self-mutilation and endurance are to be interpreted as profound statements about the human condition but by this stage they are also cliches. Where the uninitiated may be shocked or disturbed, the art cognoscenti will experience a comfortable sense of recognition.

The theme of this Biennale is "revolutions" but there is nothing revolutionary about Parr's gruesome performances. Even in our new ultra-moral society, led by those organs of spiritual purity - The Daily Telegraph, 2GB and Channel 9 - we are highly resistant to works of art that set out to offend. For the most part such actions are never even noticed by the general public - the presumed target of this unhappy mixture of sanctimoniousness and nastiness. Then there is a sense that museums and galleries are special places where the normal rules of human behaviour are suspended and anything goes. Finally, there is a psychological reflex that makes us want to ignore things that vie childishly for our attention.

Audiences quickly tire of being shocked but never lose their taste for being amazed and delighted. Having said that, it is a mystery to me that so many curators and critics have been amazed and delighted by films of Shaun Gladwell on his skateboard. In his installation on Cockatoo Island, Gladwell unveils a daring new career path: a film in which he does wheelies on a BMX bike. As an added attraction, viewers may turn the pedals of a small phalanx of bikes and hear a vaguely musical sound.

I wish I could explain the profundity of this piece but frankly I'm stumped. Hopefully someone will come up with a convincing essay when Gladwell represents Australia at next year's Venice Biennale. My best theory is that the work has vicarious appeal for unfit, middle-aged people who could no more imagine chucking a wheelie on a BMX bike than riding a bucking bronco.

By general agreement, the outstanding contribution to this year's Biennale comes from South African artist William Kentridge, whose installations on Cockatoo Island are dazzling in their wit, flair, breadth of reference and technical virtuosity. A multi-channel projection titled I Am Not Me, The Horse Is Not Mine (2008) is adapted from a new production of The Nose for the Metropolitan Opera of New York. This opera by Shostakovich, based on a story by Gogol, has led Kentridge to investigate the montage techniques of the early Russian avant-garde - combining text, music, animation and shadow-play into a unique audio-visual experience.

Kentridge's other Biennale piece, What Will Come (Has Already Come) (2007), is reputedly the world's first-ever anamorphic film. This entails a series of distorted images in an animated sequence being projected onto a revolving metal cylinder on a circular table. When we see the "corrected" film on the cylinder, it recounts a little-known historical episode in which the Italian invaders used poisonous gas on Abyssinian troops.

This installation is complemented by Kentridge's solo exhibition at Annandale Galleries, Telegrams From The Nose, which contains two more circular tables where drawings are corrected by reflective cylinders, graphic works and sculptures, an earlier animation and a wall-sized tapestry. I've written an essay for the catalogue but I don't see any conflict in drawing viewers' attention to one of the most engaging exhibitions to be seen this year in a commercial gallery.

The show contains spin-off works from opera projects such as The Nose and The Magic Flute, plus pieces that relate to a 2007 residence in Frankfurt, where Kentridge pursued his investigations into optics and visuality.

What is most impressive is that these researches have been used chiefly as tools to further extend the cultural dialogue in his work between Europe and Africa, coloniser and colonised, the ideals and ordeals of the Enlightenment. Kentridge is an artist who seems acutely aware of his own cerebral tendencies and tries to keep them in check by constant drawing, collage and other forms that retain the impress of the artist's hand. He refers to his animations as "drawings for projection" or "stone age filmmaking". When so much contemporary art makes a virtue of stupidity, it almost qualifies as a guilty pleasure to find an artist of such unremitting intelligence.

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» View Place of treats and torture exhibition

LAST week the suspicion was starting to grow on me that the Sydney Biennale - as with so many events in this city - is nothing more than an excuse for a party. Every time the Biennale popped up in conversation, someone would say: "Well, it was a great party!"

Not having been to the party, I was in no position to comment. I have, however, been to the party venue - Cockatoo Island - and was suitably astonished. Cockatoo Island is a textbook example of "the industrial sublime". This is our contemporary answer to the towering peaks, stormy seas and other natural phenomena that gave the Romantics their frisson of pleasure and terror. A more moderate variation was "the pleasure of ruins" that Rose Macaulay extolled in a best-selling travel book in 1953. Looking at the ruins of empires past, the British accustomed themselves to the idea that, by dint of historical necessity, their own great empire was destined to crumble. Little by little this noble pathos degenerated into mere tourism.

Nowadays nobody talks about empires, unless referring to business tycoons such as Frank Lowy. The pathos resides in the spectacle of vast warehouses and factories left to decay; heavy equipment covered in rust, stained concrete floors, cobwebs and broken glass. We feel the painful obsolescence of sites that once teemed with activity. The world has changed, the global economy and our working habits have changed. Warehouses and factories are being converted into apartments all over the city but Cockatoo Island remains in suspended animation.

It must have been an irresistible invitation for the artists of the Biennale to create a series of installations that make use of the atmosphere of these derelict structures. It works so well that the rest of the show, at the Art Gallery of NSW and other venues, seems a dull footnote to the main event. Pier 2-3 is particularly disappointing, with only three works in its cavernous interior - a facsimile of an old piece by the Futurist, Luigi Russolo; a single Western Desert painting by Doreen Reid Nakamarra that looks as singular as Uluru in the desert landscape; and a soundscape by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller that would work just as well on an iPod.

Getting on the ferry at Pier 2-3 and voyaging to Cockatoo Island, one feels like one of the revellers in a painting by Watteau, taking the boat to Cythera. On alighting, viewers find themselves in an environment where even the slightest, most ephemeral works are imbued with a strange vitality. The prime example is Susan Philipsz's voice singing a haunting version of The Internationale, usually heard in the form of a rousing Bolshevik chorus. This disjointed and wilfully amateurish performance - more like singing in the shower than on stage - echoes throughout the island's enormous Turbine Room. It is simple but effective, as is Jannis Kounellis's installation of sails that clambers from floor to ceiling in the same building, and aiPotu's visual gag of a canoe in the shape of a boomerang.

I suggested a fortnight ago that one could zip through the Biennale in a day but, while that may hold true for the other venues, the plan comes unstuck at Cockatoo Island. There is a lot more to see and it requires a greater investment of time. Some items, such as Peter Watkins's film, La Commune, (2000) would be better viewed in a cinema. It's also easy enough to find on DVD. This piece and some of the other fare turn the island component of the Biennale into a film festival held in a wasteland.

One of the most powerful presentations is Mike Parr's self-styled retrospective of performance films in the former sailors' quarters and naval academy. This large, utilitarian building is in a shabby state. It stinks of urine, mould and mildew but that's the least of its detractions. One wanders down a darkened corridor, listening to various grunts and groans issuing from each room, as though acts of torture are being performed within. This is exactly what is happening, although they are generally acts of self-torture - as we watch Parr hold his breath until he turns purple, stick his finger in a candle flame, have his thigh sliced with a scalpel, vomit on the floor, tie his face with fishing line and so on.

I was reminded of what Oscar Wilde said about torture: "It helps pass an hour or two." In this case, one would have to be a dedicated masochist to spend two hours watching Parr do diabolical things to himself. It's ugly and often pathetic but one could hardly imagine a more effective mise-en-scene. These films have a much greater impact in this environment than in the clean white spaces of a museum, where most have been screened in the past.

Naturally these acts of self-mutilation and endurance are to be interpreted as profound statements about the human condition but by this stage they are also cliches. Where the uninitiated may be shocked or disturbed, the art cognoscenti will experience a comfortable sense of recognition.

The theme of this Biennale is "revolutions" but there is nothing revolutionary about Parr's gruesome performances. Even in our new ultra-moral society, led by those organs of spiritual purity - The Daily Telegraph, 2GB and Channel 9 - we are highly resistant to works of art that set out to offend. For the most part such actions are never even noticed by the general public - the presumed target of this unhappy mixture of sanctimoniousness and nastiness. Then there is a sense that museums and galleries are special places where the normal rules of human behaviour are suspended and anything goes. Finally, there is a psychological reflex that makes us want to ignore things that vie childishly for our attention.

Audiences quickly tire of being shocked but never lose their taste for being amazed and delighted. Having said that, it is a mystery to me that so many curators and critics have been amazed and delighted by films of Shaun Gladwell on his skateboard. In his installation on Cockatoo Island, Gladwell unveils a daring new career path: a film in which he does wheelies on a BMX bike. As an added attraction, viewers may turn the pedals of a small phalanx of bikes and hear a vaguely musical sound.

I wish I could explain the profundity of this piece but frankly I'm stumped. Hopefully someone will come up with a convincing essay when Gladwell represents Australia at next year's Venice Biennale. My best theory is that the work has vicarious appeal for unfit, middle-aged people who could no more imagine chucking a wheelie on a BMX bike than riding a bucking bronco.

By general agreement, the outstanding contribution to this year's Biennale comes from South African artist William Kentridge, whose installations on Cockatoo Island are dazzling in their wit, flair, breadth of reference and technical virtuosity. A multi-channel projection titled I Am Not Me, The Horse Is Not Mine (2008) is adapted from a new production of The Nose for the Metropolitan Opera of New York. This opera by Shostakovich, based on a story by Gogol, has led Kentridge to investigate the montage techniques of the early Russian avant-garde - combining text, music, animation and shadow-play into a unique audio-visual experience.

Kentridge's other Biennale piece, What Will Come (Has Already Come) (2007), is reputedly the world's first-ever anamorphic film. This entails a series of distorted images in an animated sequence being projected onto a revolving metal cylinder on a circular table. When we see the "corrected" film on the cylinder, it recounts a little-known historical episode in which the Italian invaders used poisonous gas on Abyssinian troops.

This installation is complemented by Kentridge's solo exhibition at Annandale Galleries, Telegrams From The Nose, which contains two more circular tables where drawings are corrected by reflective cylinders, graphic works and sculptures, an earlier animation and a wall-sized tapestry. I've written an essay for the catalogue but I don't see any conflict in drawing viewers' attention to one of the most engaging exhibitions to be seen this year in a commercial gallery.

The show contains spin-off works from opera projects such as The Nose and The Magic Flute, plus pieces that relate to a 2007 residence in Frankfurt, where Kentridge pursued his investigations into optics and visuality.

What is most impressive is that these researches have been used chiefly as tools to further extend the cultural dialogue in his work between Europe and Africa, coloniser and colonised, the ideals and ordeals of the Enlightenment. Kentridge is an artist who seems acutely aware of his own cerebral tendencies and tries to keep them in check by constant drawing, collage and other forms that retain the impress of the artist's hand. He refers to his animations as "drawings for projection" or "stone age filmmaking". When so much contemporary art makes a virtue of stupidity, it almost qualifies as a guilty pleasure to find an artist of such unremitting intelligence.

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