Almighty row
While
debate rages about content
on television, a furore of a rather different kind
has reared up over art – specifically, the Blake Prize for
Religious Art. Now, as regular readers will undoubtedly be aware,
another Sydney-based art prize (the Archibald) regularly courts
controversy; but the Blake Prize has tended to fly under the radar
somewhat. After all, it’s an award given for a very specialised
(and some might argue, marginal) field of artistic endeavour,
its accompanying exhibition is generally shown outside the “big”
galleries, and it tends to get little media coverage.
This year however has been different. Ironically
perhaps, the storm surrounding the awards wasn’t about the
winners; but rather about two works shown in the Blake exhibition
that weren’t among the judges’ favourites.
The two pieces in question were Priscilla Bracks’
hologram work titled “Bearded Orientals: Making the Empire
Cross”; and Luke Sullivan’s scultpure, “The
Fourth Secret of Fatima”. The reason these two pieces (particularly
Bracks’) stirred so much passion is their juxtaposition
of Christian iconography with elements that many would find inimical
to the Christian faith.
In “Bearded Orientals: Making the Empire Cross”,
Bracks creates a holographic "diptych" of sorts, showing
a traditional depiction of Jesus and a photo of Osama bin Laden,
which can morph into one another. Understandably, some were quick
to see the work as somehow lauding the terrorist and were equally
quick to express their outrage.
The Herld-Sun’s neocon and anti-intelligensia
columnist Andrew Bolt railed:
“To the casual viewer, the meaning would seem
as obvious as the gap where the Twin Towers used to be –
that bin Laden and Christ really aren’t so different. Indeed,
one might have created the other. Hmm: Jesus – the true
author of the September 11 attacks.”
Had Bolt bothered to talk to the artist however,
he might have found a rather different meaning. As the Herald-Sun’s
Sydney sister paper, The Daily Telegraph reported:
“Bracks says her intention in creating Bearded
Orientals was to pose the question: Is the Western media inadvertently
turning Osama bin Laden into a cult hero for posterity?”
In other words, Bracks seems to see Jesus as the
ultimate cult hero, and is questioning whether the media is seeking
to effectively deify bin Laden. Which, in a way, appears to be
generally supportive of Bolt’s position on such matters.
For Sullivan’s work, the issue was similar,
though probably not quite so incendiary. “The Fourth Secret
of Fatima” was a statue depicting the Virgin Mary dressed
in a Muslim burqa. This is of course the kind of ironic counterpointing
that would be familiar to many art followers. The fact that the
counterpoint in this specific case is the Muslim religion seems
to have gotten up people’s noses.
Some however were prepared to focus on the artistic
merits – or otherwise – of the pieces, with the Bishop
of South Sydney, the Rt. Rev. Robert Forsyth saying the Sullivan
statue was a “cheap shot”. He was however kinder to
Bracks’ piece, saying “It kind of works for me –
it’s arresting”.
Now the drama has spread to the higher levels of
Australian churches, with the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal
George Pell, weighing in. As reported in the Daily Tele, he said:
“Some contemporary art is tedious and trivial.
These works demonstrate this. Regrettably, attempts to insult
Jesus and Mary have become common in recent years, even predictable.
Too often it seems that the only quality which makes something
art is the adolescent desire to shock. If this is the best the
Blake Prize can do, it has probably outlived its usefulness.”
Of course, the difficulty for His Eminence is that
these were the works that DIDN’T win. The actual prize was
awarded to indigenous artist Shirley Purdie for her work Stations
of the Cross, which renders the traditional Easter devotion using
indigenous art techniques and colours. The stark rendering clearly
won over the judges who commented:
“It is a marvellously realised painterly journey
that recreates the stories told to the artist in childhood of
the Stations of the Cross in Warmun country using a breathtakingly
beautiful natural ochre palette made from the earths eroded from
the very Kimberley rocks whose mobile shapes enclose and frame
the vignettes of story.”
The judges highly commended Rodney Pople’s
painting, “The Last Supper”; and gave the John Coburn
Award for Emerging Artists to Jumaadi for the work “Whisper”.
The fact that the winners were lost in the hullabaloo
over two entries deemed not worthy by the judges is probably telling
in itself. But as the saying goes – there’s no such
thing as bad publicity. Of course, bagging off an award like the
Blake is an easy way to fill column inches and provoke debate,
but I personally am disappointed that the controversy has taken
the focus off the works that actually won prizes.
Sadly, the whole episode seems to have generated
a lot more heat than light.
David Edwards
