Across the waves
Collaboration
is a bit of a buzzword in the art world these days, and when that
collaboration crosses national and cultural boundaries, special
things can happen. In that spirit, Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary
Art and its counterpart in San Diego are teaming up to present
two unique exhibitions showcasing the collections of these leading
contemporary art institutions.
The first of these exhibitions, Southern Exposure
– now showing at the Sydney venue - showcases works from
the collection of MCA San Diego and offers a unique insight into
diverse West Coast contemporary art practices over the last four
decades.
A second exhibition will be presented at the MCA
San Diego in early 2009, featuring film and video works by young
and established contemporary Australian artists acquired by MCA
Sydney over the past five years. These will include works by Shaun
Gladwell, the Kingpins and Susan Norrie.
The collecting strategies of both Museums have focused
on emerging and established artists from the surrounding regions
of the respective institutions. For the MCA San Diego, this has
resulted in a strong collection of contemporary art from the West
Coast of America, Mexico, and Latin America from the 1960s to
the present. The MCA Sydney, in turn, has a collection which includes
a range of experimental media including film and video by contemporary
Australian artists.
Presented at the MCA Sydney as part of its autumn
2008 exhibition program, Southern Exposure presents highlights
from the MCA San Diego collection, with a focus on art from California
and Tijuana, Mexico.
Spanning 1962 to the present day, the works have
been jointly selected by Rachel Kent, Senior Curator MCA Sydney
and Dr Stephanie Hanor, Senior Curator MCA San Diego with featured
artists including Robert Irwin, Vija Celmins, Ed Ruscha, John
Baldessari, Bill Viola and Barbara Kruger. A number of younger
artists are also on show including Glenn Kaino, Kota Ezawa, Jeremy
Blake, and Torolab from Tijuana.
Works in Southern Exposure encompass painting, sculpture,
photography, video, projection and installation, and explore issues
that have shaped our world from the 1960s to the current day –
from the anti-war movement to feminist debates and the role of
advertising in everyday life.
A key installation will be The Reason for the Neutron
Bomb (1979) by Chris Burden. Comprising 50,000 nickel coins and
match-heads laid in precise rows upon the gallery floor, it references
the fleet of 50,000 sophisticated tanks maintained by the former
Soviet Union into the early 1980s.
Other works explore human perception and emotions
through the manipulation of light and colour. James Turrell's
immersive environment Stuck Red and Stuck Blue (1970) transforms
our awareness of physical space using visual illusion. For Jeremy
Blake, in Winchester (2002), psychedelic colour and distorted
imagery symbolise the declining psychological state of a woman
tormented by her family's past.
National boundaries and the flow of individuals
between San Diego and Tijuana is mapped out in topographical relief
by Torolab, while Sharon Lockhart’s photographs of a man
repairing a marble floor in a Mexican anthropology museum become
a study of class and ethnicity, as well as display and objectification.
David Edwards
