Footage of an ‘artist’ kneeling on the ground whilst beating a slab of butter to death with a power cord in an undisclosed art gallery somewhere in the Western world is currently doing the rounds on the internet. One of the most fascinating aspects of the footage is the fact that the artists is being watched by a two people who are kneeling in silent awe and wonder as they participate in the spectacle passing itself off as culture.
Speaking of spectacles passing themselves off as culture, next month Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne will house a state- funded photographic exhibition entitled DisGraceland’. The series of photos, created by performing couple Will and Garrett Huxley, is a ‘queer love story’ set in rural Victoria between ‘two queer alien Elvis’s trying to make it home. Garret, who is clearly the more articulate of the pair, says ‘we want to make it super queer and super extreme.’ If there were any nuns buried on the convent’s grounds, there would be an inordinate amount of grave turning.
Over at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Southbank, the state of affairs is not much better. If you are not already depressed by the building’s exterior, which is a soulless, windowless unedifying construction that resembles a giant rusty shearing shed, then the exhibitions contained within will have you desperately searching for the exit as soon as you have entered.
‘Between Waves’ is one such exhibition. It is as incoherent as it is uninteresting. We are told that participating artists ‘embrace the push and pull dynamics that flow beneath the surface, navigating ideas of presence and absence, the known and unknown, transgenerational and collective consciousness.’
While it claims that it is ‘devoted to highlighting the significance of First Nations contemporary art practice of the Southeast within a national context’ there is very little sign of actual having been produced by the artists. Cassie Sullivan, for example, has created seven tarlatan monotype prints on frosted acrylic, which process ‘conveys a deeply personal and somatic language that explores the ways in which transgenerational communication and trauma manifests in the body and is brought into physicality.’
Dean Cross uses aluminium, timber, synthetic polymer paint, fired ceramic, fabric and paper to enact ‘First Nations sovereignty through expanded contemporary art methodologies’. James Howard has created a ‘channel sound sculpture’ with electronic instruments and synthesizers, while Mandy Qadrio uses wire mesh and a rotating mechanism to ‘unfix racist categorisations, historic denials and imposed invisibility about Tasmanian Aboriginal people.’
This exhibition is of course, funded by the taxpayer, having received assistance from NETS Victoria’s Exhibition Development Fund which is supported by the Victorian Government. But while the taxpayers might be paying for it, they are certainly not going to see it. There is a reason why the rooms of Contemporary art museums such as this are depressingly and tellingly empty. It’s not because the people are ignoramuses or stupid, it’s they know it’s not art. They know it’s politics.
The contemporary art world in this country is simply an extension of the dangerous post-modernist theories that are fast defining our age. It has become an echo chamber for art galleries, artists and dealers who are not interested in beauty, talent, skill, or tradition but who are occupying this important cultural space solely as political revolutionaries to make political comment.
They are driven by identity politics and claim that Art (and much else besides) had been a created and jealously ruled by white heterosexual males. They believe voices of the ‘other’ other being their favourite word, have been marginalized, and the time has come for those voices and perspectives to be heard. And our culture is so much poorer for it.
