Minnestrone art: Australian Centre for Contemporay Art and Tiamo

 It’s complex, intriguing, challenging and does require some complexity that’s not always in the eye of the beholder or the customer.

‘Future remains’ is a concoction of responses by 7 artists selected whose works seek to “reclaim, restage and reframe specific material, cultural or ideological inheritances in an effort not only to better understand the past and present but to generate new possibilities for the future”.

As I followed the crowd of on lookers and peered at the long winded explanations and took time to talk to a bemused and challenged photographer I was struck by what is a worthy intention but an artistic response often blurred by the practice of art itself. 

It troubled me that what we experienced in public and private galleries recently responded to a similar intention with a more accessible and powerful artistic presentation. 

https://acca.melbourne/exhibition/future-remains-the-2024-macfarlane-commissions/

Tiamo’s minestrone comes in a big bowl and is rich in content and complexity. It’s hot and steamy and is served with ample bread together with olive oil (and accompanied by the ubiquitous red now served in glass stemmed glasses) and is a fitting reminder that complexity can also be simple and easy to take in.

City lights and City sounds - Hamer Hall, Melbourne

https://youtu.be/ugnyvfisPZ8

 

Victorian Archives Centre & Hellenic Museum: What it is to be.

Melbourne’s all over it! At the Victorian Archives Centre in North Melbourne an exhibition by Tahlia Palmer explores history, identity and perception. Her works derive from the archives she has researched and she ‘interrogates the impact of colonisation on people and Country, and to unpack and heal inter-generational trauma in her own family’. ‘occupation studies’ is an installation of audio-visual works made by Palmer during the first Creative in Residence Program at the Centre. 

Whilst over at the Hellenic Centre in downtown Melbourne Pink Ember provided snapshots on the Centre’s collection in a mind opening and engaging deep dive by their poets and writers  into ancient Greece. ‘Speaking to Pictures’ was a performance laden with words and pictures, drawing on the Hellenic Museum collection.

Institutions such as these are opening up to artists their lives, our past, our history and broadening our mind on what it is to be.

Last stop London!

 Last stop London! Judy Chicago has been an influential feminist artist in our lives since 1979 when Maggie, Kes and I travelled to the USA via San Francisco and experienced the Dinner Party by Judy Chicago. 

It was a momentous 5 year undertaking and its result was so powerful and proved so antagonistic to powerful men and the art establishment that Chicago that the work spent time in the art wilderness. It was criticised for being pornographic and also received criticism from high ranking Congress legislators. 

However exhibitions of the Dinner Party were held in cities around the world including in Melbourne at the Royal Exhibition Building in 1988. It was rejected by the National Gallery of Victoria!

I was the Community Arts Network EO and was involved in bringing the Dinner Party to Melbourne and the CAN organised Dinner Parties across the State inviting women  to create their own dinner plates of important and influential women in their lives. 

Our next encounter with the Dinner Party was in Brooklyn NYC in where  it has after so many years in storage been given a permanent home and a rightful place in the lexicon of art. 

The Serpentine Gallery has a retrospective exhibition of Chicago’s work dating back to the ‘70’s to today. It is an inspiring, influential and brings to the fore an example of her collaborative work over several decades. It is a powerful reflection on the role of women that has been subjugated by men for centuries and still today. 

https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/judy-chicago-revelations/

Moderna Museet, Malmo

 Moderna Museet, Malmo has an exhibition currently titled ‘Unhealed’. It is an exhibition that explores the aftermath of the Arab Spring in 2010 that resulted in uprisings and revolutions across the Arab world.

Many refugees from these parts are now living in Sweden as a consequence so the artworks are personal, poignant and thought provoking. 

The exhibition ‘embodies a poetic narrative rather than strict historical accounts’. ‘It navigates through feelings of hope, confusion and despair beyond political analysis’. 

It is a timely reflection on the present and future that captures and shapes the lives of those living in Gaza.