GOMA will celebrate its tenth anniversary this year with exciting new artwork commissions and a program of major exhibitions commencing with ‘A World View: The Tim Fairfax Gift’.
Since the opening of GOMA in December 2006, the two-site Gallery has established a wide-reaching reputation as a dynamic artist-driven cultural institution. The building’s tenth anniversary was an opportunity to celebrate GOMA’s impact on the cultural landscape and look toward its future, with a suite of exhibitions, programs and commissions. Plans include a new public artwork commission by a Queensland Indigenous artist; a major free summer exhibition opening from 2 December, ‘Sugar Spin: you, me, art and everything’; and ‘A World View’, an exhibition honouring the far-reaching contribution of Tim Fairfax AC, one of the Gallery’s most generous supporters.
Since 2008, Tim Fairfax has kept QAGOMA at the forefront of contemporary international collection development, supporting the institution with the acquisition of more than 70 artworks from across the world, especially from Africa, South America, the Pacific and beyond. Artworks acquired for Queensland with Mr Fairfax’s support have ranged from vast installations to intimate sculptures all of which have enriched the experience of millions of local, regional, interstate and international visitors to the Gallery.
‘A World View’ is presented at GOMA in two chapters over ten months and will include visitor-favourite artworks such as Timo Nasseri’s highly polished, sublime sculpture Epistrophy VI 2012, Zilvinas Kempinas’s mesmerising video tape installation Columns 2012, Michael Sailstorfer’s ominous overhanging Wolken (Clouds) 2010 and Candice Breitz’s King (a portrait of Michael Jackson) 2008.
Stay Connected: Subscribe to QAGOMA Blogfor the latest exhibition announcements, be the first to go behind-the-scenes, and hear stories from artists and more.
The second chapter of the exhibition opening at GOMA on 2 December will feature Tomás Saraceno’s Biospheres – a series of large-scale, suspended webs and Crossing 2016 a major new commission by leading international light artist Anthony McCall, secured for the QAGOMA Collection with Mr Fairfax’s support. Crossing 2016 reflects McCall’s many years developing ‘solid light sculptures’ in which white light is projected through dark, haze-filled spaces. This experiential work encourages visitors to step into shafts of intersecting light and be encompassed by the sounds of breaking waves. A selection of the artworks in ‘A World View’ will also tour regional Queensland for the first time in late 2017 and 2018.
‘Sugar Spin: you, me, art and everything’, opening from 2 December, will feature more than 200 contemporary works from the Collection, including many visitor favourites and new commissions. Across levels one and three of GOMA, ‘Sugar Spin’ will draw visitors in with distinctive chapters that celebrate and reconceive the complex connections between humanity and the natural world.
Subscribe to YouTube to go behind-the-scenes / Read more about your Australian Collection
An exhibition of works in the Collection acquired with the support of Tim Fairfax, AC, will open on GOMA’s ground floor on Saturday 11 June, honouring the visionary generosity of the QAGOMA Foundation President and leading benefactor.
A World View: The Tim Fairfax Gift celebrates a decade of artworks acquired through the support of a single generous benefactor. Tim Fairfax’s extraordinary commitment has brought major works by leading international artists into Queensland’s Collection, for visitors to enjoy now and into the future.
Movement is at the centre of this exhibition: the movement of our own bodies dramatically framed by Tomás Saraceno’s majestic webbed spheres, or reflected in the sublime geometry of Timo Nasseri’s refracted universe. We are invited to move in Uche Okpa-Iroha’s dynamic studies of light and shadow, to dance to Michael Jackson in the work of Candice Breitz, and be mesmerised by Julian Opie’s passing parade of humanity.
These works invite a multi-layered perspective of the world, asking us to embrace detailed insights into the lives of others, just as we enjoy passing through abstracted spaces modelling cosmos and community.
Tomás Saraceno, Argentina b.1973 / Biosphere 2009 / PVC, rope, nylon monofilament, acrylic, plants (Tillandsia), air pressure regulator system, hydration system / Purchased 2014 with funds from Tim Fairfax, AC, through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
We were deeply saddened to learn of the passing on Friday of S. Teddy Darmawan, or S. Teddy D as he was better known.
Teddy was born in 1970 in Padang, West Sumatra, to a Javanese military family, but became exposed to social activism that complicated this background for him while a student in the early 1990s, first at the Indonesian College of Art (STSI) in Surakarta, and later at the Indonesia Institute of Arts in Yogyakarta. Against the military discipline of his upbringing and his family’s role in policing Suharto’s repressive New Order regime, he developed an energetic, irreverent, anti-authoritarian style of art making. Drawing on Javanese street life and counter-cultural imagery, he became a key figure among the generation of young artists who would come to prominence after Suharto fell in the late 1990s. As art historian and curator M Dwi Marianto put it at the time: ‘Teddy never allows himself to be trapped into a particular frame of meaning; the creation of meaning itself is like a game whose rules are invented as the game proceeds.’
Teddy enjoyed an international exhibiting practice that took him from Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Semarang and Bali to Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul, Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin, spending time in residence at the Ludwig Forum in Aachen, Germany, and the Australian National University in Canberra. He was part of a broad and dynamic group of Indonesian artists to travel to Brisbane for APT3 in 1999, and we are proud that his contribution to that exhibition, Penjagaan kepala (The guardian of the head) no. 1 1998, is part of the Gallery’s permanent collection.
Kaul and Wagi from Moab stringband enacting old customs
‘A Bit Na Ta’ locates the – source of the sea – Blanche Bay, Rabaul – in the Tolai language of East New Britain. It is also the title of a project commissioned for the upcoming Queensland Art Gallery exhibition ‘No 1 Neighbour: Art in Papua New Guinea 1966-2016’. Comprising a music video installation and performance event, the project will feature newly commissioned songs by leading Australian and Papua New Guinean musicians including the celebrated George Telek. These will draw on the rich oral histories of the Tolai people, transposing into contemporary beats, personal stories of the period between 1875-1975.
Project leader, musician and producer David Bridie shares some more views from his stay in Papua New Guinea
Over the past two weeks we’ve been travelling all around the Gazelle Peninsula and surrounds filming, recording, listening and talking (and chewing Buai). We are in a vain search for a kidolona pirpir-the full story of the past 100 years in Rabaul. This is of course an impossible task. But our historian Gideon Kakabin is passionate about the story needing to told from the Tolai perspective and that’s our pursuit.
Telek recording a Bit na Ta
George Telek has come up from Raluana to the studio here at Vunaulul and been in for four days of recording new songs especially for the project, ‘Boro’ and ‘Lili ram Kavavar’ and ‘a Bit na Ta’. He’s coming back again today. Yesterday Donald Lessy from Barike came and in played guitar on ‘Boro’ and is helping to sort out the musical and logistical arrangements the ‘Abot a Bitapaka’ Tolai choir song. Donald was a great friend of Glen Lows. Donald is quiet and unassuming, has a smoothness to his guitar playing and we’ve been friends for a long time but have never managed to work on a project together so that was a treat for both of us.
Gilnata Stringband
Last week we took the banana boat out to Mioko Island in the Duke of Yorks where we recorded the Gilnata Stringband’s new composition ‘Jack Emanuel’ about the murdered Australian District Commissioner. Gideon had explained the story to the legendary Alan Tobing who went away and wrote the song. We shot a film clip for Gilnata by the lagoon that featured a “varvalaruai” (an acted re-enactment of Jack Emanuel’s unfortunate death after a land dispute at Kabaira on the north coast) as well as recording the songs ‘Oscar Tammur’ and ‘Tutupele’. Gilnata have a history of telling oral history in their stringband songs and the Duke of Yorks style is totally different from the Tolai arrangements even though they are only ten miles away from each other. Miko offers unique vistas over to New Ireland and back to the volcanoes and whilst we were there massive storm blew on the north side of the island over the reef.
We ventured down to North Baining, to Ragaga Bay to Glen low’s block, Glen is buried there. We spent a lot of time sitting on his concrete tomb and chewing the fat. Glen accompanied Telek and I on tours for 15 years to the UK, USA, Solomons and Vanuatu and all round Australia. His son Gareth is the cameraman on this trip and is capturing minutiae, people and panorama with a unique eye. Kaul and Wagi from the Moab Stringband came down and in the varvalaruai tradition acted out old customs down in the mangrove swamps there-the working of abut (lime and clay applied to the face, tanget leaf necklaces, trading of tobacco and coconuts and the like). We recorded all sorts of bush and village ambiences helped because the house backs on to a big mangrove area and at night the insects and frogs create an all embracing sound-a symphony that Graeme Revell from SPK would have delighted in (Revell is a great Australian composer made a seminal electronica album sampling insect sounds!.)
Bung Marum and Revie Kinkin recording ‘Apinpidik’
Yesterday we recorded two beautiful old women from Wagi’s village, Bung Marum and Revie Kinkin in Bitabaur who sang an ‘Apinpidik’ for the project. Gideon found notes his mother, Lilak IaKaru had hand written in an exercise book from the 1960s when the Nilai Ra varden broke out from being “just” a women meeting group to joining with the warbete and the mataungan association to form the initial provincial government. In writing it reads, “nau meri i laik sanap wantaim ol man” (Its time for women to stand up and be equal to men) as well a disertation on the need for freedom from fear to be in the constitution. Lila passed away, she was a dynamo. Gideon, George and I look forward to working with curator Lisa Hilli working in ol singsing bilong meri na story bilong em (song of women’s stories). Last night we recorded the 95 year old Lasiel ToRavien (see picture below) playing a range of Tolai garamut drum beats dressed in bilas. In amazing condition for his age, the recording was astonishing as Lasiel played a range of minamai ceremonial Tolai garamut beats that will feature in the soundtrack.
Lasiel ToRavien
We have been photographing this classic old colonial text, Das Deutche Kolonial Buch, a 1900 book of all the German colonies around the world… frightening really. Gideon’s range of knowledge is a constant inspiration and for me working with George Telek in our 30th year of collaboration is rather special, especially on a project as comprehensive as this. Gideon made the long 5 hour boat trip down to Tol Pantation on the south coast with many descendants of the 2nd 22nd battalion (Lark force) of whom at least 150 were slaughtered having been left to defend Rabaul against the Japanese in 1942.Gideon said it was a very emotional journey with descendants looking for their father or uncles graves.
The volcanoes are always present and we’ve been filming them from a range of different angles. They of course look very different depending on the angle and proximity and their mood transforms Blanche bay. We’ve filmed and recorded sounds from the Namata ceremony at Matupit and will be at the Minamai in Bitabour next week when ten Tumbuans dance the strength of custom, song and dance in these occasions is wonderfully intense and dynamic. We look forward to Anslom and Moab coming into the studio over the next two weeks.
Themes for the a Bit na Ta installation are becoming more apparent, the Tumbuan Society and its inherent artistry of deception (Pidik na Pui), the oceans source, the volcanoes, gardens, the Vunutarai clan systems, the kivung (Tolai village based self-governance) the ‘Apinpidik’, ‘Malira’ and ‘Lili’ styles of song along with Tolai assertiveness in the face of wars, volcanic eruptions and the century long campaign to get their land back and retain it resurfacing constantly (The 6 day war, the Kokopo wars, the Navuneram Incident and the Matungan association etc). Gideon George and I, a whole host of other collaborators are swimming in music, art ,sound recordings, stories, photos and film. So many great songs to work with… there must be an album in this as well as the a Bit na Ta installation at No 1 Neighbour.
David Bridie, Project leader, musician and producer
‘No.1 Neighbour: Art in Papua New Guinea 1966-2016’
15 October 2016 – 29 January 2017
The exhibition presents work by artists from Papua New Guinea created from the mid-1960s, through Independence in 1975, until today and focuses on the vibrancy of contemporary artistic expression, a direction that is unique in Australia. A key conceptual thread is the importance of the ongoing relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea with projects profiling ongoing creative relationships between communities and individuals.
‘No.1 Neighbour’ is supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation and through the Australian Government through the Australian Cultural Diplomacy Grants Program of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Cindy Sherman / Untitled #568 2016 / Dye sublimation print on aluminium / Courtesy: The artist and Metro Pictures
The first Australian solo exhibition in more than 15 years by New York-based artist Cindy Sherman opens at GOMA this weekend. The exhibition will include Sherman’s two subversive fashion house collaborations, ‘Balenciaga’ 2007–08, and ‘Chanel’ 2010–2013, her iconic ‘Head shots’ 2000-02 and ‘Clowns’ 2003–04, as well as the ‘Society portraits’ from 2008. These intriguing, beautiful and at times challenging characters come to life in 56 large-scale photographs.
In addition, the exhibition’s centrepiece is an immense 5 metre-tall mural featuring a cast of even more eclectic and imposing personas. Cindy Sherman is one of the most recognised and influential artists of our time. The Gallery is thrilled to be presenting this major exhibition where Sherman is the model, costume designer, make-up artist and photographer in every image.
The Gallery is especially honoured to be featuring Sherman’s newest work, showing for the first time outside of the United States. Sherman’s 2016 series printed directly onto metal showing at GOMA and concurrently at Metro Pictures, New York, referenced early Hollywood and the excesses of the Roaring Twenties. These character studies evoke the languor of Depression-era greats, film stars such as Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich.
Sherman’s images are not self-portraits but representations of clichéd figures, lifted from the pages of fashion magazines, and in the world of television and social media. In all her photographs, Cindy Sherman expands on contemporary society’s fascination with aspiration, narcissism and the cult of celebrity, and explores the resulting emotional fragility. In an era obsessed with self-image, her work continues to influence generations of artists working in photography and video today.
On Saturday 28 May at 11:00am as part of opening weekend celebrations, a panel discussion led by Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow, Curatorial Manager, International Art, QAGOMA will focus on Sherman’s work produced since 2000 then at 1:30pm QAGOMA curators Ellie Buttrose and Dr Kyla McFarlane, Acting Curatorial Manager, Australian Art, will lead a walking tour of the exhibition.
The special ‘Sundays with Cindy’ program running throughout the exhibition season will launch on Sunday 29 May. The monthly Sunday program will feature a pop-up zine fair featuring local and independent small-press publications, a free hands-on DIY workshop with blogger and artist Rachel Burke, a pop-up curator’s talk and an artist talk with emerging and established Australian photo-media artists.
Presented in conjunction with the exhibition, the Cindy Sherman Up Late series will showcase an all-female line-up of international and Australian performers, including Eleanor Friedberger (US), Major Leagues(Bris), Mojo Juju (Mel), Kimya Dawson (US), Sampa the Great (Syd), Jess Ribeiro (Mel) and Teeth & Tongue(Mel).
To complement the exhibition, the Australian Cinémathèque at GOMA will present ‘In Character’, a cinema program of more than 65 films focussing on ideas and personas also reflected in Sherman’s photography.
Cindy Sherman is renowned for her mastery of masquerade — her own image is at the centre of an inspiring array of character studies created over decades. Sherman expands on contemporary society’s fascination with aspiration, narcissism and the cult of celebrity, and explores the resulting emotional fragility.
Focusing on large-scale photographs made since 2000, ‘Cindy Sherman’ exhibited at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) 2016, showcases the artist’s return as the central model in her artworks, for which she is also costume designer, make-up artist and photographer. The exhibition included two series made with high fashion houses Balenciaga and Chanel, and an entirely new body of work shown for the first time outside New York.
This is the second extract from the Cindy Sherman publication by Betsy Berne.
Cindy [Sherman] operates by intense instinct when she’s working, just as she operates by intense discipline in her non-working life. Instinct conjures magic and mistakes. Magic and mistakes are what make good art and that’s probably why Cindy genuinely relaxes when she’s making art — and her eye relaxes too. Another way to say it in modern lingo: she lives fully in the present; and what a relief it is to swat away the ‘shoulds’ that preoccupy the public Cindy, the conscientious Cindy, the disciplined Cindy, the overly generous Cindy.
It seems to me that there exists a crowd of bodies inside everyone’s body. Some people are hardly aware of these foreign bodies. Some are able to use them to their advantage. Cindy uses her foreign bodies from the inside, as well as foreign bodies from god-knows where, to make her pictures. They are not self-portraits: they are portraits of selves — and where those selves come from nobody knows, except Cindy, and I don’t think she could articulate it either. I think she creates her characters like some writers create fiction, unwittingly using what they know and then embellishing, imagining, fantasising, perhaps making three people into one or one person into three — and then an unexpected visual narrative emerges. If the narrative works, if she does surpass her high standards, no one is more surprised than Cindy. I’m always ‘seeing’ people that we know, especially in her more recent work, but she laughs it off and I believe her.
When it comes to the academic analysis of her work, Cindy laughs it off too. In an interview I did with her years ago,1 she said there was one time when she learned something, when Elizabeth Hess wrote about the series of works using fake body parts.2 Hess had said Cindy herself was gradually moving out of the work and she analysed the ‘deconstruction’ of it. ‘I’d never thought of that’, Cindy had said. ‘That’s the only time a light bulb went off. Because to me, I was just trying to see if I could make pictures I wasn’t in.’ About the props, now she says:
I guess I started to feel like I was cheating by using myself because it was easy — and then I thought, well, if it’s too easy, it must be bad. And I wanted to do something unexpected. I didn’t want to go back to doing what everybody loves.3
So, let’s skip the academic readings, and let’s skip the inevitable Cindy Sherman and feminism conversation. As she said to me in the same interview, ‘The work is what it is and hopefully it’s seen as feminist work, or feminist-advised work, but I’m not going to go around espousing theoretical bullshit about feminist stuff’. And could we please skip the ‘Cindy Sherman’s work subverts the male gaze’ too? Let’s just say it wasn’t ever her conscious intention. As for classifying her works as self-portraits and discussing ‘Who is the real Cindy Sherman?’ . . . please.
The obvious thing to do is to call Cindy a chameleon in her work, but that’s too easy. The less obvious truth is that she absolutely is a chameleon when it comes to her life. Sometimes she enjoys it and learns from it, sometimes she regrets it. Cindy does love to dress up, but not to act as a chameleon. We’ve often agreed that half the fun of going out is planning the outfit. The more you learn about fashion, the more you understand that fashion is an art, just as fashion is valuable as armour. It’s no surprise that most women who love fashion are equally interested in the female-on-female gaze. Certainly, fashion has been an inspiration for Cindy at times, but she’s not dressing up when it comes to her work. She’s simply creating a narrative that’s up for grabs.
This exhibition represents work from 2000 to the present. Is there a common denominator? Well, she returned to using herself as a model after a period of mostly using props. So why did she go back? The answer is pretty simple. She got sick of using the props; it was really hard and challenging, and it was liberating to go back to the figure — ‘it was nice not to struggle’. As for each series, they’re loosely named purposely and usually after the fact. The ‘head shots’ 2000–02 were based on Hollywood misfit wannabe actors and Hamptons wannabe socialites, according to Cindy, and were shot in two stages for shows on the west coast and east coast. I remember when she started the ‘clown’ series 2003–04, I asked her what got her going. It was after 9/11 and Cindy, like most New Yorkers, was shaky, dazed and unable to go directly back to ‘before’, whether consciously or not. She came upon a pair of pyjamas/ clown suit during her cleaning and organising ritual. She started researching pictures of clowns and realised that how she felt about clowns could encompass much of what she wanted to say about the ‘now’ of the ‘after’. The ‘Balenciaga’ 2007–08 shots commissioned for French Vogue served as a transition into digital photography. Cindy had been resisting using a digital camera until she tried a friend’s camera. It made her work easier and more spontaneous because she didn’t have to wait for the images to return from the lab. She was also able to use more elaborate backgrounds using digital techniques. It made her old way of working obsolete.
Where the ‘society portraits’, shown at Metro Pictures in the spring of 2008, came from in Cindy’s demented mind, I have no idea. All I know is when I walked into the gallery and saw the giant portraits, I gasped, in a cartoonish bubble-over-the-head sense, as in GASPED! It was astounding how Cindy had captured the exact moment of the economy’s crash — as it was happening, not after it happened — through these garish, yet not derisive, old money/new money/ modern-day Edith Wharton-type characters, while at the same time, she presaged the next chapter of the nascent Gilded Age. Purposely? Definitely not, because Cindy doesn’t get into politics with her work. Coincidence? I doubt it. Inexplicable? Yes.
The origins of the ‘murals’ came about through circumstance. Cindy was given a room in a group show at Pinchuk Art Centre in Kiev,4 and she wanted to do an installation. She discovered a high-quality adhesive paper that could be used to make really large prints, hence, the murals. The characters? Cindy became fascinated by impromptu shrines found on the streets during a visit to Mexico. She began to experiment without using make-up, instead making subtle changes to the face digitally. Why? ‘It was fun’, she said. The murals continued with a commission from POP Magazine using clothing from Chanel. Cindy started playing around with backgrounds, using landscapes that were influenced by a trip to Iceland. Critics spoke about the idea of lonely figures in isolated environments. Cindy’s thoughts on the matter: ‘They do look pretty isolated’.
It seems safe to say that no-one knows anything about Cindy’s process or, for that matter, what she’s trying to say — at least no-one I’m aware of. That’s classified information and will remain classified. One last thing. There’s talk in the art underworld that Cindy Sherman is ‘lucky’ because she’s been so ‘successful’ from early on. Let’s just say that it isn’t so easy to make work relying on instinct, especially as you get older and you can’t help but know too much. It’s hard as hell and enervating not to fall back on a formula or a bag of tricks. Cindy starts over every time.She’s in that studio alone until she takes flight and then she’s in there with her mirror reflecting her imaginary ‘friends’, and then they only speak when they emerge two-dimensional, in context and complete. As for what they’re saying, your guess is as good as mine. Cindy merely sets the stage.
Related: Part 1 | Cindy Sherman: In the eyes of the beholder
Betsy Berne is the author of the novel, Bad Timing. She also writes essays about culture, fashion, race and class and is currently working on a non-fiction book, Single White Mother.
Endnotes 1 Betsy Berne, ‘Studio: Cindy Sherman’, Tate: Arts and Culture, issue 5, May–June 2003, pp.36–41. 2 Elizabeth Hess, ‘Sherman’s inferno’, The Village Voice, 5 May 1992, pp.107–8. 3 Personal conversation with the artist. 4 ‘Sexuality and Transcendence’, Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev, Ukraine, 24 April – 19 September 2010.
Subscribe to YouTube to be the first behind-the-scenes / Delve into artist stories
#CindySherman #QAGOMA
We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art stands and recognise the creative contribution First Australians make to the art and culture of this country.
