The Contemporary Art Blog from Canberra

The essence of abstract expressionism was defined by the dynamic gesture. But I’m sure nobody ever expected to experience it as a dynamic viewer. Speeding through a gallery is one thing, but seeing art from the corner of one’s eye, while zipping along at 60 kph, is an altogether different conception of dynamism. However this is how most people experience one of the best examples of public art in Canberra.

In the rush to decorate our public spaces, drive-by art is one of the cliches of  town planners’ and politicians’ needs to render the modern freeway less dehumanising than it already is. Most often such drive-by art is infuriating. It’s like being shot at, with aesthetic intent. You have to duck, and sometimes this can be a hazard. Very occasionally, however, such art is properly hazardous because you should hit the brakes, throw the car into reverse, and back up for another look. The Margo Lewers mural Expansion on Northbourne Avenue is one such work.

This work, first installed in 1960, and now fresh from recent restoration, has been the subject of a recent exhibition at the ANU School of Art, curated by Tanya Crothers and Darani Lewers. The catalogue for this exhibition (Expansion) explores the processes of its creation, its restoration and its art historical context in essays by Peter Pinson, together with Tanya Crothers and conservator Gillian Mitchell.

In this archival photograph we catch the installation in progress. The mural was Lewers’ largest work, later judged by her then assistant (and later her gallerist) Frank Watters as “one of her finest”. Measuring 12.3 meters by 2.3 meters, its proportion matches that of the building it adorns. Just six stories high, The Rex Hotel was Canberra’s horizontal skyscraper. Together with its contemporary, Roy Grounds’ Shine Dome, Alexander Kann’s Rex was the epitome of architectural modernity in Canberra in the 1960s.

Peter Pinson writes: “Expansion… was a painter’s mosaic mural rather than a ceramist’s mosaic mural. Abstract expressionism sought to imply that the making of an artwork has entailed urgency and existential struggle. A technique that appeared too accomplished or too polished was associated with glibness and “style”. For abstract expresionists generally, the apparent vigour of the execution and the potency of the imagery were paramount, and so they were for Margo Lewers in Expansion“.

Recognising the character of her medium, where “sharp biting edges of the cut tiles lent her mosaic composition an abrasiveness” Peter Pinson also acknowledges that the overall design, with spatial clues and architectonic elements, is strongly aligned to its landscape format. This is in keeping with most of what passed as “abstract expressionism” in the 1950s and 60s in Australia. Abrasive, perhaps, but as you see from the detail above, it is the quite specific pictorial effects that derive from the painstaking placement of the thousands of geometric shards of ceramic tile – which both activates the surface and enhances the spatial illusionism of the artist’s dynamic gestures and palette decisions – that makes this work uniquely significant.

What keeps me looking at this work with (a certain nostalgic) admiration is the way it reconciles its painting style (expressive, gestural, tending towards abstraction, in keeping with her contemporaneous painting practice) with its materials – the fragments of ceramic tiles, the leftovers of a hundred bathrooms. The material is surprisingly effective, and even more so when you realise that the process of its production involved tiling over Lewers’ full scale painted cartoon. The surprise, fifty years later, is that the process retained the expressive intent of the original with such a high degree of stylistic fidelity.

Concerning the detention of the artist Ai Weiwei and numerous other Chinese citizens:

The Honourable Julia Gillard MP

Dear Prime Minister,

I understand that you will be making an official visit to the People’s Republic of China from the 25th to 28th April.

May I draw your attention to the recent reports in the press that 54 “dissidents” have been detained by the Chinese Government in the past two weeks.

Most notable among the many significant figures in this group is the internationally renowned artist Ai Weiwei, who appears to have been detained under a series of variously mysterious accusations. All the evidence suggests this an extra-judicial process, as Australians would understand it.

His detention has been condemned by the unprecedented number of highly placed international institutions, artists and public intellectuals I have listed below.

Notable among these has been a spokesman for the U.S. Head of State Hillary Clinton, and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Given Australia’s proud history of democratic rights and robust political debate, this recent rash of arrests and the consequential suppression of civil liberties and freedom of speech deserves your most serious attention. Just as the destiny and wellbeing of our two countries are closely tied together, so are our two systems of social justice. As an Australian citizen I urge you to raise these matters in your discussions at the highest level with the Chinese Government.

Yours sincerely

Nigel Lendon

19th April, 2011

The following international political figures have called for the release of Ai Weiwei:

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-16/merkel-asked-for-china-for-artist-ai-s-release-spiegel-reports.html

The U.S. State Department Acting Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner:

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/asia/US-Calls-on-Beijing-to-Release-Chinese-Artist-Ai-Weiwei-119218364.html

Public Institutions who have petitioned for his release include:

Richard Armstrong, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation
and Alexandra Munroe, Samsung Senior Curator, Asian Art
Juan Ignacio Vidarte, Director General, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao,
and Deputy Director and Chief Officer for Global Strategies, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
Glenn Lowry, Director, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Sir Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate and Chris Dercon, Director, Tate Modern
Kaywin Feldman, President, Association of Art Museum Directors and Director
and President, Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Yongwoo Lee, President, The Gwangju Biennale Foundation
Michael Govan, Director, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Vishakha Desai, President and Melissa Chiu, Vice President of Global Arts, Asia Society
Jim Cuno, President and Director, Art Institute of Chicago
Julián Zugazagoitia, Director, Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas City
Ann Philbin, Director, Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles
Olga Viso, Director, Walker Art Center
Alfred Pacquement, Director, Musée national d’art moderne/Centre de création industrielle, Paris
Arnold Lehman, Director, Brooklyn Museum
Jill Medvedow, Director, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Julia Peyton-Jones, Director and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-director of Exhibitions and Programmes
and Director of International Projects, Serpentine Gallery, London
Poul Erik Tøjner, Director, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark
Nathalie Bondil, Director and Chief Curator, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Neal Benezra, Director, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Tony Ellwood, Director, and Suhanya Raffel, Deputy Director, Queensland Art Gallery, Australia
Thomas W. Lentz, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director, Harvard Art Museums

…who have sponsored this petition at change.org which has attracted more than 90,000 signatures

http://www.change.org/petitions/call-for-the-release-of-ai-weiwei#?opt_new=t&opt_fb=t&utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=sm&utm_campaign=twitter

Plus also see the signatories to this open letter:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/apr/08/our-fears-fate-ai-weiwei

The most recent reporting of the arrests of the 54 “dissidents” in the New York Times of April 16 is to be found here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/world/asia/16briefs-ART-china.html?_r=2

Further details of this international campaign may be found here:

http://www.iconophilia.net/ai-weiwei-arrested-again/

Image: with apologies to Shepard Fairey and with thanks to Ampersand Duck who wrangled the graphics. This image is not restricted by copyright and iconophilia encourages its FREE usage by others.

…concerned members of Canberra’s arts community joined together today outside the Chinese Embassy in support of the global sit-in to protest against the detention of artist Ai Weiwei by the Chinese Government.

The Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is visiting China next week – let’s see what she has to say about the suppression of political discourse in China. In breaking news, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel is reported as having made a personal plea to the Chinese Government for Ai Weiwei’s release. And the NYT reports that 54 people have been detained during the current crackdown.

You can follow the campaign for Ai Weiwei’s release here.

If the concept of the Readymade conditions our understanding of the aesthetic challenges posed by the mundane world of commodities within a seemingly infinite cosmos of artefacts, both artistic and otherwise, then surely there is no other art object that so fundamentally challenges our orientation towards every other work of art than the Fountain. No other object presents the viewer with such profound psycho-social and evaluative/critical ambiguities as those initiated by its original manifestation ninety four years ago. In every subsequent manifestation, both in the museumspeak of gallery directors, and in the vernacular, a Fountain is a “destination work”.

Chastened by recent debates on this site, your iconophile has thrown convention to the wind, and in the construction of his latest domestic installation he has adopted uncritically many of the design criteria espoused by his erstwhile friend Ron Radford (to whom we are indebted for the odd turn of phrase). When it comes to a work such as this, nothing is more important than the blend of architectural form and the harmonious experience of function.  Everything must express its proper relation to each other, in its evocation of its historical and contemporary cultural antecedents and environments.

And so in the midst of this post-phenomenological moment, whilesoever the body-to-body paradigm remains the conventional mode of address for the artist-beholder, so it remains the primary consideration for our critical engagement with an art object such as this. These are matters on such a high aesthetic plane that the search for meaning in social or cultural practice allows no room here for distraction, no space for disciplines other than the purely aesthetic and art historical. Whenever a replica or an analogue of The Fountain is installed, every consideration of matters of natural and cultural significance should be weighed and measured. If precedents exist, they must be properly acknowledged.

Prominence is a critical aspect of the placement of such an object, and thus this Fountain has been given a prime position just inside the door, so that it may be displayed to its full advantage as a distinctive and beautiful installation away from other things. The idea is that visitors will encounter and experience the work with a complex sense of the interior/exterior spatial relationship, in circumstances enhanced by natural light and the circulation of air to maintain its unique environmental considerations with respect to the rest of the building. Sensitive to both light and humidity, it took a great deal of consideration to get all the elements correct. The overall aesthetic consideration was to reduce the introduction of alien materials in its display so that The Fountain remains the central point of attention. The final materials surrounding the Fountain are those already embodied in the object and its surroundings, all handled with dignified simplicity.

The process of installation and design engineering set out to create a harmonious context for this great work. The vitrified china (a kind of protoporcelain) body of the Fountain itself is reflected in the ceramic tiles on the walls, which being specially imported from the historic Stoke-on-Trent potteries, reflect the complexity and contradictions of our postcolonial heritage. The stones that make the floor (tumbled grey granite sourced from Byron Bay) are part of the earth and are an ideal material for the space as they serve several purposes. They prevent humidity moving vertically downward, and they hide the unsightly infrastructure below. The stones also fulfilled our requirement for a material and colour that blended with the external surroundings of the building, which are a part of the original palette of the house, and other works within the immediate environment. We have consciously used such materials in the new space to help link the old with the new.

A substantial amount of work has gone into ensuring natural daylight would be the predominant illumination for the Fountain. Blinds on the windows come down if the light levels are too high. Artificial light can be manually adjusted to ensure a correct balance throughout the day. We have gone to a great deal of trouble and expense to achieve this lighting for this great work.

Contrary to conventional curatorial practice, during the early planning stages of his project your iconophile was assisted by an historian and anthropologist, in consultation with plumbers, electricians, tilers and others to ensure that this important work was displayed respectfully and beautifully. Visitors to the installation have unanimously agreed the new Fountain has been displayed with more dignity and more beautifully than ever before.

P.S. (which is an appropriately euphonic acronym, in this instance). As if to prove a point, (de faire un point, ostensiblement, as the ghost of MD reminds us) on this past March 24th this other Fountain appeared in Grange Park, Toronto, just next to the Ontario College of Art and Design. For one night only, alas…

I’m pleased to welcome Nicolas Garnier as a new contributor to Iconophilia. He is the author/editor of Twisting Knowledge and Emotion: Modern Bilums of Papua New Guinea, (Alliance Francaise de Port Moresby/University of Papua New Guinea, 2009). Dr Garnier is Senior Lecturer in Visual Anthropology at the University of Papua New Guinea. What follows is a further significant contribution to the ongoing discussion of collaborative art works and issues of authorship elsewhere on this site, and reveals a great deal about the social and political economy of such ventures.

In November 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a brief but symbolically important visit to Papua New Guinea. Her visit lasted hardly two hours during which her core activity was a visit to the National Parliament. On this occasion, the Speaker decided to hang in the Grand Hall a very large string bag that was offered by the University of Papua New Guinea on Mother’s Day in May 2010. The architecture and the art decoration of the Parliament House is socially and politically meaningful and has been the result of successive attempts to build a national identity thus creating a common platform from more than a thousand independent local political units speaking over 800 languages and who manifest some of the most socially and culturally contrasted features.

The creation of the bilum: The project originated at the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby. Following a discussion with Dame Carol Kidu, Minister for Community Development, I had realized that the Parliament, which was about to vote an important bill to give women easier access to politics, did not display any art work in relation to the world of women and their values. While we prepared the launch of a volume dedicated to string bags that included several important contributions of Papua New Guinea prominent academics, we thought we could also plan the creation of a very large bilum which could be displayed in the Grand Hall. Such a creation was intended to be a tribute to women’s contribution to the country. After discussions held within the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Mrs Ruth Dom and I were appointed to conduct the project. Under the recommendations of Mrs Dom we invited a little more than 20 women from the neighbouring regions to attend an information meeting in the presence of the husband of one of the invited ladies who appointed himself as representative for this newly formed group of women. During the meeting we presented the main lines of the project and we particularly emphasised that there would be little money available. We also highlighted the fact that despite the project being commissioned by the University we wanted to let the women be the authors of the project. We didn’t want to impose upon them any form of program. We had only three requirements. The first concerned the timeframe. We had only a little more than two months since the artwork was due to be presented in May on the occasion of Mother’s Day. The second was the size. We wanted an artefact which would be really large. The third constraint was financial: we had very limited funds and for many of the women we believed at first that this might be very discouraging.

The context of its creation: The monumental string bag was made in a settlement called Morata which is located at the north east border of the University land. For Ruth Dom and myself, it was an easy task to pay women daily visits. It was also easy for us to provide them with yarns whenever they required them. As suggested by Ruth Dom, it was also decided that food should be prepared or at least made available as often as we could arrange it. Several times, we bought rice bags and tinned food for the initially 20 and then 17 women who worked on the project. Providing food is a necessary requirement in most collective work. This marks an alliance and a reciprocal dedication between those who order the work and those who were appointed to do it. It often symbolises more than a relationship of trust and reciprocal recognition but a form of symbolic adoption. On this occasion the food providers, as “parents”, demonstrated that they intended to look after those who worked, their new “sons and daughters”. The final payment was to compensate for the labour provided and acknowledge the importance of the work. The final contribution was also intended to put an end to this temporary adoption and split again the group and send back everyone to their previous activities and previous relationships.

“The baby is too young yet, it is not ready…” The women soon started to organize themselves. The self-appointed male “women’s leader” was politely asked to step down. We all argued (the university and the women who decided to be part of the project) that a man who does not know how to make string bag can be of little help and moreover can be a kind of nuisance in the conduct of the project. We all argued that only bilum makers, Mrs Dom and I should be part of the project. Actually it didn’t really happen this way but while the making of the bag was progressing none of us noticed that some newcomers were building arguments to share the authorship of this incredible experience.

To ensure women had a shelter and a place where they could work without dispute, Mrs Dom generously proposed to host the project under her newly built house in Morata. In doing so, we reminded everyone that this project was a University project and that women should not fear any form of threat linked to where they are working. After a month or so, Tibe Philip, the newly appointed women’s representative asked us to advertise the name of the group as Apa Kenge. The term was made of two words borrowed from the two main languages used by the participants. Part of the women came from the Southern Highlands Province while others came from the region of Goroka. For the launching of the book at the Parliament we invited the 17 women. The bilum was brought to the Parliament, but carefully hidden in a box. It was important to show that the work was in progress but also as important not to reveal anything about it until its completion. Tibe Philip and the other women also feared that some witnesses could “steal” the idea and therefore diminish the impact and the importance of the ongoing work: “the baby is not ready yet, we cannot show it yet”.

The launching: The days preceding the deadline were frantic under the house of Mrs Dom. The excitement and pride grew day by day. The first half of the payment we gave them was spent in nice traditional gowns and for many women their first pair of shoes. In the Grand Hall, the TV and newspaper crews were interviewing the “big shots”: ministers and a few members of Parliament, and the Speaker of the Parliament Jeffery Nape. Quite a large number of the diplomatic body was also there with their spouses. It was also a great day for the University since it was their first contribution to the embellishment of the Parliament. The Speaker and the dignitaries stood on the steps of the monumental stairway. The women who first hid at the back arrived with the bilum following a choreography they had rehearsed a hundred times. The crowd was astonished. The Speaker had prepared a kind but polite discourse. He left his written paper after reading the first lines and improvised an enthusiastic speech in which he said that this bilum was the most beautiful thing he ever saw. It fully deserved a first place in the Grand Hall and was a very strong and convincing embodiment not only of women’s skills but of the nation as a whole. To show his appreciation he promised a gift of 20,000Kina to the clever women.

The end of the project: The gift of the National Speaker was a great relief, since Mrs Dom and I felt a little embarrassed to offer women a very little amount of money for such a tremendous work. And yet it was precisely at that time that dissention re-emerged. Ruth Dom and I were first approached to seek advice about this unexpected gift of money. But neighbours, plus the self-appointed male “women’s leader” claimed their share under several aggressive pretexts. About a year later, the women admitted that they felt disempowered by their very confrontational relationship with the new claimants. Within two days the amount of money had just vanished leaving many with anger and disappointment. The sudden fame and unexpectedly high amount of money offered to the group of bilum makers was probably the cause of this unfortunate ending of the project.

This monumental bilum is an example of a modern creation deeply rooted in tradition. It illustrates the capacity of public institutions (a University and the Parliament) to initiate and acknowledge the creativity of women who live in particularly harsh conditions. It also shows that the creation of a monumental bilum, otherwise a modest artefact, by a group of women living in a neglected settlement of the capital city, could generate national pride and be taken as an example to demonstrate the talents of PNG citizens to the rest of the world.

The Apa Kenge group was composed of: Ruth Kinsley (Southern Highlands), Saina Andrew (Chimbu), Helen Pima (Southern Highlands), Sera Hove (Eastern Highlands Province), Jenny Assi (Eastern Highlands Province), Jenny Hove (Eastern Highlands Province), Margret Hove (Eastern Highlands Province), Linet Hove (Eastern Highlands Province), Rose Inaru (Eastern Highlands Province), Elisabeth Bai (Chimbu), Cicillia Lucas (Chimbu), Livore Kevin (Eastern Highlands Province), Botani Boas (Eastern Highlands Province), Esta Philip (Eastern Highlands Province), Priscilla Andrew (Eastern Highlands Province), Tibe Philip (Milne Bay Province), Vavine Andrew (Gulf Province), Vite Abol (Eastern Highlands Province). Ruth Dom and Nicolas Garnier were coordinators of the project.

The interweb is filling up with commentary on Ai Weiwei’s (and others’) detention on April 3rd. I’ve been adding them to this post (at least those I find are contributing new information and commentary) as they have come in. It started here on April 3rd in the NYT. And then in the WSJ here. And at ArtInfo. And on TED. And the New Yorker blog. And the New Yorker essay. And now on Voice of America. And Lebbeus Woods: This Cannot Pass. And ABC Arts. And Holland Cotter in the NYT. And the WSJ again. Even Bianca Jagger at Huffington Post. Then CNN reporting the Chinese official response. And The Guardian’s version of the same. And a petition on ArtDaily. And The Guardian again on his “economic crimes”. And The Australian. And at Bloomberg. Plus The Financial Times. Then Ben Davis on ArtInfo and a Friday update here.  And now this open letter (with a zillion signatures) in The Guardian. And more from Beijing by Evan Osnos at The New Yorker. And now a change.org petition. The Irish Times. ArtDaily reports on continuing Chinese Government intransigence. April 10: It’s “killing the chicken to scare the monkey” says Jaime FlorCruz on CNN. And see Newsweek. And the Herald Scotland

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April 11: apparently now it’s about obscenity (Michael Sheridan, The Oz): is this the offending image, on China Digital Times? It’s none of your business, China tells the West (Telegraph). And criticism of Bob Dylan, in The Times (Joe Joseph). April 12: He’s now rendered invisible, see Probe International (with more links). And Sean Wilentz defends Bob Dylan in the New Yorker. As does Jonathon Jones, in The Guardian. And Ian Crouch, again in the New Yorker. PBS Newshour summary here. April 13: The Christian Science Monitor. And where is Wen Tao, disappeared at the same time, at Huffington Post? April 14: The Guardian reports on contradictory invitations offered to AWW just prior to his arrest. Deutsche Welle reports on German debates about the purpose of the current exchange: The Age of the Enlightenment. And read here, in further detail. Colin Jones, the producer of the upcoming film Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, also gives an insider’s account at Dissent.

April 15: Art Info summarises the various rumours and responses. And there’s a world-wide sit-in planned for this Sunday, reported in the L.A. Times. April 16: Now The Guardian reports on other associates being arrested. And see The Committee to Protect Journalists. Michael Sainsbury, in The Australian, (“Brutal flipside of economic success”) points out that Julia Gillard will be put on the spot when she visits China next week. And see Austin Ramzy, in Time Magazine. April 17: NPR publishes an interview article by Laura Sydell. And see designboom. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel is reported as having made a personal plea to the Chinese Government for Ai Weiwei’s release. The NYT reports that 54 people have been detained during the current crackdown. A revealing interview with German architect of the Chinese National Museum, Meinhard von Gerkan at Spiegel Online. April 18: reportage on some of the demonstrations around the world on The Age here. And here on the blog WNYC. April 19th: read Ma Jian at Day by Day (The Day Weekly Digest) on the symbolic values of the sunflower seeds. And read Ben Evans who ruminates on the effects of the NY protest here at Art Info. The NYT watches the German angst over their Beijing exhibition The Age of Enlightenment. Maybe this gaggle of U.S. Senators will raise the issue. “It’s a tinderbox… it’s all about to blow” says Will Hutton, interviewed here by Ali Moore on the ABC. April 20th: ArtInfo reports that change.org, the host of the AWW petition, was brought down by a denial of service attack. In Australia, press reports quote Prime Minister Julia Gillard as having said: ‘We regularly raise human rights and in a broad set of discussions I will raise human rights.” The Guardian’s Tania Branigan reports today that Ai Weiwei’s lawyer, Liu Xiaoyuan is no longer in detention. The Economist sees the purge of public intellectuals, reporters and lawyers as a reflection of the nervousness of the leadership. And Charlie Finch at artnet argues the comparison with fascist Germany in the 1930s. See and read Alison Klayman on Frontline (with Hillary) drawing attention to the breadth of the purge. April 21: The Guardian on the change.org hack attack. AFP reports that the US government has reiterated its concerns at the “extralegal detentions”. April 22: AFP reports the departing US Ambassador Jon Huntsman reiterating his call: “It is very sad that the Chinese government has seen a need to silence one of its most innovative and illustrious citizens,” he said in a written introduction to the artist, who is also a staunch activist, published by Time. “Ai… has shown compassion for his fellow citizens and spoken out for victims of government abuses, calling for political reforms to better serve the people,” Huntsman, who is due to leave his post in the next few days, added. “For the world, Ai continues to represent the promise of China.” Chinese Human Rights Defenders publish a list of those missing. April 24: AFP reports another significant Art Citizens demonstration in Hong Kong. Reported by BBC TV news.  Human Rights Watch asks Gillard to step up. And here’s VoA’s latest.  And meanwhile (Evan Osnos reports in the New Yorker) the Chinese Government exhorts the populace to be happy. April 27: The Asia Society references an instance of the use of parody to get around censorship. The Swiss Interior Minister, Didier Burkhalter, is reported as having raised the issue, and more forcefully than the Australian PM, it seems. And here’s an anonymous Chinese contributor to the austere Wesleyan Argus. Reuters reports the Chinese government’s warning that discussion of human rights is a “tool to meddle”, suggesting that something got lost in translation? Here’s the Asia Society’s Melissa Chiu speaking to CNN. On the U.S. Asia Law Institute (NYU School of Law) site Jerome A. Cohen unpacks the possible legal scenario(s) facing Ai Weiwei. April 28: Martin Gayford at Bloomberg asks whether, if Ai Weiwei is still in custody, the Chinese participation at the Venice Biennale (opens June 4) will be a focus for art world action. Tania Branigan reports today in the Guardian that two of Ai Weiwei’s oldest friends, Zuoxiao Zuzhou and Xiao Li have been detained at Shanghai Airport. It may be coincidental, but Zuoxiao Zuzhou yesterday published an article “Who doesn’t love Ai Weiwei?”, in the Hong Kong newspaper Mingpao. And in the context of the German exhibition in Beijing, The Age of Enlightenment, the NYT’s Didi Kirsten Tatlow compares Ai Weiwei’s circumstances to that of Voltaire… April 29: Geremie Barmé writes this incisive and informed essay on Ai Weiwei’s predicament on The China Beat. April 30: Read Barmé’s conclusion, and then: Jamil Anderson reports on Xu Bing’s “apolitical” stance. And then Chen Danqing, Ai Weiwei’s friend, interviewed in the LAT. May 1: The Chinese Embassy in London writes that this has nothing to do with freedom of speech, etc. (Ben Balnchard, at Reuters). And here (Peter Foster, The Telegraph) specifically in response to Salman Rushdie. Ai Weiwei’s wife and colleagues make their claims in this open letter to the authorities. And here is a dedicated blog: freeaiweiwei.org. Australia’s voice remains silent on Ai Weiwei’s disappearance. In its own Open Letter, iconophilia asks whether the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard will have anything to say about Ai Weiwei when she visits China? And the answer is: not much, politely. A Chinese police officer, right, and a security guard stand outside the entrance to Ai Weiwei’s studio in Beijing Sunday, April 3, 2011. China blocked Ai Weiwei, one of its most famous contemporary artists, from taking a flight to Hong Kong on Sunday and police later raided his Beijing studio, the man’s assistant said. AP Photo/Ng Han Guan. Quotes: “The state is taking action against people who have peacefully demonstrated their ideas. They are writers – all they did is to express their minds through the internet. So the pattern is very clear. The state tries to maintain stability by crushing any thought of making change,” Ai says. “It could happen to me, because I did the same thing and in many cases I went much further and deeper. But I always think the government can learn from their mistakes – they should learn and should understand; they should be just as intelligent as anyone else. I have to be wishful [optimistic] in that sense.” (see Tania Branigan, in the Guardian, 18 March 2010) “So what is my activity? My activity is very simple, asking basic rights for people to freely express themselves and also to find a new structure, a new way of communicating. Because I’m an artist and this is what I do and I believe in that.” (CNN) “How can you predict what’s in a dictator’s mind?” he asked. “You know if you really think about them you are already a victim of them.” (npr) “They put you under house arrest, or they make you disappear,”‘ Ai Weiwei said in an interview. “That’s all they can do. There’s no facing the issue and discussing it; it’s all a very simple treatment. Every dirty job has to be done by the police. Then you become a police state, because they have to deal with every problem.” From Art Info 7 April: – Love the Future Indeed: In China, where countless government agents patrol sites behind the Great Firewall for any offending political content (and where telephone conversations are so closely monitored that some trigger phrases can immediately disconnect the call), it takes some creativity to voice opposition. The fact that even sympathetic publications universally self-censor to avoid reprisals is a sad problem too. So to rally citizens to protest the detention of Ai Weiwei, online commentators have taken up the slogan “Love the Future,” (爱未来) which both resembles and sounds similar to Ai’s name (艾未未). Calls range from the energetic (“To love the future is to love yourself. Fill the microblogs with love. Fill the motherland with love. Donate your love to the future of the motherland.”) to the despondent (“I really don’t dare believe that in this society, even love for the future can disappear”). [China Digital Times] AWW quoted in the Australian: “Dissidents are criminals. Only criminals have dissident ideas. The distinction between criminals and non-criminals is whether they have dissident views. If you think China has dissidents, you’re a criminal. The reason China has no criminals [dissidents?] is because they have already become criminals.” And from Bloomberg (above): Departing U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman said yesterday America will defend the rights of Chinese human rights activists such as Ai and jailed Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo. Future ambassadors “will continue to speak up in defense of social activists, like Liu Xiaobo, Chen Guangcheng and now Ai Weiwei, who challenge the Chinese government to serve the public in all cases and at all times,” Huntsman said in a speech in Shanghai. And, now, in The Age (7th April) there’s a story about “The Initiators and Organisers of the Chinese Jasmine Revolution” who are said to be the people who first launched the idea of a peaceful revolution on February 17. And Bob Dylan (on tour in China) appears to have accepted censorship of his playlist, and has kept his mouth shut over AWW. Great photograph in The Australian here. And reported here in the Washington Post. And for related ambient experiences, read Bill Shiller, at the Toronto Star. A slideshow of AWW’s work has been posted by The Washington Post. And here’s Imagine’s Without Fear or Favour on YouTube. From which these marble surveillance cameras were snapped:

Unofficial war art? War zone street art? Even if you’re familiar with the work of recent official Australian war artists (for example, in war zones, Charles Green and Lyndell Brown, or Shaun Gladwell, and in peacekeeping zones, Jon Cattapan and eX de Medici) you’re unlikely to have seen what the soldiers themselves are up to. Only from George Gittoes’ movies (notably Soundtrack to War, shot in Iraq in 2004) do we gain some sense of the culture of everyday life for members of the armed services in such arenas as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Unofficial war art is another thing altogether. Here we see the work of the stencil artist ZEROSIX downtown in the Kandahar ISAF base. While you might say that the work of the official war artists is largely a matter of matching their highly protected experiences of being embedded against their existing personal styles and strategies, in this case it is the vernacular of street artists like Banksy and others which provides a set of visual conventions for ZEROSIX and others to work with.

David Fincher’s 1999 film Fight Club – based on a 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk – created the character Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt), who is also ambiguously the narrator of the film. While Fincher makes no claims for Tyler’s beliefs – “[the] movie couldn’t be further from offering any kind of solution” -  here ZEROSIX revisits Tyler’s values in a much more challenging context.

The Kandahar base is a massive fortress housing approximately 30,000 personnel. Its incongruous village-like atmosphere (the boardwalk, the fast food franchises) was criticised last year by the “notoriously sober” General Stanley McChrystal, who was reported as having said: “This is a war zone – not an amusement park.” Closing the fast-food outlets was an unpopular decision, since reversed. However it’s not so surprising that in any community of this size you will find at least a couple of artists. In this otherwise bleak environment, it’s probably the only mode of creative release available. That 06′s street art – or his tag – is permitted at all is itself unexpectedly humane.

It must seem to the readers of Iconophilia that I have an obsession with the floor plane.  But here’s a thing. There’s no way you can look at the installation of Quentin Sprague’s current exhibition at tcb (until 2nd April) without giving some time to an interpretation of the linoleum floor. That is, before you attempt to engage with the works of art. And then you’ll have to mentally Photoshop it away (and all the connotations it evokes, of institutional dining rooms, of Hay Plains service stations, of, you tell me…) before you can attend to the works themselves. But first you have to look very closely, to make sure the artist hasn’t sneakily integrated the design…

But no, there’s no alignment to the past history of the room. There is, however, all kinds of suggestive alignments to the recent past of art history. Thus the limitations of such art experienced as mere reproduction. So what have we missed?

What were they like? Is crossing open ground a form of homage to Lucio Fontana’s Spatial Concept paintings, or was there something else happening, when experienced face-to-face? So who would like to write about this show, to talk us through it?

(crossing open ground, 2010-11, enamel on Aluminium, gunshots, wood. photo: Christian Capurro)

PS. QS is a contributor to Iconophilia.

According to this account, this photograph taken from Bahrain TV via Associated Press Television News on Friday, March 18, 2011 shows the rubble from the base of the Pearl Square monument, in Manama, Bahrain.  On Friday Bahrain authorities tore down the 300-foot (90-meter) monument at the heart of the square now purged of Shiite protesters, erasing a symbol of an uprising that has inflamed sectarian tensions across the region. Apparently the symbolism of the pearl refers to when the kingdom and its wealth was based – more modestly – on  the pearl industry. Now that the royal inheritance is on the nose, nobody wants to be reminded of the good old days…

You can find a better sequence of images, and a more nuanced commentary, by Michael Shaw, at BagNews here.

In another age, it was Courbet and his revolutionary mates who were responsible for the toppling of this other symbol of royal authority, the Vendome Column in Paris, in 1871. In this instance, the suppression of the revolution forced Courbet to flee to exile in Switzerland, lest he be presented with the bill for its reconstruction. He died in exile.

Or, as rendered by Isidore Pils (The Fall of the Vendome Column, 29th May, 1871).

PS. And here’s the other side of the coin, in Deraa, Syria, from BagNews.

“What’s the color of the wind?” Such are the questions the mini-poet Ned Moore Bonyhady asks. And such are the qualities of the works of art that have motivated our qualophile Matthew Shannon, who is the curator of Margaret Seaworthy Gothic. Which is? It’s the title of the current exhibition at the VCA’s Margaret Lawrence Gallery, with works by Colin Duncan, Nigel Lendon, Andrew Liversidge, Dane Mitchell, and Matthew Shannon himself.

What follows is Matthew’s account:

Margaret Seaworthy Gothic is the custom typeface Lawrence Weiner created and has used in his text works since 1968. It’s a bold sans serif, a bit like Impact, and is not open for the public to license or use.

Weiner’s early texts works made use of default typefaces used in sign writing, Franklin Gothic Extra (the default typeface on pre cut letters available at stationery stores) and FF Offline (a default typeface sometimes used for stencils).  These fonts are obviously potent with a burdensome context, they speak of Fordism and in general aesthetics of standardisation that grew out of the Bauhaus and Vkhutemas. Weiner’s concerns, however, at the time of designing the Margaret Seaworthy Gothic, were more immediate: how to escape the signature association of his work with these default typefaces and how to stabilise the context of his work.

By creating his own typeface, Weiner created a context of pure signature – one, however, not wholly devoid of a relationship to Weiner’s thinking, with its keen interest in Wittgenstein and Freud. Margaret Seaworthy Gothic individualises the body of Weiner’s work within the context of the 20^th Century, not simply as a signifier of its geist.

As an artist intrinsically associated with the period, it may seem strange that Weiner has always argued against his work being considered ‘Conceptual Art’; rather, he sees himself resolutely as a sculptor (and, in his words, his work can ‘fuck up your life’). What’s implicit in this way of thinking is that ‘language can represent material without explicit form’ [fn]. As such, words can be as potent in representing, for example, wood as a piece of wood itself. Wood comes forth from the letter forms that make up the word in the same way as the physiological effect of a lover’s presence can be conjured from seeing their name written – their presence coming through the kerning and spacing of the letters. Maybe it could be said it is only in the context of art and love, where the separation of left and right hemispherical brain function is so collapsed, that letter forms can provoke the qualia of a physical presence.

It’s this channelling and conjuring capacity, the magic of translating, that brings the artists Colin Duncan, Nigel Lendon, Andrew Liversidge, Dane Mitchell and myself together. Each work in this show in its own way occupies the gallery as a conceit of relationships, a cybernetic atmosphere and a theatre of aliases. Matter is not banished in the world, but it does take on spooky properties – its scale and identity having been permanently displaced by the network of communications within which it exists.

Colin Duncan’s flat two-dimensional high reliefs render the history of art into a new kind of wingdings; each one is a communicational icon, much like an emoticon, that condenses a huge amount of information into one ultra-recognisable form. These works communicate the entire existence of another work into a complete signifier and, writ large, they fill the gallery with the presence of works that are far removed.

Nigel Lendon’s air works, Maquette for an Invisible Sculpture (1993-2011) and Untitled Invisible Work of Art (2011) [above], directly affect the gallery’s breathable atmosphere, carving in it invisible forms that can only be felt. The architecture of the Margaret Lawrence Gallery, the life sustaining air it contains and Nigel’s work merge as one succinct system of interdependence.

Andrew Liversidge’s molten forms made from $1,000 worth of one dollar coins (the artist’s fee) fugues the form of money, turning it back into mere nickel, copper and aluminium alloy – from gold into lead. The actual value of this alloy, know as a ‘melt value’, is roughly $0.01 per $1 coin. Only the circumstance of a system of shared values allows such magical inflation – almost literally turning lead into gold. By taking the alloy of money as a sculptural material, this work transforms financial currency into an artistic one; a transmutation of one economic structure into another, eradicating one value system and replacing it with another through a crude modification of form.

Dane Mitchell’s way-finding devices inscribed with ‘Do Not Enter’ rendered backwards work directly on the institution of a gallery as public space, where the behaviour of the crowd needs to be choreographed with signage and controlled with surveillance cameras along with specialist staff members. Galleries are spaces where the crowd is free to roam, within limits: they are spaces open to the public, but have codes and privacies that are indicative of the invisible structures that control the presentation of art. By reversing the word ‘Do Not Enter’, Dane puts the viewer on the inside of this system of control. Initially, this may seem overly critical of the institution and the audience’s place within it, however I keenly believe the work uses its gallery context to explore ideas around objective vantage point and certainty of presence.

My work – the Manga comic about the white paint that is the default setting of all gallery walls –  highlights the paint itself to probe its infinite depth as a surface, to see its body come to life. In cybernetics every ‘body’ is in commutation with another; there are no inactive elements, no silences. It seems there is an implicit relationship with Conceptual Art of the twentieth century: when art becomes information, every contextual dimension becomes information, too (hence Lawrence Weiner’s struggle with pre-existing typefaces.) And, in much the same way, each of the works in Margaret Seaworthy Gothic seeks to animate the information in what appears to be silence.

Works illustrated above:

Dane Mitchell: Stanchion 1-5, 2011, Chrome plated steel, mylar, laser prints

Colin Duncan: Shadow, Spiral Jetty, Robert Smithson, 1915, 2006, Acrylic

Nigel Lendon: Untitled Invisible Work of Art, 2011, Radial fans, motion sensors

Andrew Liversidge: FOR THE AVOIDANCE OF DOUBT (QUID PRO QUO AND THE GOLDEN TORPOR), 2011, 92% copper, 6% aluminium, 2% nickel

Matthew Shannon: Weave and Gravity, 2011, Risograph prints

footnote: Weiner, Lawrence. ‘Interview: Lawrence Weiner.’ Artkrush Issue #73.  2007. Flavourpill. 8^th December 2010 <http://artkrush.com/155783>

Photographs by Pamela Faye and Christian Capurro.