texts

Foyer Demarcated

A note on the exhibition of bark paintings from the MCA’s Arnott’s Collection in 2008

The foyer of the splendid and carefully curated exhibition of bark paintings in the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art in 2008 was supposed to be transfigured through a powerful performative gesture:

A famous Aboriginal painter covered the walls of the entire foyer with the bold stripes of the elemental colours: earth and sun shine, day and night, etc, symbolically reclaiming the the Australian land, as well as natural and symbolic space from the confinement of the Western arificial interior.

The action was captured on video that had been re-played on the screen next to the entrance, with a rich narrative by the artist himself and explanations in the accompanying text. (More details and critique in Risky Business: The Invention of Aboriginal Abstraction)

What happened later was unavoidable and yet surreal. One more time, it demonstrated how the machinery of the Western society works, naturally making the work of art complete or, better, completely consumed.

The walls striped with the fundamental colours without obstruction - a relief from the old order and old guilt - represented the quietude of the symbolic richness of the open expanse ready to be mapped only by the forces of nature and human as a translator of that mapping.

The expanse itself seemed to have invited a fierce flood of signs taking over the control over the openness that misleadingly looked like a savage and primeval Terra Nullius. 

Once the power matrix had been applied, the whole area, instead of representing a single concept, was naturally fragmented into a multitude of pre-canned artefacts, the more amusing the more serious and practical this municipal demarcation had been. Even the choice of the place for this art project was a foyer, i.e. an intersection of human traffic, which could not be left unregulated.

The single project got transformed with no special effort into a bizzarre and well-organized postmodern museum full of exhibits bound by the theme of demarcation of the universe. Everything there needed to be renamed and re-captioned, with just a few examples following (there could be dozens of pictures taken).

"Fire Door". "Fire Door. Do Not Obstruct - Offense Relating to Fire Exits - This Area Is Approved For 215 Persons". Every installed sign is necessary for public safety, controlling movements in the space, for convenience, etc. Taking into account that Fire is one of the basic elements, these abundant signs controlling Fire assume ritualistic qualities. (Restricting number of people in the area representing the vast Australian landscape is quite remarkable, too.)

"Fire Door" (fragment)

Thus, the performative gesture succeeded brilliantly. Much more than it had been expected or planned. 

Contents