Sometimes it feels like the wheels just go round and round. Gitte Weise is shutting up shop and heading to Berlin. Patricia Piccinini has a five year old video work playing in the Contemporary Project Space at the Art Gallery of NSW and John McDonald has a go at the MCA. It’s a good thing that we like repetition – it feels good – but it still makes you stop and wonder, haven’t we been here before?
We heard last week that Weise was shutting her Sydney galleryand was on the blower trying to stop the rumour mill from grinding. We can only assume that when the news made the Sun Herald’s S section [the place to read all the latest art news] last weekend that it’s all now common knowledge and official. You could probably make the argument that Weise was a brave gallerist, exhibiting artists and art that other galleries were too fraidy cat to exhibit themselves, but then again maybe not. As was said to us recently, Berlin is a great place in which to be an artist, but a terrible place to run a gallery. We wish Weise all the best.
The S article that mentioned Weiss was about a recent Contemporary Benefactors get together, a meeting of dedicated art world philanthropists who support the AGNSW and its efforts to build up their contemporary art collection. A ticket to a CB function will also give you the opportunity to donate further cash [via a hand held credit card machine] to the purchase of particular art works the gallery wishes to acquire. One such piece is Patricia Piccinini’s Swell, a three screen DVD work from 2000 that the AGNSW wants to buy from Roslyn Oxley for $16,000. The benefactors have reportedly managed to trump up $8000 including a donation of around $2000 from Oxley herself. Did you ever see that Daily Show news report read by John Stewart where it was reported that Iraq was importing oil? Our reaction was just like that – whhhhhhaaaaaaaat!!!? When we calmed down, it all became clear and the god like genius of it explains why Weise is going to Berlin and why Oxley reigns supreme. The AGNSW gets its Piccinini piece, the gallery and the artist sell another work into the collection while the dealer gets a percentage of the sale plus a nice little tax deduction as well. Did you know that Oxley has a show by Piccinini in her gallery at the moment? It must have just been a coincidence.
A billionaire, yesterday.
Walking around the AGNSW it’s strange to find that there’s an exhibition next to the downstairs coffee shop by Reg Grundy. Yes, the very same Reg Grundy who brought us countless hours of TV fun in the form of game shows such as The Price is Right and soaps The Young Doctors, The Restless Years, Neighbours and perhaps his greatest creation of all, Prisoner. It turns out that Grundy has a secret life, but instead of being a covert operative for the CIA, he goes out and takes wildlife pictures. A billionaire from his TV shows and the sale of Grundy Television to Fremantle Media in 1995, the would-be photographer is 82 and has only been shooting wildlife for six years. Frank Devine in The Australian described the works as having a “startling intimacy” but they are in reality extremely average and are displayed in back lit cases and wall mountings with accompanying text and multimedia sound and lights. It’s rather odd but the AGNSW – which has the ‘show’ until Saturday – doesn’t mention the exhibition anywhere on its web site or publicity. How do you suppose it came to be that the AGNSW came to host this show instead of say, the Australian Museum where it would have made a lot more sense? Grundy is a billionaire who takes photographs and the AGNSW is an art gallery that shows photography. It all goes together.
In a final act of ignominy, we were reading Steve Meacham’s flattering profile of Liz Ann Macgregor in The Sydney Morning Herald’s Spectrum. The piece, The Accidental Australian, described the personal sacrifices Macgregor had made to take up the directorship of the MCA, the end of her marriage and the difficulties she had in realising that most Australians don’t go into the office on Sundays. The article also made mention of the fact that under Macgregor’s stewardship, the gallery now has an extra large gallery Fourth Floor space to display items from the permanent collection and that the building has been saved from ‘development’ [i.e. complete destruction, a plan courtesy of Frank Sartor]. More importantly, the gallery is back in the black financially and visitor numbers courtesy of the free entry [thanks Telstra!] has made shows such as Tracey Moffatt, Ron Mueck, William Kentridge and Bridget Riley huge successes. The disappointment came when Meacham felt it necessary to spoil the fun by quoting The Esteemed Critic John McDonald and his party-pooper, kill joy anti-MCA stance. To wit:
The MCA and Macgregor have their detractors, most vociferously John McDonald, the Herald’s art critic. McDonald says he was even more critical of her predecessors, but he accuses Macgregor of presiding over “an institution with an intellectual complacency.”
Aside from the fact that McDonald’s statement doesn’t actually mean anything, it’s far too predictable, perhaps the Herald likes to flatter itself that their critic is ‘controversial’ and we want to hear this oft voiced opinion yet again, or perhaps that the story needed ‘balance’, but whatever the reason, we just thought, you utter bastards.
There was a moment of levity, however, in The Esteemed Critic’s review in the same edition called Emotion In Slow Motion where he popped down to Canberra to review Bill Viola’s The Passions and the National Sculpture Prize and Exhibition. Spending the better half of the review lamenting the fact that the ‘emotion’ in Viola’s piece looked fake [yes, it’s all fake!], he roused himself to like most of the Sculpture prize while adding the caveat that:
“For someone like me, who often feels that he’s seen it all before…”
…there were a few good things. For once we agreed.
