Reality In 21C

A question came to my mind after leaving the exhibition “Civilization – The Way We Live Now” at NGV Australia.  What exactly constitutes living these days?  Author Sasha Grishin makes it plain how he felt about the exhibition “powerful, troubling photographs of a crowded planet with an uncertain future.” 

Sami and the Panguna mine 2009–10 (Bougainville), Taloi Havini & Stuart Miller

The show brings together over 100 contemporary photographers from Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe and Australia with over 200 photographs. Some of the works are large in scale and all are thought provoking. There are very few images of people in rural settings, highlighting the fact that most of the world’s population now live in cities.

Desigual, Nathan Dvir, 2013

“For the first time, there is a real prospect that the human species stands to comprehensively annihilate itself, not through an act of war, but through man-made climate change and over consumption. It is also the first time that photographers are virtually everywhere and are photographing virtually everything.” GRISHIN

Brookes Brothers New York, WTC, Sept 12,2001, Sean Hemmerle

The exhibition is divided into 8 broad themes which, we are told, occupy many of the world’s photographers today.  There are images of military conflict, mass migration as a result of it and poignant scenes of the bedrooms of US servicemen who have died during the Iraq conflict.

Caribbean Princess 2015, from the Cruise Ships series 2014, Jeffrey Milstein

“A hallmark of a memorable exhibition is that it seduces the viewer through its sheer beauty, while at the same time making us question the reality that we inhabit.”  An example of this is the theme Escape which, for some people, involves fleeing from a war zone while for others it involves the positive connotation of  ‘getting away from it all’ – hence the blossoming pleasure business.

Migrants walk past the temple as they are escorted by Slovenian riot police to the registration camp outside Dobova, Slovenia, Thursday October, 22, 2015, Sergey Ponomarev

One of the photographers featured in the exhibition, Nick Hannes, believes our civilization is reaching social and ecological limits.  His ambiguous and ironic imagery expresses his confusion and incomprehension with what’s going on.  He hopes to hold a mirror up to ourselves and create a moment of self-reflection.

f.D-2, KDK (this room really exists)

The exhibition will run until February 2020 after which it will travel to Auckland.

Baldessin/Whiteley and the curator

Sometimes a 'curator's perspective' can lift ones appreciation of an exhibition from moderate to considerable.  Emeritus professor Sasha Grishin's talk on the Baldessin/Whiteley show at the National Gallery of Victoria (Federation Square) is a case in point.  Both Brett Whiteley and George Baldessin were born in 1939, both had difficult childhoods, both enjoyed considerable success in their respective cities; Melbourne (Baldessin) and Sydney (Whiteley), and both had relatively short careers.  Baldessin's was ended in a fatal car accident in 1978, Whiteley died in 1992, although the last decade of his life was somewhat unproductive.

Whiteley The Spray At Bondi (1981)

I was aware of Whiteley's difficult childhood, largely the result of being sent to a boarding school at Bathurst when he was 8.  He hated every minute of it.  But I was not aware of Baldessin's.  He was born in Italy and his mother left for Australia shortly after with the intention of finding work and then bringing her family over - but the second world war intervened and George was shunted around from relative to relative, not seeing his mother again until he finally arrived in Australia at the age of 10.  They were never close. 

Baldessin Part of his MM (Mary Magdalene) at Rue Saint Denis series 1976

Both artists rejected the abstract expressionist movement of the time and focused on more figurative work.  Both of them were concerned with the human condition and the duality of human nature.  One of Whiteley's more celebrated series of paintings was based around the serial murderer John Reginald Christie in his 10 Rillington Place series.

Both artists explored themes of sexuality in an urban environment and witnessed the rapidly changing world following WW2 including the cultural upheavals of the 1960's and 70's.  Both artists were sculptors and well as 2D artists and both were strongly influenced by British artist Francis Bacon.

Whiteley Black - The Get Laid Totem

The highlight for Whiteley fans will probably be his 22 metre long "American Dream" which was painted in the late 1960's while he and his family were living in New York - a savage critique of life in America, which as Grishin points out, seems just as relevant today in Donald Trump's America.  Overall, a powerful exhibition.

Baldessin The Performer