Shopping & Extreme Pleasures
Issue 24:2 | June 2004
Has art become just another consumer product? Relationship of art to retail and porn eg in the work of James Guppy, Jose da Silva. Also the Auckland Triennial reviewed. Co-editor Helen Grace
In this issue
Tokyo Shopping Mix: An Email Saga*
It is not hard to shop given the entire city of Tokyo seems to be premised on the activity. Tokyo is a space as complex and flowing as the most convoluted natural system. One may be in a train station but it is filled with shops. Above ground, below ground, on the ground - shops. Haley documents his activities over a period of a couple of months in what is most likely the worlds largest consumer oriented city. He discusses the somewhat surreal and absurdist nature of this environment and paints a picture of the plethora of advertisements, signs, extreme fashion trends and other visual paraphernalia that consume the city.
Flatness Packed
While the idea of modern and contemporary art are located in a fairly nebulous discursive realm, the notion of modern or contemporary lifestyle (the two seem, in fact, interchangeable) are very much a part of the familiar rhetoric of consumer spending. No Nonsense Return Policy (2003), Pat Foster and Jen Bereans installation at BUS Gallery, documented six miss-assembled items of IKEA furniture and dissect the curious aesthetic cycles that drive the commercial products in both realms. Taylor looks at this work and others which are focused on drawing attention to the formal and ideological intersections between modernism and the stuff of homes and home decoration.
One or Two Things about Art and Shopping
This article explores the relationship between art and shopping, in particular the contemporary alignment of the two as one and the way feminist identity is largely constructed through the media and consumption. Wilson looks at the work of Barbara Kruger and her critique of Western consumer habits, in particular the way Kruger explores the different shopping patterns of men and women to reflect some inherent gender traits.
How Much is that Artwork in the Window? Notes on Shops and Art
Through reference to Walter Benjamin's writings, Peers suggests that it has become commonplace to describe the city in terms of the progress of the flaneur, the middle class bohemian who strolled through the city, moving in the ephemeral sphere of impressions and images. This article looks at shopping as a central feature to the manner in which Australian art and culture has developed. The artist is a shopper and collector, moving through the materiality of things. Australian culture has itself become flaneur-ised over the past decade in the expansion of new museums and cultural precincts inviting discovery and added pleasure to the experiences of viewing and consuming art.
Food Slut > Manifesto
Food increasingly became alienated from the body over the latter half of the twentieth century. Its material, its preparation, its distribution and its consumption became hostage to the banal aesthetics of the food stylist, the aridity of cultural studies and the repressive partnership of the public health zealot and the liability lawyer. Paul van Reyk here presents a manifesto on the food slut, a model for the examination of current food consumption trends in our society. As he states, a food slut is never indifferent to food, any more than a sex slut is indifferent to sex.
Pornography and Photography
A series of three exhibitions which appeared to erase or at least redraw the boundaries between art photography and pornography was seen at the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney in 2003. Helen Grace talked to Alasdair Foster, Director of the ACP and curator of one of the exhibitions, about this timely and challenging project.
The Perverted Gaze of the Artist: Recent Work of James Guppy
James Guppy has a curiously ambiguous place in contemporary art. This is not because of his subject matter, but rather because of his technique. For the most part Guppys recent work is not about fun, nor is it even really about sex. Rather he argues it is about the nature of exploitation. He argues that artists by their nature are voyeurs who see the world around them and all its objects as items to be used as visual product. His recent Peeping Box series taps into this idea where images of sexual activity with a particular sadistic overlay are presented behind thick glass to incite some vain attempt on the part of the viewer to engage in such voyeuristic acts.
Chaotic Attractors: Jake Chapman Lecture Tour 04
The two hours of Jake Chapmans lecture at the Capitol Theatre in Melbourne in March 2004 were in many ways a homage to Modernism and the aesthetic of industry - albeit back-handed. The hierarchies of art history, the possibility of the poetic and the tradition of humanism all came under attack. The core issue circled around throughout the discussion was the degree to which art was simply a diversion for the middle-class: a market-responsive product or cathartic moment in which people could be and even pay for the privilege of being shocked.
Enchantment/Disenchantment: The 2nd Auckland Triennial
The generic theme for the 2nd Auckland Triennial Public/Private sought to address central issues concerned with the relationship of the visual art scene to that of the everyday life (to banality), the potential or otherwise of new technologies to engage with the conditions of modern society and the ability of art to deal in specific ideas of a social and political nature. Furthermore in bringing together artists projects that are cross-cultural and transgenerational, the curatorial aim was to make connections which would intensify the privacy debate. Edward Hanfling examines some of these works with regards to such issues and concerns.
Artlink on the Road: a China Diary
March saw a little bit of history being made in Sino-Australian cultural relations with Artlink being the first Australian art magazine to be launched as well as offered for sale in China. Perversely we were not offering the Chinese an issue of the magazine about Australia, our normal subject area, but about China, a subject area we have only visited occasionally. In the manner of all human vanities that may have been one of the reasons we received such a warm reception. Imagining the reverse - reading an issue of a Chinese art magazine about Australian art is in the current state of art writing in China unlikely.
News from the Front
Its less than a centimetre long, but the weapon of mass distraction on Artlinks March cover was deemed unacceptable for US audiences. For those who missed the media frenzy, our US distributors refused to put the Adelaide & Beyond issue of Artlink on the shelves of Barnes and Noble. The reason given was the completely nude male on the cover (would a hat have rendered it incompletely nude? Would it have mattered if it was a female nude, neatly packaged away?).
Joan Kerr, Art Historian: February 1938 - February 2004
Joan Kerr, Art Historian, February 1938 - February 2004
Transmission and a Selection from 32 Cars for the 20th Century - Play Mozart's Requiem Quietly
Nam June Palik Sydney Opera House Forecourt 8 -26 January 2004 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 26 February - April 2004
2004 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Contemporary Photomedia
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide 29 February - 30 May 2004
Repercussions: Individual and Collaborative Works
Peter Hennessey & Patricia Piccinimi Greenaway Gallery, Adelaide 28 February - 28 March 2004
Songs of Australia: Volume 16
Aleks Danko The Ian Potter Centre, NGV Australia Melbourne (and touring) 7 February - 18 April 2004
Group Material
Ben Booth, Neil Haddon, Anthony johnson, Anna Phillips, Lucia Usmiani and Kit Wise The Queen's Warehouse Gallery Tasmanaian museum and Art Gallery, Hobart 18 March - 2 May 2004
Allthatglitters: Contemporary Visions of the Gold Coast / Allthatglitters: 50 Years of Gold Coast Kitsch and Memory
7 February - 21 March 2004 The Gold Coast City Regional Art Gallery 14 February - 9 May 2004
Art of the Biotech Era: Art, Culture and Biotechnology
Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide 27 February - 3 April 2004
New 04
Guy Benfield, Nadine Christensen, Stephen Honegger & Anthony Hunt, Tom Nicholson, Sangeeta Sandrasegar, Parekohai Whakomoe Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne 23 March - 16 May 2004