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11/9/2013

Two exhibitions

Museum of Contemporary Art - MCA, Sydney

Primavera 2013: Young Australian Artists
12 September–17 November 2013

The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) reveals the eight artists selected for the 22nd edition of Primavera, the annual exhibition for Australian artists aged 35 years and under.

Primavera 2013 is curated by Robert Cook, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Photography and Design at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. The exhibition features works by Jacqueline Ball (WA), Jackson Eaton (WA/VIC), Heath Franco (NSW), Brendan Huntley (VIC), Thomas Jeppe (WA/VIC), Jess Johnson (VIC), Juz Kitson (NSW) and Kusum Normoyle (NSW).

Themes include a moving investigation of romantic and family relationships, the creation of portals into fictional realms, a look at the role of language in the shaping of (and the breaking down of) the self and the ways sound shapes our physical and emotional worlds. These ideas are presented across a range of media including painting, wall painting, sculpture, photography, installation, ceramics, digital media, sound and performance.

Central to Primavera 2013 is a series of direct responses to the exhibition space, the MCA’s Level 1 North Gallery.

Thomas Jeppe’s Vista Verticals (2013) is a series of paintings that replicate the dimensions of the Level 2 lookout above the gallery’s entrance. His huge wall installation, Tudor Minimal (2013) transforms one of the walls into a 17-metre architectural facade.

In a corner of the gallery, a domestic interior painting by Jess Johnson frames detailed pen drawings. A geometric carpet finishes off the work, transforming it into a compellingly strange, high-key cavity to another world.

Juz Kitson transforms another corner into a huge ceramic installation. Her exquisite porcelain objects are a gathering of mutant life forms which emerge from the wall and the ceiling of the gallery.

Eight photographs by Jacqueline Ball appear to be tunnels between different realities. Their scale, based on amplifications of domestic doorways, engages with the floor and the wall of the gallery, and invites viewers into the artist’s alter-realities while physically overwhelming them.

A series of video works by Kusum Normoyle creatively document the artist screaming in public spaces. Interspersed through the gallery between the works of other artists, the viewer is pulled into a relationship with the wall and into intensely powerful sound- and building-scapes.

In addition to these ‘purpose built’ gallery interventions are a further three equally arresting bodies of work. Brendan Huntley stages a face-off between 15 quirky sculptural heads presented on tables and 15 head paintings hung on the wall. The works re-stage aspects of last century’s modernism in relation to the role of the mask in the creation of self-hood.

Jackson Eaton’s Better Half (2007–13) is a romantic series of photos documenting a relationship the artist had with a young Korean woman. This is paired with a re-staging of the photographs with his father playing the role of Jackson and his Korean step-mum playing the role of Jackson’s now-ex girlfriend.

Heath Franco presents three video works, TELEVISIONS (2013), YOUR DOOR (2011) and DREAM HOME (2012). Each one features a performance by Franco in a variety of costumes and backed by an array of bizarre special effects. Though dense with meaning, at their most basic these videos are about the construction and the unravelling of the self through language.

Primavera Curator Robert Cook said: ‘It’s an incredible honour to be asked to do a Primavera exhibition. To work with some of the most inspiring artists in the country, each on the cusp of becoming majorly recognised, is a dream. The sheer intensity of their material and conceptual practices takes my breath away. As a curator, it’s been a thrill ride. I reckon MCA visitors will be as impressed as me by the ambition and scale of the works.’

ABOUT PRIMAVERA
Primavera is an annual exhibition for Australian artists aged 35 years and under. It was initiated in 1992 by Dr Edward Jackson AM and Mrs Cynthia Jackson AM and their family in memory of their daughter and sister Belinda, a talented jeweller who died at the age of 29. The exhibition commemorates Belinda Jackson by celebrating the creative achievements of talented young artists who are in the early stages of their careers.

ARTIST LIST
Jacqueline Ball, born 1986 Sydney, NSW. Lives and works in Perth.
Jackson Eaton, born 1980 Denmark, WA. Lives and works in Melbourne.
Heath Franco, born 1984 Cooma, NSW. Lives and works in Sydney.
Brendan Huntley, born 1982 Frankston, VIC. Lives and works in Melbourne.
Thomas Jeppe, born 1984 Perth, WA. Lives and works in Melbourne, Hamburg, and Guadalajara.
Jess Johnson, born 1979, Tauranga, New Zealand. Lives and works in Melbourne.
Juz Kitson, born 1987 Sydney, NSW. Lives and works in Central Coast and Jingdezhen.
Kusum Normoyle, born 1984 Sydney, NSW. Lives and works in Sydney.

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Embedded: Craig Walsh
12 September – 24 November 2013

The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) presents a new installation by Australian artist Craig Walsh.

Walsh is renowned for site-responsive artworks using digital video, projection, sculpture, photography and sound developed collaboratively with local people and communities. His works incorporate stories and perspectives and connect with communities in a meaningful and empowering process of self-portraiture in relation to environment.

Building on the MCA project Craig Walsh: Digital Odyssey (2010–11), an 18-month tour and artist residency to 11 regional and remote locations around Australia, the MCA and Rio Tinto commissioned Walsh to undertake a four-week residency in the Burrup Peninsula, near Karratha in north west Western Australia. The brief was to explore the unique rock art set within the site’s compelling natural beauty and open ruggedness and to realise a new body of work from the experience.

Walsh’s response, titled Embedded: Craig Walsh, is presented in the Level 1 South Galleries. It reflects on contrasting forms of engagement with the landscape evident through the extreme contrasts on the Burrup Peninsula and includes the collaboration with the region’s traditional custodians, Elders of Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, as well as Murujuga National Park rangers and staff from Rio Tinto.

The installation features moving imagery, photography and industrial containers filled with iron ore. Craig Walsh explains: ‘I see the Pilbara as a place which uniquely presents a concentration of extremes... The contrast between the ‘land’ as commodity and ‘Land’ as spiritual and cultural guidance are co-existing in the installation, and the audience will be physically positioned somewhere between the two’.

In Country (2012) is a multi-screen digital video work. Each screen is synchronised so that one after the other, the faces of Murujuga Elders emerge from the darkness and speak, describing elements of the signficance of Murujuga for thousands of generations of original inhabitants. The Elders’ images are juxtaposed onto the rock formations of Murujuga, literally embedded into the landscape.

Standing stone site (2012) is a wide-screen digital video depicting nature’s shifting light on a significant sacred site featuring 96 standing stones, the largest concentration of standing stones in one area in Australia. Co-Curator Judith Blackall comments: ‘The physical profile of the horizon remains fixed and monumental, unmoved as it has been for thousands of years, while the spectacular transformation of colour from deep purple to orange red is rendered visible through a technique of high-resolution interval photography.’

The MCA Australia and IMA Brisbane are preparing a major new monograph on Craig Walsh’s practice. Richly illustrated, the publication features essays by Michael Fitzgerald, Robert Leonard, Judith Blackall and an interview with the artist by Annemarie Kohn.

Embedded: Craig Walsh is organised in partnership with the Institute of Modern Art and co-curated by Judith Blackall and Robert Leonard (Director of the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane).

Image: Kusum Normoyle, S.I.T.E: A Scream for Ljubljana 2011, performance still, The Event: 29th Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, 2011, image courtesy and © the artist, photograph: Jaka Babnik

MEDIA contact
Kelly Stone
2 9245 2434 or 0429 572 869
kelly.stone@mca.com.au

Museum of Contemporary Art - MCA
140 George Street - The Rocks - Sydney, Australia
Mon-Wed: 10am-5pm
Thur: 10am-9pm
Fri-Sun: 10am-5pm
Free Entry

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