Stupidity: A Big Picture
Art is perhaps the only occupation where behaviour that would otherwise be deemed stupid is embraced. In most other fields and in daily life, we avoid actions and statements that might make us look stupid. In art however, apparent openness to stupidity is not so much testament to the corresponding stupidity of the author (well, not always) but to the questioning of commonly held assumptions of what constitutes aptitude and mastery. Choosing to behave stupidly becomes a potential means of challenging institutions authorising intelligence. The list of art that critically engages stupidity is practically endless and well documented. As a result, this essay does not speak to individual art works or the intentions of the artists in the exhibition. Instead, it focuses on the paradoxically serious, but stupid, macro-structures that frame art today. These structures condition the knowing or unknowing stupidity of contemporary artists: the stupidity endemic to the global domination of capital, and the current accelerated stupidity and bankruptcy of Western global geopolitics. These wider interlinked lenses affect us all, whether we acknowledge it or not.
Say it Again, KNULP at New Joerg, Vienna
Habitually we assume that what we read and say neatly corresponds with what we see and experience. Language and speech however rarely fully align with what we attempt to express or describe.
Another Place After Another
The exhibition ‘Transplant’ was conceived as a collaboration between the independent artist space KNULP in Sydney and Sydney College of the Arts gallery at the University of Sydney. Part of the underlying though not explicit mandate of the exhibition, was to highlight the seminal role independent art spaces play in the creation and critique of contemporary culture locally and around the world.
Someone Looks at Something/ with One Eye Close To... Shane Haseman at AFAAAR
References to four key figures of the historical avant-garde - Tristan Tzara, Hugo Ball, Marcel Duchamp and Samuel Beckett - appear in Shane Haseman’s latest work ‘High Street’, at NEAR gallery in Sydney. A series of site-specific intellectual gags suggest alternative understandings of their historical legacies.
History is a Dying Star, Jelena Telecki, NEW14, ACCA, Melbourne
Jelena Telecki’s paintings prove that the representation of subjective truth need not automatically result in simple illustrative narratives. In the artist’s recent body of work, references to the overreaching ‘utopian’ ambitions of states and their leaders, are unhinged from easy readings of historical causality.
To produce value under Capital is a misfortune because it means producing value for somebody else.