Art and the Politics of Withdrawal
The controversy surrounding founding Biennale of Sydney corporate sponsor Transfield, and its simultaneous operation of refugee detention centres, raises much broader issues. At first glance, could there be anything more diametrically opposed than a multi-national corporation capitalising on human suffering and a mass cultural event implicitly believed to democratically celebrate global difference?
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.
Plenty of Nothing; Art/Money/Installation
Even today, installation art, properly defined by its dependency on site and its irreducibility to isolable components, poses especial challenges. Never is this truer than when the installation art in question appears to exhibit ‘nothing’. In a global climate founded squarely on reinvigorated traditionalist principles of material accumulation, contemporary installations in which ‘nothing’ is exhibited pose important questions concerning art’s value.
Art/Social/Capital
The massive mediation of our contemporary cultural terrain obviously has a notable impact on the activities of contemporary art, particularly in a globalised context. In fact, what is especially noteworthy about much contemporary art impacted by this communication imperative, is its heightened emphasis on the value of communicability itself.
To produce value under Capital is a misfortune because it means producing value for somebody else.