Presented by MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
in association with Melbourne Festival
art as a verb: Media kit
ART AS A VERB
EXHIBITION DATES
3 October - 16 December 2014
Opening function: Saturday 4 October 2014, 3-5pm
ARTISTS
Marina
Abramovic,́ Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Paweł Althamer & Artur
.
Zmijewski, Francis Alÿs, Billy Apple, John Baldessari, Brown Council,
Catherine or Kate, Clark Beaumont, Martin Creed, DAMP, John Davis,
George Egerton-Warburton, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Emily Floyd,
Ceal Floyer, Heath Franco, Alicia Frankovich, Andrea Fraser,
Ryan Gander, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Matthew Griffin, Bianca Hester,
Hi Red Center, Christopher L G Hill, Tehching Hsieh, Tim Johnson,
Allan Kaprow, Peter Kennedy, Sister Mary Corita Kent, Anastasia Klose,
Laresa Kosloff, Jiríˇ Kovanda, George Kuchar, George Maciunas,
Basim Magdy, Paul McCarthy, David McDiarmid, Ian Milliss, Kate Mitchell,
Bruce Nauman, Rose Nolan, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Ariel Orozco,
Deborah Ostrow, Mike Parr, Campbell Patterson, Kenny Pittock,
Stuart Ringholt, Sarah Rodigari, Robert Rooney, Martha Rosler,
ˇ
Eva Rothschild, Tony Schwensen, Jill Scott, Katerina
Šedá,
Christian Thompson, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Gabrielle de Vietri and Franz West
CuratoRium
Charlotte Day, Francis E. Parker & Patrice Sharkey
INTRoduction
Art as a Verb is a major thematic exhibition that takes as its departure point
the concept of art as action, both inside the gallery and beyond. Drawing
upon the unbridled energy and anarchy of fluxus and happenings, and
looking back to a moment when art dematerialised, Art as a Verb presents
a range of projects from the 1960s to today that challenge the traditional
role of the artist and the site of the museum. What constitutes the work
of an artist? How do the varying roles of an artist (as instigator, facilitator,
teacher, performer, consumer or visionary) fit within broader society? And
how does the museum support art forms that function beyond the art
object? Bringing together artworks from a wide range of Australian and
international practitioners, Art as a Verb will feature documentation of actions
and performances, situational pieces, instructional works, manifestoes and
interactive props.
'Recent events in Australia and elsewhere have brought renewed attention
to the role of the artist in our social, political as well as cultural life. Art as a
Verb looks at ways artists protest, agitate as well as recommend different
models for how we live and relate to each other. Narrow definitions between
politics, art and life give way to a broader understanding of artistic activity
as initiated by artists in the 60s and 70s, and re-interpreted in the work of
younger artists today.’
Director, Charlotte Day
'Art as a Verb reflects on the transformation of the artwork from a tangible
object, art as a noun, into something of action. The move prefigures and
parallels the transition of power, finance and communications into immaterial
forms over the last fifty years or so, and depicts how art continues to help us
comprehend and face the world we live in.'
Curator – Exhibitions, Francis E. Parker
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
DOING THINGS WITH ART: READINGS & Performances
Saturday 11 October 2014, 2-4pm
As part of the opening weekend of the Melbourne Festival, MUMA will
present an afternoon of live events. A second and final performance of
Taped by Jill Scott will accompany the final performance day of Coexisting
by Clark Beaumont (see page two for information on both of these works).
Additionally, from 3pm Bianca Hester, Christopher L G Hill, Anastasia
Klose and Kenny Pittock will present live readings of iconic manifestos,
which have inspired their own artistic practice.
CATALOGUE
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with texts by
Victoria Lynn, Ian Milliss and Jarrod Rawlins.
MEDIA
For all media enquiries please contact Kelly Fliedner
kelly.fliedner@monash.edu | +61 418 308 059
www.monash.edu.au/muma
Telephone +61 3 9905 4217
muma@monash.edu
Clark Beaumont
Coexisting 2013
photo courtesy of Jamie North and Kaldor
Public Art Projects
Presented by MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
in association with Melbourne Festival
art as a verb: SELECTED artist profiles
Jill Scott (ch/AUS)
Jill Scott has lived and worked in North America, Australia and Europe.
Scott's explorations in performance, video art and new media over the
last four decades have been motivated by her interest in the human body,
specifically how the artists' body is represented in relation to the body of
the audience. MUMA will present Scott's seminal 1975 performance work,
Taped, originally performed in a warehouse building in San Francisco. Scott
stood on a pair of tall ladders and was fixed to the side of the wall using ten
rolls of two inch-thick masking tape. She remained there until sunset. Taped
will be re-performed on both Saturday 4 and Saturday 11 October, using the
exact method to attach, and then leave suspended, a figure to defy gravity.
Clark Beaumont (AUS)
Nicole Beaumont and Sarah Clark began their collaborative performancebased practice in 2010. Through live and mediated works, Clark Beaumont
investigate ideas around identity, female subjectivity, intimacy and
interpersonal relationships. At MUMA they will present Coexisting, originally
commissioned as part of 13 Rooms, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and
Klaus Biesenbach for Kaldor Public Art Projects, Sydney (2013). Explicitly
positioning the artists as artwork, the pair will spend the duration of the
performance, on a plinth with a surface area just too small for two people to
comfortably occupy. As a physical manifestation of their creative relationship,
as well as a durational challenge, Clark Beaumont must continually navigate
the complex terrains of negotiation and compromise that define collaborative
artistic practice. Coexisting will commence with Art as a Verb on Friday 3
and finish on Saturday 11 October.
Laresa Kosloff (AUS)
Laresa Kosloff’s film, video, and performance works examine the body in
space, from extraordinary acts like swinging from a trapeze in the middle of a
CBD to an ordinary office worker sitting at his desk. She is interested in how
our behaviour is regulated and moments of interruption and release from
such strictures. A number of her works explore the formal and conceptual
dynamics of sport including Standard run which depicts the artist teaching
another figure how to run on the spot at a suburban sport’s court. The
movement of running is slowed down to individual gestures before then
being seen to gradually build in pace until both figures are absurdly leaning
forward with limbs unnaturally jerking side to side, frenetically going nowhere.
Campbell Patterson (NZ)
Campbell Patterson works predominantly in performance-based video,
much of his work has the rough, immediate look of user-generated content
from websites such as YouTube or Vimeo. Rather than being confessional,
revelatory or expressly exhibitionistic, Patterson’s videos capture abstract
actions derived from moments in his life. Lifting my mother for as long as
I can is a physical performance carried out once every year on Patterson’s
mother’s birthday. He is acutely aware of the capacity of documented
performance to ‘function on its own as an art object’ and to manipulate
mood and response. Patterson refers both directly and indirectly to the
history of performance art, connecting with early performance-based
practices from the 60s and 70s, by artists such as Dennis Oppenhein, Yoko
Ono, Bruce Nauman and Vito Acconci, who used their bodies (often in
extremis) as the subject of their work.
(from top)
Jill Scott
Taped 1975
courtesy of the artist
Clark Beaumont
Coexisting 2013
photo courtesy of Jamie North
and Kaldor Public Art Projects
Laresa Kosloff
Standard run 2007
courtesy of the artist
Campbell Patterson
Lifting My Mother For As Long
As I Can 2011
courtesy of the artist and
Michael Lett Gallery, Auckland
Presented by MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
in association with Melbourne Festival
art as a verb: SELECTED artist profiles
Tim Johnson (AUS)
Tim Johnson is concerned with the communication of unseen phenomena,
and his work often interogates the possibility of other spiritual and physical
dimensions. In 1972, Johnson was asked by Bill Carr, a lecturer at the
University of Queensland, to participate in Art Experience Week, an initiative
of the university's Department of Architecture. Proceedings commenced
with Johnson’s Induction, a performance in which participants were directed
to attempt to induce an erection 'by directing [their] thoughts towards
erotic subjects.' Although Johnson's work was clearly motivated by making
apparent the unbridgeable divide between body, socialised behavior, and
psyche, this was not recognised—much less accepted—in the conservative
Queensland of the time. Within days of the performance, the educational
validity of Johnson’s activities were questioned in State Parliament, both
artist and lecturer were sacked and Art Experience Week cancelled.
Documentation of the performances will feature in Art as a Verb.
Andrea Fraser (USA)
Andrea Fraser is a performance and video artist who is regarded as a
pioneer of institutional critique; structuring her work around existing museum
practices and protocols such as gallery talks and opening speeches.
Although they often begin rationally, her performances progressively unravel,
frequently devolving into discussions of eccentric topics or enactments of
taboo behaviours. Official Welcome, performed at Kunstverein, Hamburg
in 2003, parodies the rhetorical functions of institutional opening events,
and questions the relationship between artists and patrons. At one point,
Fraser completely disrobes to suggest the inherent exhibitionism involved
in presenting art. The intelligence, clarity and forcefulness of Fraser's
performances have ensured that her oeuvre remains a touchstone for
critically engaged art of the 1990s and beyond.
.
–
PaweL Althamer & Artur Zmijewski (POL)
Paweł Althamer has realised a number of projects that seek to subtly alter
reality through nearly imperceptible interventions in public space. Art as a
Verb will feature Althamer’s series of eight videos, So-Called Waves and
Other
Phenomena of the Mind, made in collaboration with artist Artur
.
Zmijewski. These works capture Althamer as he ingests various drugs
(peyote, LSD, magic mushrooms, truth serum, hashish and weronika) and
undergoes hypnotherapy, on a journey to explore the depths of his own
mind. Interested in extremes and margins, Althamer describes his drugrelated experiences in great detail throughout the video, striving for the
accuracy of a scientist charting the borders of perception, noting the most
minute facets of the wondrous stimuli around him.
ˇ
ˇ
KateRina
Sedá
(CZE)
Since becoming an art student in the Czech Republic in 1999, Kateřina
Šeda has staged interventions into everyday life. These experiments have
taken place in small villages near Brno, her home town, as well as in the
urban setting of her second home, Prague. Based on rigorous research into
behaviour and communication patterns in both art and non-art communities,
Šedá has developed poignant sociology-driven themes, manipulating
truisms about production and consumption. There is nothing there is a social
experiement in which the participants, all the inhabitants of Pon∫tovice,
a small Czech village, were asked to follow a universal regime for a day
prescribed by Šedá, based on previous observations the artist had made
of an ordinary day in the town. There is nothing there follows the villagers'
newly synchronised activities as they go about their slightly altered, collective
Saturday.
(from top)
Tim Johnson
Induction 1972
courtesy of the artist
Andrea Fraser
Official Welcome 2001/03
courtesy of the artist and
Galerie Nagel Draxler, Cologne/
Berlin
Paweł Althamer & Artur
Żmijewski, So-called waves
and other phenomena of the
mind 2003-04, courtesy of
the Bonnefantenmuseum
Maastricht
Kateřina Šedá
There is nothing there 2003
courtesy of the artist