You’ve heard this before, but it’s been a very busy week, divided between Melbourne, Canberra and Bundanon. Along the way I saw the NGV Triennial, which lived up to expectations; and the Emily Kngwarreye and Jordan Wolfson presentations at the National Gallery of Australia, which proved to be a mixed bag, supplemented by an excellent Pintupi show at the Drill Hall Gallery. In Bundanon there’s an equally good Yolngu exhibition.
Tempting as it is to keep thumping away at the Powerhouse Museum saga – an abject betrayal by the NSW Labor government that will have disastrous, long-reaching consequences for this state’s culture and heritage – I can’t push this story every week.
Instead, I’m looking at a more constructive development, in the launch of a new French-Australian Cultural Exchange Foundation. The occasion was a lunch at the NGV, in which the guest of honour was Mme. Catherine Colonna, the French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs. Also present were the directors of the Musée Picasso and the Musée du Quai Branly, and a group of senior curators.
It’s hard to imagine an Australian function in Paris with a Minister, and so many top cultural officials in the room, but the French have always taken culture far more seriously than we Aussies. For the French it is the very foundation of political and business negotiations, for Australia, it has always been an afterthought.
With this initiative the French have accorded Australia a highly favoured status and backed it up with an investment of more than $2 million, which will help fund a series of 12 artist residencies across Australia, France and the Pacific in the new year. The intention is that the FACEF will partner with Australian institutions, from the Ministry of the Arts and DFAT, to universities, museums and galleries, and with private enterprise. What they are doing is putting money on the table and inviting local organisations to work with them to get the best possible results for both countries.
The project should bring French artists to Australia, and Australian and Polynesian artists (including First Nations artsts) to France. Yet this is only the beginning. The FACEF is open to ideas and projects for the future and is already calling for suggestions.
Looked at from a positive angle it’s a great platform for Australia to consolidate its relations with one of the world’s cultural superpowers and perhaps loosen the age-old ties that bind us to the Anglophone worlds of Britain and the United States. From a purely strategic point-of-view, the French are daring – perhaps shaming – their Australian counterparts into action. It’s obvious to them, if not immediately so to legions of local politicians, that Australia is an exceptionally wealthy country that could do a whole lot more in terms of art and culture.
If, by the whims of history, Baudin had claimed Australia for France and the name, “Terre Napoleon” had stuck, the entire development of this country would have been different. In the 21st century, the French are hoping to conquer us through the soft power of cultural diplomacy. May their schemes be crowned with success!
The art column this week has a partially-French aspect, looking at Louise Bourgeois: Has the Day Invaded the Night or the Night Invaded the Day?, at the Art Gallery of NSW. This is a comprehensive survey of an artist who spent her early life in France, before moving to New York, where she woud eventually make her name. Fame didn’t happen overnight, but when it arrived, Bourgeois became one of the most sought-after artists in the business.
The Sydney Modern show is devied into two parts – the ‘day’, in an upstairs gallery, and the ‘night’ in the basement gallery called the Tank. I’ve got a few reservations about the basement component, which is pure theatre, but hey, the AGNSW has actually managed to put on a show! Let’s hope it’s the first of many more.
The film being reviewed is The Old Oak, the new and allegedly final film by Ken Loach, the voice of social conscience in British cinema. There’s been the usual sneering about the “sentimentality” of this film, which looks at what happens in a godforsaken former mining town with the arrival of a busload of Syrian refugees. Well, there’s sentimentality and there’s basic humanity, and I know which heading I’d apply to Loach’s work. It’s a quality conspicuously lacking in most of today’s mainstream movies.
Finally, I’m including a small first reaction to Jordan Wolfson’s Body Sculpture which made its long-awaited debut at the NGA this week, and left most of us feeling distinctly underwhelmed. After more than five years in gestation, at a cost of $6.67 million – and rising! – press and patrons might have hoped for something a bit more dynamic than an over-sized mechanical device that raises and lowers a cube with two robot arms attached. One gets the idea within the first two minutes, but the cycle takes a half hour. Not for the first time may we despair at Dr. Nick’s judgment, let alone his profligate way with Other Peoples Money.