Outside the art scene, it may not be understood that, for the selected Australian artist, the Venice Biennale is an opportunity of Olympian stature.
Fiona Hall’s selection last year was uncontroversial given her significant accomplishments, and it is fitting she was given the opportunity to launch the new purpose-built Australian Pavilion. This year, her Venice installation, Wrong Way Time, is reinstalled at the National Gallery of Australia.
This wunderkammer-like collection of objects, materials and images directs attention to the current environmental, social and political state of the globe.
“The enduring legacy is that Hall looked quite distinctive – not following fashionable trends but rather revealing an artist who is absolutely true to herself – a great ‘maker’ of art works with the ability to convey profound messages,” says NGA senior curator Deborah Hart, who saw Wrong Way Time in Venice.
“She doesn’t tell people what to think but she opens up profound areas of experience for us to contemplate, question and take on board. Her work is provocative but also at times playful and witty, and always engaging.”
”In its major temporary exhibition space the NGA has “exactly mirrored the space of the Australian Pavilion in Venice”, according to Hart. Other works by Hall from the NGA collection, including her Paradise and The Divine Comedy series and her cutout Morality dolls: the seven deadly sins, 1984, will extend the exhibition into other galleries.
“The world is such an amazing place,” Hall says, “yet sadly we are living in troubled times and that sense is reflected in a lot of the works”. Her artistic intensity expresses concern about changes to the earth’s environment, yet in her artwork her concerns become life-affirming and vital.
Wrong Way Time
Fiona Hall
National Gallery of Australia
22 April – 10 July
For the 24th Biennale of Sydney, Paris-based Fondation Cartier has commissioned 14 new works by Indigenous artists across the globe, curated by renowned Kuku Yalanji artist, Tony Albert.
From revamped industrial sites to brand new spaces in Sydney, to openings in Adelaide, Melbourne, Cottesloe and Darwin—across Australia there’s a flurry of new and reopening gallery activity.
The National Gallery of Victoria has unveiled their summer blockbuster exhibition for 2024–2025. Yayoi Kusama’s signature polka dots and pumpkins, along with world-premiere work, will appear in Australia’s largest retrospective exhibition of the Japanese artist.
“Everybody has their own sense of truth.” The acclaimed photographer Steve McCurry, particularly known for his iconic photograph of an Afghan girl with green eyes which featured on the cover of National Geographic, has been travelling and documenting the world for over 40 years.
25-year-old Serwah Attafuah is known for her hyper-luminescent dreamscapes and cybernetic archetypes. In her Sydney studio she discusses the scavenger methods, ancestral rituals, and socio-ecological concerns that scaffold her practice—and why The Matrix helps her understand the world.
CREATION is a new religion by artist Deborah Kelly, radically rethinking how we collectively come together. Having engaged with communities nation-wide, inviting audiences to dance, sing, listen and perform together, Kelly is now taking CREATION to regional Victoria. Curator Ineke Dane talks with Kelly about why she wanted to start a new religion, and where it will go in the future.
