The Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) is currently closed until further notice.
Artist and musician Laurie Anderson has branched into virtual reality in a collaboration with Taiwanese new media artist Hsin-Chien Huang. Chalkroom, part of this year’s Perth Festival, utilises as a guide Anderson’s disembodied voice, familiar to audiences since her 1981 hit single O Superman. Visitors enter a black room, with phrases and song lyrics painted in white on the walls and ceilings. Anderson says she and Huang created this environment “full of shadows and darkness” as a deliberate antithesis of the “brittle and bright” aesthetic of the virtual reality world. Putting the VR headset on, the white graffiti becomes a multichambered journey. Words fly past, then disintegrate and reform.
The Washington Post reports that Anderson had tried as long ago as the early 90s to pull off a virtual reality project with singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel but that early VR work failed because of the then technological limitations. More than two decades later, Chalkroom “establishes Ms Anderson as one of the artists VR was invented for”, writes New York Times co-chief art critic Roberta Smith. Before making its way to Perth, Chalkroom has now been seen by audiences in the US, Denmark, Italy and Taiwan.
In a video interview on her website, Anderson says: “I wanted to see what it would be like to travel through stories. You begin slowly moving into this world of ramps and hallways, and it opens up to huge towers, and they’re all covered in language. Sometimes letters float towards you; like snow, they’re there to define the space … they’re fractured languages.”
Her main inspiration, says Anderson, was to allow people to fly, “like you do in your dreams”.
Chalkroom
Laurie Anderson & Hsin-Chien Huang
Perth Institute of Contemporary Art
8 February – 19 April
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.
Yhonnie Scarce, a Kokatha and Nukunu artist, has emerged in recent years as one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists. Yhonnie Scarce: The Light of Day, at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, curates a survey of significant works by Scarce from the last few years.
“Sometimes I think of my paintings as a sound score to the pulse of the landscape.” Sue Lovegrove presents 12 new abstract landscape paintings in her latest show at Gallerysmith.
This year’s Biennale of Sydney centres the “profound changes of the 21st century” from migration to diaspora to climate change—and how communities show perpetual resilience. From delicate kites to images of nuclear war, here’s our round up of what you can’t miss.
