Li Zhanyang, 'Rent' - Rent Collection Yard, 2007, Sculptural Installation, 37 life size figures, resin, approx. 224 x 1750 x 500 cm. Courtesy: Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne
It is now several months since the Melbourne Art Fair 2008 and the overriding impressions that remain are that it was a great and enriching aesthetic experience but if you weren’t selling works by Indigenous artists, urban or non-urban, then you weren’t making money, although six months on from the event, making money seems a thing of the past. We saw a mugger in an alley behind where the Fair was being held and he had a knife to the throat of a well known art dealer. “Your money or your life” he said. “Hey”, she responded, “I’m an art dealer: no money; no life.”
Gregor Kregar Large sculpture - Piercing the Clouds, 2008, mirror polished stainless steel. Image courtesy the artist & Michael Reid at Elizabeth Bay.
Some dealers exceeded the expectations of the audience and provided a performance extravaganza. Yet, by Saturday evening some stands hadn’t sold anything, others would barely have covered costs. Of course there are exceptions to any rule and the odd gallery had sold out because they were showing the latest ‘hot’ artists.
The exhibitions that surpassed all expectation were Gordon Hookey at Nellie Caston Gallery, Gregor Kregar at Michael Reid’s stand and Li Zhanyang at Gallerie URS Meile.
Gordon Hookey’s work was more akin to an installation than a cohesive group of paintings because the paintings and ephemera were versions of the same story. As a whole they told of a time and a world where indigenous men with boxing talent were exploited by a man named Jimmy Sharman. The boxers, one group of four brothers known as the Sands Brothers, were paraded in the ring and any man from the audience (at the time, not at the Art fair!) could challenge any one of them to a fight. Great entertainment for the audience, but when one considers most people who challenged them weren’t concerned with the rules of boxing, just with having a go, the considerable danger posed by the situation for the four black men was hair raising.
Gordon Hookey, Terraists Colonialhism 2008, 290 x 350cm, mixed media. Copy right Gordon Hookey & courtesy of Nellie Castan Gallery.
In the paintings a female heroine, an icon of Hookey’s culture, looks on, providing a protective aura around the boxers. The paintings are loud and brash, attracting attention not only from the general public and the media but also from museum curators. The popularity of the stand was so great, it was difficult to get access, a testament to its success.
In 2005, Gordon Hookey described his work in a gallery catalogue as follows:
- “My bold painting and mixed media installations are overtly political and provocative, utilising iconic Australian imagery juxtaposed with quick wit and scathing humour to comment on the meeting of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australian cultures. Rich in visual puns and wild political cartoon, I bring to the foreground a number of historical and contemporary political issues and scream out loud what people are whispering.”
Forest wallpaper made in the United States especially for the Michael Reid stand was a knock out inspiration that set this exhibit apart from the rest; the wallpaper was visible from all parts of the building, helping to see the wood from the trees. The installation included oversized polished stainless steel gnomes which didn’t transcend the kitsch and weren’t the hit with the public hoped for by the dealer. An unelfy part of the display! But the multifaceted polished stainless steel cuboid sculptures that reflect the sky and their surroundings on flat triangular surfaces were a big success. They mirror the world that surrounds them, notably the landscape, but to recreate that experience the dealer and artist came up with the idea of bringing the landscape inside, hence the wallpaper. The inspiration for the cuboid pieces would appear to come from Hollywood movies. You can imagine them in the landscape marking the place of a galactic black hole; these were magical sculptures of originality and whimsy.
Jan Murphy was showing the work of the young sculptor Alexander Seton. He is a marble sculptor of refined craftsmanship. Cars and grand pianos draped in cloth are the subject of his precocious mind. The works were all of a domestic size but visually looked able to morph into monumental sculptures. Whether that’s possible physically I imagine depends on Seton’s ability to find large marble slabs and a client with the foresight and purse to afford such extravagant beauty. Perhaps we’ve lost the potential for such patronage in the current financial market, unless you own a string of pawn shops perhaps.
Gregor Kregar Reflective Lullaby, 2008 (installation). Image courtesy the artist & Michael Reid at Elizabeth Bay.
The other visual belting came from the number of works dispersed around the galleries that were made out of fur; real or fake. It was “in your face” at the entrance with a giant green kangaroo by Louise Weaver at Daren Night’s stand. My ‘pre-furred’ work was ‘Mad dogs & Englishmen’ by Joan Ross at Gallery Barry Keldoulis. Ross uses recycled materials; preferably pre loved ones. This particular work is a portrait of Governor Arthur Philip. Both native and exotic furs are mixed in this work, which immediately grabs the viewer. Having been drawn in by the lusciousness of the material you are suddenly repulsed when realising that kangaroo has been mixed with mink. It’s the first hint of sinister undertones to the intended meaning of the work by the artist. Fur as a signal that goes beyond skin deep?
Alexander Seton Any Dessert You Want (Porsche) 2008, white marble, 26.0 45.0 x 58.0 cm
Money went on Indigenous arts. This seemed completely valid as the originality, diversity and sheer beauty of the works displayed deserved the attention and purchasing power of the clients. My companion at the fair mentioned to Christopher Pease’s dealer that she wanted to buy one of Pease’s combined abstract resin and topographical paintings. The dealer looked at her blankly. I thought perhaps she had misunderstood and thought my friend’s request to be polite chit chat. So I restated the intended wishes of my friend; we were treated with a breathless explanation of the rarity of the works for sale, the high demand by institutions and the amount of time it takes to collect all the resin from the grass trees that is needed to make his fantastic giant red/black/yellow paintings. A lecture was provided rather than a delivery date.
Joan Ross, Mad dogs and English men, 2008, crayon on furs and metal, 200 x 200 x 30 cm approx, courtesy the artist and Gallery Barry Keldoulis
There were many great works that hadn’t sold while I was there. Li Zanyang at Galerie URS Miele based in Beijing and Lucerne exhibited ‘Rent’ his latest work, although not his intent which was, of course to “Sell”. This is a monumental sculpture comprising 18 groups of life sized painted fibreglass figures. Three of the separate works were displayed at the fair. When I spoke to the dealers on the stand, no Australian media had made enquiries about Li Zhanyang or his work. What an embarrassing oversight! Surely the organisers should have introduced the media to the gallery and this work, after such effort and expense spared by the gallery to introduce their clearly internationally acclaimed artist to this country?
William Mora Galleries Stand Melbourne Art Fair 08
“Rent” has been exhibited in Switzerland, China and Australia at the Melbourne Art Fair only. Thirty nine year old Li Zanyang has only had five major solo exhibitions; “Rent” took a year and a half to produce and encompasses art world figures, mainly in groups, who have been chosen because of their public or professional roles in the international or Chinese art arena. There are thirty four life size fibre-glass figures, realistically coloured, in the images of the works, conjuring strange memories of nativities from my childhood. In fact, although the colouring is realistic it is slightly pallid. The conceptual themes of the individual or group pieces are “Paying Rent”, “Foot Washing”, “Raping”, “Oppressing”, Dying a Martyr” and “History Observed”. In the mind’s eye, the sacrificial meets the sacrament.
The entire work is a reworking of a 1965 sculpture, of the same name, sited in landlord Liu Wencai’s orchard. This group of sculptures “portrays the class struggle between the indignant farmers and the ruling landlords prior to the Chinese Communist Party’s coming to power”. (Galeries Urs Meile Bejing, catalogue, by Nataline Colonnello).
Li Zhanyang, 'Rent' - Rent Collection Yard, 2007, detail, "History Observed": Joseph Beuys, Mao Zedong, 195 x 217 x 160 cm. Courtesy: Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne.
The one hundred and fourteen clay figures comprising the 1965 sculpture were made by local folk artisans and students and teachers from the local academy of fine arts. The figures obviously have had an enduring effect on the Chinese creative psyche, as they were also the reference for a performance by Cai Guoqiang at the Venice Biennale in 1999. Li Zanyang has been influenced by the original and the conceptual performance by Guoqiang and has included him as one of his figures in “Dying a Martyr” which is the piece that particularly caught my attention at the art fair because of its super realism. The kind of art world conspiracies that stir the creative powers of Li Zanyang’s muse can be guessed at in this piece where the disciples, Cai Guoqiang and Samuel Keller, the previous director of Art Basel, carry a naked and dead Harold Szeeman, the late curator of the Venice Biennale, where I cannot say as no hints are given in the sculpture. Where do dying martyrs go?
Li Zhanyang, 'Rent' - Rent Collection Yard, 2007, detail, "Dying a Martyr": Samuel Keller, Harald Szeemann, Cai Guoqiang, 187 x 220 x 89 cm. Courtesy: Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne.
Li Zanyang clearly has a developed sense of humour, as the subjects in “Foot Washing” (which wasn’t at the fair, unfortunately) attest. Ai Wei Wei is seated, foot in bath surrounded and pampered by his wife, curators, collectors, his assistants and dealer. Perhaps Ai Wei Wei’s demeanour of seriousness as an artist leaves him open to humorous reflection as I myself have created a small send-up of Wei Wei’s waves in a piece I recently made and titled “ A drop in the Ocean”. It was actually the price of Wei Wei’s waves I found ridiculous, not the pieces themselves, though having lost two subsequent pieces to the god of the kiln, perhaps his pricing has some reasoning; “Foot Washing” suggests not.
Li Zhanyang, 'Rent' - Rent Collection Yard, 2007, detail, "Foot Washing": Christiane Leister, Nataline Colonnello, Tang Xin, Livia Gnos, Lin Suling, Ai Weiwei, Lu Qing, Urs Meile, Bird’s nest with baby head, 224 x 541 x 282 cm. Courtesy: Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne.
The Melbourne Art Fair 2008 was a great success with the audience, visually stimulating, diverse and entertaining. From the point of view of the dealers I imagine for most of them it was a time consuming expense that in a year of financial crisis they could have done without. Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. It is this enriching process that we should look back on and savour.
