NGV Triennial

Highlights from a first pass through. As a wide-ranging celebration of contemporary art focused on established and well-known artists - international and Australian - there was plenty to enjoy. It didn't seem as densely teeming, nor to have any with the same wow factor, as elements of the previous one in 2018, which would be understandable if true given the circumstances, but might also reflect that we only made it through the southern section of the ground floor and most of the pieces interspersed among the collection on levels 1 and 2 (and along the ramp).

Sarah Waiswa - "Seeking to belong" (2016), from a series of a an albino woman photographed in the Kibera slums in Kenya

Alicja Kwade - "WeltenLinie" (2020), a disorienting and at the same time aesthetically engaging walk-through experience which messed around with my perceptions as much as it did everyone else's in terms of uncertainty about which were empty spaces and which mirrored

Lee Ufan - "Dialogue" (2017), a series of individual marks combined to appear like a single brushstroke (previously)

Cerith Wyn Evans - "C = O = D = A" (2019-20)

Angela Tiatia - "Narcissus", 2019, in which "Behind the kneeling self-absorbed figure of Narcissus, which specifically references Caravaggio's Narcissus, 1597-99, a cast of forty Narcissi performs acts of self-worship, ritual, joy, love, lust, complacency, despair and disregard" in an era of social media - made me think of a more overtly contemporary (albeit with much older reference points) Alex Prager

(w/ Hayley)

(previous Triennial: visits 1, 2, 3, 4)

Valeria Luiselli - Lost Children Archive

There's something elusive about Lost Children Archive, arising from its many effacements - the namelessness of the family whose road trip across America it focuses on, the slipperiness of the present tense in which it begins and the story-telling mode into which it shifts, the elisions inherent in its use of short sections and intertexts, the deliberate absence of the migrant children whose journeys from the 'northern triangle' of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to the US-Mexico border are set up as the book's nominal subject. The elusiveness is apt, though, and of a piece with the mysterious, poetic tone in which it works. 

I never entirely sank into it, nor loved it as much as I'd expected to - and I found it slightly jarringly over-determined in the way all of its plotting and much of its characterisation connected more or less directly to its themes - but still it held many pleasures, and that central concern, and the way it deals with the worlds of children, together with the power and delicacy of many of the individual scenes, go a long way.

2020: "Potential"

In line with this year's general blurriness, it felt like I was listening to a lot of this music all the way through 2020, give or take. Jason Isbell and Margo Price were the big ones - two excellent albums from two consistently excellent artists. Although maybe Fetch the Bolt Cutters sounds the most like 2020 to me, and it was also, by the end, somewhat slyly a year of Phoebe Bridgers.

(on spotify)

1. Dreamsicle - Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Reunions (Southeastern, 2020)

2. Held Down - Laura Marling
Song for Our Daughter (Chrysalis, 2020)

3. Circle the Drain - Soccer Mommy
Color Theory (Loma Vista, 2020)

4. Shameika - Fiona Apple
Fetch the Bolt Cutters (Epic, 2020)

5. Love Song - Miranda Lambert
Revolution (Columbia, 2009)

6. I'd Die for You - Margo Price
That's How Rumors Get Started (Loma Vista, 2020)

7. This Is Me Trying - Taylor Swift
Folklore (Republic, 2020)

8. Me in 20 Years - Moses Sumney
grae (Jagjaguwar, 2020)

9. Graceland Too - Phoebe Bridgers
Punisher (Dead Oceans, 2020)

10. Sunblind - Fleet Foxes
Shore (Anti-, 2020)

11. Idoru - Grimes
Miss Anthropocene (4AD, 2020)

The Letter String Quartet - All the Stories

Elements of minimalism and folk, organic and treated, with vocals. A gift from Kim.

Bendigo Art Gallery

First gallery trip in many long months.

The exhibitions had a strong Indigenous theme running through them - not all but most.

Void

Contemporary Indigenous art speaking to the theme of 'void'. Two of the most striking had a superficial resemblance to notable Western art movements of the 20th century in Op Art and Land Art while actually arriving in a very different space.

Doreen Reid Nakamarra - "Untitled" (2006) - designs associated with the rockhole site of Marrapinti, west of Pollock Hills in WA, the tali (sandhills) and puli (rocky outcrops) that surround Marrapinti

Hayley Millar-Baker - "Meeyn Meerreeng" (Country at Night) (2017)

Also James Tylor's photos (2013-14) with their dark geometric excisions, and Mabel Juli's iconographic night sky "Garnkiny Ngarranggarni" (2006).

Paul Guest Prize 2020

A prize for drawing, which seemed broadly defined with many of the works having drawing as only one component of themselves.

Richard Lewer - "2020" (2020)

Zoe Amor - "Architecture of a Dream - The Gift I + II" (2020)

David Sequeira - "Song Cycle" (2020) - each one is titled, eg "Song for Arvo Part", on sheet music paper

In addition, "Piinpi" - contemporary Indigenous fashion exhibition - which I didn't engage much with.

(w/ R)

Blade Runner 2049

Not exactly subtle, but strong-lined and persuasive, and graceful with what it is. A particularly impressive feat is the emotional weight it wrings from the relationship between K and Joi.

(last time)

I, Tonya

This is a snappy take on Tonya Harding and 'the incident', foregrounding class, competing stories and human fallibility. Good performance by Margot Robbie goes a long way to rendering Harding if not exactly entirely sympathetic then certainly recognisable as a product of circumstances as well as individual choices. Alison Janney indelible as the mother too.

The War on Drugs - Live Drugs

The War on Drugs are a band whose music is made for the live format - large, expansive, sweeping rock and roll with long builds and extended climaxes and outros - and they come through strongly on this set, which was compiled across multiple shows as is often the way. 

There's a few songs from each of Lost in the Dream and A Deeper Understanding, including several of their most exciting - "An Ocean Between the Waves", "Pain", "Strangest Thing", "Red Eyes", "Thinking of a Place", "Eyes to the Wind", "Under Pressure", "In Reverse" - and an older one ("Buenos Aires Beach") and a cover of Warren Zevon's "Accidentally Like a Martyr" in the middle. 

No revelations in these versions, which are pretty faithful and just a touch more earthy and organic, but a general slightly new perspective on all of them, with a few bonus little details like the clarity of the "be the writer of your own story" refrain throughout "Strangest Thing" and the airy grandeur of the saxophone wherever it shows up.