MCA’s Primavera; NGA’s new learning centre; Cirque’s crazy imagination
From young artists taking over the MCA, to the astonishing feats of Cirque du Soleil at the Entertainment Quarter, October is another big month in Sydney’s arts world.
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CONTEMPORARY ART
Primavera 2019: Young Australian Artists, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, The Rocks, October 11 to February 9, 2020, free, mca.com.au
Each year for 28 years, Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art has sampled the work of Australian artists aged 35 and under, and has presented a selection of those pieces under the banner of its exhibition, Primavera. The concept was initiated by Sydney doctor Ted Jackson and his wife Cynthia in memory of their daughter Belinda, who died in 1990.
Belinda’s favourite season was spring, or primavera, so the exhibition blossoms afresh each year with a peek at what’s being done in young Australian studios right now. Every Primavera inducts a new cohort of artists into Cynthia Jackson’s second family (Ted Jackson died in 2008).
That family already boasts impressive names. Shaun Gladwell (Primavera 2003) was in the Venice Biennale and his solo exhibition, Pacific Undertow, closed at the MCA this week. Fiona Lowry (2005) won the 2014 Archibald Prize. And there are many more. Each year’s Primavera has a guest curator and this year it is Sydney artist Mitch Cairns. Cairns chose seven artists for his exhibition: Sydney’s Mitchel Cumming, Zoe Marni Robertson and Coen Young; Melbourne’s Lucina Lane and Aodhan Madden (Madden lives in Paris); and Rosina Gunjarrwanga and Kenan Namunjdja from Maningrida in the Northern Territory.
The artists were in Sydney this week for Cynthia Jackson’s annual Primavera artists’ dinner, and to oversee the installation of their works — a giant banner hung on the facade of the MCA facing Circular Quay, in Robertson’s case. Inside the building, Robertson’s works include a new video piece, Is This Still Life, in which the artist diarises episodes from her unusual life story. Robertson grew up in Sydney where her parents ran clubs in Oxford St. As a teenager she was bedridden for two years with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (chronic fatigue syndrome), a period in which she fell into the habit of writing and reading — processes that still inform her work.
Robertson says her video does not need to be consumed whole. “It’s written so you can walk in and out and just get a fragment of something,” she says. “It’s quite political. The lived experience of politics. That’s usually what I write about — how these things affect people’s everyday lives.” Cairns says his Primavera has no overarching theme or narrative. But there is a certain quietude to the works in the show that is also found
in the artist’s own paintings. “No one in the exhibition has hit the emergency button. Everyone has a beautiful measure and speed, and I think that shows,” Cairns says.
A small 2013 flower painting by Lucina Lane is probably the oldest piece in the exhibition, and some of the works were especially made for Primavera. While the artists are young, some of them have been exhibiting for at least 10 years. “It’s long enough to have really developed a practice where you really know what you want the work to do,” Cairns says.
Primavera is Kenan Namunjdja’s first appearance in a Sydney exhibition, although Rosina Gunjarrwanga’s work was shown in 2018 at Michael Reid Sydney, at the same time as her uncle, renowned Maningrida bark painter John Mawurndjul, was the subject of a major touring show at the MCA.
Rosina’s mother, the artist Susan Marawarr, is Mawurndjul’s sister. Marawarr’s work is also held in state and national galleries. Fascinatingly, it was Kenan Namunjdja’s grandfather Peter Marralwanga who mentored John Mawurndjul many years ago. Tradition, whether in Sydney, Melbourne or Maningrida, continues.
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OPEN DAY
Tim Fairfax Learning Gallery and Studio, Open Studio, National Gallery of Australia, ACT; Saturday October 12, 10am-4pm, nga.gov.au
The National Gallery of Australia is inviting the public to visit this Saturday to help inaugurate its new Tim Fairfax Learning Gallery and Studio. A wide range of activities will be provided to celebrate an expansion in what director Nick Mitzevich believes is the crucial area of hands-on education for visitors of all ages. “Education is a significant part of our agenda and to be relevant in the 21st century we need to have specialised learning facilities in the gallery, as well as dedicated online and travelling programs,” Mitzevich says.
Central to the new space’s ethos is giving visitors the chance to get creative and make their
own art. To that end, apart from the studio itself, there will be “mobile learning studios” that
can be moved between various exhibition spaces. Special activities taking place on Saturday will include art-making workshops, performances, family tours, talks and drawing.
There will also be poetry writing sessions, with inspiration provided by Swiss artist Urs Fischer’s somewhat macabre wax sculpture Francesco, which is locked in a continuous cycle of burning down and being remade. Located in a prominent position in the NGA, Francesco has been a selfie magnet since being ceremonially lit in March. But Francesco is not forever. He will be extinguished on November 10. Visitors to the new learning gallery and studio can also take in the NGA’s current exhibition, Contemporary Worlds: Indonesia, which is on, free, until October 27.
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CIRCUS REVIEW
Kurios, by Circque du Soleil, is on at the Entertainment Quarter until November 24.
Kurios is a staggering feat of the artistic and athletic imagination with a pseudoscientific aesthetic that doffs its hat to Jules Verne but spins off into a realm all its own. Whether it was tiny Mini Lily emerging from the diving helmet belly of the character of Mr Microcosmos, or the astounding power and grace of the double act in which men soared high in unison on single-handed straps, Kurios never stopped giving.
The opening scene in The Seeker’s vintage laboratory featured endearing robot characters with fencing masks for faces, setting an atmosphere of inquiry and curiosity that spawned a sequence of extraordinarily skilled acts of strength, flexibility, co-ordination, comedy and bravery.
Kurios, The Cabinet of Curiosities, opened in Sydney’s Entertainment Quarter last night. Written and directed by Michel Laprise, the show is the latest Cirque du Soleil production to visit Sydney and follows previous Cirque creations to be seen here including OVO, Varekai and Saltimbanco.
Kurios is marked by Cirque’s signature athleticism and attention to visual detail, but has a character all its own. The sets and costumes brought to mind such influences as A Series of Unfortunate Events and, as mentioned, Jules Verne’s adventure stories including Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea and Around The World In Eighty Days.
The mad professor hallmarks of the show drew a special audience contingent from a local steampunk society, and its members couldn’t have been disappointed in the show’s gramophone-era sensibility.
As for the acts themselves, the only one that could do with a little tightening was the invisible circus. Everything else was brilliant. A giant mechanical hand crawled on stage, becoming a platform for a slithering, fluid performance by four contortionists dressed as electric eels.
Acrobats launched themselves into the air from a huge trampoline net, a yoyo master turned this humblest of toys into an object of amazement, and bodies defied gravity to become towering human pyramids. A live band and singer drove the action along. The costumes, props and sets were fabulous. And the dignity and beauty of Mini Lili, whose home in Mr Microcosmos’ belly could be glimpsed in all its Victorian-era cosiness, was a true highlight of the night.