New Breed choreographer confronts the future; surf’s up at Hazelhurst; Van Gogh for Canberra
Australia’s next-gen choreographers strut their stuff; Hazelhurst in Gymea surfs a wave of nostalgia; National Gallery of Australia to borrow Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers.
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DANCE
Sydney Dance Company’s New Breed, from tonight (November 28) until December 7, Carriageworks, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh, $35, sydneydancecompany.com
Whether a robotic car would swerve to avoid pedestrians, or would prioritise the safety of its occupants by running the pedestrians over, is a ghastly dilemma that might not seem to have much to do with dance. But Josh Mu is fascinated by possible human futures, especially darkly dystopian ones. And he believes they are great subjects for his own choreography.
Mu is one of the four young dancer/choreographers whose work will be showcased in New Breed, which starts tonight at Carriageworks. Now in its sixth year, New Breed was created by Sydney Dance Company artistic director Rafael Bonachela to uncover emerging choreographers and give them the chance to create a work on the company’s extraordinary dancers.
Last year’s New Breed was riveting, with explosively contemporary ideas about the human body’s potential for expression. This year promises to be just as vibrant.
Apart from Mu, the 2019 participants are Lauren Langlois with her work Creeper, Ariella Casu (Arise) and Davide Di Giovanni (In Walked Bud). Mu and Langlois are flatmates in Melbourne, and another member of their household is Mu’s fiance, dancer Marlo Benjamin. Marlo has been assisting Mu in the rehearsal room and her father Huey Benjamin wrote the music Mu is using for his New Breed piece. Titled ZERO, it will be performed by 11 members of Sydney Dance Company.
“I’ve been really fascinated with where humankind is heading to and what possible futures are in store for us,” Mu says. Reading the books Sapiens and Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari were particularly inspiring for him.
“(They are) all about the hypotheses of potential outcomes of where humanity is going, whether it be through evolution or technology or gene splicing,” he says.
Mu enjoys wrangling with ideas such as whether any future immortality would be the province only of those rich enough to afford it. He is also a keen computer programmer, a sideline which tends to inflect his choreography.
“I’m a coder. I’ve made quite a few websites and apps and algorithmic trading bots that run in the cloud. That relates to my choreographic practice, because code can also be like poetry,” Mu says.
Mu was born in Darwin where he and some mates became self-taught breakdancers and hip hop dancers while still at high school.
“We were pooling our money and buying VHS tapes of breakdancers to stop/start on a
tape recorder to learn their movements,” he says. He started teaching dance while still at school, and later studied at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. Mu finally determined to become a professional dancer when he appeared in the Bellingen arts festival, Stamping Ground, in northern NSW.
Mu went on to dance with Shaun Parker and Company, Chunky Move, Force Majeure and Dance North, among other companies. He now sees choreography as a major part of his future.
“Now I’m getting to make what I would like to see,” he says.
EXHIBITION
Southern Swell, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre; from Saturday until February 2, 2020, free, hazelhurst.com.au
It started life with a farmer at the wheel and a load of hay in the back, bumping across paddocks near Swan Hill in Victoria. Now this lovingly restored WB 1981 Holden panel van will ignite memories of many a coastal road-trip when it takes centre stage from Saturday in an exhibition that goes to the heart of Sutherland Shire’s first love — surfing.
The show, Southern Swell, takes over Hazelhurst Arts Centre in Gymea where curator Carrie Kibbler has worked with Cronulla surf photographer John Veage to source vintage surfboards, classic surfing photographs and personal memorabilia from locals who responded to a media call-out.
Veteran surfer Jeff Killick was quick to offer his beloved panel van, a vehicle that still “drives itself” down the Pacific Highway and which offers him an escape route when he needs to pull on his boardies and hit the beach. And yes, just like the old days, Killick sleeps in the back. He still has the original rear camping tent, too.
Killick bought the van for spare parts for his Sandman van, but soon realised he’d found himself a jewel. He changed the tail lights and front end to match the rare 1975 HJ Holden Sandman model and painted it authentic Sandman mint julep. (The van was originally white.)
“I sourced some classic ’70s curtains and had them cut to fit the windows, changed the wheels and put in a stereo. It hasn’t missed a beat in years and is great for cruising down the coast,” Killick says. “When I want to get out of the hustle and bustle I throw my board in the back and hit the road with my tragic ’80s music blaring with the windows down while I sweat to the seat, which is common with the old vinyl benchies.”
Other prime bits of memorabilia in the show are a 1976 Surf Champ pinball machine, and a curated selection of vintage, retro and recent surfboards dating back to the 1920s. The photography display will feature images shot by Jack Eden and Bob Weeks of top local surfers, including Garry Birdsall, Frank Latta and world champion Bobby Brown.
On top of that, Kibbler selected 15 local artists to contribute work. As someone who is married to a surfer and has done “the obligatory surf trip up the east coast in a Kombi”, Kibbler wanted to include artist/surfers only. Given that criteria, Thirroul artist Nicole Kelly, whose coastal painting series, Notes From The Water, was being installed this week, was an obvious choice. “I drive to Cronulla or Garie every morning,” Kelly says.
Young filmmaker Cameron Staunton will show his new film, 15 minutes of unseen surf footage shot over five years around Cronulla. Staunton reckons lots of surfers will come to the show, curious to see if they’re in the film. “It should be a nice little surprise for them,” Staunton says. “I’ve got, like, 15 hard drives of this footage.”
Also on view will be Henry Jock Walker’s wetsuit painting collaboration with young surfer Jarvis Earle. The blurb about Walker on his gallery’s website says the artist has developed “a national nomadic practice, utilising his Toyota HiAce van as an ever-changing exhibition/studio/performance site and mobile core of operations”.
Veage says surfing in southern Sydney was established when the legendary Duke Kahanamoku arrived from Hawaii for a demonstration in 1915. The craze reached an important crest in 1956 when American surfers Greg Noll and Mike Bright paddled out with Malibu boards “in what is now acknowledged as the birth of modern surfing in Australia”.
NATIONAL GALLERY ANNOUNCES 2020 PROGRAM
nga.gov.au
Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers will pay us a visit from London. A specially commissioned animatronic artwork by US artist Jordan Wolfson will test our tolerance to the weird and creepy. Women artists will be totally put on a pedestal. And a touring hot air balloon will take culture to the Australian skies.
Those items were highlights of this morning’s reveal by National Gallery of Australia director Nick Mitzevich of the 2020 season of art and ideas that will energise the Canberra institution he was appointed to lead only last year.
Vincent’s Sunflowers are coming courtesy of the big international show of 2020. Titled Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London, the exhibition spans 450 years and more than 60 paintings by revered European artists including Titian, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Velazquez, Goya, Turner, Renoir, Cezanne and Gauguin. Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London will open on November 13 next year and run until March 14, 2021.
Switching gears completely, the NGA will also be showing some of the world’s newest art. New York-born Jordan Wolfson is known for his animatronic, robotic artworks such as Coloured Sculpture (where a demented puppet is dragged around and dropped by heavy chains) and Female Figure (a sinister, hypersexualised female puppet in a witch mask which dances to pop songs).
The NGA has commissioned a new work from Wolfson. “He’s an artist that really rethinks what it is to be an artist in the 21st century,” Mitzevich said. “We’re looking forward to presenting Jordan and his ideas to the Australian public.”
The work the gallery commissioned and has bought from Wolfson will go into the national collection. It will be “even more ambitious” than Coloured Sculpture and Female Figure, Mitzevich said. He said the “big reveal” of the new Wolfson work will be in 2021 and the artist will be present.
The NGA this year announced its Know My Name project which aims to restore women to their rightful places among the ranks of Australia’s top artists. In 2020, that project will be “at the heart” of everything the gallery does, Mitzevich said.
“What we’re seeing is institutions (around the world) reviewing and revising their collections and rethinking how to tell the story of art history, and in doing so the contributions of women artists are critical,” he said.
Exhibitions on this theme in 2020 will include Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now, which will include well-known names as well as those deserving of more recognition. The Body Electric will present work by female artists on the themes of sex, pleasure and desire. And Tjanpi Desert Weavers will present a new, large-scale installation illustrating the Seven Sisters dreaming story.
Know My Name will also present Australian artist Patricia Piccinini’s anticipated new work Skywhalepapa — a massive hot air balloon to be a companion piece to the artist’s 2013 hot air balloon Skywhale.
Together, the two whale balloons will be launched in Canberra before floating across the skies of Australia as an NGA “travelling exhibition”, Mitzevich said.
“I’m looking into the future and I want our site in Canberra to be the mothership and to have things floating around or travelling around the country and engaging with people regardless of where they live,” the director said.
“I want to make sure that we are generous in the way that we might interact with our audience beyond Canberra, and the hot air balloon is a symbol of that intent.”
Mitzevich said the acquisition of the Wolfson work is another pointer to how he sees the gallery’s future developing.
“It’s a major new commission and it points to where art is going. For me, it’s very important the national collection define that. So it’s part sculpture, part experiential work, part performance, and it’s an animatronic, robotic work,” he said.
“But when you’ve got (Jackson Pollock’s) Blue Poles and Brancusi’s Bird In Space in your collection, you have to be really ambitious.”
Among other exhibitions to be seen in 2020 will be the first Australian solo exhibition by the famous Chinese contemporary artist, Xu Zhen. The exhibition will open in March but the artist himself, who dislikes travel, will not be present. The exhibition will showcase Xu Zhen’s sculptural installations, videos and performance works “that challenge cultural assumptions and question social taboos”.
The NGA will revisit Australian art critic Robert Hughes’ famous publication and screen exposition, Shock of the New, to show how much has changed in the last four decades.
“When Hughes was writing Shock of the New, the geographical centres were still quite firmly established in Europe and America. But what we’re seeing now is where something’s produced is less important. What’s important is how it reflects the world we’re in right now,” Mitzevich said.
Another interesting exhibition next year will showcase works on paper by American Abstract Expressionist artist Joan Mitchell who settled in the countryside near Paris in 1968 and remained there for life. Her works are atmospheric and colourful, and these ones are drawn from the NGA’s own Kenneth Tyler Collection.
Nick Mitzevich said the National Gallery is experiencing a 10 per cent rise in visitation since last year and will extend its educational and family offerings in 2020, including new programs such as Art Babe (for parents and carers with small children), Night Shift (an up-late program of talks, music and art-making) and Art IRL (In Real Life) for 13 to 18-year-olds.
Next up on the National Gallery’s slate is the exhibition Matisse and Picasso (opening December 13 and running until April 13, 2020) in which the rivalry between the two masters is examined.
DANCE
Dance Rites, Sydney Opera House Forecourt; Saturday and Sunday, free, all ages, sydneyoperahouse.com
FRESH from dancing at Uluru and being “pretty happy” to celebrate the end of tourists climbing the famous desert landmark, senior Mutitjulu woman Rene Kulitja is preparing for her next performance — at the Sydney Opera House this weekend.
Kulitja will join more than 300 performers in 21 groups from all over Australia competing in
Dance Rites, the annual celebration of First Nations’ culture now in its fifth year. Kulitja says her 15-member dance group, Mutitjulu Mob, will perform the key desert story of the Seven Sisters.
According to the Opera House, Kulitja is sometimes known as the Queen of the Desert. And it’s easy to see why. In 1999 her designs were splashed across the exterior of the first Qantas plane to carry indigenous culture across the international skies. Kulitja, who travels the world, says she flew on her Qantas plane at least once.
As well as dancing and painting, Kulitja is a member of the Central Australian Women’s Choir and as such she has performed in London, Germany, New York, Washington DC, Alaska and Italy.
Kulitja is sure to be a central figure at Dance Rites, which takes place in the open air and culminates on Sunday with the final judging and awarding of prizes. The Rite Of Passage award will be bestowed on a dance troupe’s outstanding contribution to revitalising cultural knowledge and practices. Dance Rites also includes a professional dance program staggered throughout the heats and finals of the competition.