Last Ride in a Hot Air Balloon- The 4th Auckland Triennial.
Last Ride is the 4th auckland triennial, and situates its works around ideas of risk, travel, and economic climate.
One of the artist i liked a lot was Shilpa Gupta, her works Singing Cloud and Untitled (airport split flap display board), were the ones that related to the tittle and theme of the triennial the most for me. The interaction Singing Cloud has with it's audience is quite intriguing. The ominous cloud of microphones makes noises which are very hard to pick up. They lure you in to try and make sence of it all but this is to no avail. The hand out says that the cloud was made after the 2008 bombay bombings, I like it because it has a very scary presance in the room, yet it invites you closer. The cloud can be compared to a cloud of smoke after a bomb has gone off. This coupled with the air port flip board which rolls over very scary statements makes a very bold statement about the risk of travel. Both these works use common objects to portray their idea, and both use noises to atract the audiences attention.
I think these to works were the most succssesful in the triennial, I did not like Alicia Frankovich's works. I struggled to link the works to what the gallery staff were saying. Also I felt that the works did not tie in well with the theme of risk and travel, i know that the human body has a key part to play in risk and travel, however the works did not even hint towards it.
As for a Maori representation I think it would have been good, but I think it would have been hard to intergrate Maori work into the brief. I havn't been influenced by much maori work, and don't have a very good understanding of what I have seen. However in saying this I still think the breif would have had to been alterd to suit a Maori influence. Maybe this is why there was no Maori work.
We fight Rebels, and blow up Alderon. It's what we do best.
Thanks Max,
ReplyDeleteCouple of things, I agree with you about the Frankovich work being hard to fit into the brief, but you could have mentioned that she was a gymnast, and usually did risky performances with her own body (as I showed in the lecture). Also, the thing I got out of it in reference to travel, was the Martini bottle being about duty free shopping, because there was also that stand of shopping bags, it made me think of airport travel, and what it's like being a globe-trotting artist, living between Melbourne and Berlin, and then performing in NZ, etc...
Finally, I was going to say that this blog would have been a good place to talk about your experience of the exchange work with Tiffany Singh. I know it's not part of the question - but you can make it fit, describing how her work is part of relational aesthetics, and that this is an artform that engages audiences maybe more than the Triennial.
Never mind this time, but just be aware that you can be more creative with how you slant these entries to respond to what YOU find interesting...
TX