Patricia Piccinini 'The stags' 2008. ABS plastic, automotive paint, plastic, stainless steel, leather, rubber tyres. Courtesy: Tolarno Galleries.
I walked over the bridge to GoMA feeling the sun burning the skin I’d foolishly left exposed, worrying about skin cancer and global warming. It was the end of the week and I was tired. I left a few hours later and the world looked different. As I stepped through orange flowers raining down from a gnarled old tree, I was struck by their beauty and the way they ‘littered’ the ground in the most delightful way. The sky was a blazing shade of blue, the buildings stood out in sharp relief and I couldn’t quite tell if I was looking at real life or a vivid photograph where all the colours have been concentrated and exaggerated …
Poetic fantasy? Maybe, but, apart from the colours and the beauty I was suddenly seeing (my eyes must have been blinkered before), the most striking difference was emotional. I practically skipped out of the gallery. Where before all had been negative, now everything I saw delighted me. Optimism had struck.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that Optimism is some new wonder drug but it’s something far more ephemeral. Something that will be with us only until February. Optimism is the new exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA). It’s the first part of the ‘Contemporary Australia’ series of exhibitions and I hope you’ll visit and feel its effects for yourself.
When the good folk at GoMA decided to theme an exhibition around the topic of optimism, they had no idea that it would be so timely, that it would open at a time when ‘recession’ is on everyone’s lips and the world appears darker and more frightening. It came, in part, from a reaction to the many exhibitions where viewers leave feeling shell-shocked and bombarded, from the sense of bleakness and despair that art conveys so well.
They invited 67 Australian artists to participate and to create works based on the theme of optimism. As one of the artists noted, going to the studio every day to try to create art is an act of optimism in its own right!
One of the most striking aspects of this incredible and vast exhibition is the use of colour. Colour is perhaps one of the most obvious visual cues for optimism and there are many pieces that feature bright, vibrant, glorious colour. Robert Owen’s magnificent work is a particularly good example. He joined 12 giant panels together, each one a colour graph of his emotions over a 24-hour period.
Funnily enough, one of the most optimistic pieces of all is Tony Albert’s piece, Sorry. A short time ago it would have had negative connotations, but now it’s one of the most hopeful words in our language.
There is too much in this exhibition to take in during a whirlwind trip. You’ll need to devote at least half a day to get the most out of it. I’ll be coming back with my children because I know they’re going to adore Kids: Contemporary Australia – I was in there wishing I could be a kid again to participate fully in the hands-on displays. Read our guide to Optimism for kids.
You don’t have to be a kid to have fun. There are labyrinths, forests and mazes to lose yourself. My favourite was Kathy Temin’s white forest. It was eerie, still and fantastical. Great, white trees that were soft and cuddly urged me to touch them while repelling me with their Dr Seuss-like cactus shapes. White planks were neatly stacked for people to sit and ponder the vision before them.
There was so much to love and be inspired by in this exhibition. Who could ignore the Kayili artists and their old car bonnets covered in intricate paintings of land and story? Or the most impressive and huge piece in this exhibition – ‘Not Under My Roof’? This piece is the floor from a 1937 Queensland home hung on a wall so you can view it as an art piece, each room delineated with its different lino pattern and the cut off walls. The feat of engineering required to cut the house from its floor and then hang the floor on a wall is mind-blowing.
Don’t miss Optimism – it’s a free exhibition and it’s on display until February 22, 2009.
I wonderfully light-hearted and cheerful exhibition. People were walking all over the museum with big smiles on their faces ... but cheerful doesn't necessarily mean slight, this is a show full of quality work, but with the emphasis on humour instead of shock and gloom ... and as a recent settler in Queensland, I thought the quality of the exhibition spaces and the atmosphere left its Sydney and Melbourne rivals for dead.