This is my second post on the Triennial at the NGV. A first and third one are here and here. It finishes on the 7th of April 2024; I encourage you to visit at least once. We’ve been twice as I can only manage about an hour in a gallery! All the quotes below come from the accompanying notes.
I loved a room full of paintings by Richard Lewer, a New Zealand artist who lives in Melbourne. There are twelve works painted in 2022, each made with synthetic polymer paint on canvas, depicting the creation story of Adam and Eve. Maybe they resonated because the story is so familiar! it’s one that has served as a source of inspiration and commentary by artists throughout the history of Western art. These works are displayed around the Antwerp altarpiece that’s in the NGV’s permanent collection. I photographed ten of the twelve – should have completed the set. The gallery is hoping to acquire this series. I hope they do.
I couldn’t quite work out the order in which they are hung – the signage wasn’t clear. I think this is first. God made the earth and the heavens … Then God formed a man from the dust of the earth…
God planted a garden in the East, Eden. There he put the man … and made all kinds of trees grow … In the middle of the garden was the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Out of the ground God formed all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky.
God said ‘It’s not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him’… God made a woman from Adam’s rib. He named her Eve.
Adam and Eve were both naked and felt no shame.
The serpent convinces the woman she will not die [as God had told Adam] and will instead gain wisdom from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Eve takes the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and shares the fruit with Adam. All of these paintings remind me of Arthur Boyd, but especially this one.
Adam and Eve hear the sound of God and they hid amongst the trees because they were naked. God said ‘How did you know you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree I commanded you not to eat from?’
God’s punishment: he said to the woman I will make your pains in childbearing severe and with painful labour you will give birth; to the man you will work the fields by the sweat of your brow and you will eat your food until you return to the dust of the ground from which you came.
And so they both were banished from the Garden of Eden. Incredibly powerful paintings.
The next gallery continued the religious theme. Garden of Love Lost by Diana Al-Hadid, Syrian born living in the USA, is made of skeins of dripped sculptural threads, created from polymer gypsum, fibreglass, paint and gold leaf.
It’s placed in front of a series of religious sculptures held by the gallery, usually on plinths but they’ve been placed on the floor. You can see one here.
This is the back of it. Amazing!
The grotto features the outline of the Virgin Mary cradling the crucified Jesus, inspired by Hans Memling’s painting The Man of Sorrows in the arms of the Virgin which is in the NGV’s collection.
You can see the likeness of the image – particularly the Virgin’s head and the hands of Jesus – clearly here. Everything about this exhibit was beautiful!
We are now down on the ground floor which is where we started on our first visit. I went through quickly not distracted by bananas on walls – another exhibit people who like to mock the Triennial like to point to! Just ignore what you’re not interested in! I had heard about and was keen to see Mun-dirra (Maningrida fish fence).
It’s by the community of Manigrida in Central-West Arnhem Land. It’s 100 metres long and is very inventively displayed. It took two years to produce, and reflects the creativity and collaboration that underpins Burarra art and culture.
Wonderful colours, amazing work and all beautifully displayed.
For Burarra women weaving is not just a means of creating functional objects, it is also a way for individuals to express their identity and cultural heritage. There were variations in style. This is a tight weave. Look at the detail, imagine the work!
While this one is looser – can you see my beloved through it?
Somewhere moving between the galleries on the ground floor I was taken with this. It spoke to me because I have a lunch group called What’s Left. For a start I thought it was a real body hanging there! It’s by Elmgreen & Dragset a Danish and a Norwegian artist both living in Germany, called What’s left, fig. 2 2023, silicone, fabric, metal. A bit macabre!
I thought this a very beautiful work, Flare (Oceania) 2022, colour digital simulation, silent, looped. It’s by an Irish born artist, John Gerrard whose work offers us a perspective on our world through the prism of its technological medium: the same software that enables the operations of entertainment, industry, and even warfare. In the gallery the flame is moving and it was quite soothing sitting watching it.
Now it is time for a concluding, third post on the Triennial.
The Man of Sorrows is one of my favourite paintings in the gallery so we always like to go and visit. Imagine my display when we couldn’t see it on the wall… then discovered as a part of a contemporary work. Had a long conversation with the Art Gallery of Ballarat’s previous director, Gordon Morrison, on the merits or otherwise of this work. He was strongly against “meh. imagine if a sacred Churinga stone from Pintupi or Anangu Country was ’appropriated’ into a someone’s ’artistic statement’ …I think it is one of the finest works in the NGV collection, and it’s the height of hypocrisy to appropriate it. Imagine doing that to a 12th century statue of Vishnu or Buddha?…funny how the ’widen the audience’ argument doesn’t get used in the context of non-Christian art. I know I’m beginning to sound like Andrew Bolt here, but I do think there’s a double standard going on.” An interesting discussion to be had really.
I did love the Fish Net You could feel the sway and see how it would herd the fish and Flare was mesmerising. Didn’t see Adam and Eve, his style reminds me of a friends artworks and maybe I had seen instagram posts with What’s left that it had lost the element of surprise.
Glad we went back for a second viewing.