According to curator Gabrielle Pizzi, “Beyond Myth and Reality,” is an attempt to invite “a re-assessment of aboriginal peoples as we approach the end of the 20th century.” Currently on show at the Australian Embassy, this exhibition focuses on contemporary photography, painting and sculpture by leading aboriginal artists.
Leah King-Smith, who has a foot in both black and white Australian culture, has generated wonderfully evocative images by taking 19th century British Colonial photographs of aborigines — originally intended as scientific tools of study — and overlaying them with contemporary pictures of places, people, fauna and flora, creating a haunting impression of the past watching over the present: a brooding effect in which the elders are seen as witnesses.
In contrast, Harry Wedge’s vibrant, childish, narrative paintings are accompanied by barely literate personal stories that nevertheless grab the viewer by the hand, guiding his thoughts and feelings. Although this sometimes reduces the work to illustrative kitsch, like most kitsch, it’s fun, colorful and engaging. He uses Western artistic techniques, incorporating traditional Wiradjuri imagery to make comments on a broad range of issues that concern aboriginal people today, particularly “koories” (alienated, urbanized aborigines): their culture, AIDS, domestic and sexual violence, environmental degradation, drugs, identity...
Almost as interesting as the exhibition itself is the way in which it has been packaged and presented to the French public: in connection with the selling of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Any exposition linking aboriginal artists with a government-funded publicity campaign remains, to a certain extent, suspect.
Such controversy is reinforced by the association of the aboriginal exhibits with a mural by Ken Done, a popular Australian “tea-towel and greeting card” artist who built up a big audience in the ’80s. Hanging from the embassy façade, rue de la Fédération, the work celebrates the games with cheery kookaburra bird-style clichés that appear to mock sacred aboriginal iconography.
Another irony of the exhibition is that these aboriginal artists, descendants of a race decimated by its contact with Europeans 200 years ago, are displaying their work in a location where, only 57 years ago, thousands of Parisian Jews were shunted off in railway carriages to nazi death camps. The Australian Embassy is built on railway yards across from the infamous Vélodrome d’Hiver or Vél d'Hiv’, a cycling stadium that was used to hold Jews of all ages awaiting deportation. In this context, the Australian Embassy seems to take on the importance of a “sacred site.”
Finally, there are the aboriginal sculptures — the highlight of the show -— produced by “outback” artists employing traditional wood carving techniques. The making of art by these masters is confined to special, out-of-the-way places where creative energies are still joined to the forces of magic and ritual. They contain a force, a drama, a compelling mystery which is justly underscored by their presence in the post-modernist space of the Embassy foyer. Don’t miss the beautiful stork near the auditorium. And beware of the Mimih Spirits, female supernatural beings responsible for initiating tribal magicians into the secret knowledge of ritual songs and dances and designating the locations of sacred ceremonial sites. You don’t mess with the Mimih...
"Beyond Myth and Reality,” till Feb18, daily from 9am to 6pm except weekends and public holidays, Australian Embassy, 4, rue Jean Rey, 15e Mº Bir-Hakeim.
Champs of sculpture
Even in the pouring rain people stop to look at the sculpture along the Champs-Elysées where more than 50 works by contemporary artists from around the world transform the famous avenue into a giant sculpture garden. This much talked about outdoor exhibition is being billed as a sequel to the modern sculpture show that drew record crowds in 1996.
John Kelly’s “Cow in a Tree” has caused several traffic jams. The seemingly outlandish work is explained in simple terms by the artists who says “when it floods in Australia you often see a cow caught up a tree.” Another eye-catching work is “The Hotdog Vendor” by American artist Rod Grooms, who celebrates everyday heroes of modern life.
The outdoor exhibit will be on view through Nov15.
