Kaldor Public Art Projects
Blowing our tiny minds since 1969
A FEW YEARS ago, art collector, businessman and philanthropist John Kaldor was searching for the perfect coastal site to stage an art project. He found himself in Little Bay, about 25 minutes south of Sydney, staring across familiar rocky coastline and imposing cliffs. The sense of déjà vu was palpable. “I looked at those cliffs and just thought: John, you must’ve been out of your cotton-picking mind.”
Little Bay is the site that altered not only the course of Kaldor’s life but arguably the course of contemporary art in Australia. In 1969, he invited then up-andcoming artists Christo and JeanneClaude to create an art project in Sydney. The resulting work, ‘Wrapped Coast’, was the biggest artwork ever seen in the world at the time. Working with a group of volunteers, Christo and JeanneClaude wrapped the entire two and a half kilometres of Little Bay coastline with white fabric and rope, creating an otherworldly landscape out of a rugged place. In an age when art was almost exclusively something you saw in a gallery, a work that took a full hour just to traverse and view was controversial. Kaldor and the artists were mercilessly mocked by the local media, and there were even attempts to sabotage the artwork by night-time vandals. Religious figures objected to the work, saying that the resources being spent on it would be put to better use at the local hospital. But the scale of the achievement and the magnetism of the artists drew enormous crowds, and a new chapter in Sydney’s artistic life began. “Christo and JeanneClaude were so charismatic that they convinced me it was the most important thing that I could do,” Kaldor recalls. “And that I took it seriously literally changed my world and gave me the courage to start my own business.”
While Kaldor’s textile manufacturing business was enormously successful, he’s now most celebrated for his art projects. He never planned to make a series, but after the thrill of ‘Wrapped Coast’ he immediately knew he needed to make more. Fifty years later, Kaldor has presented 34 projects from some of the art world’s biggest names to the Australian public. That legacy is being celebrated in a retrospective exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW curated by British artist Michael Landy.
“It was a big challenge for Michael and us,” Kaldor says. “Because while I wanted him to put his signature on the whole exhibition, we also have to respect each artist’s project.” Those projects range from Jeff Koons’ huge ‘Puppy’ sculpture covered in flowers, which stood outside the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1995, to Gilbert and George’s ‘Singing Sculpture’ in 1973, in which the pair lip-synced as live sculptures in the entrance foyer of the Art Gallery of NSW for five hours a day. Each project will be represented in the exhibition by an archive box that will be four metres square and three metres tall. Some of those boxes will be filled with archival material – and you’ll be able to enter and explore – while others will be closed and use sound, images, video and installation to bring the project back to life. “It’s very hard to do an archival exhibition. People go through it and after the third or fourth go, ‘oh, not another letter.’ So we’ve tried to put as much variation into it as possible.” As well as the physical exhibition, Kaldor is inviting Australians who experienced the projects over the last half-century to share their memories and contribute to a living archive on the Kaldor Public Art Projects website. Kaldor’s one request is that the contributions aren’t from typical art lovers, but people who may have discovered one of the projects by accident. Kaldor, Christo and Jack Clancy
Kaldor says he’s operating now in much the same way as he always has, which involves travelling and talking to artists, curators and directors to determine who is making exciting and innovative work. The only difference is that contemporary art has become a much larger industry. “Every town with a set of traffic lights has a biennale and an art fair. It’s very different.” ■
Art Gallery of NSW, Art Gallery Rd, The Domain 2000. 02 9225 1700. www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au. Thu-Tue 10am-5pm; Wed 10am-10pm. Free. Until Feb 16.