Full house of grounded ideas
HOME/LAND Georgia Lucy, Caleb NicholsMansell, Flo Robinson, Nunami Sculthorpe-Green, Priya Vunaki, Richie Cuskelly Curated by Alexandra Hullah Contemporary Art Tasmania, 27 Tasma St, North Hobart Wed – Sun, 12-5pm Until October 30
Tackling complex issues with art is harder than it may first appear. It’s all too likely, unfortunately, that an exhibition that wants to engage with something complex that affects the real world can end up being a didactic exercise that doesn’t allow much room to manoeuvre when considering the art, and that can end up being very well meaning but not really achieving much. Mind you – what are we expecting art to achieve, anyway?
It seems that emergent curator Alexandra Hullah has considered a few of these more esoteric issues when putting the Home/Land exhibition together, because the hallmark of this show is that it’s smart enough not to provide pat answers – that’s left for the audience. The show is not patronising either; it assumes that there’s some understanding that there’s a housing crisis occurring right now, and goes a bit further than reiterating what’s already a well-known situation.
The exhibition itself is beautifully realised and created. One is presented with the bones of a small home, which may be wandered through, there’s a literal garden and a symbolic fence made out of real estate for sale signs, which I found utterly hilarious. The notion that arbitrary borders are made from advertising is almost heavy handed, but the repurposed signs have a function of making noise, on the hour, just like the GPO clock. This could be an allusion to the unrelenting grind of capitalism, or it could just be a pleasurable way to make a disruptive din; it’s always fun to see something being hijacked like this, and it fits into a grand tradition of subverting advertising.
Other works are a bit more subtle or gentle, like Caleb Nichols-Mansell’s sculptural cairn of rocks, reverentially collected from Tasmania’s midlands. This work transplants land itself into the gallery space and permeates the space with a deeper question about who land might belong to. This notion provides Home/ Land with a strong conceptual spine; ownership of land in Tasmania ultimately must be traced back to its theft during colonial times.
This is echoed as well in Nunami Sculthorpe-Green’s dignified and exquisite installation work, which evokes specific places and cultural activity and memory that exists across time. Sculthorpe-Green’s work is reverent, revealing home and land as deeply sacred.
This is in stark contrast to the brutal anecdote, typed out in pixelated text on a tired television set, presented by Richie Cuskelly. Cuskelly recounts with some fictional (and highly comedic) flair the moment when a developer ignored the restraints of planning and heritage and tore down a building and removed some significant trees.
This has broad implications as this kind of event occurs across Australia now, simply adding the fine for vandalism to the overall cost of development, ultimately to be recouped when the final product is sold.
Alongside this work in the housing structure is a room we may only peek into, filled with enticing mood lighting, suggesting there could be something subversive occurring, created by Priya Vunaki, while out the back are garden beds – which bring up a massive question about food, food security, how we treat the literal earth and how that is in turn valued.
Home/Land has a tremendous amount packed in it, and what it does best is open dialogues about land, the idea of home, the finances around land and the clash between ideas of shelter and investment. Individual works are interesting, but the success of this is the way the works come together to create a home for dialogues.
Home/Land features a public event hosted by Frontyard (NSW) on October 29 and 30, and will end with a house cooling party on Oct 30 at 6.30pm. Get along!