Marina and me
With pioneering performance artist Marina Abramovic in residence at Pier 2/3 this month, her Sydney protégés explain why we should be excited. By Dee Jefferson
Performance art has historically been a dirty term outside art circles, conjuring up experiences ranging from boring to plain bad. But when New York’s Museum of Modern Art hosted the major retrospective Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present in 2010, something strange happened: the public queued for hours to get in – and to be part of the exhibition’s central performance art work, a feat of endurance in which the 63-year-old Abramovic sat for eight hours a day staring into the eyes of whichever member of the public was seated opposite her. People cried, vomited, got naked, proposed marriage. Lady Gaga signed up to be mentored by Abramovic at her exclusive artist retreat, and Jay-Z was inspired to rap ‘Picasso Baby’ for six hours, as a tribute to the artist. Suddenly, performance art was hip. Sydney will get to experience the ‘Abramovic Method’ this month, thanks to Kaldor Public Art Projects’ latest opus. Marina Abramovic: In Residence will see the artist present for 12 days at Pier 2/3, directing performers in a series of ‘experiments’. Meanwhile, upstairs at the Pier, 12 temporary rooms will be constructed, in which 12 Australian artists chosen by Marina will live for 12 days, and be instructed in the Abramovic method. Below, five of the chosen artists explain why Abramovic is worth getting excited about. “What I admire about Marina’s practice is the way in which she can harness a single gesture and through its duration and/or repetition build its symbolic impact.”
SARAH RODIGARI
“I am drawn to the ‘presence’ that Marina Abramovic commands in her artworks – specifically, how through this ‘presence’ she engages with an audience, inviting them into a relationship that is developed throughout their time in the gallery.” “I identify strongly with her interest in ancient cultures – Aboriginal Australian, Tibetan and Indonesian. I was lucky enough to see her show in London at the Serpentine. She created a space for audiences to step out of the grind of everyday life.”
ZIN
(HARRIET GILLIES AND ROSLYN HELPER) “We are inspired by Marina’s constant exploration of the artist/audience relationship and the powerful and unique experiences she has with her audience.”
SARAH JANE NORMAN
“As a performer I owe a debt to Abramovic and other artists of her generation as pioneers of the form. I also respect her as a woman artist who has continually affronted a phallocentric art world, and I respect her as an artist working in a non-material and temporal form, in a field dominated by the capital value of objects.”
Marina Abramovic: In Residence Pier 2/3, 13 Hickson Rd, Walsh Bay 2300. kaldorartprojects.org.au. Daily noon-7pm. Free. Jun 24-Jul 5.