Art Gallery of New South Wales
ISOBEL PARKER PHILIP, CURATOR OF PHOTOGRAPHS, AGNSW
How did you go about selecting artists for The National? Isobel Parker Philip:
“It was a really open conversation and a supportive framework where all four of us [curators] talked initially about artists we were interested in. We have 20 works here, created by 15 women and 10 men, and more than a quarter are Indigenous artists. That was a focus for all of us; if you’re calling a show The National, you need to have a significant focus on Indigenous art in all its multiplicities. The research period was long (around five months) and wonderfully rewarding, with lots of studio visits seeing what artists were interested in and projects they hadn’t had a chance to explore. As a curator it’s rare to let slow gestational conversations with artists happen, and let that shape the work.”
Did you have a theme in mind for the exhibition? IPP:
“As the curating process developed I noticed echoes between the different artists’ works. Nicholas
“A LOT OF THE ARTISTS ARE DEALING WITH STATES OF INSTABILITY AND CHANGE”
Folland has created a suspended archipelago based on an inverted map of Lord Howe Island using 1,000 pieces of antique glassware. A very beguiling [sculpture], it weighs more than 750 kilograms and looks dense yet is a reminder of the fragility of the natural world. A lot of the work comes out of a very attuned sense of the profound uncertainty and precariousness of the contemporary moment. For a lot of these artists, things feel as if they’re in a state of anticipated collapse. Whether that relates to climate change or the refugee crisis or a personal narrative, they’re all dealing with states of instability and states of change.
“Rushdi Anwar is a Kurdish refugee whose work takes a humble domestic object – the chair, something that gives comfort – but here burns them to a crisp and piles them into a precarious funeral pyre. It’s a work about displacement and dispossession, yet there’s resilience in the way it’s structured, because it will rise higher, a phoenix from the ashes.
“And then you have established Melbourne sculptor Linda Marrinon with one of the largest sculptures she’s ever made, hinging on a true story from World War I of a French church that was hit, felling the statue of the Virgin Mary but not fully. It remained horizontal and became a mark of resilience. She’s created a heroic female figure in the foreground, so the work feels like a time capsule of the moment before calamity happens.”