The new exhibition season in Rome is kicking off with a promising show entitled SHOUT! which will be held in MACRO from September – November 2014 in conjunction with the film festival Asiatica Film Mediale.
The show is curated by Singapore-based curator Santy Saptari and Bryan Collie, director of Melbourne’s MiFA Gallery and features artists Aditya Novali, Andita Purnama, Angki Purbandono Bestrizal Besta, Erika Ernawan, Gatot Pujiarto, Maria Indra Sari, Sigit Santoso, I Gusti Ngrurah Udiatara, Tantin, Yudi Sulisto and Gusmen Heriadi.
Yesterday I sneaked inside the MACRO to take some pictures of the artists setting up the show and have a chat with them. Here’s a preview of what you will see from the 26th of September:
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In 2012 I interviewed artist Angki Purbandono for my reportage about contemporary art in Indonesia for Art a Part of Cult(ure). That time I had the chance to snap some pictures around his studio/house filled with the weirdest objects. That was not surprising, considering that Angki is well know for his scannographies, namely giant scans of everyday objects unusually associated, defamiliarized by the size and the black background. Even if his photographs look as if they would have been taken with a complex set of lights, Angki revealed me that his only tool was a normal scanner – which of course, I didn’t fail to photograph. As for Angki himself, you could guess his personality from his body language and shirt. He is a great chap!
On July 18, right after an unexpected rain in Rome, we held a private screening of “Indonesia – Orienti, Visioni Contemporanee” for three members of the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in Italy. MNAO Contemporary’s Chief Curator Valentina Levy and I had an informal chat with Counsellor Nindarsari Utomo and Third Secretary Tinus Zainal. We discussed the difficulty to keep alive tradition in relation of Krisna Murti’s “Empty Theather”. We also dwelt on the value of documentation and national identity with Tintin Wulia’s video and we observed how the young generations of Italians can easily relate to SlavePianos and Punkasila’s work. The Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in Italy is constantly promoting cultural events across the two countries, and it has been great to see how visual art can be part of that. Here a couple of pictures!
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At the beginning of 2012 I started making research about Indonesian contemporary art and now I’m excited to had the chance to introduce some of these amazing artists to an Italian public through “Indonesia – Orienti Visioni Contemporanee” , a series of screening of video art in Villa Ada’s Art Project Space.
For this screening, part of MNAO Contemporary program, I wanted to show three completely different approaches to video art, presenting new-media pioneers Krisna Murti and Tintin Wulia, and the most irreverent bunch of punks in the whole Asia-Pacific, namely Punkasila and Slave Pianos.
Despite the title of the program, I tried to steer away from any kind of representation of “Indonesianess”. Krisna Murti makes an aesthetically mesmerizing observation on traditions slowly fading away. On the other hand, Tintin Wulia’s way of working goes beyond her nationality, in fact she works around the concept of nation and national boundaries itself. Punkasila and Slave Pianos, joining forces just like a crossover from some comic book, give space to their wildest fantasies, imagining an alien invasion starting from Java.
So, here a preview of what you will see this week if you happen to pass by the Art Project Space in Villa Ada.
For the “Nothing happened since yesterday – Due Artisti da Melbourne” exhibition, I organized a talk at Accademia di Belle Arti Roma – aka Rome’s Art Academy – with the two exhibiting artists.
The talk was hosted by Prof. Isabella Tirelli and was meant to fuel a discussion with the students about the path of artists after art school. I thought that the experience of Kenny Pittock and Georgina Lee could have been interesting for the students. To start as emerging artist in Melbourne is certainly easier in Rome, thanks also to a very tight community and the presence of artist-run space. I hoped that by comparing the Australian art system to the Italian one, the students could have been inspired and come with new ideas for their own art environment.
I started the talk by introducing the Australian context and my research on the Melbourne art scene. Then Kenny and Georgina went on talking about their own work.
I’m happy about the outcome of the talk. Some students asked about the conceptual process of making work, some others inquired about how an Italian artist could start exhibiting in Australia. Georgina replied very clearly to all the questions and Kenny made even the more impassible students laugh. A student called Francesco even made a drawing of Georgina and Kenny and gave to them as a gift!
I feel like the curator’s job is a little like Charles Xavier’s at times. After all both the curator and Prof. Xavier go around the world gathering mutants with superpowers – or artists in my case. My team for the “Nothing’s has happened since Yesterday” exhibition is sure smaller than a Marvel one but by no means less powerful.
One day, surfing on the internet, I stumbled upon a blog which reviewed exhibitions in Australia. It was when I was researching about the art scene in Melbourne, so I send a mail to the website asking for an interview with one of the two authors. At table of a cafe, waiting to be interviewed, sat a petite girl with resolute manners, nervous nostrils and round glasses. She was called Georgina Lee and chatting with her I found out that she was not only an arts writer, but also an artist.
Few weeks later I visited the TCB art space with a friend, and we were greeted by a gallery sitter with curly dusty hair and a worn out jumper. “I’ll give you guys a tour”, he mumbled and he started to list the names of the artists exhibiting, gesticulating with the hands in his jumper’s front pocket. One sculpture hanged on the wall looked like something that I had seen in exhibition at the Perth Centre for Contemporary Art a short time before. “Oh… that’s my work”, he said quickly and shyly. That’s how I met Kenny Pittock.
“Nothing’s happened since Yesterday – Due artisti da Melbourne” is going to open tomorrow at Galleria 291est in Rome and we are super-excited. These days have been pretty busy for exhibiting artists Georgina Lee and Kenny Pittock; I dragged them to gallery and vernissage all over Rome, yesterday we had a talk at the Art Academy (pics soon on this blog) and most importantly they have installed their work in the gallery. On the second day both artists showed up at Galleria 291est sporting “I love Rome” t-shirts. Kenny was so in love with his t-shirt to the point that he refused to change it even for the ultra-posh opening in Villa Medici, the French Academy. That’s the best part of being an artist after all, you can wear whatever the hell you want and no one can tell you anything!
The whole setting-up process has been filmed by Mauro Piccinini of Hour Interview, a great video series that catches snippets of artists’ working day. I’m super curious to see the result! If you are in Rome in these days, come visit us for the opening tomorrow!
After visiting Dario Carratta’s pen-drawings exhibition at Galleria 291est in Rome, I was totally curious to see his paintings. On the way to his studio in Conca D’Oro, a north-east suburb of Rome, I was wondering where his twisted world of dingy nightclubs, pulped faces and blue hair in the wind came from. I won’t say I was expecting to find corpses and carnivorous plants in Dario’s studio, but I was actually pretty surprised to hear that the artists was so sensitive to bad vibes he wouldn’t even see the news. He explained me that art for him was an outlet to negative emotions that would otherwise overwhelm him. That’s why he needed to paint every day and he couldn’t picture himself not doing it.
The paintings in flesh looked much more violent and rougher than what I could observe from the photos, but for this very reason even more exciting and fascinating.
My interview with artist Ashley Bickerton “Artists are dyed poodles dancing through fiery hoops for the one percent”, is the cover story of the Australian magazine Trouble. (My second cover story on Trouble after Bindi Cole!)
The interview is part of my reportage about contemporary art in Indonesia.
Here the link to the interview
Here the link to the online version of the magazine
The Australian magazine Trouble has just published the interview I had in Melbourne with artist Two One (Hiroyasu Tsuri). The interview is part of my reportage about emerging artists in Melbourne.
Here the link to the interview
Here the link to the online version of the magazine
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The Italian magazine Art a Part of Cult(ure) has just published my review of Ana Gloria Salvia’s exhibition “Archi_Cuba” at PAN, Naples
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What the National Gallery of Victoria is trying to do with the Melbourne Now exhibition is to define the identity of Melbourne through its cultural practices, with a special focus on contemporary art.
I’m in Italy now, ironically writing my book about emerging artists in Melbourne, so I couldn’t visit the exhibition. Luckily my Australian friends and the artists that I have interviewed always keep me updated.
Some time ago I got a mail from artist Danius Kesminas, who told me about his new project with Slave Pianos for Melbourne Now, called Gamelan sisters (Sedulur gamelan). I posted some images, which gives you the feeling of this evocative machinery. On Slave Pianos’ website I find more information about it:
“Sedulur Gamelan (Gamelan Sisters) consists of two interlocking wooden structures that reconfigure elements of traditional Javanese architecture through the De Stijl philosophical principles of neoplasticism to create an abstraction of an 18th century double grand piano.
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