Invisible Genres is an exhibition that not only raises important questions about the relationship between contemporary art and historical imagination but also offers an opportunity to reflect on the nature, limits and possibilities of the group show as a curatorial ‘genre’. Curated by John Mateer, the exhibition was presented at the John Curtin Galley, in Perth, on the fourth centenary of Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog’s landing in the north-west of Australia. Hartog was the second European to reach our shores and the first to leave a physical memento of his visit; an inscribed pewter plate nailed to a post.
While the show’s pretext may appear somewhat conventional, Mateer’s understanding of the relationship between historical memorialisation and contemporary art is anything but predictable, especially if one compares it to the more orthodox approaches adopted in other concomitant exhibitions celebrating Hartog’s landing. The kind of history and memory Mateer has in mind are more virtual than actual and they underpin a curatorial conceit that highlights correspondences, both real and hypothetical, between Dutch colonialism and Western Australian history and culture. This conceptual frame is intended to bring forth a web of intriguing, and occasionally somewhat oblique, thematic relationships between the artworks. The Dutch/Western Australian connection also explains the exhibition’s focus on the Indian Ocean, and the inclusion of works by Dutch artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh, South African artists William Kentridge and Candice Breitz, Balinese painter Dewa Putu Mokoh and several Western Australian artists.
The most original aspect of Mateer’s curatorial approach is that the thread linking the geographical, historical, cultural and political issues at play in the exhibition is provided by the relationship between ideas of the ‘virtual’ and ‘artistic’ genres (hence the... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline
Wendelien van Oldenborgh, No False Echoes, 2008. Still from video, 30’. Courtesy Wilfried Lentz Rotterdam and the artist.
Tony Nathan, Untitled, 2011. From Kawah ljen series. Photograph. Courtesy the artist.
