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We can learn much about contemporary Australia and its art from a big show in a big gallery. Bigness is indeed the theme of ‘Optimism’, as the serious scale of its artworks aspires to match the scale of GoMA (Gallery of Modern Art) itself. Average sized works, like paintings and drawings, are extended into the space one way or another, through loud backdrops, wall drawings or in the isolation of office-sized cubicles. Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healy’s Not Under My Roof is singular and impressive. It nails the entire floor of a house to one of GoMA’s interior walls. Bigness shows the power of public arts bureaucracies to move things around, and here aligns itself with contemporary Australian politics. Curator Julie Ewington declares ‘Optimism’s’ interest in an Australia that came into being ‘after the apology of the Kevin Rudd-led government’ in ‘this new moment of emerging social and cultural responsibility’.1 Rudd does offer something of a model for the curatorial practice at work here. Constructing an Australia with everything and nothing in common, Rudd is inclusive, endlessly consulting, at once representative and institutionalised, favouring all and pleasing few. The contemporary mega-curator is also product of the need to represent and include, to make a show that is spectacular and accountable to the public.
Producing work for biennales and major galleries, contemporary artists have adapted to this demand for the grand idea, but often to the detriment of subtlety, craftiness and conversation. Works in ‘Optimism’ are often bigger than the gaze itself, extending upward and outward to leave the viewer behind, awed and humbled by scale alone. They are optimistic as they physically demonstrate that there is public money around... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline