Ten Days on the Island
Historical museum collections bore me. Unless overseas, I rarely venture out to see exhibitions compiled from a museum’s permanent collection. For my taste, contemporary art is where it’s at. Artist run spaces, independent galleries and theatres offer the creative verve and challenging subject matter I seek to find in art. Walking the musty halls of a museum gazing at an equally musty collection of conservative artworks quickly reminds me that I may have left the stove on and had better hurry home.
In an attempt to lure people like me in to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) to engage with a selection of the permanent collection, John Vella curated ‘Acidophilus: live culture colonised at the TMAG’ for the biennial arts festival, Ten Days on the Island. With the aid of Contemporary Art Services Tasmania, Vella commissioned six Tasmanian artists to produce contemporary works in response to specific pieces from the TMAG’s collection of twentieth century painting and sculpture.
Stretched over five substantial galleries, the works of Acidophilus were seamlessly slipped in amongst the permanent art on display. One of the most successful new works on show was found in Gallery 5. Performance artist Brigita Ozolins spread a series of large mirrored perspex letters over the polished wooden floorboards. Spelling LOOK ON, Ozolins’s work was a response to the romanticised female figure dreamily gazing into the distance in The Onlooker (1905) by Emmanuel Phillips Fox. Reflecting back the viewer, The Onlooker and the other TMAG works on display, Ozolins’s Look On (2005), provided an innovative and pristinely slick exchange between old and new.
Gallery 1 played welcome host to Roof (2005), a sound sculpture by Kevin Leong. Responding to