Mixed-Up Childhood sets out to examine contemporary perceptions of childhood by enlisting an impressively stellar cast of more than twenty artists. To avoid straying aimlessly into vast and contentious territory, such an investigation must be carefully framed. Billed as ‘a show about childhood, for grown-ups’ it is, to be more precise, an exhibition surveying ways artists portray problematic aspects of childhood.
In partnership with Auckland Art Gallery curator Robert Leonard, the exhibition was co-curated by Janita Craw, an expert in early childhood. In an interview for the gallery’s publicity literature, she explained how the sophisticated way complex ideas can be discussed through art has helped her get leverage on difficult theories. Craw, on the other hand, brought to the art gallery a wealth of contextual information and history, providing the exhibition with a secure conceptual footing in this delicate terrain.
Under the auspices of a major public institution (and with significant corporate sponsorship), a project like this easily could have become padded with family-friendly themes of nostalgia and innocence. Avoiding such a populist path, Mixed-Up Childhood resolutely tip-toes through a minefield of debates with every work offering its own set of difficult issues. Any sense of instructive or prescriptive moralising has been carefully sidestepped, leaving such short-fuse issues as abuse, sexuality and exploitation to reverberate from wall to wall, sparking questions and contradictions.
Densely packed with complications, a set of eight black and white photographs from Sally Mann’s controversial series Immediate Family quickly unravels with constructs that any contemporary consideration of childhood needs to negotiate. As the title suggests, these are images of Mann’s own children but rather than bypassing issues of access and voyeurism, her maternal role in these