Making It Real
‘Making It Real’ is an exhibition that surveys the work of an artist dedicated to the revelation of objects and technology physically unknown to us. Things like GPS satellites and lunar rovers; ejector seats and Google Street View cameras. Peter Hennessey’s art is concerned with converting inaccessible things into tangible forms. His practice of the last decade is summarised well by this tightly and well-curated exhibition by the University of Queensland Art Museum’s (UQAM’s) Samantha Littley. It is also rare to see exhibition opportunities for mid-career artists like Peter Hennessey—something for which the Museum should be congratulated. Hennessey’s work is big, in most cases to scale with its real world counterpart—it must be hard to find a public space able to comfortably accommodate it. The size of these works challenges the parameters of the UQAM’s galleries and their inherent restrictions. This is by no means a negative—their weight and sheer presence is felt through their proximity. The question that the work fails to account for, however, is what it actively achieves by existing, beyond its admirable technical quality and intricate detailing. Hennessey’s work of the last decade appears, in hindsight, with the help of this survey exhibition, to be an altar dedicated to aesthetics.
The main push and pull at the heart of Hennessey’s project is the absence of objects due to the digital world, scientific/political secrecy or environmental restrictions. Within these parameters, images stand in for the actual—we all recognise the distinctive shape of Sputnik, but who among us have stood next to it? Hennessey seems determined to be the man who can provide the common punter with this opportunity. He wants us to join him in prioritising the