Post-pop from the Museum of Contemporary Art
‘Wild Thang’ is ‘wild’ in two ways. Firstly, it presents a selection of experimental art covering the years 1962 to 1978 and secondly, it advances an innovative curatorial model that sets out to connect works from the permanent collections of Regional Galleries to a larger body of work from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.
The show’s curator, Craig Judd, in association the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, has devised a touring exhibition that was developed around a series of adaptable modules. This has been achieved through the establishment of a highly innovative series of institutional partnerships that places works from the Museum of Contemporary Art collection alongside complimentary works from the collections of Regional Galleries in Bathurst, Armidale and Albury. The result is to create a series of unique exhibitions that is determined by the specific collections of the individual Regional Galleries.
One of the remarkable side effects of art collections in regional centres is that once an international work becomes part of the permanent collection of a regional gallery it is not only Australianised but it also becomes identified as a specific cultural marker belonging to a particular geographical place. Perhaps it would not be totally inconceivable to ask questions such as ‘wasn’t Jackson Pollock a Canberra based artist?’ or ‘didn’t Enrico Baj have a studio in Bathurst?’. In this way ‘Wild Thang’ pays homage to benefactors, gallery directors and curators from the past and the present who have developed outstanding collections in regional galleries throughout Australia.
The selection of works in ‘Wild Thang’ covers virtually the entire spectrum of experimental practices from the 1960s and ’70s. Included are examples from movements and styles as diverse and oppositional