Power, Corruption & Lies
Various artists
Institute of Modern Art
August - September 1997
Brisbane
 
  Hiram To

Hiram To, Autoportrait
(Manifesto from memory
with error),
c-type photo,
122 x 183 cm,
Autoportrait
(Public opinion by error)
,
framed c-type photo, 47 x
61 cm, 1997

Presenting an exhibition titled Power, Corruption and Lies (the truth is out there) in Queensland might seems like a cruel joke; a reminder of those halcyon days of Fitzgerald and a particularly unpleasant era of political duplicity. That's part of the appeal of this exhibition: a canny title which seems to hone in on local history, or rather, hysteria.

The curator, Scott Redford, has drawn together works from Hany Armanious, Roderick Bunter, Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley, Ian Burn, David Craig, Saint Prudence De Cumes, Juan Davila, Malcolm Enright, Rodney Glick, Peter Hill, Christine Morrow, Callum Morton, Susan Norrie, Mike Stevenson, Imants Tillers and Hiram To. The works address the themes of conspiracy, anxiety, fakes, criticality and complicity. As such, they forge various relationships with the concept of truth.

In the vein of X-Files' Scully and Mulder, Redford is searching for lies in the hope that something of the truth will emerge. This is how the readymades of Morton, Burn, Armanious, Cumes, Tillers, Morrow and Enright operate. The readymade irrevocably alters one's view of the world; of art and the museum. It is a curiosity or a displacement which elucidates the contingencies and contexts upon which it's re/production relies. In particular, Morrow's Painting as Model and Morton's Convenience make this explicit. Their allure is in their replicative quality, a quality which necessitates a double-take from the viewer. More than being simple anti-art gestures, these works reference quite disparate cultural practices and expectations but are drawn together in that they suggest duplicity.

Of course, Redford acknowledges that there is no single truth, and that we need to think of knowledge and reality in terms of context and cultural position. This is perhaps why conspiracy, anxiety and forgery are so closely linked to the question of truth, because they point to individual interpretations of reality. In identifying the conspiracy or the anxiety, one also identifies an abeyance to power, an oppressed, a repressed or an aggrieved. This stain of thinking is seen in works by Stevenson, Norrie, To, Bunter, Glick and Hill. In To's Autoportrait (Manifesto from memory with error) and Autoportrait (Public opinion by error) the struggle with truth is played out in a fictional narrative consistent with the Asian customs of To’s cultural background.

Works by Burchill and McCamley, Craig and Davila have drawn a purposeful relationship to art criticism, art's ability to act as criticism and the artist's need to assume the role of critic. What results is a type of sardonic and critical complicity with those historicising and hierarchising processes which have traditionally enmeshed art.

According to Rex Butler’s catalogue essay, Art has no position. He argues that "perhaps we can no longer even say it is a matter either of understanding or changing the world, for there is no perspective outside it." As Butler points out, these diverse works are framed by a "conception of art as a kind of doubling of its object, after which nothing is changed but everything is different."

This exhibition pulls us into an alternative space of subterfuge, immersing us in a sea of seductive lies. It is a strategy which disturbs a culture's sense of safety, its secure knowledge in its origin, imperatives and authenticity. And sometimes the artist gets away with it, and the audience happily believes the lie. Such complicity provides the lie with momentum and perhaps even allows it to subvert a singular notion of Truth.

There is something about Power, Corruption and Lies which approximates April Fool's Day: those who perpetrate the pranks derive most satisfaction from them. Those of us who aren't quick enough on the uptake either go along with the joke or just get humiliated. But art doesn't care about that and why should it? It gets the last laugh.

Linda Carroli
October 1997

   
  Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley

Janet Burchill/Jennifer
McCamley,
Printed Matter
1993-1997
, 1997, 100%
Sports pages
, 1993,
artist's book, 1993,

1,2,3 . . . plenty
,
artist's pages, 1995

   
   
   
   
   

© The artists and
Courtesy of the artists
& IMA