THE OTHER

“Precisely as excluded from the Other, we are already part of its game," Slavoj Zizek

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that what we perceive is rendered as ‘object’ to our gaze and is defined by us . This theory can be applied to colonial races and their perception of the indigenous race. For example, the concept of indigenous persons, is a white concept; the indigenous person is always ‘other’ because the white person is the subject from which the concept derived. For Sartre, the gaze is reciprocal, but in the cultural sense, it is a means of domination, by making others’ identity according to some particular (white, colonial etc) perception.

According to Michel Foucault, our identity is constructed by how we are seen by others . In this regard, one could say that the gaze is the source of the establishment and naturalisation of racial identity and prejudice. The constructed identities and racial stereotypes thrown upon indigenous and mixed-race people only reflect back to the colonising culture and what it wanted to see in itself.

When one is constantly being defined as ‘other’, they are never permitted to be individual, independent or recognised in difference in their own terms, but rather, always defined in the terms of the hegemonic culture. Coming from a mixed-cultural background, Jason Castro is familiar with the feeling of being caught between worlds. His art explores this in-between space, drawing on practices of his own heritage- European Australian, Native American and Mexican.

His Cowboys and Indians Series (2011) explores the development of racial identities through childhood games. This series of photographs, in the platinum/palladium process, is representative of a colonising culture’s obsession with distinctions between the Anglo-American ‘good guys’ and Native American ‘bad guys’. These works reflect the complexity of being Native American in a colonised culture and having to identify as the supposed ‘primitive’, ‘savage’ ‘bad-guy’. The figures have been removed from their innocent, childhood-toy setting and now appear to us through a sinister night-vision-like lens. The dark and light contrast eerily highlights the conflict between colonised and coloniser.

Castro’s work Little White Lies (2011) focuses on the individual; a human being as opposed to a representation of a cultural or racial stereotype. The image appears to be digitally pixelated but is actually a sandpainting, appropriated from the North American Indian Series (1907-30) by American ethnographic photographer, Edward Curtis. The appropriated image has been cropped to take the focus away from generic signifiers of Native American people (such as headdress, feathers etc) and instead zones in on the basic human facial features. The nationality of the individual represented is now unclear; their identity is individual, not defined by race.

Freedom for an individual depends upon the extent to which one sees him or herself as a free subject, rather than as the object of society’s gaze. Castro’s works set out to recalibrate a new societal view of equality. It is not only a matter of us looking at the art, but the art looking back at us.

NOTES
Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, 1989 p.66
Jean-Paul Sarte, Being and Nothingness, 1943
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol 1, 1976

This review has also been published in Metro Arts' Promise Program 2012 catalogue. Jason Castro's art is included in Metro Arts' Promise Program 2012 exhibition which is on until April 14. Promise Program is a survey of the considerable talent of artists emerging out of Queensland’s leading arts institutions. Promise Program 2012 is curated by Bec Dean and presented in collaboration with Queensland College of Art and University of Southern Queensland.

MAGIC

Mikala Dwyer's work predominately lies in the irrational. She talks about ghosts, the paranormal and the occult with the same gravity of a natural science. She has suggested seances and covens and worked with black-arts paraphernalia, including candles and Ouija boards. She has employed clairvoyants to serve alongside her art during exhibitions, made art professionals dress up as crystals and even channelled spirits of female convicts.Dwyer's work is playful but simultaneously serious, dealing with themes such as mortality and the mysterious. Ultimately it is about the return-of-the-repressed; the infantile, the feminine and the irrational. Her work pushes the boundaries of our expectations by forcing us to re-imagine everyday objects as evocative objects of substance; shifting, fluid 'carriers' of emotions or spirits. It forces us, not necessarily to believe in the paranormal or supernatural, but to see the material universe as in itself, magical.


Mikala Dwyer's 'Drawing Down the Moon' will be at the Institute of Modern Art until April 14.

OBLITERATION

If you are a regular follower of The Swing, you'll know that I have posted about Yayoi Kusama on here previously, and if you have been to the GoMA recently, you'll know all about her 'Look Now, See Forever' exhibition. You also may have noticed that Kusama, now in her sixth decade of being a practicing artist, is in higher demand than ever.

Kusama is popular because of the simplicity of her work. The simple fact that her beautifully colourful, bright, repetitive patterns look so great in their large-scale reproductions. But the most important thing about her work is that the spectator is almost always positioned at the centre of it. This is true for Kusama's sculptures, installations and even some of her videos and paintings; the viewer is made to feel part of it. Not only do we feel an empathy for Kusama, but we feel that we have an understanding of exactly what she sees. And quite possibly, rather than solely being a therapeutic exercise, this is Kusama's intention. The spectator's immersion in the art is the art itself.

Yayoi Kusama's 'Look Now, See Forever' will be at the Gallery of Modern Art until March 11.

THE GOLDEN HIND

Both the concepts and the aesthetics of James and Eleanor Avery's separate practices complement each other so perfectly, that when paired, the already complex ideas are strengthened and made more profound. For this reason they have been collaborating on large scale sculpture and installation projects since 2004. As stated on their website- James and Eleanor are 'interested in ideas, not conclusions', this is clear as their works are embedded with historical and political references, ideas of cult ideology, hyperreality, science fiction, iconography and indoctrinated belief systems.


The Golden Hind James and Eleanor Avery, is at Boxcopy until February 25.

WE ARE MADE OF STARDUST

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn't be here if stars hadn't exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and life - weren't created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of the stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so you could be here today.-Lawrence Krauss.

Sydney-based Artist Michaela Gleave took inspiration from this idea for her most recent installation piece exhibited at Boxcopy in November. The work was literally a large neon sign which took up the entire gallery space. The bright neon lights slowly changed colours - setting a glow right through the gallery space and emphasising the powerful words which question our relationship to space, matter, time and our existence as beings on Earth. We are made of stardust.

THE POETRY OF DREAMS

Surrealism: The Poetry of Dreams exhibition at Gallery of Modern Art.

Direct from the Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Pompidou are works by Giorgio De Chirico, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Victor Brauner, Joan Miró, Alberto Giacometti, Paul Delvaux, Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky and Joseph Cornell. If you are expecting a lot of works by Dali, prepare to be disappointed- instead this exhibition focuses on covering all Surrealist styles. There are plenty of familiar works and plenty of works that you may have never expected to see, this is a very educational and entertaining show. Personally I was most taken by the works of Ernst, Magritte and Dorothea Tanning. Not only is the art amazing but the GoMA have really done a flawless curatorial job. This one is very highly recommended. The exhibition is on until October 2. The pictures below are from the opening night as well as in the exhibition itself, all credited to the Gallery of Modern Art website.

Lemurs, roswell, wheat, pyramids, mosquitoes, yellow skin, humans that lay eggs, bestiality, nazi Aryanism.

Where will we go after death? What will happen to the Earth in the future? These kind of questions have been plaguing scientists and philosophers for as long as has been recorded. Today, on top of common religious and scientific theories, there are a great number of conspiracy theories that claim to have answers to these questions. With so many options available it is difficult to decide who to trust (if anyone) and what to believe in (if anything). Artist duo Wilkins Hill recently exhibited at Boxcopy, a work that played around with these ideas through the dissection and abstraction of language.

Lemurs, roswell, wheat, pyramids, mosquitoes, yellow skin, humans that lay eggs, bestiality, nazi Aryanism (2009) is a nine-part video that was filmed over a six-month period between Berlin and Paris. Artists Wendy Wilkins and Wesley Hill used text-to-speech software, voice recognition and automated translation websites to create abstract narrations paired with simple and stunning imagery.

Each short film gives some sense of an idea or opinion, some make more sense than others in that they seem to be making scientific statements or predictions about the future. However, the narrative in each is so obscure that they never quite deliver any direct meanings, they are instead left open for interpretation. There is one particular film though, that seems to give way to an overall meaning. It is called Humains qui pondent des oeufs (humans that lay eggs). The footage used was actually taken from a clip of the world famous, widely followed and equally criticised American medium Judy Zebra Knight (AKA J.Z Knight) being interviewed on the Merv Griffin Show in 1985. Knight claims to be a channel of the spiritual entity named Ramtha. Before starting her mystic teachings in the Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, she was interviewed by Merv Griffin and displayed herself ‘channelling’ Ramtha live on national television.



Wilkins Hill chopped and changed this clip and added their own audio to it. With the visual and audio slightly out of synch and completely nonsensical, you get an awkward, pessimistic, freaky feel; much like the feeling you might experience while watching a dream sequence from a David Lynch production. The new J.Z Knight speaks in French about a new breed of humans called the ‘Rhizomatic Items’. As bizarre as it comes across, she is almost convincing. We know that these humans do not exist-yet we want to believe her. It is tempting. Perhaps this is Wilkins Hill’s comment on J.Z Knight and conspiracy theorists in general. They could be questioning the discourse of conspiracy and possibly even hinting at epistemology. Regardless of the intention, this work is unsettling and stays with you long after viewing.

This review has also been published on das500.com

Image credits:
1. Still from Lemurs, roswell, wheat, pyramids, mosquitoes, yellow skin, humans that lay eggs, bestiality, nazi Aryanism.
2. Still from Twin Peaks, TV series by David Lynch and Mark Frost