GAB 24 (Grishin’s Art Blog 24)

The NGV Triennial:
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Melbourne finally has an exhibition that rivals Sydney’s long-running biennale, Adelaide’s successful Biennial and Brisbane’s Asia-Pacific Triennial.  It is simply called the NGV Triennial and despite its ambitious scope, with over 100 artists and designers from 32 countries, it is all housed within the National Gallery of Victoria’s mothership building in St Kilda Road. 
 
This is not Melbourne’s first attempt at a regular international exhibition; Signs of Life in 1999 was intended as the inaugural Melbourne International Biennial, but this was generally a flop and largely died without a trace. 
 
The NGV’s Melbourne Now in 2013/14 was an important forerunner to the present Triennial that brought together art/design/architecture from the Melbourne region and attracted spectacular attendance figures.  The NGV Triennial has moved the focus to a global perspective, tightened quality control and embarked on some ambitious curatorial strategies.

Ron Mueck meets Tiepolo at the NGV Triennial

The curatorial team is all in-house, led by the director Tony Ellwood, together with gallery staff members Andrew Clark, Dr Isobel Crombie, Simon Maidment, Ewan McEoin, Don Heron, Donna McColm and Ingrid Rhule, and the primary venue is the gallery. 
 
What has happened is that the whole gallery has become an immersive experience. The fact that all four floors of the gallery have been utilised means that not only is the visitor encouraged to explore the gallery and its fabulous permanent collections, but all sorts of unexpected synergies occur.  For example, one of the monumental skulls by Ron Mueck is juxtaposed with Tiepolo’s Banquet of Cleopatra, while Timo Nasseri’s Epistrophy merges into, reflects and dominates a foyer space. 
 

Xu Zhen, Eternity-Buddha in Nirvana, the Dying Gaul, Farnese Hercules, Night, Day, Sartyr and Bacchante, Funerary Genius, Achilles, Persian Soldier Fighting, Dancing Faun, Crouching Aphrodite, Narcissus Lying, Othryades the Spartan Dying, the Fall of Icarus, A River, Milo of Croton, 2016–17, mineral-based composite material, mineral pigments, metal Commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne National Gallery of Victoria, Loti & Victor Smorgon Fund, 2017

Twenty of these large-scale works have been specifically commissioned by the NGV, leaving a lasting heritage for Australia – as well as a headache for storage – which will in part be offset once funding for a new building for the NGV has been approved.  Although the diversity is staggering and includes 3D printing, robotics, performance, film, painting, printmaking, drawing, installation, fashion design, tapestry, sculpture and a smelling work, the tightness of presentation makes this into a manageable exhibition that can be viewed over a number of hours. 
 
The exhibition, rather than having a general motherhood theme, is divided instead into five broad areas with very porous boundaries, namely time, body, virtual, change and movement.  As they added little to my understanding of the exhibition (although a good anchor for the 660-page monster catalogue), I largely ignored them. 
 
On a few occasions, I have noted that Xu Zhen, aged 40, is the most interesting artist to emerge out of China in recent decades.  His monumental Eternity‑Buddha in Nirvana ..., stretching over fourteen metres, juxtaposes a famous Tang dynasty reclining Buddha with Greco-Roman, Renaissance and Neo-classical sculptures of the western tradition. 
 
In some ways, the work can be taken as an allegory for the old and new Silk Routes and the clash between pacifist and militant philosophies on life and being.  Although Ai Weiwei, his senior by twenty years, has received greater international attention, Xu Zhen is perhaps the more significant and a more profound artist.

Alexandra Kehayoglou, Santa Cruz River, 2016-2017, wool, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, purchased with funds donated by Michael and Andrew Buxton from MAB Corporation 

If Xu Zhen employed 3-D scanning techniques to replicate his sculptures, the Buenos Aires–based artist and designer Alexandra Kehayoglou, employs drones and aerial footage to weave her environmental installations.  The Santa Cruz River, commissioned by the NGV, focuses on the last free-flowing river in Argentina, now under threat from proposed dams.
 
Woven employing traditional rug making techniques, it is a very effective immersive installation, where you are invited to literally lie on the artwork and be reflected within the environment as you gaze into the mirror vault of heaven.

Installation view of Mass by Ron Mueck, 2016-17, synthetic polymer paint on fibreglass, Commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria, Felton Bequest, 2017

Australia’s Ron Mueck has been commissioned to make a hundred individualised human skulls, each about a metre-and-a-half high.  They form a sort of memento mori to a mass age where massacres have increasingly become common occurrences.  It is good to see Mueck challenged outside his comfort zone.
 
India’s Shilpa Gupta creates a suspended dark and mysterious mass from which we hear echoes about boundaries and zones, imposed and imagined, while the American weaver Pae White, in Spearmint to peppermint, creates an amazing shimmering cotton and polyester wall as well as a totally absorbing installed environment. 

Pae White, Spearmint to Peppermint, 2013, cotton, polyester, National Gallery of Victoria, Purchased NGV Foundation with the assistance of Donald Russell Elford and Dorothy Grace Elford Bequest, 2017 © Pae White, Image courtesy Pae White and 1301PE, Los Angeles 

Tokyo-based teamLab create an interactive digital installation, Moving creates vortices and vortices create movement, where sensors follow human movement to generate a vortex. The group argues that vortices are part of nature and define global weather, oceans and the microclimates of cities.
 
There are relatively few traditional media pieces, which include the delicate, politically-charged drawings by the Russian artist, Olga Chernysheva, and paintings by the Polish artist, Paulina Ołowska, which are haunting and loaded with images of women and of herself. 
 
As is inevitable in an exhibition of this nature, there are also a number of duds, including the unfortunate work by Ben Quilty, which are best passed over in silence. 
 
The inaugural NGV Triennial is in parts brilliant, exciting and innovatory, and one feels confident it will establish a major mass event on the Australian summer arts calendar – one which is free, democratic and secular and will stand up in any international company. 

Paulina Ołowska, The painter, 2016, oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas, National Gallery of Victoria, purchased with funds donated by Connie Kimberley and Craig Kimberley OAM, 2017, © Paulina Ołowska, Image courtesy Paulina Ołowska and Metro Pictures, New York