"Do it", Review by Jared Davis

A project conceived by Hans Ulrich Obrist
VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne
June 14 – July 7 2007
Review by Jared Davis

Ripe with spatial idiosyncrasies, the Margaret Lawrence Gallery at Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts has played host to numerous exhibitions that pay conscious heed to its unique structure, atypical to that of common ‘white cube’ exhibition spaces. Entering the current show Do it, an exhibition conceived by Hans Ulrich Obrist, one is overwhelmed by a collection of art that is seemingly incongruous in its disparity. Whilst these works are all of considerable aesthetic and conceptual difference they remain unified in their origins of conception: from the mind of one artist to the practice of another, that is, a practitioner conceives a set of instructions for the creation of an artwork and another practitioner ‘does it’. An intriguing method of artistic practice, indeed one that is loaded with an immense array of permutations surrounding the nature of art, as well as raising notions of authorship, gesture as concept, concept as gesture and the discrepancies of interpretation versus the author’s intent.

Acoustic ambience, place and its physicality are investigated in Kate Neal’s practical application of Mike Kelley’s instructions to ‘record in a place with a colourful or weird history’ for no less than half an hour. Neal chose to produce a field recording of Victoria’s You Yangs Regional Park, an area with a rich sonic environmental atmosphere, and the place in which convict William Buckley and fellow escapees ate the last of their food rations following their escape from detention in 1803. Through its playback via a compact disc and small stereo in the gallery space, the viewer/listener experiences a compressed simulation of the true physical sonic environment that Buckley would have engaged with in his vulnerable uncertainty over two-hundred years earlier.

Interpreting a set of eccentric instructions attributed to Andy Warhol, Ace Wagstaff has created a quirky colourful art object out of polystyrene, dyed paddle-pop sticks, mushrooms, toy plastic bugs and insects, a model skull, a suspended wooden cube and a model skeleton arm, all doused frenetically with fluorescent silly-string. A mix of neo-psychedelia with primal expressionism, Wagstaff’s work is an energetic reinterpretation of the found object, one that aligns itself fittingly with a vogue aesthetic appreciation for colour that is interspersed throughout the work of many emerging Australian contemporary artists.
A slightly secluded crevice within the gallery space complements and coalesces with the voyeur of Santina Amato’s video work. Instructed by Elizabeth Presa to ‘be the woman with the pale blue eyes that Vito Acconci desires’ in his 1973 piece Theme Song, Amato’s video features her strewn across the floor, filmed with a camcorder placed at ground level beside her. The camera’s static motionlessness is cold, whereas its closeness to its subject is intrusive, if not forthright. Throughout the film, soundtrack exists solely as the dialogue of Vito Acconci’s voice (lifted from Theme Song), being monotone, visceral, candidly sleazy statements, and Amato’s slight responses, being unabashed and softly complacent of Acconci’s Svengali-like persona. Dark and yet surreptitiously feminist, Santina Amato presents a haunting investigation of female/male sexuality, as well as undermining the fine line between intimacy and intrusion.

Do it is an exhibition that features tremendous disparity with regard to each individual artwork’s conceptual breadth, nonetheless, its underlying idea creates a ubiquitous cohesion that truly validates it as an outstanding investigation into the practice of art-making. Through the dual-authorship of each of the works, issues of language and interpretation arise, with the pertinence of considering how the resolved artworks differ in their conceptual implications from those intended by the initial artists within their linguistic instructions. Furthermore, this process allows for the possibility of interpretations that exist within the sets of instructions unbeknownst to the instructors themselves, to be played upon and further articulated. Do it is truly an exceptional foray into the sensibilities and interests of an impressive palette of international and Australian artists.