The entryway to the main NGV Galleries (free, by the way) is beautiful, covered in a falling water installation.
In these galleries, a few works in particular caught my attention.
Marjetica Potrc is an artist and architect from Ljubljana. Her work Urban, 2001, is a series of photographs of urban spaces and buildings.
Potrc complicates easy narratives around these images of urban life, both cluttered (slums) and glamorous or sleek (skyscrapers) by layering text around and through them that tells fragments of stories. Information panels tell the viewer, "Each depictions of the city considers community, a sense of place and belonging, and conversely, detachment and alienation." I found Potrc's work thought-provoking, and an interesting juxtaposition of her artistic and architectural talents.
I also enjoyed
Yayoi Kusama's installation of Tender are the stairs to Heaven (2004). Something about the ladder streaming upwards and the slowly melting colors was tremendously relaxing and meditative.
Nearby, another branch of the NGV, is the Ian Potter Centre.
This branch contains the Qantas-funded Aboriginal Art Galleries, which include both traditional/historical works as well as contemporary art.
The galleries are spacious and airy, and look like this:
Traditional decorative weaving is also included.
Wall text from artists remind visitors that painting is a political and agentive act, and that the history of Aboriginal painting in Australia has been laden with difficulty, tension and struggle. As scholar Fred Myers relates, Aboriginal artists were often taken advantage of by gallerists and dealers as their work came to represent the Australian nation, a nation which did not necessarily acknowledge rights to these same peoples.
Some of the text panels read like the works on display are purely artistic, with no additional or interpretive information presented, whereas others include part of the artist's story, which helps the works to be seen as cultural artifacts (rather than as purely art works). It is also critical to clarify that providing descriptions that help the viewer decipher these works can be read in two ways: first, that as Bourdieu tells us, all art is read and understood by decoding certain symbols and its legibility, that is, that its meaning is encoded and understood by those who know the key and find it legible and so providing this type of key and description helps build this lexicon in the viewers, which they can then carry to interpret other works; alternatively, providing such a key can come across as condescending or as acknowledging these works' location outside the historic Western art canon.
I was really taken by Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrala's A bushtucker's story, below.
And a closeup:
I just thought this painting was stunning in its complexity, delicate colors, and careful details. It reminded me of Monet's gardens at Giverny, if seen through a Seurrat-ian eye.
Other paintings were depicted very clearly as cultural artifacts that allowed the visitor a view into Aboriginal culture and beliefs around certain social practices or understandings, as this painting, Mimih spirit and human reproduction.
Another work I found compelling was Ruby Tjangawa Williamson's Puli murpu (Mountain range). Wall text assists the viewer in deciphering the image.
In the contemporary art section, I was completely mesmerized by Samantha Hobson's Bust 'im up, 2000, seen below in details. I have also included the wall panel, so readers can see that Hobson's geographic and tribal affiliation. The galleries are clearly attempting to promote seeing these artists as individuals, with distinct cultural, geographic, and social backgrounds.
And finally, Mirdidingkingathi Jurwunda Sally Gabori's 2008 work, Ninjiki, is absolutely incredible. If I could cover a wall with this painting, and another with Lee Krasner's Gaea, 1966...
Overall, the NGV is making strides to promote varied and nuanced interpretations of works by Aboriginal artists, which is positive and should be encouraged and valued (not all museums are so nuanced in their thinking and representation of native peoples). However, when I went to the gift shop to look for postcards of the works I had fallen in love with (those above!), I was saddened to find that the only postcards available were from the "main" galleries, and there were no postcards of works in the Aboriginal galleries for sale. Thus it seems that wall panels and display aside, the NGV and its gift shop are still rooted in a normative and normalizing view of what constitutes "art."
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