Art
For crying out loud
by Aaron Kreisler
Wellington’s City Gallery is packed to the gunwales on the opening night of shows by New Zealand artists Peter Madden and Tony Lane, but most of the crowd is hovering in the downstairs rooms, which are occupied by a series of large photographic and video-based works by the British sensation Sam Taylor-Wood. And why wouldn’t they? The Taylor-Wood experience offers instant gratification – it’s smartly packaged, has conceptual hooks and offers large dollops of celebrity. This is the perfect opportunity to dress up and, for a fleeting moment, see how the well-heeled, famous and beautiful live and perform in the name of art.
It is fair to say that this show is a marketing and PR dream: on the day before it opened, it seemed as if there were more reporters and TV crew than gallery staff in the exhibition space. Watching the news correspondents plotting their camera angles and coyly probing Rachel Kent, the Australian curator, as to why they couldn’t film a particular artwork – David (2004, a video portrait of David Beckham sleeping) – it becomes abundantly clear that this show fits snugly into any lifestyle/entertainment slot. And looking at this process unfolding in the gallery all I could think was that this show had legs. In a country where the arts struggle for mainstream media coverage, this exhibition was newsworthy. It had the necessary pedigree, and it’s not hard to speculate about what made this story so attractive: celebrity.
The cornerstone of this exhibition is an extended suite of photographic works, Crying Men (2002-04), that features portraits of famous male actors in vulnerable and introspective moments. The photographic “set-up” for this series of images should be mentioned. Taylor-Wood arranged with these actors’ agents for them to participate in this project. For these stars it would have seemed like a normal role call, but in this instance they were not expected to read a set of lines – they were simply asked to cry.
It is the impromptu aspect of this situation that makes the reactions of the likes of Steve Buscemi (2004), Sean Penn (2004), Benicio del Toro (2002), Willem Dafoe (2003) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (2004) so mesmerising. The artist knowingly toys with the ambiguity created by these scenes, between the public performance and the private, intimate moment. It is easy to buy into this voyeurism, because as spectators we have developed such strong bonds with these actors/characters and their screen-life existence.
But at another level there is something deeply facile about this photoshoot – it is hard to feel any empathy with the participants or believe that we are getting a sustaining insight into the male psyche. And when you really get down to the nitty-gritty, is this work best served by being delivered in an art context or would it sit more comfortably (in all its slickness) in a magazine photo spread?
It is always interesting to see how an artist operates in another hemisphere – both physically and financially – and what they are producing. There will be broad public appeal in this show – people might even find the video Brontosaurus (1995) strangely compelling.
This video captures a nude male friend of the artist who is self-absorbed in a hypnotic dance routine. The footage has been slowed down and set to classical music for added effect and is somehow made acceptable in the context of this artist’s oeuvre. This work is worthy of note when one considers the New Zealand public’s response to international exhibitions that contain images of the male body: Robert Mapplethorpe, Keith Haring and Pierre et Gilles.
This will be one to watch, as will the reaction to the cover charge for this international show. But I find it mystifying that one is also expected to pay to visit the two New Zealand exhibitions – this is surely something that could have been avoided.
SAM TAYLOR-WOOD, City Gallery, Wellington (until January 28, 2007)
