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Anxiousness

Thoughts on The National – New Australian Art, 2017

David Corbet
Eyeline 87
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The National 2017 – New Australian Art is a diverse, multi-layered and nuanced exhibition, featuring new work by some of the country’s most interesting artists, woven together by an expert and talented group of thinkers. Yet its reception, critical and public, has been somewhat subdued, and its relevance questioned in some quarters. By the time this essay sees print, thousands more words will have been written, and a better critical picture will emerge, so it is not my intention to offer a work-by-work review, but rather to ponder how this first (forty-eight artist, three venue, five curator) edition of The National intersects with the broader cultural landscape, and the future role it might play across its full three-edition, six-year cycle.

While deliberating on a title for this essay, I was mindful of equivalent shows of the last decade, including Optimism at Queensland’s Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) in 2008. That show’s sunny disposition and themes of ‘…hope, energy, passion, playfulness…’1 might nowadays appear a little forced in the face of contemporary anxieties, hence my title. Such surveys, usually mounted by State institutions, are part of a longer history of overviews/snapshots of national contemporary practice, including Sydney’s Australian Perspecta (of which the final edition was in 1999), and the Art Gallery of South Australia’s (AGSA’s) long-running Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, alongside relative newcomers like the National Gallery of Australia’s (NGA’s) National Indigenous Art Triennial, and the Tarrawarra Biennial. And of course the venerable Biennale of Sydney and Brisbane’s Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT), while international in scope, have for many years been important and well-funded platforms for new Australian art, seen by large audiences. These will... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Richard Lewer, Never Shall Be Forgotten – A Mother’s Story, 2017. Still, detail. Hand-drawn animation. Image courtesy the artist, sullivan+strumpf and Hugo Michell Gallery. © The artist.

Richard Lewer, Never Shall Be Forgotten – A Mother’s Story, 2017. Still, detail. Hand-drawn animation. Image courtesy the artist, sullivan+strumpf and Hugo Michell Gallery. © The artist.

Karen Mills, Floodline (i), 2016. Dry pigment and ochre on linen. Image courtesy the artist and Alcaston Gallery. © The artist. Photograph Fiona Morrison

Karen Mills, Floodline (i), 2016. Dry pigment and ochre on linen. Image courtesy the artist and Alcaston Gallery. © The artist. Photograph Fiona Morrison