Matthew Barney’s Research

Matthew Barney: River of Fundament

Museum of Old and New Art

Hobart

22 November 2014 – 13 April 2015

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It is all too easy to be seduced by the sheer gloss of Matthew Barney’s career. He makes epic videos via massive budgets. He seduces ‘big’ names to be involved, from Ursula Andress to Deborah Harry to Norman Mailer. He shows at the Guggenheim and was married to a rock star. At times it is nigh impossible not to be blinded by the glittering surface sheen, regardless of the faeces and the gore.

But the grunge at the core of this glitter has been there consistently. This became apparent during an all-too-brief discussion I had with the artist in Hobart as he was installing his massive sculptures in the bowels of the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in late 2014. The conversation had begun by discussing the author J.G. Ballard, whom Barney has long acknowledged as his favourite writer. Ballard’s fascination with psychopathology, with the bodily, with automobiles (crashed) and the apocalyptic has bled through Barney’s oeuvre since its inception, however there was a parallel, rarely discussed, interest which came to light when Barney uttered a few words: ‘There were also those wonderful RE/Search books which were definitely an inspiration.’

The influence of RE/Search opens a Pandora’s Box into how to (re)consider Barney’s modus operandi. Based in San Francisco and founded in 1980 by publishers Andrea Juno and V. Vale, RE/Search grew out of Vale’s seminal punk fanzine Search & Destroy from the late ’70s and continued to wear its punk/industrial/hardcore credentials with pride, covering such acts as Cabaret Voltaire, SPK and Throbbing Gristle (Barney’s own interest in hard-hitting rock is abundantly clear via his inclusion of such bands as Morbid Angel, Agnostic Front, Murphy’s Law and

Matthew Barney, River of Fundament storyboards, 2007-14. Detail, mixed media in eight oak and glass vitrines. Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Photograph Rémi Chauvin/MONA. Image courtesy Gladstone Gallery and Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart.