FRAGMENT: CONCRETE DREAMS; MCA
Christie Cooper
16.09.2014–15.00: It’s bright, blue, and windy; perhaps for Walter Benjamin, disturbingly ebullient, disquietingly crisp. An ocean liner sits heavy in the harbour in art deco white. It holds promises of buffets, games, glamour and a bit of Paddy Pallin. Trains cut across Circular Quay. Bauhaus imaginists, please draw them out, under or above the sky – the Didgeridoo is playing under a mini-marquee, bass beat-box accompanied, adding to timetable announcements, ferries and a touristy buzz. Maroon-hatted kids dart on a grass mini-square, office ladies gather for a cruise and we’re on the stairs, harbour side MCA, a big black cube jutting out of the regal old woolstore.
16.09.2014–15.10: We’re going in. The harbour side entrance brings outside in, broad low stairs and high ceilings. A white neon arrow, person-size, flashes down outside the entry. Inside, the left wall is etched with a list: donors, philanthropists and friends. Signs and posters, leaflets, brochures, articles and placards. It is in these materials, Walter Benjamin writes that ‘language shows itself actively equal to the moment’ – the book old and obsolete in contrast. On the right, spanning the size of a pool, is Guan Wei’s azure blue ‘Journey to Australia’. Fish, cartoon black silhouettes of navy boats and helicopters, and a sea god, like the one on the door of the Neptune Restaurant, dispenses weather and waves. In the big blue sea of space are rowboats, naked writhing figures spilling in and out. Wei reminds us that we were once immigrants and invites us to question our own approach to refugees in today’s precarious seas. As oil is to machines, Benjamin says, “Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence.” Opinions, he suggests, need to be applied “to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know” rather than saturating the whole machine. Guan Wei is our critic, our gentle oil. Bags backpacks in here guys, photos without flash, no pens pencils only no touching have fun….do you want an introduction? The strawberry blond woman suggests contemporary themes: the feminine, the occult, dreams, childish and fun but serious and weird. We see a retrospective of 42 years. To us, fresh from our desks, 42 years are fleeting. The Parisian history of the playful object imbued with beauty, value, sadness and joy is tinged with the mystic, religious, the political, the push of politeness against the mean. We are ready to look, feel and absorb like kaleidoscopic Flaneurs.
Kendal Murray, Exclaim, Disclaim, Ballgame, 2014, mixed media, 44 x 24 x 10 cm/ Image courtesy of the artist
