SEANNA VAN HELTEN surveys CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIA: OPTIMISM on its opening weekend at the Gallery Of Modern Art.

“Thinking the most of life ... could be a useful working definition,” says cartoonist Michael Leunig of optimism, that is, the disposition to think positively and expect the best possible outcome. Leunig is one of 67 Australian artists featuring in Contemporary Australia: Optimism, a selection of new artworks on the theme of “optimism” at the Gallery of Modern Art.

Optimism seems to me a particularly modern notion, related to unwavering self-belief and the Pollyanna-brand perennial hopefulness that afflicts many Americans. So going into Optimism, the inaugural triennial exhibition of contemporary Australian art at GoMA, I am interested in how the concept of optimism has been integrated into recent Australian art practice. Is optimism a reaction or defence against wider social challenges? Is all art – underfunded, introspective, creatively risky – inherently optimistic?

The answers are contemplative, political, irreverent, colourful, and humorous, evoking a multifaceted conversation between the artists involved. Rather than group together a disparate survey, the gallery curators have specifically sought artists currently engaged in the theme and, in some cases, commissioned new works from artists keen to delve into the concept. The resulting collection of paintings, drawings, photography, sculpture, video art, and installation is therefore both eclectic and thematic – the theme, perhaps, being a useful thread for punters to weave their way through the sometimes baffling world of contemporary art.

Two motifs shine through strongly in Optimism. In the first room, colour dominates. Culturally, nothing signifies emotion in art more than the use of colour and it abounds here in bold, sumptuous glory. Robert Owen’s large-scale painting explores colours as indicators of mood, charting a graph of his emotions over a 24-hour period with vertical bars of corresponding hues. Owen’s work is one of several that respond to the twentieth-century European traditions of modernism and abstraction, in which colour and shape were integral to expressing sentiment and feeling.

Opposite, Arlene Textaqueen introduces the show’s other underlying motif of humour – certainly an important element of optimism, sustained by a culture’s ability to laugh at itself. In her work titled They Took It Very Seriously (Brides of Frank), Textaqueen uses the playful medium of children’s markers in her large-scale burlesque-inspired nude drawings, featuring Brisbane performance group the Brides of Frank frolicking on Mt Coot-tha.

With the majority of works completed in the last twelve months, there are several references to current affairs, in portraits of Barack Obama, Paris Hilton (in a “Vote or Die” t-shirt) and English politicians. Tony Albert’s work titled Sorry commemorates Kevin Rudd’s symbolically optimistic apology this year to Indigenous Australia. Plotting kitschy Aboriginal-themed objects over the black text of “Sorry,” Albert seeks to reclaim outdated, false representations of Indigenous identity, taking the apology at face value whilst we wait for what political action may follow the Prime Minister’s gesture.

The personal is political in works such as 2008 Archibald Prize winner Del Kathryn Barton’s suite of drawings, within which she explores “‘optimism’ as a physical threshold for self-knowledge and unity.” Various ideologies comprise optimistic beliefs in Emily Floyd’s sculptural installation titled Permaculture Crossed With Feminist Science Fiction and the cheeky surf-lifesaver photographs of Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont.

If the first room is colour-dominated, the second is more tactile, featuring a fluffy white walk-through glade crafted by Kathy Temin, titled My Monument: White Forest, and Mark Galea’s sheets of coloured acrylic suspended from the ceiling. The Salon Project room, in the centre of the second gallery, references the aesthetic and philosophic movements of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment era – the period to which the word “optimism” is traced. The artists featured in The Salon Project make use of representational painting, often subverting the conventions, or paying subtle homage to a method since replaced by photography.

Admission to the general exhibition is free, although entry will be charged on Friday evenings when the ‘Australia Up Late’ series launches in January. Following the hugely successful ‘Up Late’ evenings during the Warhol and Picasso blockbusters, ‘Australia Up Late’ will boast Aussie music and comedy acts, including Operator Please, Urthboy, Katie Noonan, The Gin Club, Tripod, Josh Thomas, and members of The Chaser.

At the media launch, most of the speakers spoke of recent world events and the human capacity for optimism in the face of financial crises, climate change and political turbulence. Ultimately, if optimism – risk, hope, faith – is what enables agency, then we should be proud that the optimism of contemporary Australian artists has found its home at GoMA.

CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIA: OPTIMISM is showing at the GALLERY OF MODERN ART until February 22, 2009. For details visit www.qag.qld.gov.au.

Comments (3)

2. Written by Louise, on 26-02-2009 21:19 Heyy Could you please put a picture of Arlene TextaQueen, Brides Of Frank. please. My year 9 Art class is doing a asiment on this art work   we saw it at GOMA. please could you put it on your website

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