REVIEW | Spaced 2

VISUAL ARTS
Spaced 2: Future Recall
WA Museum, Perth | Review by Laetitia Wilson

The team at International Art Space in Perth has launched another major exhibition of socially engaged art.
Spaced 2: Future Recall marks the culmination of 12 commissioned residencies, where national and international artists are propelled into far-flung regional locations of WA.

Walking into the exhibition in the dark spaces of the WA Museum, there is an odd feeling that socially engaged art has become mummified — carefully contained in museum display cases, combined with museum artefacts and ensconced within the weighty hush of the past.

Such an impression is reinforced when first glancing at the work of artists such as Ruben Santiago from Spain, whose Spaced residency was in Derby. This artist has carved 60 boab nuts, which are displayed in gridded formation in a glass- enclosed display case, like historical artefacts. First impressions can be deceiving, however, and looking closer reveals a range of meanings.

Santiago’s art practice is generally sociopolitical and here he uses the boab nut as a unique diary of his time in Derby, while also referencing the history of its use and how it signifies a crossing of cultures. Boab nut carving is said to have begun in Australia in the late 19th century and the trees themselves are pan- geographical; endemic to both the Kimberley and Africa.

Santiago brings boab nut carving into the contemporary world with provocative text such as “This nut kills fascists” or “Aboriginal artist unveiled as a white woman”. The carved nuts are not only beautiful objects; their messages are more complex than first meets the eye.

Socially engaged art itself is compelling as an idea from afar but necessarily more complicated on the ground. It is more often a theoretical castle in the sky rather than a practical reality.

IAS director Marco Marcon distances the exhibition from this label, claiming that the works are in fact not socially engaged but rather context responsive, responding to the culture, the history, the landscape, the politics or the community of a given place.

Complexity characterises many of the projects, concerned as they are with responding to complex communities. One of the artists, Maddie Leach from New Zealand, described the residency program as like an arranged marriage: unpredictable from the outset and fraught with complications.

Leach had a residency in Mandurah and experienced friction with the community in the realisation of her work. She became interested in the nearby town of Pinjarra and its bloody history with the massacre of up to 80 Bindjareb Noongar people in 1834. Leach’s work was not supported by the City of Mandurah and she does not display a final artwork, but rather the video of the making of a lithograph of a document relating to the creation of a memorial plaque. The absence of the final print directly references the absence of a memorial plaque at the site of the massacre.

Contrary to this, most of the works are convivial within their given communities and the artists follow the formula of not only giving to the community and place of residency but also creating cohesive and well- executed projects in diverse media.

American artist Daniel Peltz landed in Tom Price, a town founded on American capitalism and ambition. Here he developed an extraordinary project following the fate of the Kaiser steel mill from Tom Price, to the US, to various locations in China. Working with the Taichung Opera troupe, he created a traditional Peking opera based on this story.

Overall, Spaced 2 has an underlying humour, a touch of horror, a political bent, a poetic celebration of the landscape, a wonderfully obscure opera and a poignant reminder of dying languages and our lesser-known endangered species.

Compared with the IAS’ first Spaced exhibition by IAS in 2012, the works here are arguably less audacious and more concerned with the minutiae of response to context and the creation of a tangible outcome to be exhibited. It is still nonetheless a highly ambitious and unique undertaking of critical relevance to the arts in Perth and beyond in bridging cultures and geographical distances.

Spaced 2: Future Recall runs until March 29.