Image: Every day I am a day older (installation) 2013. Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane. Photo: Mick Richards
16 February – 30 March 2013
Charting the range of portraiture in the Griffith University Art Collection ( GUAC ), the exhibition Everyday I am a day older takes its title from a series of self-portraits by artist David M Thomas ( AUS ). The exhibition included historical works held in the GUAC, through to contemporary portraiture by Juan Davila (Chile/ AUS ), Tracey Moffatt ( AUS / USA ), Mike Parr ( AUS ), Vernon Ah Kee ( AUS ), Robert McPherson ( AUS ) and Dale Frank ( AUS ), among others, with selected loans.
Artists’s self-portraits, their portraits of other artists, portraits of animals and of architecture provide a rich set of associations through which we can reflect on ideas, debates and contexts that have shaped our conceptions of self, and the way we perceive the beings and things that surround us. It is also a fruitful reflection on the way artworks are acquired and function as public collections grow around shifting areas of interest and research.
In the unwieldy realm of portraiture, it is apparent that each artwork and series is a force unto itself. The context of an exhibition shifts the relationship, however. We cannot help but find specific messages reverberating with other artists’s practices. In Every day I am a day older, artists take a stand against the weight of problematic, if not violent, visual representations and ideologies. Other portraits reveal how performance and humour, or wit, can be exercised as a strategy to overturn stereotypes. Elsewhere, physical gestures and mark-making are the processes of working through subjectivity, offering striking insight into interior states of being, imagining and feeling.
For a collecting institution, the opportunity to reflect on its own history can throw up curly questions and downright problems. Perhaps one outcome of an exhibition like this, is that the collection has the potential to become self-aware and ‘fess up, so to speak, about ‘problem’ works, and to think about ways of handling issues in productive, meaningful and sensitive ways, rather than deciding to forget or avoid. Every day I am a day older states the obvious, but it also accesses deadpan humour and philosophical subjects — driving a wedge into our thinking — about what it means to get older, in increments, and hopefully as we age we’ll end up a little wiser.
Public Programs
Sessions were run during Orientation Week where David M Thomas spoke about his art practice and the project Every day I am a day older, featured in the exhibition. The Griffith Artworks Art Collection Manager, Joanne Duke, led a tour of the exhibition and provided insight into the workings of public art collections.
Exhibiting Artists
- Vernon AH KEE
- Tony ALBERT
- Gordon BENNETT
- Peter BOOTH
- Juan DAVILA
- Destiny DEACON
- FARRELL & PARKIN
- Dale FRANK
- Oscar FRISTROM
- Elizabeth Dickson (Bessie) GIBSON
- Gonkar GYATSO
- Maria KOZIC
- Lindy LEE
- Robert MacPHERSON
- Tracey MOFFATT
- John NIXON
- Maurice ORTEGA
- Harold PARKER
- Mike PARR
- Luke ROBERTS
- William ROBINSON
- Julie RRAP
- David M THOMAS
- Hiram TO
- Jenny WATSON
- Paul WRIGLEY
- Anne ZAHALKA
Pixy Liao
Born 1979 Shanghai, China; lives New York, United States of America
Pixy Liao uses photography, video, and installation to question stereotypical representations of couples, artists, and the female experience. Some of these intimate, humorous photographs are from Liao’s Experimental Relationship project, 2007 – ongoing. For Liao:
As a woman brought up in China, I used to think I could only love someone who is older and more mature than me, who can be my protector and mentor. Then I met my current boyfriend, Moro. Since he is 5 years younger than me, I felt that whole concept of relationships changed, all the way around. I became the person who has more authority & power. One of my male friends even questioned how I could choose a boyfriend the way a man would choose a girlfriend. And I thought, ‘Damn right! That’s exactly what I’m doing, & why not?!
In her photographs, Liao often portrays herself in a dominant role while her boyfriend assumes a more submissive position in order to break the predominant relationship model and experiment with new modes of being together.
Lin Zhipeng (aka No. 223)
Born 1979 Guangdong, China; lives Beijing, China
Lin Zhipeng (aka No.223) is a leading figure in contemporary Chinese photography. Selfnamed after the lovelorn Hong Kong police officer in Wong Kar-wai’s 1994 film Chungking Express, 223’s photographs capture the need to love in an otherwise indifferent society. Documenting the ecstasy, eroticism and esotericism of life amidst an often-closed traditional culture, his photographs act as a collective not-so-private diary of a generation pushing against the limits of the rigid social rules of conservative Chinese society. This presentation is comprised of photographs, dating from 2007 which demonstrate the arcs and parameters of his practice. Confidently flash-lit and playfully posed 223’s photographs show you that relationships will continue even as they change. Your friends will grow old, their homes might shift from Beijing to Paris, and some lovers may depart while others choose to stay. In 223’s photographs we see bodies immersed in milky waters or decisively slumped against the wall. These are bodies that are not explicitly working but neither are they at rest. Embodying the messiness of human relationships, his work is equal parts surprising and sanguine, mundane and melancholic, yet always beautiful.
Installation Images
