“ROMPIENDO BARRERAS”
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The quirky inclusion of a pond (officially, the ‘water mall’) in the QAG seems an
inappropriate architectural feature for a building that requires strict humidity and climate controls. Yet, as argued earlier, it is this departure from the generic white cube gallery space that has attracted and inspired site-specific art. The water mall is as much a hook to site-specific art as the AGNSW’s vestibule. Apart from the water feature, the
architecture is fairly unremarkable,69 which is reflected in the fact that the site-responsive artworks have all focussed on this single unique design element.
The QAG, commissioned in the early 1970s is as much a symbol of the cultural change in Brisbane as it was in Australia as a whole. The state ‘gallery’ had officially existed since 1895 but until the QAG’s opening in 1982, had never had a permanent, purpose built home.70 A second adjacent site, GOMA, is officially part of the QAG, although its emphasis on art that is more contemporary and its individual branding means that it tends to be seen as a separate building.71 The expansion of Brisbane’s cultural precinct,72 as it is now known, has challenged the state’s traditional stereotype as a cultural backwater,
69 The heavy cubic features, mezzanine levels, mix of glass-walled naturally lit areas and windowless galleries, and indoor/outdoor sculpture gardens can be seen in other Australian galleries of that period, such as the NGA. However, following its opening, Peter Prystupa argued that the building was distinctly local. Along with the water mall, he commented that the building’s outline ‘complements the magnificent silhouettes of the distant mountain ranges,’ the light and shade reflects the ‘Mediterranean-like quality of Brisbane’s climate,’ and the covered walkways are akin to the verandas that rim the iconic Queenslander houses. Peter Prystupa, ‘Interior Architecture of the Queensland Art Gallery,’ Art and Australia 20, no. 4 (1983): 486.
70 The original gallery was housed in the now demolished Town Hall building from 1895 until 1905 when it moved to the third floor of the Land Administration Building. From there it moved to the Exhibition Building Concert Hall in 1931 where it stayed until the purpose built QAG opened in 1982. Queensland Art Gallery, ‘History,’ QAGOMA. http://qagoma.qld.gov.au/about_us/history
71 To minimise confusion, I will refer to Robin Gibson’s 1982 building as the Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) and the newer building, designed by the firm Architectus, as the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA). 72 Sited nearby is the state’s key performing arts venue and Queensland College of Art.
revealing the influence of large state institutions on a city (or country’s) sense of cultural identity. While the AGNSW’s original classical architecture reflects the values of a country that at the time looked to England for cultural and social legitimacy, the QAG’s inclusion of the water mall was intended to distinguish itself from other institutions, a trend in museum architecture that has only increased since the 1970s.
The gallery is situated on the Brisbane River, and so the water mall, which runs parallel to the river, echoes the city’s key geographic feature. From the building’s inception, the water mall has been used as an exhibition space, with staff placing appropriate artworks from the gallery’s collection, such asEmilio Greco’s bronze Bather (1956), on raised platforms in the water. On the gallery’s opening, Peter Prystupa observed that the positioning of such artworks ‘gives one a foretaste for the exciting possibilities of relating sculpture and water in future displays.’73 Yet, until the late 1990s, it was
predominantly the curators rather than the artists deciding which works would be placed in or around the water.
Most of the artworks responding to the water feature have been commissioned for the Asia-Pacific Triennials. For the third triennial, the Chinese artist Cai Guo Qiang
produced a traditionally constructed bamboo bridge over the water, entitled Blue Dragon and Bridge Crossing (1999).74 When the viewer reached the middle of the bridge, a laser would trigger a shower of water onto the unsuspecting participant, an act which Charles
73 Prystupa, ‘Interior architecture of the Queensland Art Gallery,’ 486.
74 Charles Green, ‘Beyond the Future: The Third Asia-Pacific Triennial,’ Art Journal 58, no. 4 (1999): 86.
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Green argues turned each person into ‘an insistent traveller – even a pilgrim – over uncharted and lonely cultural waters,’ adding that the work ‘was both a cliché and an accurate diagnosis of Australia’s position in Asia.’75
While Cai’s work engaged with the water on a fairly literal level, Yayoi Kusama’s 2002 ‘incarnation’ of her famous Narcissus Garden, first shown uninvited at the 1966 Venice Biennale,76 used the water’s reflective qualities. The artist, well known for her
distinctive polka dotted artworks, has long played with reflections, such as her boxed Infinity Mirror works where the viewer enters a room internally clad with mirrors. Typically, the floor is mostly water with just a small viewing platform, and the properties of this liquid results in a sixth mirror not quite as perfect as the rest. Likewise, in the 2002 water mall version of Narcissus Garden, the mirrored balls placed in the water infinitely reflected each other and the surroundings, the water providing an additional, albeit imperfect, reflective surface. Two small platform bridges curving around opposite ends of the water mall, allowed the viewer to physically enter the work, their gaze
reflected back, distorted, dozens of times. The presence of water in the gallery already generates a soothing, contemplative
atmosphere, and Kusama’s work
emphasises this mood. Although slightly obscure, Kusama wrote about her
constructed environment, ‘when we
obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots, we become part of the unity of our environment, I become part of the eternal, and we obliterate ourselves in love.’77 A smaller version of Narcissus Garden was shown at the MCA at Kusama’s survey
exhibition in 2009, and was installed on a ledge outside the gallery windows. Unlike the biennale and triennial versions, not only was the viewer unable to walk through the mirrored ‘garden’, they were also separated by the glass window. As a reflective surface and a physical barrier, the MCA garden did not encourage quite the same level of
environmental ‘unity’ advocated by Kusama.
75 Ibid.
76 Lynne Seear, ed. APT 2002: Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, exhibition catalogue (Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery, 2002), 61.
77 Kusama, cited in Laura Hoptman, Akira Tatehata, and Udo Kultermann, Yayoi Kusama, (London: Phaidon, 2000), 124.
Ai Weiwei also drew upon the reflective qualities of the water in his glitzy 2006 work Boomerang. The oversized and fully lit boomerang-shaped chandelier filled the cavernous space from floor to ceiling in what Sarah Tiffin described as ‘a spectacular monument to consumption and display with a finely honed sting in the tail.’78 The
extravagant work commented on the aspirations of the increasingly affluent Chinese middle-class, where ‘bigger is better’ and ‘worth and status can be measured in crystal drops’: all 270,000 of them.79 The chandelier’s
positioning over the mirror-like water, doubled its ‘weight.’ The vulgarity associated with such an over-
elaborate object also starkly contrasted with the otherwise peaceful pond. The most recent of the water mall
commissions was an installation by Ayaz Jokhio, which consisted of a six-meter tall octagonal room in the middle of the water, again with a ‘bridge’ that allowed viewers to enter the work. Described as ‘conceptual architecture’ by the curators of the 2009 triennial, the work referenced Islam, as well as traditional Eastern architecture and
design.80 The structure sat easily in the space, and like the other site-specific works made for this site, the pond acted both as an inspiration as well as a ‘frame’ to the contemplative work.
78 Sarah Tiffin, ‘Ai Weiwei,’ in The 5th Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, ed. Lynne Seear, and Suhanya Raffel, exhibition catalogue (Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery, 2006), 5.
79 Ibid., 4-5
80 Suhanya Raffel (Curatorial Manager, Asian and Pacific Art) and Russell Storer (Curator, Contemporary Asian art), APT6 –Audio Tour, 2009.
64. Ai Weiwei Boomerang (2006)
65. Ayaz Jokhio,
GOMA’s architecture is distinctive in a different way to the QAG. The tall ceilings and windows that typify the white-walled cubic gallery do not tend to inspire site-specific response to the same extent as the water mall. However, the most distinctive features of the gallery architecture are its tall ceilings, and floor to ceiling windows. As a
consequence, there is no distinct hook for site- specific response comparable to those at the QAG and AGNSW. Despite this relative absence, the drive to respond to something,
anything, has resulted in artworks being sited in GOMA’s toilets. Additionally, the windows that flood the expansive gallery foyer with light, has also been the subject of response in the 2009 Asia Pacific Triennial.
Wit Pimkanchanapong created a cloud of office paper and paperclips in the cavernous entrance. The descriptively titled Cloud (2009) was set against floor to ceiling glass, and from most viewpoints was viewed against the backdrop of a blue Queensland summer sky, slightly mirrored by the reflective surface. Again, the predominantly white cube spaces provide little opportunity for artistic response; instead, the catalyst for the installation is one of the building’s few relatively distinguishing features.
Sited in the toilets at the same triennial was Charwei Tsai's Hand Washing Project 1 (2009). As visitors washed their hands in the distinctive trough sinks, videoed hands were projected over the top,
echoing their movements. For the related
Water Project (2009) in the downstairs toilets adjacent to the gallery’s education department, sea creatures were projected instead. This creep from regular exhibition spaces to the gallery’s utilitarian areas demonstrates the desire of many artists to actively interact with just about anything.
66. Wit Pimkanchanapong, Cloud (2009)
White walls may still be the norm in most art museums, but they are also a barrier to creativity, discouraging a much-desired dialogue between museum architecture and works of art. While the growth in distinctive museum architecture, from the
Guggenheim in Bilbao to Rome’s MAXXI, could be viewed cynically as mere branding exercises, or alternatively (competing) art objects in themselves, any deviation from the ubiquitous white-walled space, whether it be as simple as a window, or more
spectacularly, a pond, tends to inspire artistic response.