Empty heads making too much noise

The talking heads have been sounding off about New Zealand's entry to the Venice Biennale. By LINDA HERRICK



There was a lot of braying on the Holmes show on Wednesday - not all of it from footage of the donkey toilet installation by artist et.al, who is actually Merylyn Tweedie. Holmes was in foaming talkback mode as he shouted down Creative New Zealand chairman Peter Biggs' attempts to explain why the work - real title Rapture 2004 - would be going to the Venice Biennale 2005 and how et.al's site-specific project would warrant $500,000 of Creative NZ funding.

He might as well have been speaking Martian. As Biggs laboured to get his points across, Holmes rolled his eyes, interrupted, and mocked him and the artist.

They were all signs, says Wellington art commentator Jim Barr, of a man threatened by something he didn't understand.

"He was so angry about it, you assume that anything new in his life he finds threatening - and that is the talkback culture. If it's new or not the same as everything that went before it, you get scared - then you get angry." But Holmes was not alone, as talkback discussions and letters to the editor have proved.

Because much contemporary art does not take the form of a pretty painting - and often deals with painful emotions - it can provoke extraordinary hostility. Many of those most vociferous in their criticism have never visited public galleries to experience contemporary art. They just see out-of-context images on television, accompanied by the shocking news that an artist will receive public funding. Then predictably, all hell breaks out. Biggs tried to talk to Holmes about "context", or the lack of it in the broadcaster's case against et.al, but failed to get through. However, New Zealand's presence at the Venice Biennale is all about context, as is the work sent there by nations from all over the world.

Creative NZ is not promoting our interests at the Venice Biennale - the most important, and largest, contemporary arts event in the world - on a whim. New Zealand involvement in Venice goes back to 1998, when Creative NZ commissioned independent consultants to quiz the visual arts community for recommendations.

The results, highly critical of Creative NZ and compiled in the New Vision Report, set two priorities: set up a range of international artists' residencies, which it has begun; and establish representation at Venice.

The country's presence in Venice has been a three-biennale trial, with 2005 the last time, after which continued participation will be reviewed.

Why should New Zealand be at the Venice Biennale? "When you travel, you realise how far away we are from everybody and how little anybody knows about us," explains Barr, who rates et.al in the same league of "greats" as Colin McCahon. "That's why The Lord of the Ring has been so hugely important to New Zealand, and it's the same when we make our presence felt in art."

While some critics have urged that only art that is distinctly New Zealand or Pacifica-looking should be sent, such as that by Ralph Hotere or Shane Cotton, Barr argues we can be more mature in the international arena.

"That is art of the 70s and we are not trying to project ourselves as a country living in the 70s. We are trying to project ourselves as a more sophisticated place not obsessed with itself, isolated and looking into its own navel and counting our sheep. Other participants at Venice don't have this nationalistic obsession.

"Anyway, this whole thing about it looking like it comes from New Zealand is a red herring. The work will look like it comes from somewhere different and all the people who see it will know it has come from New Zealand."

Auckland Art Gallery curator Robert Leonard believes the decision to send et.al to Venice is actually quite conservative - in the context of what goes on in the Biennale in dozens of venues over five months.

"You could see et.al as an out-there call or you could call it conservative. She's been around for a very, very long time, she's a pedigree artist, she teaches, she's had huge retrospective shows and she's in all the public gallery collections in New Zealand. She is a highly respected artist ... the perfect person to send to Venice. I think it is a very good call - on the one hand it is a brave call, but it's not radical. I think they want to present her as outrageous, but all it is is contemporary art."

Holmes and his ilk also seemed to have particular trouble with the fact et.al operates under a range of pseudonyms, and doesn't talk to the media because she wants to preserve her privacy.

"Why would you want to?" asks Barr, referring to the Dominion-Post's constant use of the word "dunny" in its headlines last week. "Why would any sensitive artist want to talk to the media when they know what's going to happen? The media regards this as sport. They don't feel any responsibility or respect towards the enterprise. That is exactly the attitude we are trying to break down with people overseas. If they felt that was the way we were, they would think we were an ignorant backwater."

Natasha Conland, curator of art at Te Papa, who will curate et.al's Venice show, to be titled The Fundamental Practice, says the use of pseudonyms is nothing new in the art world. "We can have fun with Barry Humphries and Dame Edna Everage, but when it comes to art our hackles are already up. There's a sense we are playing some sort of elitist game so they are not comfortable with the notion of dealing with pseudonyms, whereas we can really enjoy it."

Leonard agrees. "A play with gender pseudonyms and gender identity may seem very out there, but for the kind of people who go to Venice, it's business as usual. All that stuff is part of the stock and trade of contemporary art."

Conland says et.al's use of the moniker, Latin for "and others", comes from humility. "The acknowledgment of the collaborative way of working is crucial, especially when you're using found material [like junked computer hardware] with no single originator. et.al is using quite complex technology - but that is not a skill an artist owns 100 per cent themselves, so et.al is acknowledging the skills of other people."

She points to Marcel Duchamp, the great-grandfather of surrealism, whose work et.al has referenced throughout her career. Duchamp used names such as Rose Selavy (a play on the phrase Eros C'est la vie) and R. Mutt, which he signed to a work placed in a public gallery way back in 1917 - a urinal. It caused an uproar.