The Original Birds

Forgotten Songs by Michael Thomas Hills.  Originally commissioned by the City of Sydney in 2009 as a temporary installation,
this beloved work was reinstalled as a permanent work of public art in 2012.

Not too long ago, the sprawling city of Sydney, Australia was a lush forest, home to abundant wildlife.  While we enjoy the urban pleasures of this splendid and powerful city, we typically forget to ask: what happened to the birds and animals that once lived here, right here, where now there is a cafe, bookstore, international bank, government office, or Prada store?  Where are they now?

Forgotten Songs hovers over a cafe in
Angel Alley, in the heart of downtown Sydney.

Michael Thomas Hills' marvelous artwork, Forgotten Songs, reminds us to wonder -- literally, because this work summons a sense of wonder.  One of my favorite works commissioned by the City of Sydney's vigorous public art program, Hills' multimedia installation takes full advantage of its site:  one of the tight little lanes that crisscross Sydney's downtown. These vital small spaces are hidden behind grand 19th century buildings with ornate facades of granite and sandstone, and their intimate scale makes it possible for artists to work magical acts of transformation.  Rounding a corner, we look up at a swarm of old fashioned birdcages; where once there were perches on mighty tree branches, now there are hundreds of empty cages miraculously suspended in empty space.

Forgotten Songs spans the width of its narrow site.  A shaft of sun reaches into this shadowed canyon at certain times of day, bringing the play of light across the birdcages that hang in a ghostly cloud.  At first, Forgotten Songs is simply delightful.  But we realize that we have been transported into an avian ghost town, a post-apocalyptic world. All the birds are gone, they've flown the coop.  Perhaps they held on as long as they could as wild birds, and then were preserved briefly as pets or specimens, but now they have vanished entirely.  Thanks to an audio component, if we listen carefully we can detect an echo of their presence woven through the hubub of city noise.  Hidden speakers play the sounds of 50 species that once called, romanced, alarmed, and scolded in this space.

Each suspended cage is unique and suggestive of individual character -- in the same way a carved tombstone is, somewhere between mass produced and hand-crafted.  Having worked for 10 years in a Victorian cemetery, I recognize a kinship, even though Forgotten Songs is as light as air.  Both feature a massing of delicate, but enduring, objects, scaled to fit the body and designed to comfort through domestic analogy; individuals come together to form a grand memorial landscape bigger than any single life story.  As memorials, both preserve memory, evoke the past, and spur thoughts of the inevitability of change and ephemerality of life.  

"Habitat loss is credited as the biggest threat to bird survival. At present there are 129 species of birds native to New South Wales formally listed as extinct or threatened with extinction."
                                      – from Forgotten Songs, City of Sydney website 

Forgotten Songs commemorates more than the mortality shared by all living creatures.  It reminds us of our culpability.  We humans displaced almost all Sydney's birds to create our own habitat, a new world which leaves no spaces for wild creatures.  These creatures once brought vitality -- color, movement and song -- to our lives.  The grim truth is that we are eliminating birds and other animals all over the world, at an incredible, seemingly unstoppable pace.  Forgotten Songs creates a space to contemplate this tragedy and, hopefully, gain resolve to fight it.

To create the audio component,  Hills collaborated with a scientist, Dr. Richard Major.  The research that went into selecting which diurnal and nocturnal birds to include (based on local ecology and historic museum collections) is a story in itself, and can be found along with a list of all the birds and a link to some field recordings of their songs on the City of Sydney's website for this artwork.

More Information

Artist's Statement 

"An interplay of past and present, large and small, predator and prey, Forgotten Songs engages audiences with the beauty, unexpectedness and unfamiliarity of these displaced birdsongs. The installation explores how Sydney’s fauna has evolved and adapted to co-exist with increased urbanisation – inviting contemplation of the city’s past, its underlying landscape, and the sustainability issues associated with increased urban development."

– Michael Thomas Hill, 2009

City of Sydney Guide to Public Art -- Entry for Forgotten Songs

Always was, always will be

Public art and street art in Sydney is often hidden down a small street, tucked away around a corner, nestled into a laneway -- as the narrow alleys that offer shortcuts through the city’s long blocks are called.  You have to hunt for it.  But not always….

Seen from afar, this magnificent work by Reko Rennie jitters and glows like a radioactive site.  It crooks a finger and beckons…come nearer, see more… Then, viewed up close, it smacks you in the head!  But in a good way.

Always Was, Always Will Be by Reko Rennie, 2012-2014.  Commissioned by the City of Sydney's Streetware Program.

Coming from Boston, I had an immediate association with Sol LeWitt’s marvelous wall paintings at Mass MOCA – but run wildly amok.  I immediately fell in love with this work just for the way its dazzling use of color and pattern transform a stolid masonry structure into a sizzling work of sculpture.

Standing closer, I read the script wrapping around the façade, and began to recognize that this work is trying to tell us something about history, about determination, about endurance.  A simple declaration with the weight of ages:  “Always was, always will be.”  This, it turns out, is the title and core message of the work.

As a citizen of the United States traveling in Australia, I have been impressed by how the wrongs that were done to the Aboriginal people during “settlement” of the continent are an acknowledged part of the national story and identity.  Genocide, a generation of children abducted, continuing prejudice and impoverishment – this shameful history (and challenging present) is given space in civic discourse and family conversation.  In 2008, the Labour Party's Prime Minster Kevin Rudd issued an official – and heartfelt -- apology: "We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians....and for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture...We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation."  Rudd called for "A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia."  While this utopia has not been achieved, during our travels, we noticed that many public events -- small and large -- begin with a dedication to the first peoples, and Aboriginal art is proudly exhibited in contemporary art museums as well as in historic collections.   

Of course, apologies and dedications are not reparations, and poverty, discrimination, and cultural dislocation are acknowledged problems.  And things have changed in Australia since the days of PM Rudd, with Aboriginal land rights jeopardized by powerful development interests backed by the government.  It's not a simple situation. 

So, I’m wondering if this is what this piece is about. Has the artist created a vibrant space to think about the displaced people of earlier times? And a vivid assertion of their right to be here, right here, in the middle of Sydney?  A summoning of resilient spirit, a mash-up of traditional culture and global, street-wise, hip hop energy that offers a glimpse of a new way forward?  A little research confirms this guess.

Always Was, Always Will Be was commissioned by the City of Sydney’s Streetware Program in 2012.  The program gave a street artist whose clandestine work would typically be confined to part of a wall or the sides of a train the opportunity to take over an entire building.  Streetware enabled Reko Rennie to make a bold move, to create something spectacularly assertive that is both a part of the urban fabric and profoundly, stubbornly "other."

On his website, the artist Reko Rennie explains:

In this work, I used the geometric diamonds, referencing my associations to northwestern New South Wales and the traditional markings of the Kamilaroi people….Across the front of the building façade, neon text (‘Always was, always will be’) is incorporated across the geometric diamonds.  As a temporary work in this urban context the meaning is clear – this always was Gadigal country and always will be Gadigal.

So the simple diamond pattern is an ancestral motif from Rennie's own Kamilaroi heritage, and the transformed building becomes a heraldic crest for the Gadigal (the Gadigal clan lived in what is now called Sydney and are acknowledged by the city government as the "traditional custodians" of the land there).  

Now, how to explain the colors?  Rennie says he uses a “fluro pigmented paint” to achieve this intensity of clashing color, quite different from the subtle ochres, grays, and browns made from natural materials used in traditional aboriginal paintings. These strident colors are drawn from the palette of spray paint and markers used by graffitti artists everywhere to tag and transform urban walls all over the world; they are the international colors of now. 

A thoughtful essay by Vincent Alessi explores Rennie’s use of – and departure from – traditional forms and color.  Alessi believes that Rennie’s experiences growing up in the suburbs of Melbourne, the influence of other artists, and his own politically-oriented graffiti/street-art practice enabled him:

to create contemporary Indigenous art that was not restrained by the stereotypes that have come to dominate its representation.  Rennie was not interested in making work that simply utilised [sic] traditional mark-making such as dots and lines within the narrow ochre palette.  This was not because he did not associate with or want to be part of this tradition; rather the traditional symbol that he references – the diamond shape – formed only part of his identity.  His urban upbringing, which had shaped him as an adult and, ultimately, as an artist, was just as significant.  For Rennie, art was a means to explore identity, memory and Indigenous politics.  It was a way for him to challenge the stereotypes that had characterized Indigenous art.  And it was a way for him to explore what it means to be an urban Indigenous man in contemporary Australia.

Renie has developed a set of motifs, a vocabulary that appears in both art commissioned for public places and work created for a gallery setting.  In addition to the diamond pattern, he uses a crown (marking a kinship with Jean-Michel Basquiat) and an aboriginal flag; both symbolize the original sovereignty of the indigenous people.   Regarding the diamond motif Alessi offers this insight:

Described as a type of coat of arms by Rennie, it represents his Indigenous heritage.  The hypercolour rendering articulates his urban upbringing and declares proudly that he is part of a living, continually developing culture, not one that is static and defined by the ‘noble savage’ narrative.  The contemporary treatment of this sacred design reveals the level of self-investigation in Rennie’s work and his search to find a place for himself in an urban environment as an Aboriginal man.

With this fuller understanding of the artist’s intent, it is clear that Always Was, Always Will Be functions on two levels.  It is a monument to a past that is still with us, and a pointer towards the future.  It celebrates the survival against odds of Indigenous people while it offers a triumphant new accomplishment, a vibrant and vital expression that both preserves and transmutes earlier traditions in a contemporary voice.  

Around the same time as he created Always Was, Always Will Be, Rennie was invited to create a work in Washington DC in 2012.  Entitled "Remember Me," this work also uses the diamond pattern overlaid with script.  The script is rendered in neon, giving the work a literal glow at night.  Rennie brought the Australian awareness of indigenous peoples to our nation's capitol city, creating a work that is part admonition, part inspiration.  It literally lights the way to a new relationship to history.  Rennie explained:

This is, of course, not about remembering me, but remembering the past and remembering the original inhabitants of the land, at home and abroad.  

Remember Me, 2012, by Reko Rennie.  Commissioned by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Curator: Justine Topfer.

Remember Me, 2012, by Reko Rennie.  Commissioned by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Curator: Justine Topfer. 

Rennie became a full-time artist in 2009, when he realized how much he could accomplish as an artist.  In an interview with his former employer, The Age, he said: "'I realised that in art I had more power than I ever did as a journalist...After working as a journalist for a number of years I realised that some of the ideas I had about being able to portray Aboriginal affairs were a bit naive."  And indeed, he has achieved great success, with an impressive list of awards, commissions and exhibitions at home and abroad that get his messages out to wide and diverse audiences.  He has also worked collaboratively with young people and local artists, helping them to develop  empowered voices that will ripple out further.

It is not in the scope of this blog post to describe the ways that Australia's current conservative government is failing to keep the promises made by Prime Minister Rudd. In a recent interview Rennie was asked "What can you say about the timeliness of your work for Personal Structures [at the Venice Biennale], given the recent debates and protests surrounding Aboriginal sovereignty in Australia?"  His response was: "Unfortunately today, it’s easier to dispossess people and force the closure of remote or regional Aboriginal communities based on economic rationalisation, the economic rationalisation relating to natural resources. So it's a timely reminder." ("The Personal Structures of Reko Rennie," Australia Council for the Arts, 2015)

I will leave you with one last quote from Alessi’s essay:

Rennie has declared that he doesn’t have an issue with his identity, even though others do: ‘I’m comfortable with who I am, where I’m from, and hopefully my work shows that.’  Throughout his career he has maintained such a position, one that he poignantly and authoritatively declared in a  2013 neon work that simply read, in all its  glorious glowing red and yellow, I wear my own crown.

I'd like to thank my host in Australia, Kerrie Faulkner, for exploring Sydney with me and sharing her knowledge of her country's history and politics as well as her home!

For more information:

Reko Rennie, Artist's Website

Apology to Australia's Indigenous peoples

"Wearing his own crown; the work of Reko Rennie" by Vincent Alessi, Art and Australia, No 52, 2014. 

"Reko Rennie:  Aboriginal artist spreads his wings" by Dewi Cook, The Age, 2013.

"Rekospective" by Jirra Lulla Harvey, Artlink, 2013. 

MONA -- A Museum of Old and New Art at the end of the world

Designed like a Borgesian labyrinth, lit like a nightclub, arranged like a grand cabinet of wonders, MONA, since it opened [in 2011] on a remote island with a population of 500,000, has attracted more than 700,000 people [1.5 million as of June, 2015].  Visitors came first from Tasmania, then the rest of Australia, and now increasingly the world – a growing caravan of stars and celebrities, art lovers, aficionados, camp followers and the curious. In two years, MONA has become Tasmania’s foremost tourist attraction and a significant driver of its languishing economy. Lonely Planet recently listed Hobart as one of the world’s top ten cities to visit in 2013, largely because of MONA.

-- Richard Flanagan, “At home with David Walsh, the gambler,” The Monthly, February 2013

David Walsh, the visionary creator of MONA, claims to believe that life is shaped by “the coin toss” of arbitrary chance.  Heads, you end up working as a tax agent (as he did for less than a year as a lad); tails, you create a $180 million museum at the end of the world.  Walsh is, of course, speaking as a professional gambler, or rather a man who is rumored to make $8 million a year through his gambling activities.  In turn, this money finances the estimated $8 million a year operating loss required to keep The Museum of Old and New Art going; MONA then contributes an estimated $100 million to the local economy, which is huge in one of Australia's poorest states.  Walsh was raised close to where he located his museum, in a low-income neighborhood of Hobart, and he has made admission free for all Tasmanian residents.  

Walsh’s success as a gambler is not the result of luck, however.  It was hard earned through extensive research, investment in large betting pools, and complex computing programs that reduce risk.  The success of MONA, which is often portrayed as Walsh's ultimate and most wild gamble, was won by attention to every detail of the unusual architecture, sumptuous exhibition design, curatorial daring, and an innovative and highly crafted visitor experience. 

MONA combines cutting edge technology with ancient paradigms to reinvent aspects of the museum experience.  Three levels of windowless exhibition spaces are carved into the living rock of a sandstone bluff.  Think burial in a royal Egyptian tomb, a mad scientist's lair, art seen by torchlight in the caves of Lascaux, and Georges Bataille’s dark fantasies.  In this lush, dimly lit setting, the dominant themes for the permanent collection are sex and death; in fact, for $75k you can have your cremated remains stashed at MONA.  You descend to the galleries riding in a transparent elevator set into a luminous glass shaft – a tube-shaped pipeline through the heart of the museum.   Like a space-age Dante, you leave daylight behind and navigate the underworld of the galleries using The O -- one of the most elegant iPod guides I’ve ever experienced.  This gently glowing companion replaces label text, eliminates the need for conventional lighting, and satisfies your curiosity.  You can read curatorial text (push the “Art Wank” button) and listen to audio clips with curators, artists, and Walsh himself.  The layout of the museum is deliberately mysterious and disorienting.  But the iPod hanging around your neck and breathing into your ear has a GPS system so accurate that at the touch of a button it jumps to the object in front of you, and lists the things nearby.  Using the O gives you the sensation of being inside a virtual space and navigating by hyperlink.  The result is an experience that mixes the sensations of exploration, risk, and safety.

Walsh’s first try at building a museum featured his collection of ancient and tribal art, and MONA – the Museum of Old And New Art -- mixes these with contemporary work.  There are Sumerian tablets and Egyptian sarcophagi, including one surrounded by Stygian pools of water that harks back to the entertaining Victorian dinner party practice of unwrapping a mummy by using a scanning technology to reveal the corpse down to its skeleton.   

Esto es peor (This is worse) from The Disasters of War, Francisco Goya, 1812-1815

On the Road to Heaven the Highway to Hell, Stephen Shabrook, 2008

Violence enters some of the works.  A terrifying print by Goya (from the Disasters of War, 1812-1815) is hung next to On the Road to Heaven the Highway to Hell -- a chilling life-size sculpture of a young suicide bomber by Stephen Shanabrook.  The latter was inspired by a photograph of the freakish aftermath of the detonation, which left the boy’s face and torso intact.  The image haunted the artist’s imagination until he created an uncanny life-size sculpture, a kind of death mask, made even more appalling by being fashioned in cast chocolate.  The connection between these two unflinching artists -- separated by 200 years -- is clear.   

I hesitated to include photos of these "portraits" by Greg Taylor.  Are they exploitative or liberating? Pornographic or feminist?  Ultimately, I decided to include them to share the experience of seeing one of MONA's most written-about works, and let readers decide.  The women involved were willing to let this private part of themselves be seen, albeit anonymously, and it doesn't seem morally right to censor this work. Two from a series of  150 porcelain sculptures entitled Cunts and Other Conversations, by Greg Taylor and friends, 2008-2009.

Around the corner, 140 small sculptures -- porcelain vulvas -- hang in a long row that makes its way along darkened corridors.  Disembodied “portraits,” each unique work is framed in a spot light.  It's hard to know what to think; is it offensive that this series takes sexist objectification of women to an absurd place? Or is it liberating that this always hidden part of a woman's body is made public, without any shame?  On "O" the artist explains that "it's about the whole issue of women's body issues...the place of women...for thousands of years being told that they're stupid, they're ugly, and they stink."  Replicas -- ironically made of soap -- are offered for sale in the gift shop and are a popular item.  This work is mentioned in nearly every article I have read about MONA, along with Wim Delvoye's infamous Cloaca, a giant room-sized machine which simulates the human digestive process, culminating every few hours in mechanical, but very smelly, elimination of excrement.  

Zizi, the Affectionate Couch, Twenty121

But the MONA collection is not summed up by these two works, despite their pervasive appearance in media reports.  There are hundreds of diverse works on display, including many that are funny, beautiful, playful, sinister, graceful, or strange.  Two that I particularly enjoyed were Zizi the Affectionate Couch created by the artists collective Twenty121 and Artifact, a large sculpture by Gregory Barsamian.  Zizi squawks, squeals, shudders and squirms in response to your movements on her cushy faux-fur seat.  The artists describe this friendly bench as "a mixture of shaved poodle, a fluffy cat and an exotic sea slug.  Zizi growls when sat upon, purrs when touched and groans with delight when you stroke her fur.  If left alone, she mews for attention."  Artifact appears as the discarded head of a gigantic automaton; a series of small windows give you a glimpse of the thoughts, dreams or memories still swirling within.  The scenes are created by an old-fashioned method of animation using rotating sculptural elements and a strobe light to generate the illusion of movement.

MONA’s above ground spaces complement its subterranean chambers.  A white pavilion perches on the hilltop, designed by James Turrell to frame a rectangle of sky and the surrounding vistas – expansive views of the Derwent River that flows down to Hobart’s harbor.  At sunrise and sunset, a suite of changing colored light washes across the ceiling, manipulating our perceptions of color and depth.  No surprise to discover that one of Walsh’s childhood interests was astronomy; he commissioned Turrell to add a celestial temple to his modern necropolis, one that invites us to contemplate the subtle transitions of dusk and dawn, the movement from day to night, and night to day.  (And, by the way, the work is entitled Amarna – after the city built by the “heretical” Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten and dedicated to monotheistic worship of the sun god.)

Amarna, James Turrell, 2015

During our visit, we met David Walsh briefly; we later learned he has an apartment in the museum.  We guessed it was him, getting into a Tesla parked in a space marked “RESERVED – GOD”.  Asked if he was, indeed, God, he replied modestly “Well, no, but I’m acquainted with him.”  However, at MONA, I am convinced that Walsh does an excellent job fulfilling the jobs of both Zeus and Hades, ruling equally over the realms of light --  rational intellect -- and dark -- subterranean myth.

For more information:

Richard Flanagan, "At home with David Walsh, the Gambler," The Monthly (originally published in shorter form in The New Yorker)

Vicky Frost, "Mona's David Walsh: 'Now I'm the Arbiter of Good Taste, the thing I abhor,'" The Guardian
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, Australia's Temple of the Weird," Slate