Sign of the times

Sign of the times
September 23, 2005
Sydney Morning Herald



It's the art of social commentary, writes Sunanda Creagh - if you've got something to say, show it.
They say there is an old Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times.
For the photomedia artist Merilyn Fairskye, there's a sinister familiarity to the saying. "For many artists, this is a most interesting time," she says.
"When you think about all the issues that an artist might address, there are so many contradictory things happening."
Fairskye has a video install- ation, Connected, in the Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition Interesting Times, which displays work engaging with social and political issues in Australia.
Connected is a collage of footage from the top-secret Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap, near Alice Springs, and includes interviews with residents.
It's a controversial place, but Fairskye's work is not overtly opinionated or inflammatory. Instead, she tenderly pieces together the residents' stories, reflecting rumours and the facility's strange isolation from its surrounds.
"Pine Gap is a highly secretive base, supposedly a joint facility, but, in fact, it underlines the true nature of our relationship with the United States, which is a very subservient one, and secrecy is a part of that," she says. "It's a work that explores those unofficial stories, rumours, innuendo - all the things that happen when something is very secretive."
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Fairskye says her aim is not to fire up our inner activist, but to reflect an issue in contemporary Australia and ask us to pause for a minute.
That's the idea, says the exhibition's curator, Russell Storer. "I was quite keen for the show not to be written off as a political show. It's not so cut and dried, black or white, left or right."
Rather than deciding on a theme and then hand-picking works to suit it, Storer toured the studios of Australian artists and saw the theme emerge naturally. "I was responding to what I thought was an increasing interest in social and political work both locally and internationally.
"I was interested in work that responded to a mood - a sense of paranoia and anxiety that contrasted with that 'relaxed and comfortable' idea of Australia.
"A lot of the work is uneasy - maybe not directly issue-based, but gives a sense of psychological unease," he says.
There's no better way to describe Shaun Kirby's installation, cousin beast. At first glance it's a pleasantly clean, white table. A closer look reveals a massive arachnid leg poking out the side. Underneath, a giant brown spider lurks. It's a scary work, not just because it's a huge spider, but because it reflects a hidden menace just below a seemingly shiny surface.
Also in the exhibition is George Gittoes's documentary Soundtrack to War, which focuses on the pop songs US soldiers listen to as they negotiate the carnage of war in Iraq.
Deborah Kelly's Beware of the God is situated outside the museum - in railway stations and public parks and on postcards. The gallery even has a projector on its roof - and if rain looks likely the words "Beware of the God" will be projected onto the clouds above the harbour.
These are tough issues, but Storer wants it known that the priority is the aesthetic: this is good art first and thought-provoking art second.
Art with a social conscience is not new and we'll always live in interesting times. But it's up to artists to keep engaging with contemporary society and to resist simply making fashionable or collectable work, says Storer.
"We know that art isn't necessarily going to change anything, and certainly something in a museum isn't necessarily going to change the world," he says.
"But art has a special place in society. Artists raise very complex questions in a way that writing can't, film can't, newspapers can't."