Joseph Kosuth, Lau­rie Ander­son, Janet Burchill & Jen­nifer McCam­ley, Tracey Emin, Brook Andrew, Pierre Huyghe, Lori Hersberger
Neon

Neon is a rare gaseous ele­ment present in the earth’s atmos­phere at one part in 65,000. Neon is one of the noble gas­es – noble because under stan­dard con­di­tions, it is a colour­less, odour­less, monatom­ic gas, with low chem­i­cal reac­tiv­i­ty. When used in vac­u­um dis­charge tubes and lamps, neon glows red. In Greek, neon is ​‘new’.

On the occa­sion of NEON at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Syd­ney the works of ten artists have been col­lect­ed in one space. Para­dox­i­cal­ly, giv­en its ubiq­ui­ty in signs and adver­tis­ing – con­sid­er Las Vegas, Osa­ka or Hong Kong – neon, here, is the medi­um for sin­gu­lar works of art.

Each artist brings to NEON a unique approach to art, ideas and mate­r­i­al. Some­what con­di­tioned by the medium’s tech­ni­cal­i­ty (the artists out­sourc­ing pro­duc­tion to a cer­tain degree) the ​‘idea’ is clear­ly privileged.

Joseph Kosuth’s con­tri­bu­tion to the exhi­bi­tion begins in 1965 with his first work using the medium.

In 2008, this devel­ops into ​‘W.F.T. #1 [yel­low]’, born out of Kosuth’s major instal­la­tion, The Lan­guage of Equi­lib­ri­um, pre­sent­ed on the Island of San Laz­zaro degli Armeni dur­ing the 2007 Venice Bien­nale. (​‘W.F.T. #1 [yel­low]’ pre­mieres here in NEON).

In ref­er­ence to The Lan­guage of Equi­lib­ri­um, Kosuth states: ​‘This project, in yel­low neon, has as its basis lan­guage itself. It is a work which is a reflec­tion on its own con­struc­tion… The work engages the cul­tur­al and social his­to­ry of the evo­lu­tion of lan­guage itself, how the his­to­ry of a word shows its ties to cul­tures and social real­i­ties being quite dis­tinct and dis­con­nect­ed. It is only in the present when a word is used, as it is with a work of art being expe­ri­enced, that all that which com­pris­es the present finds its loca­tion in the process of mak­ing mean­ing. Here, in this work, lan­guage becomes both an alle­go­ry and an actu­al result of all of which it should want to speak.’¹

Kosuth’s third work, ​‘Clear words, Clear sight’, 2007, cites two Ital­ians: Lui­gi Piran­del­lo and Gior­dano Bruno. Piran­del­lo – a Nobel Prize win­ner – is known for his ren­o­va­tion of the dra­ma and the mod­ernist the­atre. Con­cerned with the com­bi­na­tion of fic­tion and real­i­ty, and the inter­pre­ta­tion of events, for Piran­del­lo, art was the ulti­mate para­dox – where real­i­ty is both true and false. Bruno, the philoso­pher, was a roman­tic char­ac­ter – with­out coun­try or reli­gion, hav­ing fled his home in search of a place suit­ed to his intel­lec­tu­al integri­ty. Deeply inter­est­ed in the nature of ideas, he believed they are only the shad­ows of truths. He reject­ed reli­gion and the pop­u­lar opin­ions of his day and thus was essen­tial­ly mis­un­der­stood, or, ahead of his time. Kosuth’s ​‘Clear words…’ evokes and pays trib­ute to these two great thinkers. In reduc­ing their oeu­vres to two expres­sions ​‘Clear words, Clear sight’ Kosuth dis­tills the com­plex­i­ty and depth of their work and con­tin­ues his own reflec­tions on lan­guage and thought.

Lau­rie Anderson’s Neon Bow, 1980, used in her stage per­for­mances, evokes the his­tor­i­cal begin­nings of the use of neon tube in con­tem­po­rary art. Lucio Fontana’s famous neon arabesque, Strut­tura al neon (Neon struc­ture) 1951– made in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the archi­tects Luciano Baldessari and Mar­cel­lo Grisot­ti for the IX Milan Tri­en­nale and util­is­ing 100 metres of neon tube – is thought to have been influ­enced by a famous pho­to­graph of Pablo Picas­so tak­en by Gjon Mili in 1950, depict­ing Picas­so ​‘draw­ing’ light dur­ing the long expo­sure of the cam­era. Anderson’s bow invokes this moment.

Janet Burchill and Jen­nifer McCamley’s Inland Empire, 2008, was con­ceived dur­ing a res­i­den­cy at IAS­KA, Keller­ber­rin in West­ern Aus­tralia ear­li­er this year. Orig­i­nal­ly installed in the desert land­scape, the neon tubes were pow­ered by a solar pow­er gen­er­a­tor. Installed in this way, begin­ning in broad day­light, the neon com­po­nent became clear­er as night approached. Inland Empire, like many of the artists’ works, ref­er­ences cin­e­ma, in this case David Lynch’s first exper­i­ment with dig­i­tal video. In Lynch’s Inland Empire, 2006, real­i­ty and fic­tion con­flate; the female pro­tag­o­nist must over­come adver­si­ty with­in her life and its rep­re­sen­ta­tion. In a remote town of West­ern Aus­tralia, the artists were engaged by the com­plex­i­ty of racial and gen­der politics.

‘Hard, but don’t push me’, or, ​‘but don’t push me hard’, is both antag­o­nis­tic and a plea. Indeed, Tracey Emin’s vast body of neon lines skirt the fine bor­der between romance and cyn­i­cism, between request and demand, reflect­ing the very inten­si­ty of the artist’s fun­da­men­tal ambi­gu­i­ty – as both vul­ner­a­ble woman and aggres­sive street fight­er. The line is often so fine, that the ten­sion is as potent as the strik­ing neon light ren­dered in Emin’s scratchy hand­writ­ing… observ­ing a tra­di­tion of fast actions in slow motion – like Lichtenstein’s graph­ic dot-paint­ed ver­sions of Abstract Expres­sion­ist gestures.

Emin’s works call up shared asso­ci­a­tions, begin­ning with the very per­son­al. ​‘Even when they seem to be addressed to an indi­vid­ual, the words often seem uni­ver­sal – as though they were giv­ing voice to our col­lec­tive hopes and fears’.²

The title of Kendell Geers’ Temene, 2007, comes from the Greek temenos (τέµενος), from the verb tem­no (τέµνω) ​‘to cut’. Tech­ni­cal­ly, the word refers to a kind of geo­graph­i­cal iso­la­tion, poignant here in Aus­tralia, and also select­ed out from the con­text of its orig­i­nal body of work. Read­ing ​‘SACRED SCARED’ over and over, the work projects a con­tem­po­rary con­di­tion of displacement.

The struc­ture and type­face are key, as well as the scale, design, shape, and the fact that the wall of the gallery is exposed. ​‘Red is said to be the first colour that we per­ceive and are able to dif­fer­en­ti­ate as babies. Per­haps that is why it is the colour of fear, dan­ger, lust, love, pas­sion and the dev­il. Of course it is also the colour of blood and red wine – the pas­sion of Christ…’³

Cul­tur­al dis­lo­ca­tion – or social era­sure – is allud­ed to in Bren­dan Van Hek’s White out/​Black out, 2008. Inspired ini­tial­ly by the idea of ​‘whit­ing out’ text on a typed page, the large polarised scrib­bles rep­re­sent white as that which is con­cealed, and black as void.

Like Emin’s quick text ges­ture, Van Hek’s work too is con­nect­ed to the tra­di­tion of fast ren­dered slow, allow­ing con­tem­pla­tion of the frozen gesture.

Brook Andrew’s work, buun­ji ngin­du­u­gir AMER­I­CA, 2001, ren­dered in red, white and blue – can trans­late as either ​‘share you Amer­i­ca’ or ​‘bludge you Amer­i­ca’, skirt­ing direct lines of mean­ing. Cul­tur­al dif­fer­ence is col­lapsed into one phrase. The flash­ing ​‘AMER­I­CA’ sug­gests gaudy Las Vegas motels and is rem­i­nis­cent of Pop and its icons.

Pop is also invoked, in Andrew’s Warho­lian screen print­ed images. The very colours here reflect the text above and the neon’s lumi­nos­i­ty is used in Sig­nal II, 2008, to draw atten­tion to the images on the can­vas. Archival pho­tographs col­lect­ed from the Roy­al Anthro­po­log­i­cal Insti­tute in Lon­don, depict Abo­rig­ines per­form­ing sim­u­lat­ed sex. Used orig­i­nal­ly as sci­en­tif­ic ​‘stud­ies’ these images remain unset­tling – espe­cial­ly because of the smil­ing face.

‘The gaze has been real­ly impor­tant in my work because it’s not real­ly about con­fronta­tion but about the way in which we look at each oth­er and about pre­con­ceived ideas. I think that comes from grow­ing up in a mixed fam­i­ly too, because peo­ple are always curi­ous. The gaze can be a metaphor for many dif­fer­ent things. I’ve made sure the eyes are look­ing back. They’re almost re-look­ing.’⁴

Despite aban­don­ing its orig­i­nal col­lec­tive of white neon ​‘dis­claimers’, Pierre Huyghe’s state­ment I do not own Snow White in NEON is a com­ment (or dis­claimer) of its own material.

Under­stand­ing the ori­gin of this seem­ing­ly arbi­trary ref­er­ence to a fic­tion­al char­ac­ter requires a cer­tain knowl­edge of the his­to­ry of the artist’s prac­tice. With­out this con­text, how­ev­er, the work still express­es a very bold and con­fi­dent state­ment, in its large white font. Ques­tions of the own­er­ship of ideas and copy­right are always present, but the state­ment also leaves view­ers in an imag­ined space. What does Huyghe have to do with Snow White? In the con­text of the exhi­bi­tion Cel­e­bra­tion Park – from which this piece is derived – there would be addi­tion­al state­ments, such as I do not own Tate Mod­ern, I do not own 4’33”, col­lec­tive­ly referred to as ​‘dis­claimers’. Going back fur­ther in the artist’s prac­tice, we encounter Blanche Neige Lucie, 1997. The work depicts a woman singing ​‘Some­day my prince will come’, while a sto­ry appears in sub­ti­tles on the video. The woman, Lucie Dolène, was used by Dis­ney to dub Snow White in French. When a court case was announced by her against Dis­ney, Huyghe con­ceived the work, which like his oth­er works, plays with the con­fu­sion of fic­tion with real­i­ty – con­sis­tent­ly skirt­ing both.

Lori Hers­berg­er also inves­ti­gates fic­tive space, though through a more for­mal art/​painting strat­e­gy. Hersberger’s giant emp­ty frames in Ghost Rid­er (Doors) evoke min­i­mal­ist paint­ings, or, non-paint­ings. The pic­ture plane becomes the frame, and the void an imag­ined space. Ghost Rid­eris an ongo­ing project for Hers­berg­er – the works always result­ing in emp­ty rectangles/​squares, with care­ful­ly select­ed colours. In Ghost Rid­er (Doors) the ​‘vio­let (or dark pur­ple) rep­re­sents mys­tery, secret, the occult, the strange (the exot­ic), the shades between red and blue – it stands for soli­tude and cre­ativ­i­ty, unsat­is­fied and aphro­disi­ac. It is believed vio­let is the colour of penance and con­tem­pla­tion’.⁵

In addi­tion to the neon pre­sent­ed on the wall, Hersberger’s instal­la­tion extends onto – and through – the floor. Just as the audi­ence is invit­ed to immerse and com­plete the pic­ture with­in the neon frames, the reflec­tive sur­face of the black glass, or mir­ror, com­pletes the pic­ture and extends the work through the floor of the gallery. The work is com­posed dif­fer­ent­ly depend­ing on the van­tage point of the viewer.

With­in Hersberger’s mir­ror, we expe­ri­ence the exhi­bi­tion anew.

Tania Doropou­los, Cura­tor, 2008

Notes ¹ Kosuth quot­ed in the press release for the project. http://​www​.flux​um​foun​da​tion​.co… ² Sarah Kent, ​“Tracey Emin: Fly­ing High”, http://​www​.white​cube​.com/​a​r​t​i​s​t​s​/​e​m​i​n​/​t​e​x​ts/88. First pub­lished in Neal Brown, Sarah Kent and Matthew Collings, Tracey Emin, Lon­don: Jay Jopling/​White Cube, 1998. ³ Email cor­re­spon­dence with the artist, August 2008. ⁴ Brook Andrew in an inter­view with Het­ti Perkins in, Het­ti Perkins and Jonathan Jones (eds), Half light: por­traits from Black Aus­tralia, exhi­bi­tion cat­a­logue, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Syd­ney, 2008. ⁵ Email cor­re­spon­dence with the artist, August 2008.