I happened to be at the NGV last week, after hours to see their new winter masterpiece exhibition called Pharoah, which is all Egyptian art - mainly from the British Museum. I have a sneaking suspicion this might be problematic. There were a fair few description that this piece 'used to be part of a temple' which makes you wonder why it still wasn't.
Anyway Eygptian art although interesting is not really my think. What took me instead was two statues in the main atrium of the NGV - Again from the British Mueseum but these are far more contemporary.
They are both by artist Thomas J Price - each is maybe 7-8 metres high and very imposing.
The first is called All in
Here are some thoughts from Thomas J price himself:
All in, the hands of the male subject are placed loosely in the pant pockets of his track suit. He wears an impassive, almost blank, expression that looks past into a distant space. The aching banality of his pose prevents an immediate conventional reading of the ‘hyper-cool’ Black man in urban space. Price refers to these encounters as ‘in-between moments when you are not smiling for someone or particularly conscious of how you are presenting yourself’. 4 For Black men, the ability to let one’s guard down thus allows them a freedom to move through the world without the cloud of suspicion or hyper-scrutiny that becomes part of their everyday lives.
There is something both monumental as well as everyday in this. We are so used to seeing bronze structures of important white men of history on a horse, but this is something we would see everyday given this improtance.
I liked this observation in the exhibition notes:
*Both sculptures depict the figures feet planted firmly on the floor and not mediated by a plinth. The missing plinths undermine the notion of authority and high status usually ascribed to sculptures. *
The second sculpture which I must admit I didn't spend as long with (maybe my unconscious bias coming through, who knows) has the following description....
Reaching out represents the first time Price created large-scale public sculpture where the figure is of a woman. Wearing casual pants and sneakers, the woman is depicted looking down at her phone – a fleeting, ubiquitous moment of preoccupation. Price notes, ‘This work … continues a theme of balancing experiences of isolation and connectedness, whilst acknowledging the different ways in which technology mediates our lives.
Is it problematic that as a white man I would like a bronze sculpture of me, maybe on my balcony to look out over the street?
