SWELL SCULPTURE FESTIVAL 2013

Swell is an interesting word. It has horrific overtones in the context of a ballooning body but carries a happier sense as a response to a questioning greeting like: “How are things going?” In the context of an ocean, the word holds both senses: the swaying swell that favours the board rider as it approaches land, and the severe swell that causes loss at sea. That the word should be used as a name for a sculpture festival is interesting, but here the context is predetermined: it is by the sea. The sunny beaches, blue sky and splashing waves at Currumbin on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia create the ambiance for things pleasurable: for swell outcomes beside the enjoyable swells of surf and creek under a broad open sky and fresh breezes. Following the idea of Bondi’s Sculpture by the Sea, the Gold Coast has created its own festival of sculptures along the beach from Currumbin Creek to Elephant Rock. This year, 2013, there were fifty-three sculptures installed along the length of this sandy spit and grassy promenade.

The stroll along the ocean esplanade was interesting. Without a catalogue offering any informing guidance, one never knew what was coming up. The small catalogue was nicely produced, compact, and carried more information than was available on the plaques near each work, but the first walk through without this pocket publication was enjoyable. The eye, mind and body were unfettered, completely at ease. All preconceptions could be put aside. One became the proverbial blank page. The return walk with the booklet was of equal interest as one could seek answers to questions posed during the initial meandering, and learn more about the works and the uninformed primary responses to them.

The scope of sculptures on display covered nearly all possibilities. The range of subjects caused one to ponder: they all seemed to lack matters broad and universal. Each was individual and separate, quirkily different: narrow in range. Nearly every work related to the artist’s personal experience, concepts, interpretations, expectations and perceptions. Was this display merely a challenge to highlight differences? Some works were so obscure that they became more of a cryptic puzzle than an artwork, distracting one with awkward, questioning diversions. There was no common theme other than some private involvement, where the artist was engrossed in his/her own thoughts, ideas and experience. While the vista along the promenade juxtaposed the sculptures in interesting, visual layers, each work stood silently alone, encapsulating its own internal efforts to embody an interpretation of meaning. No work referenced any other; only a few recognised the special context. It was a display of intimate interiors.

Consider the work that looks like a stone pelican, (or is it a stork? - in Australia? - does it matter?), on high legs with an egg nearby: work number 43 by Adriaan (sic) Vanderlugt called Generation Coal. It must have some meaning for Adriaan, like the spelling of his name, but how the Baby Boomers are followed by Generation X and Generation Y, that are in turn followed by ‘Generation Coal’ remains an enigma with a meaning that one can only guess at. Just what all this has to do with a pelican or a stork on extra long legs near an egg is anyone’s guess. The work is so distractingly random and personal that it becomes quixotic, distorting the aesthetic possibilities and mocking the skill of the craft.

This emotional confusion is a common feature in many works. Has art become just too much about ‘me’ and ‘my’? Do we have any shared experience other than some reflective indulgence that can become a core for ‘discovery’ and ‘expression’ in art? Traditional art was rooted in its search for meaning where difference and diversity were irrelevant as an aim in works that used the same ideas, materials and techniques to encompass values that enriched. There seems to be nothing like this today, just a scattering of personal ideas, thoughts and ponderings that have become linked to an object or have been annexed to some form of form. Take number 53 by Andrew Lang called Beach Ranger Tattoo. Now, without reading the text, one sees a Nolan Ned Kelly form painted in bright colours and patterns like a Pakistani cab. It is very pretty, but as an outcome arising from the text, it is merely enigmatic: ‘I collect and recondition. I combine the past with the present, recycled timber with stories from legend to create a modern image with hints of familiarity.’ This jumbling of words and ideas about ‘ME!’ and ‘MY’ occurs frequently, as if art arises from some revelatory confusion and self-interest, as if it was true that the more enigmatic the experience, the better the art: the more personally intimate, the greater the meaning. This is a strange alignment that seems to liken the mystery of inexplicable experience to matters that are puzzling, vague and incomprehensible, as if the creation of things formless and fuzzy will necessarily touch unknown issues of rich quality and meaning. Alas, it turns out that things uncertain and perplexing generate only more confusion and bewilderment. In the end, the meaning of mystery and the mystery of meaning may be unclear and untouchable, but they are never inarticulate or chaotic.

Sadly number 52, Christopher Trotter’s work, Blumbergville Stationary Engine, lacks the energy, character, concentration and coherence that his earlier works have in abundance. Here an old Southern Cross pump is mounted on a nice stand with a few sundry additions, and has been called ‘art.’ Is the artist trying to break away from his skillful anthropomorphic images that the art world considers, (wrongly), to be just too trite? Trotter’s kangaroos in George Street Brisbane, for example, show his skill at selecting and positioning identifiable junk to create life forms with a surprising inner energy arising with the disbelief of contingency. It is a technique that, in the hands of other less skillful artists, so easily become the crass ‘Quixote’ cliché assemblages that ask one to read more into a metal mess than is ever there. I can understand the enthusiasm for these wonderful old engines that were the reliable workhorses of the outback. They are, like their windmill cousins, Australian classics. I can recall a journey around a property many years ago when the task was to fill the tanks of the pumps with petrol, crank start the motor, and then leave it to unfailingly pump water until it ran out of fuel. Attaching a pretty phoenix-like bird on a wheel, and a tractor seat on a pole to this old pump is not art. It looks like a struggle to grasp meaning through just too much fact and an indulgent surplus of misguided nostalgia.

Number 51 by Ian Haggerty called Endless Shadows takes up a theme of figures cut in silhouette from rusty sheet steel, an idea that was used at Expo 88 (1988) by Melbourne artist Peter D. Cole. Oddly there are no ‘endless shadows.’ Why do the words try so hard to create a pseudo poetic something that is never there? While the approach involves an almost cliché, frequently adapted concept, the rusting shapes did look good on the beach, especially the running dog. This was one work that improved with its location. It was interesting to see how people seemed impelled to join the race and assume poses similar to those of the steel figures, just for a photograph: ‘ME!’

Number 50 by Craig Medson called Spirit Totem is a stack of 1960’s pieces that remind one of Hepworth et al. ‘Totems’ are just too overworked in art. Anything vague that seeks meaning or wants to have some substance applied to it seems to be called a ‘totem’ when it is merely an odd assemblage of different pieces that look ‘interesting.’ Do artists work just too hard at assessing their own works, especially the prices: here $18,000? Art is a complex matter that cunningly involves itself in the uniquely high prices sometimes achieved at auctions in what appears to be a self-serving manner. The perception seems to be that all art can be placed in this aura and priced accordingly, as if necessity demands this to be so if it is labelled ‘art,’ or if it is to achieve recognition in this category of objects. Anything cheap may not be considered to be ‘art.’

Flicking through the catalogue list backwards, as we seem to have started to do, we get the schedule below. Sundry comments have been added on each work as a quick overview. What is interesting in this transcription is the psychological twist in most of the works and the oddity of the title. It almost seems that there is a need for a ‘clever’ title for any work, irrespective of any relationship with the reality of the experience of the sculpture. Much the same can be said of the ‘explanatory’ texts where one can sometimes assume the intent has been to create a self-conscious schism to stimulate any response with a surprise or a puzzle, rather than to merely make things too ‘relaxed and comfortable.’ Some of these words appear to be irrelevant or just garbled nonsense. Why does art seem to demand some exotic rationalisation that takes issues to extremes of pretentiousness? Why are we frequently asked to make sense of such inarticulate statements? As for the psychological matters, this only highlights the core personal side of the concepts that sometimes seem to intrude or impose too much. There are no great ideas being worked on here; no common, communal understandings being explored. The critical issues seem to be that the work must be decorative, uniquely interesting and different, like the words themselves. There is not much that is transformative here. The works merely distract both the eye and the mind; such are the quirky twists on themes that have been entertained. Indeed, some sense of entertainment appears to be the basis of the intent in most works.

The sculptures remove one from the everyday, for a short time, and create an odd expectation in how one looks at things. Is that rock an artwork or landscape? Is the lifesaver’s tower lying on its side part of the exhibit? Are the people viewing the works part of the show, for they do become an integral accessory to the whole, a part of the spectacle? Perhaps this is one aspect of Swell that is encouraging: it stimulates ways of seeing - (now one always thinks of John Berger’s memorable title). In one aspect the exhibition can be seen as therapy, an analogy that places the pieces on the same level as the ink blots in Rorschach tests. Is this the best we can expect?

Is this the state of art in Australia today? As a morning out, the visit to Currumbin was an entertaining diversion, different to the norm and hence of some interest, but as art? Our world is buzzing, spinning in a chaotic state of change that is escalating in intensity at every turn. Does art reflect this situation? If one is to get anything positive from Swell, then it is this: that there are many ways of seeing our world. We need more tolerance, and peace and calm; more quiet, if we are to endure. Our existence would be less without such a festival of perception and ideas. Indeed, one might argue that we need more of the same, for it is only from such experimentation and challenges that matters of substance can be distilled and agreed upon, albeit unselfconsciously. One might be critical of the crude and naive attempts to touch quality and meaning, but our distracting times are not useful, and do not engender cohesion or any common sense of being. Our era is more interested in creating and marketing gadgets that can sell in the many millions, or raise that same amount in one weekend, than anything else. I am thinking of iPhones and blockbuster movies. Such an outcome needs self-centeredness for its success. ME! is the most important, me and my tats: the one and only presence in the universe to be so decorated or not - just bespoke ME! Look at ME!

It is up to us to generate something richer and more substantial than this ephemeral indulgent selfishness and greed that is out of date, used, and creating discontent the very next day after the enthusiastic purchase or viewing, when the next, (always better), generation gadget or experience is being promoted, leaving ME! behind again, wanting to catch up. If Swell can help change this indulgent and irresponsible attitude to life and its living, then it will be a great success. We need to learn from such encounters and use these experiences to develop rigour and strength in our personal lives, for it is only from this distilled base that larger matters, bigger and better things, can be created. Tolerance and care are involved, and individual responsibility too.

OVERVIEW
THE SWELL LIST 2013

53  Andrew Lang  Beach Ranger Tattoo

see text above.

52  Christopher Trotter  Blumbergville Stationary Engine

see text above.

The sculptures in their context

51  Ian Haggerty  Endless Shadows

see text above.

50 by Craig Medson called Spirit Totem

see text above: see also 30 also called Totem seemingly in the absence of any other sense.

49  Claire Sewell  Iron Man

a tiny sitting figure made from pieces of pipe, a little decorative piece like Michelin man – why the pun?

48  Monte Lup  Mermaid

pottery and tiled blobs making a figure half buried in sand and foliage – why mermaid? : a rockery?

47  Vanessa Stanley  Your Time Machine (2013)

a crude tube lined in mirrors in the form of a telescope to peer through; it seems that the principle of the kaleidoscope is not understood: or is it trying to suggest that ordinary life is interesting? – time machine?

46  Scott Maxwell  WM11  (Walking Man Too – Money Man)

a Giacometti figure made from paper money (photocopied?) – why? Giacometti’s work is better.

45  Jilly Gray Salty Pears

a pun on a pair (pear/twin) of breasts in a bikini that falls flat, lacking depth – we should remember that the pun is the lowest form of humour.

44  Allen Horstmanshof  Bloodlines

a more serious piece in cut and partly polished stone with some red lines – meaning is difficult to capture with strength and sincerity, is spite of the ambitious intent.

43  Adriaan Vanderlugt Generation Coal

see text above – what does it mean?

42  Wayne Mazwort  Warhorse

a Trojan horse made from timber scrap – an interesting piece for perception but the original Warhorse puppets are difficult to better: they move too!

41  Kim Namenyi  Believe

a giant sand castle – what is one to believe: the price? $15,000. Is this a return to things big in Australia? Why not bigger? Better?

40  The Winged Collective Falcini & Gottgens  The Sirens

printed heads on metallic sheet placed in sand with mirror reverse – there is something too intellectual here to convince; the mirror reverse in interesting, perhaps better than the faces; certainly more intriguing.

39  Kirsty Foley-Lewis & Matt Fischer  Sunshine

pretty spheres playing with colour, translucency and shade – sunshine? Here the sheer effort gets admired more than the experience.

38  Adrian Hofmann Pigs do Fly!

a flying pink pig on a stick: with lipstick too! – what is one to think other than ‘strange’ as one recalls the American politician’s words and the old cliché?

37  Brian Bertram  Witnesses

a cluster of carved timbers; the text is enigmatic – it is the dictionary definition of witness, n., . . Is one being asked to supply the content here?

36  Leonie Rhodes  Uncle Jack Charles – Significantly Small 2013

a small figure in a glass box framed in rusting steel on a post embodying an Aboriginal story. One can appreciate the concept by its mechanics more than the emotional experience.

35  Greg Quinton  Every Breath

coloured balls in a wire mesh frame moving in the wind asks one to see the arrangement as such. It struggles to be more than this.

The winning caravan 'sculpture' in the centre of the image

34  Chris Bennie  The Kissing Swans

the winner! A wrecked caravan from the Bundaberg floods. Why does art take the results of a tragedy and try to turn it into something to be sold for $75,150, even after getting grants from three government bodies. What is going on here? Yes, the swans are wonderful, but this has been someone’s life, now gone. Too artful? Is there a cringe here that drives promotion to confirm expenditures? One recalls how O. Ghery builds the results of disasters as new ‘architecture.’

33  John Fitzmaurice  Ode to Huey

a Hepworth wave form in mirror finish. It seems to promote a combination of 60’s clichés.

32  Suzi Lucas  Irrelevant Information

lots of old DVDs on poles with eastern hookahs etc. - ? Yes, lots of DVDs. It reminds one of the roundabouts in the United Arab Emirates.

31  Ashleigh Cotterill  Death by Fluoro

four old chairs wrapped in bright pink plastic rope $2,195.00 – this tests the limits of art and the tolerance of the public as much as the caravan. Do we blame Christo for such works or Marcel Duchamp?

30  Alex Polo & Michael Dowling  Totem

another totem but these rusting steel screens are very pretty – nice shadows. Strangely they look much better in the photographic image than in life.

29  Ibrahim Koc  Chameleon

a lovely chameleon but he looks lost, struggling to find home. Does this say something about all of the works?

28  Rosie Harvest  Beachcomber

a tangle of wood and vines that suggests a figure – it keeps one guessing, seeing tangles and body forms in the shambles, but there remains a lingering dissatisfaction with the effort.

27  Scott Ingram  Dahlia

scratched stone with an organic-shaped polished strip. A flower? A lot of effort is needed to make this leap.

26  Steve Croquett  Unearthed

Easter Island heads in steel – why?

25  Anne Leon  Fabulous Flying Fish

Japanese flying fish – here $300.00 each. These are standard fare in Japan but are being promoted differently here. Why can we not accept these as beautiful traditional kites rather than a unique work of art?

24  Jules Hunt  Bodhi Tree

oddly shaped suspended metallic ceramic forms do not remind one of the distinctive leaf; or the tree - and the bird? Corbusier’s bird at Ronchamp is richer.

23  Eric Green  Conception

the text talks about a stylised egg - ? A 60’s form that could be a ‘totem’

22  Mike Van Dam  Degrees of Separation

stainless steel chain made from stainless steel chain – 750 metres of it! Craft and concept have rigour and strength, a cohesion that is admirable, as is the craft. It seems to demand a corporate location.

21  Brad Jackson  Blue Wren

the poor wren looks like it has a falcon hood over its head – the paper folds need closer inspection and a more sensitive resolution. Are origami forms are becoming too fashionable? The question of copyright is interesting.

20  Dave Hickson  All the World’s a Stage

a roughly made assemblage like a small stage set; so? Shakespeare?

19  Karl de Waal  City Farming

a pile of trash (real construction trash) with two very tiny model farms (grass; trees; people; cows) on two slabs of smashed concrete under umbrellas – two of many concrete chunks in the pile: it tests the viewing and reminds one of Turner Prize trash

18  Andrew Cullen  Swarm

do flies swarm? Attractive flies made of wire and painted black: they just are flies. One recalls Craig Fellows printed designs.

17  Luke Zwolsman  Ascension

Hepworth in style – stone that has been given a title

16  Mike MacGregor  The Binding Tree

a tree form covered in cut-out hands – very pretty shadows, like Aboriginal wall painting. The shadows are powerful. Is this the work?

15  Dion Parker  Colourful Mind

a skull in halves with coloured checkerboard interior - ?? Too literal with little magic or intrigue. What is mind? What is man, that thou art mindful of him? (Psalm 8, 4-6 KJV).

14  Antone Bruinsma  Meditation of the Heart of a Flower – Homage to Monet

flower forms in sandstone – poor Monet; poor flowers. Mass takes over form: c.f. ‘the form of the rose is the function of the rose; the function of the rose is the form of the rose’ (Louis Sullivan).

13  Liu Yonggang  Embrace of Love

ancient Chinese characters large in steel – what does one do? Admire the size or the message? The size of the message?

12  Erica Gray  I’m waiting for you

a bike and a dog tied to it, made from white fabric – at least it is humorous, especially when a dog goes up to in and checks things out! Art? Artful?

11  Georges Cuvillier  De oogst (The Harvest)

Harvesting bamboo?? What is this? How does one look at this other than ‘interestingly’? Is the ambition: a thing of interest is a joy forever? - (apologies to Keats).

10 Lisa de Boer  Under the Tree

Gone, broken glass – glass does not make good public art.

09 Rainer Schlueter  Blue Dancers – Prelude and Quintet

sticks in sand painted bright blue create a challenge for the viewer, as does the price: $12,500. The blue is good. Is one to supply the substance for the idea?

08  Andrea King  Feeding Aftermath

pretty ceramic spheres made to look like crab pellets expelled from their holes in the sand, set out in circles – thoughtful and quietly impressive: truly a beach work.

Sculpture?

07  John Cox  Blue Perspective

plastic bikini girl with surfboard – all blue from the bikini pants up - ? Why?

06 Leisa Russell  Tumbling Tides

spheres with things stuck over them. They lack the ephemeral nature of tidal change nicely named ‘shormal’ in Shetland dialect.

05 Ivan Lovatt  Curious Bird

a marvellous emu made from galvanised wire mesh – beautiful. It has something of the early Trotter work that impresses. It feels oddly uneasy standing in the beach sand.

04  Marie-France Rose  Blown Away

it hardly blows one away, but the dog is good.

03  Daniel Clemmett  Two dogs in a house on a boat in the water

no dogs, just a stylised, quirky house boat. More information is needed to comprehend this effort.

02  Glen Manning & Kathy Daly  Reclining Figure in the Landscape

an outline of a Henry Moore reclining figure in one bent pipe. At $25,800, the price is more impressive than the work!

01  Jim Bower  Water Birds

birds shaped in steel bars – beautiful outlines in the landscape. They look wonderful in the photographs of the seaside. Nicely, they are on sale only as pairs, as if they are all ‘friends.’

ARTY CHANCE AND NECESSITY

The Arts section of The Australian 08 January 2014 carried a report on the work called Chance by French artist Christian Boltanski. While one might be puzzled by the sale of ‘his life’ as ‘art’ streamed on-line to gambler David Walsh, founder of MONA in Hobart, the work Chance is an example of another approach to what is seen as ‘art’ today. Still, one wonders how the streaming is managed when Christian is away: is this then art as void, left for the observer to fill in?

The Chance tactic seems to use analogies to interpret feelings and matters subtle and vague into facts - things, processes - where other extensions of issues that arise from the rational possibilities of the resulting assemblages are layered onto the outcomes as further material extensions to shape new analogies and develop other aspects of the original concept. The strategy holds a sense of relevance that the rational mind can analyse and appreciate, but emotionally it becomes more difficult to interpret as the things and processes manufacture a gulf of difference in feeling that distracts and distorts.

Here, within the framework of life, itemised as the tubular metal scaffold, chance is given its role by randomly stopping a newspaper-like run of 600 new-born images, faces of babies on an endless loop: like life itself it just keeps on going. Sometimes the analogies can be seen to be trite. Counters register births and deaths in the real world, as ‘real’ statistics based on averages, and a computer randomly stops and selects the face to be ‘born’ - as if this mechanism might be anything like the sense of giving birth or any prior selective opportunity. The whole becomes a mathematical interpretation of the process of addition and subtraction, a counting of events, managed with digital perfection. Emotions seem to stretch into a contrasting exclusivity that incorporates one aspect of the understanding only by diminishing the other. The emotional complexities of real births are much more involved and mixed than those that might arise from the experience of this system that reminds one of Sigfried Gidieon’s chicken processing plant illustrated in his Mechanization Takes Command published not long after the war in 1948, a work that was flavoured by the horror of hate.

The text in The Australian does not explain it, but associated with this production line structure are images of aged faces segmented into horizontal thirds and mixed on other screens to present randomly collaged, composite portraits of ever-changing possibilities touching death, dismantling. This concept suggests a variety of matters that can be put into words derived from a review and analysis that describe the processes, and get to be fabricated into objects and systems, just like as the baby births do; but again there is a great emotional divide in these aspects of interpretation. Unlike death itself, the changing interlaying of portrait pieces is somewhat entertaining.

Is this art useful? What does it intend to do? The diagrammatic conceptualisation of matters wreathed in an array of complex feelings seems to placate the enquiring mind that seeks explanations as part of the ‘appreciation,’ but can it change lives? Can it ‘touch’ one? Traditional art was rooted in matters symbolic, where the symbol, no mere sign, was in fact the thing itself being symbolised, one of its aspects. Chance seems to reference issues as signs do, by pointing to them, alluding to them diagrammatically. It may be very skilful and clever in its endeavour, but there is a great gap between a sign and a symbol. The lion might be used as a sign for a zoo, its logo, but traditionally it is seen as the sun. The relationship with the zoo tells us that there might be lions there as well as many other animals, complete with displays, cafes, and shops. As the symbol of the sun, the lion is the sun, an aspect of it – its colour, its blazing mane; its power; its authority: all of these qualities are seen to be those of the lion and the sun - hence the symbolic significance.

There are many more such connections that involve feelings that are integral in their shared experience rather than remaining a separate, informative catalyst to project a message. Artworks like Chance do the latter. Have we lost our sensibilities to participate in an art where symbols thrive with vibrancy, resonating with life in a way that can invigorate and stimulate the gentle and silent aspects of our being: truly enrich us?

Does it matter?

Architecture is not immune from this schism that is neatly explored by Christopher Alexander in his set of books The Nature of Order. It is ironical that Alexander brings his mathematical mind to these matters, but it is intriguing to see how his rigour does not dismantle or destroy his subject. Jimmy Webb does much the same in his study of song writing titled Tunesmith. It seems that works like Chance can disrupt our sensitivities and promote art as an event that can be rationally interpreted, considered and explained all within a defined set of parameters, divorcing what might be seen as the substance of life from its living - see: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/event-architecture.html

There is a bland coldness here. Is this why Boltanski has ‘sold’ his life: does he see it as a commodity that is capable of analysis and resolution, even if this involves chance, a situation that can be expressed in a card game or in gambling itself, just as it is in life. But this fact does not turn the card game or gambling into a representation of or a diagram for life, or vice versa, although gambling seems to be the core of Mr. Walsh’s life: possibilities and statistics; and profits. Care, love and consideration appear to have no role here, yet they do in life. Where might these be located in art, in architecture - this necessity of being? Are we becoming just too rationally visual, uniquely introvert and logically one-dimensional in our singular extravert, promotional manner?

P.S.

Serendipity? Perhaps chance itself? After typing this piece, I looked up the night’s television programme. SBS is showing Borgen, an episode entitled What Is Lost Inwardly Must Be Gained Outwardly Part 1- 9:30pm, 08 January 2014. It seems to sum up the position perfectly. Is this our problem inward loss: outward seeking? Chance, it appears, is more interesting than necessity: less rigorous perhaps. Is it rigour that we are lacking, personal, intimate rigour: this necessity?

The article is reproduced here complete with its ‘smarty’ title:

Chance encounter sees artist on a roll

French artist Christian Boltanski with his installation Chance, which resembles a newspaper printing press with rolling images of newborn babies. Source: News Limited

FOUR years ago, French artist Christian Boltanski sold his life on an instalment plan to David Walsh, the Tasmanian gambler and founder of Hobart's Museum of Old and New Art.

Walsh pays Boltanski a monthly, undisclosed fee for The Life of C.B., 2010, in which Boltanski is continuously filmed by cameras in his Paris studio and the footage streamed to MONA.

"If I die in two years, he is going to win money, because he gets the piece for a low price," the 69-year-old said in Sydney yesterday.

"If I die in 10 years, it is going to be awful for him."

The seeming randomness of life is a theme of Boltanski's work, including his large-scale installation Chance, which goes on public view tomorrow at the Carriageworks arts centre in Sydney.

Made to resemble an enormous printing press, Chance runs a loop of photographs of about 600 newborn babies, the images taken from the births section of a Polish newspaper. After several minutes, an alarm sounds, the machine stops, and a computer selects the image of one tiny individual.

"You have all these possibilities of babies to be born and only one is chosen," Boltanski said.

"That is the question of the piece: if you are religious, it is destiny. If you are not religious, it is only chance."

At opposite ends of the installation, which stretches 50m along the length of the former rail workshop, are electronic displays showing real-time calculations of the world's births and deaths in a single day.

Chance was commissioned for the French Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale. The Sydney installation is the fourth time it has been shown.

Boltanski's art practice since the late 1950s has included painting, photography, sculpture and installation. Some of his works are shrine-like memorials to victims of the Holocaust.

Boltanski said he met Walsh in Paris several years ago and decided to make an artwork for MONA.

When they were discussing The Life of C.B. and the payment plan, Walsh told him that he never loses a bet.

"When somebody believes he is stronger than destiny, in a way he is like the Devil, he is stronger than God," Boltanski said. "He is not the Devil at all, he is a very nice man."

Chance is on display until March 23, in association with the Sydney Festival.

HENGING BETS: SMART ART

Jeremy Deller's artwork, Sacrilege. Source: Supplied

The ARTS section of The Australian January 06, 2014, carried a report that was cleverly titled Take a monumental leap of faith – see below. One sometimes wonders about smart titles. Is this the most important aspect of journalism these days? The subject of the article was Jeremy Deller’s inflatable Stonehenge described as ‘a life-sized, bouncy-castle version of the stones’ – hence the puns in the title.

Deller is labelled as ‘one of the most important artists of his generation.' He talks about this work in somewhat vague, patriotic terms: "It's like a canvas for the projection of ideals about self and country and the world we live in." The art is labelled as ‘social surrealism,’ whatever this might mean. No one seems to know much about it or its ambitions, not even the artist. The title of the work, Sacrilege, seems to be playing the same games as the journalists involve themselves in. There is a remote cynicism here, a careless indulgence in things seen to be personally ingenious.

The article continues with the comment: ‘Now it's Australia's turn to clamber all over this fun facsimile.’ It is this immanent closer involvement in the work, the ‘fun facsimile,’ that seems to stimulate the question: ‘So what is it that makes Sacrilege art, and not just another cheerful sideshow attraction?’ The article continues to describe the response given by the artist:

'Deller sips his cappuccino.

"I don't know," he says, preferring to let us figure it out.’

Well, there it is! At least it is stated clearly.

"No one knows why Stonehenge was built so they all bring their own version of it," says Jeremy Deller, the Turner Prize-winning artist.

No one knows, not even the artist. The logic seems to be that anyone can do anything and call it art, leaving it to the observer to work something out. This insulting game of Blind Man’s Bluff allows the charlatan to participate in games of power, claiming genius status out of nothing but an intimidating presentation that is labelled ‘art.’ Just what one is supposed to make of it is uncertain, but the report goes on to note:

‘The left-wing son of public sector workers, Deller did an MA in art history in his 20s and worked as a driver, postman and shop assistant before finding his way as an artist.’

There is always a certain cunning in this charade that art seems to have become. Here Deller adds the statement:

“What could be more defining of Britishness than Stonehenge, and what could be more mysterious?"

He seems to want to claim not only the ‘British’ authority of the icon, Stonehenge, as his subject, but also appears to seek to adopt its inherent mystery as a unique part of his creation: his ‘Art,’ apparently without knowing much about it. The whole circumstance rings with what feels like a dismaying heresay that pretends to hold real substance and meaning when no one acknowledges knowing anything about it, other than it is a ‘fun facsimile.’ The cheek alone seems to force the issue and intimidate others into a silent obeisance to self-proclaimed genius. Has art really come to such a confusingly pretentious muddle that threatens anyone who might query its being? Is art merely the bloated self-creation and promotion of the hero, a blind mind game of bluff seeking attention? Is art just a different business model that promotes ME and MY?

Has it all come down to heroes, with everyone expecting to be one every day and to be recognised as such by everyone else? Is it that the artist, the architect, has to become more extremely heroic than ever before in this ocean of supermen? In the same newspaper, on the same day, there was a report on the new rules on the use of social media that the Australian Olympic Committee is seeking to implement. It carried the title, I won’t be gagged by AOC: Torah. At least one Olympian was protesting, objecting to these controls. The article started with the words: ‘Olympic gold medallist Torah Bright has savaged the Australian Olympic Committee’s ban.’ It continued by noting the credentials of this protester: ‘This 27-year-old snowboarder, tipped as one of Australia’s best hopes at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia.’ Now this makes the position hard to ignore!

The article suggests that she has made her point very clear: “I care not for the trivial policies of an organisation that comes into my sport once every four years.

“Freedom of choice and speech are humanity’s greatest gifts. I am the master of my social media. I am captain of my voice.”

The report noted that ‘Bright also publicly voiced her concerns on social media site Twitter over the weekend, stating the ban was “bullshit.”

Some voice! Some captain!

What is going on here? Is art, is architecture, now involved in this singular claim for my scream, my voice to be heard, my work to be seen, no matter what I might have to say, ‘bullshit’ or not? Where does the sense of meaning, that link to things human, of the spirit, come into play? If art is simply entertaining fun on odd facsimiles where everyone is left to make of it whatever one might, then we live in a spinning void, a world of stimulating chaos claiming to be mysteriously meaningful, where everyone can be momentous.

The report on the AOC’s rules finished by noting that ‘those athletes that did not Tweet or upload photos to Instagram, (in the London Olympics), ultimately came out on top. . . . They won.”

There was a television programme on the Australian swimmer Murray Rose some months ago on Australian Story on ABC TV. He stated that he not only loved swimming, that he had a feel for water, but that his remarkable success was based on the concept that when he was swimming, he concentrated only on swimming. A BBC programme on religion some years ago summarised the Buddhist philosophy as being: when you are walking, know that you are walking. The idea carried a further insight: When you find the Buddha, kill him.

Olympians, artists and architects might learn from this understanding, knowing their sport and their art intimately in any participation, any doing - loving; concentrating, as the craftsman of old called it: ‘Having concentrated, he set to work.’ Without such commitment, one is left floundering in one’s own self-important indulgences. There is something more in art, architecture and sport than ME and MY voice; my thoughts. It is this ‘something more’ that needs to be contemplated in silence and with humility. It might even require a 'monumental leap of faith'; but it does not involve bouncing on a replica of Stonehenge that recent research has revealed as a burial ground with a complexity of processional ways more profound than ever expected. Sadly, the inflatable facsimile only highlights something else: smart art.

The article is reproduced here as The Australian restricts some content on line. 

Take a monumental leap of faith

JANE CORNWELL

THE AUSTRALIAN

JANUARY 06, 2014 12:00AM

Jeremy Deller's artwork, Sacrilege. Source: Supplied

IT'S 7am and a couple of thousand people are standing, shivering, on Salisbury Plains in Wiltshire, England. It's as dark and possibly as cold and wet as it was just before dawn 5000 years ago, when the ancients gathered here to celebrate the winter solstice: the renewal of the light after this, the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere.

Back then, of course, there were no metal barriers and neon-clad stewards, no rules restricting access to Stonehenge, Britain's most famous ancient monument, inside which we're about to romp for 90 minutes, through what will be a mizzle-shrouded sunrise.

There's a sense of expectation as we make our way towards the prehistoric stone circle, with its iconic silhouette and powerful, almost supernatural vibe. Several druids in cloaks lead the way, tapping the ground with wooden staffs topped with rams' horns; tourists with backpacks and dreadlocked neo-pagans rub elbows with a guy dressed as springtime figure the Green Man, his face hidden by a mask of leaves, and a person wearing a large rubber unicorn's head.

"No one knows why Stonehenge was built so they all bring their own version of it," says Jeremy Deller, the Turner Prize-winning artist whose Sacrilege project - a life-sized, bouncy-castle version of the stones - is about to grace the Sydney and Perth festivals. "It's like a canvas for the projection of ideals about self and country and the world we live in," he adds. What could be more defining of Britishness than Stonehenge, and what could be more mysterious?"

It's two weeks before the winter solstice, and I am meeting Deller, 47, for coffee near his home in north London. It has been a bumper year for the debonair Englishman, frequently described as one of the most important artists of his generation. His English Magic exhibition at the Venice Biennale summed up his "love-hate relationship" with his country by including everything from Neolithic hand axes and William Morris fabrics to drawings on the theme of the Iraq war and a mural inspired by Prince Harry's alleged shooting of an endangered bird.

"I saw Venice as an opportunity to get things off my chest," says Deller in his quiet, understated way. And to promote his heroes: "William Morris humanised the Industrial Revolution with his art, writing, politics."

Deller's touring exhibition All That is Solid Melts into Air examined the impact of the 18th century manufacturing boom - the Industrial Revolution - on British popular culture, complete with a vintage jukebox playing the sounds of a bygone factory. Then there is Sacrilege: commissioned by the Glasgow International festival of art and a hit at London's Cultural Olympiad, the inflatable Stonehenge has been bounced upon at 33 sites across Britain. Now it's Australia's turn to clamber all over this fun facsimile.

So what is it that makes Sacrilege art, and not just another cheerful sideshow attraction? Deller sips his cappuccino.

"I don't know," he says, preferring to let us figure it out.

Deller's social surrealism has broadened the definition of contemporary art. His Battle of Orgreave was a 2001 re-enactment of a violent confrontation in Yorkshire during the miners' strike in 1984. He won the 2004 Turner Prize with Memory Bucket, a documentary about Crawford, Texas, where George W. Bush owns a ranch, and the notorious siege in nearby Waco.

In 2009 he took a road trip across US, towing a car destroyed by a bomb attack in a marketplace in Baghdad: "It was intended to get people talking," he says.

The left-wing son of public sector workers, Deller did an MA in art history in his 20s and worked as a driver, postman and shop assistant before finding his way as an artist. Despite the often collaborative nature of his work he would rather not be considered an artist-producer, unlike his early mentor Andy Warhol, at whose Factory studio in New York the then undergraduate spent two formative weeks in 1986.

"I was very influenced by the idea of the artist as free spirit," says Deller, who in 1993, while his parents were on holiday, used the family home for an exhibition titled Open Bedroom. "You could run a magazine, make film, TV, prints, paintings, music ... You could use whatever you could get your hands on."

The themes Deller tackles are more easily definable: identity and class, nature and progress; music, memory, the artist as mystic. A big fan of the likes of David Bowie as well as British-style brass bands, Deller brings the same DIY aesthetic to creating art that the punk movement brought to making music. His contemporaries the Young British Artists, or YBAs, did much the same, garnering attention through controversy.

But unlike, say, Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin, of whom he isn't fond ("Greedy, rapacious, self-pitying, self-obsessed"), Deller doesn't make work to sell, and eschews using anything that feels autobiographical.

Unless, that is, he's positioning himself as a fan (his English Magic exhibition included a painting of a giant William Morris standing in the Venetian lagoon, sinking a boat owned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich), or linking a personal interest to public art created with the public in mind.

Sacrilege was originally conceived as one of a series of inflatables commemorating forbidden spaces in Britain: "I also wanted to do Buckingham Palace and a military installation," he says, "but I couldn't do it all."

Stonehenge felt the most resonant. The standing stones in their concentric circle have fascinated through the ages: John Constable painted them under a crepuscular sky; William Blake used their image in Jerusalem; and 18th-century archeologist William Stukeley's romantic but fictitious image of the druids, the priestly class of the Celts, worshipping at Stonehenge, has persisted to the present day.

Deller walked among the stones as a child in the 1970s, before vandalism and erosion led to the site officially being roped off from the public in 1977. Did he feel their healing energy? "Er, no," he says. "But I like archeological remains and ruins; I like the humour of Stonehenge as well."

We talk about the monument's cameo as a shrunken stage prop in the spoof rock documentary This is Spinal Tap; of the way it has inspired such art installations as Fridgehenge and Carhenge. His own work, he says, also pays homage to the anarchic freak-out culture of film director Ken Russell and the space-rock band Hawkwind, who recorded a live album at the Stonehenge Free Festival (Stoned Henge) in June 1984.

But where the summer solstice continues to attract up to 30,000 revellers to the site each year, it's the more intimate winter solstice that really lets people get up close and personal.

There is much touching of the great stones as the first rays of the sun poke weakly over the horizon. A soundtrack of live drumming and chanting gets everyone moving; the unicorn is shaking its head.

Amid a scrum in the middle of the circle, a Gandalf lookalike is reciting the Druid's Prayer. I step on to a boulder to get a better look. "Oi, get off," a steward says crossly. "Show some respect."

Sacrilege runs from January 8 to 26 at the Sydney Festival, then February 17 to March 1 at the Perth Festival.