I Want Change.

I remember the first time I encountered Meek's moving Begging for Change (2004) piece. I was 19 years old and had recently moved out of home for the first time. On one of my frequent aimless wanders around my culturally vibrant new hood of Collingwood I passed a gallery on a street corner. I saw a dark, sitting figure against a white background out of the corner of my eye. It made me pause and look, but only for a second. I thought to myself, 'how extraordinary' and then kept walking, to nowhere in particular. I thought about it a lot after that moment but at no point did I think to look it up or do some research. The concept had affected me immensely but I was, for some reason, not compelled to learn more about this poignant work. Perhaps because it said all it needed to. Since this moment, I had come to think of the piece as just something I had dreamt up. That is, of course, until I came face to face once more that with that familiar dark sitting figure asking for 'change'. And this was my introduction to the current LUMA exhibition, 'I Want Change: Two Decades of Artistic Defiance, Disapproval and Dissent'. 

 Meek's Begging For Change

Having only just come into a state of political awareness at the end of the 2000s (my family, while political, was always more concerned with musical and artistic pursuits), I missed being present for a lot of the actions that the exhibition comments on, and somehow I feel that makes it less personally meaningful. However, having lived in Australia my whole life I can certainly appreciate that as a nation it has not been as kind to all as it has been, fortunately, to me. 

In the most basic sense, this is represented by Azlan McLennan's piece and accompanying video 'Proudly unAustralian' (2006), in which as a response of sorts to the Cronulla Riots of 2005, McLennan has burnt an Australian flag to hang on the exterior of an artist-run space in Melbourne's West, with the aforementioned title. In the accompanying video we learn that just two and a half days into his exhibition, his piece was removed by the police, bringing into question the reach of artistic expression in our country, as burning the flag is not a criminal offence. The work has since been returned to McLennan, and it seems the experience has only highlighted the message of the piece that, as McLennan says, 'art that engages in politics — much like activists — needs to be radical to raise awareness.' (Ascroft, 2006). 

Another highlight is Deborah Kelly's work, 'The Miracles' (2012), a collection of images challenging the traditional notion of family - or specifically, the Renaissance era Holy Family paintings. I had learnt of Kelly the previous week and another politically motivated work of hers titled 'Tank Man Tango' (2009) where performances were staged based on the actions of a lone man blocking tanks during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Of the performances and the inspiration behind it, Kelly says 'I was so amazed that history could be so thoroughly erased, and I wanted to restore it and bring it back to life' (Graham, 2009), referencing her inspiration behind the work whereby a young Shanghai girl that Kelly had met was convinced the aforementioned protests had never actually happened. 'The Miracles' is certainly a different work but draws on history and the notion of its reinvention, and appropriation for a contemporary audience, especially given the omnipresence of the status of same-sex marriage in the media over the last few years. 

While there were a lot of works that I felt I couldn't appreciate fully without a stronger and more rounded political knowledge, these were pieces that I could identify with and relate to for their political motivations as well as their aesthetic value and immediate appeal. As I left I, again, stood in front of the homeless man begging for a different kind of change. While some have expressed disappointment over the work for being an 'inadequate representation of itself,' (Webb, 2013) given its shift from a graffiti-ridden wall of a Melbourne railway station to the crisp white wall of a university art museum, the power of the statement will always be felt no matter its location or context – if not by anyone else, by myself at the very least.

REFERENCE LIST:

Ascroft, M 2006, Political art, censorship and change, Green Left Weekly, retrieved March 12 2013 < http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/34618 >

Graham, T., 2009 'Beauty and brutality blend in Tank Man Tango', The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 May, retrieved March 12 < http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/beauty-and-brutality-blend-in-tank-man-tango/2009/05/29/1243456735445.html >

Webb, P. 2013 'Subversive undertones on the official face of Melbourne', The Age, 1 March, retrieved March 12 < http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/subversive-undertones-on-the-official-face-of-melbourne-20130228-2f8xz.html >