Driving back through Canberra yesterday on our South East NSW break, we stopped at the National Gallery of Australia. Here in the Marsh Pond (part of the sculpture garden) is a powerful work by Dadang Christanto, an Indonesian artist based in Darwin. The work looked impressive in the hard Canberra summer light.
Dadang Christanto
Heads from the North, 2004
installation, 66 bronze heads
Seeing this work reminded me of another moving installation of his I saw in 2005 – They give evidence, at the Art Gallery of NSW. Here’s a press release from that AGNSW exhibition.
Dadang makes work against a backdrop of 1960s army-sponsored terror and murder in Indonesia, during which his father was killed. There’s memory of personal and collective trauma driving this; it makes for real and uncompromising work. It feels a little odd that the work is sited right next to the outdoor restaurant, where you can fully indulge in the gallery’s fine offerings of bodily sustenance while looking down at those disembodied heads…
But that I’m thinking about the work’s placement is an indicator to me of its effectiveness – I’m involved, not just as spectator, but I’m wondering about my own complacency, sipping my coffee in the face of daily brutality and injustice.
But also not diminished by this, I feel the creative energy of this artist has the alchemical about it – a man creating an “opus” as counterbalance and positive capital against its opposite, the life denying, the repressive. This helps all of us in our own creative ventures.
Here’s an image of the artist installing the work in 2004 (from his Sherman Galleries artist page).
