The show “Vertigo-Chaos and Dislocation in Contemporary Australian Art” borrows Alfred Hitchcock’s film title “Vertigo.” The film is filled with uncertainty about the future and anxiety about the unknown. Similar to the film, this exhibition explores a world that is lost, illogical, and fractured. The show includes 10 Australian contemporary artists that use installations, neon lights, paintings, and videos to present a world that wavers between illusion and reality. With dizzying, puzzling effect, the artworks project the deluded, confused, and prejudiced psychological condition of people today. These artists break the norm and re-establish new visual experiences and narrative, guiding viewers through scattered anxiety to uncover the spiritual realm between the public and private, the real and the unreal.

First, Kristin McIver’s works, the neon light installations situated in the central hallway and first gallery, discuss excessive desire in our consumer culture and attempts to break the norm through illusionistic aesthetics. At the exhibition entrance sits Boe-lin Bastian’s installation and video works that purposefully deconstruct everyday objects and create comical narratives of balance and imbalance. Tania Smith’s four video works document female satirical performance in the public sphere of which repetitive and playful actions coexist with anxiety and happiness, transforming the normal into abnormal. Alice Wormald’s oil paintings derive from landscape pictures cut out from books that are then reconstructed and deformed, simulating a dangerous, reclusive, and sensory scenery. Cate Consandine’s two video works eliminate narratives and express emotion and psychological condition through body images.

Kiron Robinson’s neon light installations, situated at the entrance to the second gallery and gallery corridor, suggest a kind of fear when facing the unknown world and help viewers to navigate the ambivalence between the known and the unknown. Kate Shaw’s paintings and video illustrate how technology distances people from nature. Justine Khamara’s installation and photographs twist and combine two-dimensional portraits to express personal views of social identity. Simon Finn runs computer programs to simulate motion images and uses charcoal to draw those processes and capture movements. Bonnie Lane’s videos establish sensory immersion experiences and respond to the absurdity of life with existential perspectives.

Following the well received “WONDERLAND: New Contemporary Art from Australia” in 2012, MOCA Taipei introduces a new exhibition of Australian Contemporary Art. This show is curated by Claire Anna Watson. It is also one of the international touring exhibitions organized by Asialink Arts, Australia. Its tour to Taipei includes a special program that invites Boe-lin Bastian as a visiting artist to the Grass Mountain Artist Village in Taipei. Bastian will also create artworks onsite at the plaza of MOCA Taipei. She will transform local stories into works of local flavor and initiate dialogues with the public.

*image (left)
Cate Consandine
Lash, 2006
HD Video, looped (silent)
courtesy of the artist