The gift (from 'Argonauts of the Timor Sea') 2004–06
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Image courtesy Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane 2011 Australia
aluminium, wood, rope, bamboo, synthetic polymer paint, World War Two parachute and National Geographic magazines. 40 x 60 x 30 cm. Purchased 2007. The Queensland Government's Gallery of Modern Art Acquisitions Fund. Collection: Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane.
Michael Stevenson
MCA - Museum of Contemporary Art
Wednesday 06 April 2011 to Sunday 19 June 2011
Michael Stevenson, a New Zealand artist based in Berlin, has been described as an ‘anthropologist of the avantgarde’. This MCA survey is the first opportunity to review a broad cross-section of the artist’s activities drawn from his perspective over the last 20 years.
It includes ambitious installation, object, drawing and film projects realised in the last 10 years, in relation to the artist’s earlier works undertaken in Australia and New Zealand.
Stevenson’s practice is based in the documentary and frequently re-tells the historical in exemplary form rendering tenable the possibility for allegory in and amongst historical fact. His earlier works and his sculptures, installations and films, invoke a documentary narrative form.
Delving into questions from within and beyond the art world, Stevenson’s work could be said to engage with certain absurdities that arise when universalisms take hold in insular situations and, especially when these forms arrive in parts foreign, masked in radical and perplexing guises. Stevenson’s practice constantly reveals the fascinating and complex relationship between the specific and the universal.
Location
MCA - Museum of Contemporary Art140 George Street, The Rocks, Sydney Harbour foreshore at West Circular Quay
The Rocks Precinct
New South Wales
Australia
