Thursday, June 22, 2006
"World's largest TV wall"
Boast the prime-time TV ads, plugging “TV 50” a new exhibition at ACMI, a taxpayer funded “screen” gallery in Melbourne.
Went to check it out today, and sure enough, there are, inter alia, hundreds upon hundreds of televisions piled up in a rectangle about 4m high and 50m long. And they’re each playing something different. (Disclaimer: didn’t thoroughly check this.)
And the point of it all? Beats me, unless costing a lot of money – that goes on objects and blue-collar (only) labour – automatically equates with “art” in 2006.
Yes, I know that the televisions were presumably free (courtesy of their manufacturer being a major sponsor of the whole ad, sorry, show.
Re my blue-collar labour point, the exhibition has obviously spared every expense when it comes to paying for caption/display writing and research (and proof-reading).
A Steve Irwin exhibit has the word “Crickey!” emblazoned across it in large letters.
Two identical 1970s portable B+W televisions in curved red plastic casing are given disparate treatment. One goes uncaptioned entirely, despite being part of a tableau of six vintage TV sets, with the other five all being captioned. Worse, its identical twin – in another display about 10 m away – is captioned as “1980s”. Crap. It’s B+W!! (Hint: that dates it to 1975, at the very latest). But in any case, it’s gro-o-oovy appearance alone should have given it away as coming from a time well before the 1980s, aka the Decade That Taste Forgot.
So fuck you, ACMI. Maybe for your next exhibition, you could actually employ at least one semi-educated person. And as it happens, I'm available.
Boast the prime-time TV ads, plugging “TV 50” a new exhibition at ACMI, a taxpayer funded “screen” gallery in Melbourne.
Went to check it out today, and sure enough, there are, inter alia, hundreds upon hundreds of televisions piled up in a rectangle about 4m high and 50m long. And they’re each playing something different. (Disclaimer: didn’t thoroughly check this.)
And the point of it all? Beats me, unless costing a lot of money – that goes on objects and blue-collar (only) labour – automatically equates with “art” in 2006.
Yes, I know that the televisions were presumably free (courtesy of their manufacturer being a major sponsor of the whole ad, sorry, show.
Re my blue-collar labour point, the exhibition has obviously spared every expense when it comes to paying for caption/display writing and research (and proof-reading).
A Steve Irwin exhibit has the word “Crickey!” emblazoned across it in large letters.
Two identical 1970s portable B+W televisions in curved red plastic casing are given disparate treatment. One goes uncaptioned entirely, despite being part of a tableau of six vintage TV sets, with the other five all being captioned. Worse, its identical twin – in another display about 10 m away – is captioned as “1980s”. Crap. It’s B+W!! (Hint: that dates it to 1975, at the very latest). But in any case, it’s gro-o-oovy appearance alone should have given it away as coming from a time well before the 1980s, aka the Decade That Taste Forgot.
So fuck you, ACMI. Maybe for your next exhibition, you could actually employ at least one semi-educated person. And as it happens, I'm available.
