Neo Geo: Perceptions and Representations of the New World.
By combining a sense of global scale with the concentration on the minute, Neo Geo confounds apparently commonsensical categories and disrupts the orderly ways we construct and understand our world. Presenting counter-intuitive notions such as 'man-made nature', 'artificial landscapes' and 'nostalgic ideas of nature', the nature behind 'Neo Geo' is both highly topical and richly poetic. Through cross-weaving our foundational logics and ideas, the works explore the future of humanity and the earth by seeding questions within the fabric and building blocks of our world view. Gentle, and yet disturbing, the work anticipates the growing sense of foreboding that has begun to emerge in the public debate of climate change and the environmental sustainability of our current global system.
Marking Beauty by Hannah Matthews
Flying overland, one is granted an aerial view of twenty-first century Australia: a vast country
sculpted by progress and time. Our cities centre around corporate towers and cultural precincts that
feed out into suburban backyards, shopping malls and green belts. Our activity and habits are
mapped out by dense configurations of roads and freeways that link our sprawling occupation. We
dwell in a matrix of lines and as we move inland from the coast, these lines change. They thin out
and slowly overlap with new lines as the land becomes delineated by rivers, ranges, deserts and
other slowly eroding wonders.
Within this topographical snapshot, the country’s inland waterways make their precious mark. Rivers,
tributaries, dams, channels; these bodies of water, which have worked tirelessly to form and feed our
land, thread across the country. They reflect the sun and make their beauty felt in their colour and
seemingly random paths. They contribute important mark making on a rich palette of land and yet
these lines of life struggle to survive as Australia suffers through another generation of drought and
water becomes the new oil on the commodity block.
Perth-based artist, Tom Mùller, has used the occasion of the Biennale and its timely theme - ‘handle
with care’ - to draw attention to the fragility of Australia’s water resources and the increasingly
important role water plays in connecting cultures, environments and economies.
Mùller’s installation, Liquid Empires (2008) comprises three works that utilise specific geographical
data from major Australian and international rivers to illustrate the world’s remaining inland water
levels. A selection of Australian rivers are represented in an installation of over sixty 3-metre long
glass tubes, each filled with blue liquid to indicate the identified river’s existing volume. Displayed in a
row, this rigid and regimented 3D bar chart is antithetical to the intrinsic nature of river flows yet
crisply captures the current frenzy of scientific analysis being invested into the future of water
sustainability in this country.
The artist has also selected a number of the world’s largest river systems and represented them in a
similar gauge-like arrangement, with varied lengths of tubing to reflect a more diverse range of water
levels. Arranged in a cluster, the layering of these tubes allows the audiences to view one river
through another, suggesting the inherent inter-connectivity of river systems. The geographical range
of rivers represented in the work also critically illustrates our shared reliance on water for survival.
While depleting levels of fresh water resources has been a long-term issue for most Third World
countries, it is a relatively new reality for First World countries who must now reassess their water
usage and market hold. As the title of the work alludes, water is becoming an increasingly lucrative
commodity of trade in a global economy.
On a formal level, the three-dimensional nature of Mùller’s works in this exhibition is also of important
note. To date, the artist’s largely 2D computer rendered mapping projects have dissected, charted
and represented elements of the natural and built environment, compressing information and
reducing subject matter into abstract forms. These illustrative diagrams, which have taken the lives of
trees and the stars as their source, have used the modern computer language of vectors to describe
nature in an artificial world. Like these earlier 2D works, Mùller’s new installations reduce the living
and breathing into skeletal lines of precision and order, offering a beauty that possibly transcends its
endangered source.
While these new works demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of visual language and a focused
investigation into universally adopted processes and protocols, they also continue Muller’s pursuit of
the politically provocative and timely. To this end, Tom has previously issued worldwide passports
on-line (World Passport, 2000 -), released a limited edition of 24 carat credit cards complete with
instructions for melting (Gold Card, 2006), and opened a supermarket for limited edition works
(Supermart, 2004). Liquid Empires continues the artist’s interest in connectivity and the circulation of
value and meaning through global systems of exchange.
Hannah Mathews
(Is an independent curator living in Melbourne, She was previously curator of the Perth Institute of
Contemporary Arts)