Art Ew - National Gallery of Australia

national australia bank sculpture gallery
Constantin Brancusi
L’Oiseau dans l’espace [Bird
in space] 1931–36 white
marble, limestone ‘collar’,
sandstone base overall 318.1
x 42.5 (diameter) cm and
L’Oiseau dans l’espace [Bird
in space] c.1931–36 black
marble, white marble ‘collar’,
sandstone base overall
328.4 x 51.4 (diameter) cm
Purchased 1973
8 national gallery of australia
A new gallery for sculpture: wood, stone, metal, glass
On the evening of 22 May 2007 the National Gallery
of Australia opened its new sculpture gallery, generously
sponsored by the National Australia Bank. A range of works
by American, European, Australian and Indigenous artists
are on show. When the Gallery opened in October 1982,
this impressive space originally showed sculpture from the
modern collection. It again features masterpieces including
Brancusi’s two Birds in space placed in a calm reflecting
pool. The architects have created a beautiful and generous
space, where light falls softly onto the works of art. Every
season and every time of day is marked by changing light,
which alters our perceptions of the sculptures.
Made from traditional materials, often in unconventional
ways, the works on show are created by carving and casting,
assembled from found objects or even manufactured by
industrial processes. Donald Judd’s untitled brass boxes
of 1974, for example, replicate the exact geometry and
uniformity of modern factory products. Their shiny,
regulated march across the floor reflects and refracts their
surroundings, which include the feet of visitors and the
beautiful smoky grey tiles of the renewed slate flooring.
Rocks and mirror square II 1971 unites a clean, crisp
construction of factory-made mirrored glass with rough,
hard rocks picked up in the countryside by the artist.
Robert Smithson’s installation – which like Judd’s is placed
directly onto the floor – hugs the ground, striving to merge
into it and levitate at the same time. In his Suspended
stone wallpiece 1976, Ken Unsworth uses river stones,
made round through erosion over time, each tied up with
thin wire. The rocks form a semicircle above the floor,
which seems to defy the laws of physics. Stone becomes
lighter than air.
The most common manifestation of wood on show in
the gallery is not carved, but roughly hewn or found objects,
painted rather than raw or varnished. Louise Bourgeois
made her sculpture originally between 1941 and 1948,
and covered it with red and black paint. She talked of its
genesis: as children, she and her brother hid under a table
and watched their parents’ legs as they walked to and fro.
The work’s meaning changed in 1979 when Bourgeois repainted
it salmon pink and renamed it C.O.Y.O.T.E. after the
prostitutes’ rights campaign ‘Call off your old tired ethics’.