Post 2

(MCA Sydney, 2012)

This week we visited the Museum of Contemporary Art (above) located in Sydney, NSW, AU.  Some of the pieces from the MCA that really caught my eye are featured below.

To the left is Ross Manning's Fixational Eye (2011).  It simply is a piece of rope attached to an electric ceiling fan.  The fan has some sort of reflective material similar to a CD-disc attached to it.  As the fan spins the reflective material, the rope attached to it also spins.  At the same time, a light projector that is placed directly underneath the structure shines upward.  The light from the projector reflects off the CD-ish material, creating an RGB effect that seperates the colors as the rope spins around.  What caught me about this is that despite the simplicity of the materials and design, the effect of it is incredibly intriguing and mesmerizing.  To the right is an untitled work by Stephen Birch.  It is of a misshapen figure of Spiderman staring at a worm-like figure of a man's face extruding from a human forearm.  The piece signifies the ideals and aspirations of man manifested in Spiderman, and the tension of these when faced with evils of society and culture.  For me, the piece is definitely a conceptual work, and may be interpreted many different ways.  Its design doubtlessly demands attention, drawing from a well-known figure in media. 

To the left is a picture of Kate Murphy's work, Prayers of a Mother (1999).  It is a video of Murphy's family--her mother is reading her personal prayers for her eight children.  There are five screens simultaneously playing; her mother's hands and prayer book are shown in the middle while the surrounding four screens rotate between the faces of family members, recording their silent reactions and emotions from listening to Murphy's mother.  I'd say this piece was perhaps spoke the most to me--it depicted the raw and sincere emotions of Murphy's family through a creative use of filmography.  The way silence is utilized adds more to the emotional impact.