Sunday 29 March 2015

The Promised Land

Having regretted for years now not investing in travelling to Sydney for Michael Stevenson's show at the MCA, this weekend I made the call to go to the opening of Michael Parekowhai's The Promised Land at QAGOMA (until 26 June).

I'm so glad I did. I think it is a truly stunning show: an exhibition that subverts the usual tropes of a survey of retrospective while remaining incredibly generous to the viewer.

I am still processing what's going on in this show: the importance Parekowhai places on ideas of navigation, both in his works and in his exhibition design; the concept of the memory palace and time travel explicitly evoked by the exhibition; the way Parekowhai has mashed up and remixed his own career here, both juxtaposing works from disparate series, and remaking older works to display with new ones; the works that have been left out, as much as the works that have been left out.

I'll work this through in time to talk about the show on the radio on the Wednesday after Easter, but in the meantime, here's my favourite thing I heard Parekowhai say in the talks QAGOMA yesterday

And a whole bunch of snaps from the show, which is incredibly inviting to the photographically inclined visitor.





























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