MAY DAY - THE RETURN OF ART & POLITICS IN THE 21st CENTURY
6 May to 3 June 2006
Curators Jelle van den Berg and Jo Holder.

CROSS CONVERSATION

The exhibition May Day: The Return of Art & Politics in the 21st Century reflects on these sorry days of government manipulation of unions and the introduction of divisive industrial laws, on the curbing of civil liberties and the strangling of access to information. It also identifies a strong neo-conceptual critical and aesthetic strain within contemporary Australian art practice that interacts with global concerns and local political topics.
 

As many have observed, the 1950s and Cold War political posturing have become a metaphor for today’s conservative politics. While not a historical survey, the exhibition includes newsreel footage of the 1956 Sydney May Day shot by the acclaimed Waterside Workers Federation Film Unit whose work typifies an ‘art is a weapon’ style mixed with Brechtian theatre techniques and some related archival material.
 
In contrast, artists are now maneuvered off the set by the spectacles of art and entertainment and cultural politics is divorced from institutional political culture. However, artists often work with this lineage of modernism and cultural activism. Barbara Campbell, Tom Nicholson and Raquel Ormella use traditional emblems of protest—banners, occupied sites, anonymous poster paste-ups, hand-to-hand materials, collaborative actions. Some—Tom Carment is an example—work with activists like Pat Geraghty, veteran member of The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) and resident of Kings Cross, to document passing cultural history. Other artists, like Simon Blau or Jacky Redgate, comment in symbolic or abstract ways, often with irony and humour.
 
The project evolved from discussion of Jelle van den Berg’s sketchbook titled ‘Industrial Relations’ which juxtaposes notes and views of the old industry suburb of Waterloo with notes and views of the shiny new Waterloo of residential apartments. Gentrification and outsourcing—both processes in the tension of globalization.
 
The artists of May Day honour the determination and colour of two great workers’ commemorations: the Eight-Hour Day (renamed Labor Day), won 150 years ago by stonemasons, and the May Day parade initiated by shearers at Barcaldine in 1891. Today the two have pretty much fused into one public event. May Day, associated with rites of spring, May Queens and maypoles, and given aesthetic legitimacy by William Morris and Walter Crane, is undergoing a renewal.
 
Kylie Tennant’s novel Foveaux (1939), an account of life in inner-city Sydney set in 1912, recounts the glories of these events: Eight-Hour Day was almost invariably blessed by rain or wind and some of the unions from bitter experience had taken to carrying their banners furled. More than one groan had gone up from the crowd as over a hundred pounds' worth of crimson silk split like old sailcloth.

May Day Watercolour Studio, a bannerette workshop directed by Barbara Campbell at The Cross Art Projects on Saturday 6 May preliminary to May Day 2006 on Sunday 7 May in Hyde Park. Guest speaker is Sharan Burrow, ACTU President.
 
Talk with Tom Carment, artist, and Pat Geraghty, seaman, unionist and local resident. Saturday 6 May at 3pm.
 
Cross Conversation on ‘May Day, May Day: Rethinking Art & Politics’ with speaker Ann Stephen, curator and author of On looking at looking: The art and politics of Ian Burn (Miegunyah Press, 2006), Neil Towart curator Trades Hall Collection, Unions NSW, Craig Judd, curator Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Saturday 27 May.
 
Thanks to: The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), Unions NSW Trades Hall Collection, Neil Towart for the Kylie Tennant reference, COFA Art Shop.

This is the third and final show in The Cross Part Projects series on Art & Politics. It was preceded by ‘Tunnel Vision, Stupidity & Greed: Artists, cartoonists and planners review concrete politics in Sydney’ and ‘ArtLanguage. Every Publishable Place’, curated by Ruark Lewis.

Barbara Campbell: 1001 nights cast at http://1001.net.au/

Barbara Campbell
'The sentence we all carry', 2006.
Watercolour placards read: "Once upon a time Australians believed that an
employer who could not afford to pay a living wage did not deserve to be in
business. That's over. Now anything goes." Source: John Buchanan, quoted in
Chris McArdle, 'Laws to settle a score don't bode well for the weak ',
Sydney Morning Herald, 27 March 2006.

 
Tom Nicholson, Marches for a May Day, Sydney, 2005.
Documentation of dawn banner march prior to May Day. Colour photograph, 90 x 90cm.
ch 2006.

Simon Blau, Miss Red, 2006. Acrylic on paper, 25 x 20 cm.

Simon Blau, Placard for abstract thought, 2006. Acrylic on plywood, 31 x 41 cm.

Emma Rees, Employers Beware, 2005. Screenprint, Megalo Print Workshop. Artists and Writers’ Alliance, Canberra: Protest art action the night the ‘Work Choices’ Bill passed in the Australian Senate, December 2005.

Curators, Jelle van den Berg and Jo Holder with May Day Banner, 1950s
(Courtesy Unions NSW, Trades Hall Collection)

Photograph courtesy of Myles Formby

Workshop, 6 May 2006 and May Day March 7 May 2006. Participants: Pamille Berg, Robin Blau, Phillip Boutlen, Loma Bridge, Elisabeth Burke, Liz Day, Christopher Dean, Shirley Diamond, Trevor Fry, Sarah Goffman, Helen Grace, Jo Holder, Gunther, Robert Lake, Ruark Lewis, Fiona MacDonald, Fleur MacDonald, Toni Warburton, Sue Pedley, Anna Rauls, Mary Roberts, Catherine Rogers, Ann Stephen, Jeffrey Stewart, Sophia Thibaudeau.
Watercolour on paper on mdf, 12 x 16cm, attached to hardwood battens.

Photograph courtesy of Myles Formby