John Kaldor Public Art Projects announces short list for new work, YOUR VERY GOOD IDEA
Two artists who once installed a bright red aircraft at Circular Quay are shortlisted to create the latest in a 45-year series of bold Sydney art projects
Elizabeth Fortescue Visual arts writerVisual arts writer
August 7, 2014 – 12:00AM
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro with their Art exhibition that involved sending an entire aeroplane piece by piece (70 pieces) in the post, reassembled at UQ Art Gallery
Two artists who once installed a bright red aircraft at Circular Quay have been shortlisted to create the latest in a 45-year series of bold Sydney art projects.
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro’s aircraft was the outdoor element of their survey exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in 2012.
The couple’s proposal for a new artwork now joins four other shortlisted submissions selected by an international panel, it was announced today.
One of the five works will become the next Kaldor Public Art Project, YOUR VERY GOOD IDEA. It will be temporarily located somewhere in Sydney, and the winning artist will work with the Kaldor team to make their idea a reality.
The work will be a “large scale, temporary, site specific art project”.
The other short-listed artists, announced today by Kaldor Public Art Projects, are Jonathan Jones, Alicia Frankovich, Mel O’Callaghan and Janet Laurence.
Kaldor declined to release details of each artist’s proposal. The winning proposal will be announced and fully outlined on September 9.
Kaldor Public Art Projects is the baby of John Kaldor, a Sydney former fabric manufacturer who gave his $35 million collection of contemporary art to the Art Gallery of NSW in 2008.
In 1968, Kaldor invited artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude to bring their trademark wrapping technique to Little Bay, south of Sydney.
Wrapped Coast — One Million Square Feet, Little Bay, Sydney, Australia, 1968-69 became the first in a sequence of Kaldor projects by some of the world’s leading contemporary artists, including Gilbert and George, John Baldessari, Roman Ondak and Michael Landy.
Of the finalists in YOUR VERY GOOD IDEA, Jonathan Jones is a former indigenous art curator at the Art Gallery of NSW whose work often incorporates lighting effects.
Berlin-based Alicia Frankovich works in performance art, often collaborating with people who have no acting experience and who are called on to be themselves in the artwork.
Sydney-born Mel O’Callaghan, who is based in Paris, creates kinetic sculptures for which humans often supply the energy source.
Sydney artist Janet Laurence is currently the Visiting Fellow at the College of Fine Arts in Paddington. Laurence’s work regularly relates to what she calls the “life-world”, by which she means the interconnectedness of all living things.
Kaldor Public Art Projects had received hundreds of applications for their open call to Australian artists, a spokeswoman says.
Some of Australia’s leading artists submitted large scale and intricate concepts, proposing the transformation of Sydney’s most interesting public spaces, she said.
“We are looking for ideas that are original, ambitious and at the cutting edge of contemporary practice,” John Kaldor says.
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