Headless Chickens, Dead Horses And Toasted Saints At The Toaster At The Biennial of Sydney
IT’S “this year’s” “Biennial of Sydney, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
An exhibition by the Australian artist Mike Parr, which includes a film showing a live chicken being decapitated, has prompted a complaint to the RSPCA and a visit from police.
The film is being screened in a derelict building on Cockatoo Island… It is one of 17 works by Parr included in a confronting show called Mirror/Arse, which documents his “most daring and demanding” performances and explores “trauma and subjectivity”.
The police officers who visited the exhibition yesterday were overheard expressing astonishment and disgust at work, which includes footage of Parr sitting in a chair slicing his arm with a blade and holding his index finger over a lit candle until his skin burns.
Also in show is Western Christian Civilisation by the Argentinian artist Leon Ferrari.
Made in 1965 as the United States began to bomb Vietnam, it combines two elements into a large sculpted model of Christ being crucified, not on a cross but on the wings of an American fighter aircraft.
In the next room:
Also on display is the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s Novecentro – a preserved dead horsehung by a saddle from the museum’s ceiling. A spokeswoman for the Biennale insisted the horse died of natural causes.
In December of 2004…
…there was an art exhibit by Leon Ferrari, in Buenos Aires in which works of “art” were displayed which depicted scenes such as saints burning themselves in a toaster, the Blessed Mother in a frying pan, and a statue of the Last Supper in which Christ and the Apostles face a pack of rats.
Art – It’s a dead dog eats dead chicken world…
Posted: 19th, June 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Strange But True Comments (20) | TrackBack | Permalink
