Austrian Art: Major Environmental Art exhibition in Graz

Landscape in Motion, Cinematic Visions of an Uncertain Tomorrow
Kunsthaus Graz
Until October 26

The dramatic big blue pickle which houses Graz’s Modern Art Gallery is hosting a major exhibition of environment or land art with “Landscape in Motion, Cinematic Visions of an Uncertain Tomorrow”.

The works in the exhibition are mainly film or video with some photographs but all capture the idea of the landscape; observed, in transition or under surveillance. It looks at the way in which humans impact on the environment and the dichotomies between development, utilisation and degradation. 

The show presents what some might think as a dystopian view of the world while others that of a utopia.

An obvious instance of this are the filmed images by The Centre for Land Use Interpretation, where a camera soars over the landscape following a motorway running through the landscape. This can be seen as a cutting in to and despoiling of the land or the notion of an artery opening up new possibilities. 

The exhibition takes, as its starting point, “Spiral Jetty” (1970) the seminal work of Robert Smithson who created a large koru-like shape in The Great Salt Lake in Utah.

The work consisting of 6000 tonnes of basalt was impressive as a piece of sculpture but its isolation meant that few ever got to see it. The most notable aspect of the work is the original film in which a helicopter records Mr Smithson running from the centre of the spiral to the mainland, escaping something or searching for something.

Several other works in the exhibition reference Mr Smithson’s work such as James Benning’s “casting a glance” (2007) where he filmed the spiral over a two year period, mainly in close-up, documenting the changing nature of the construction, the water, the light and the spirals impact on the environment.

There is also an intriguing work by the British artist Tacita Dean in which she makes an aural recording entitled “Trying to Find the Spiral Jetty” (1997) in which she records her abortive attempt to find the construction.

Another work which owes much to Robert Smithson is Lukas Marxt’s “Captive Horizon” (2014) where a camera moves relentlessly across a rough, stony surface. It could be desert, moonscape or a microscopic view of skin or cells; the difference between the organic and non-organic confused and disorienting.

One of the larger works in the show deals with the political balances between development, preserving indigenous cultures and the transmission of progressive ideas.

Daren Almond’s “In the Between” follows the new railway between Xining in China and Lhasa in Tibet. The line called “The Road to Heaven” is intended to help change the nature of Tibetan society by making the place less isolated.

The three screen projected images of softy rolling landscape, with stops and starts by the train interspersed with images of dark railway stations and scenes of traditional Tibetan monks praying, highlights the dilemmas of cultures in change.

In “Eden’s Edge” (2014) a team led by Gerhard Tremi and Leo Calice created a series of vignettes set in an American desert landscape. A camera is suspended above a discrete group – a person, a car and a few objects.

The individuals relate narratives about living in the desert, on the edge of society. From the birds eye point of view each scene has the look of an animated model, with the objects casting strong shadows on the bright desert sand.

One of the simplest and most powerful works in the show is Guido van der Werve’s “Nummera Acht, Everything is going to be alright” of 2007. Which was shown at the Sydney Biennale in 2012. The short film shows the black clad artist walking across a frozen sea.

Behind him, keeping pace is a huge icebreaker which is smashing through the ice. It could be seen as a metaphor for a great catastrophe, the advances of industrial and corporate over the mere mortal. The film is fascinating in its actual drama. It seems as though the boat only has to speed up and it split the ice from under the artist. There is no conclusion to the film only a ten minute sequence of his ongoing Sisyphus-like journey.

The Ed Ruscha work in the show “Every Building on Sunset Strip” (1966) predates Googles Street View project by nearly 50 years. All the buildings are recorded as black and white photographic images on two long scrolls. His documentation of all the building between Hollywood and Beverly Hills is both an historical record as well as the cinematic way in which we glimpse views of the street from a moving vehicle.

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