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Media Release - Barbara Kruger - Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) Barbara Kruger
| Barbara Kruger's Twelve, and three new large-scale projects specially devised for ACCA, will open at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) on December 20.
Twelve, launched last year at the famous Mary Boone Gallery in New York and currently showing at Glasgow's Tramway Complex, is a large scale video installation of twelve short scenes, written by Kruger, performed by actors and projected on opposite sides of the space to each other. Nine of the 12 scenes occur at the same time in a mealtime setting. Text scrolling along the bottom of each scene suggests the thoughts or words of the people involved who tackle the issues of global politics and prejudice.
Barbara Kruger was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1945 and now lives in New York and Los Angeles. After attending the School of Visual Arts at Syracuse University, she went on to study Art and Design with Diane Arbus at Parson's School of Design in New York. Barbara Kruger's iconic red and black text and image works, where fragments of images are overlaid with short phrases or captions, owe much to her early career in graphic design and art direction at Conde Nast Publications.
Since then, Kruger has sustained a career that spans over thirty years. Known universally for her iconic piece, I Shop Therefore I Am, her work is included in all major collections of contemporary art throughout the world, but is just as likely to be placed in non-art environments; billboards, public parks, train stations or match boxes. Kruger was recently awarded the Life Time Achievement Medal at the Venice Biennale.
Kruger uses popular culture as both a subject and a tool in her work. Images taken from sources such as fashion magazines are juxtaposed with provocative text to critique the very structures and values these magazines propagate. Her work poses questions, scenarios and ideas on a range of subjects; economics, consumerism, gender politics, race, personal rights, autonomy; but all can be reduced to a simple exploration of how people function and co-exist within a hierarchical society.
"Power and its politics and hierarchies exist everywhere: in every conversation we have, in every deal we make, in every face we kiss. I try to address this power and how it choreographs the issues of violence and control, of wealth and poverty, of hope and abjection," the artist says.
ACCA's Artistic Director, Juliana Engberg, says: "This is one of the most exciting and important exhibitions to come to Melbourne for a very long time. Kruger is arguably the best known contemporary artist since Warhol, and has blazed a path for art with a punch and a punch-line. Her pithy texts and massive installations have made direct contact with audiences around the world to bring attention to the worlds of power, politics and propaganda. Using the methods and media of advertising, design and merchandise, Kruger has infiltrated her messages into the lived experience of the cultural consumer.
"Walking into a Barbara Kruger installation is like being submerged into the central control room of world power. Awesome and overwhelming, ranting and raving, saturating and subversive."
Barbara Kruger: December 20, 2005 - February 26, 2006.
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art,
111 Sturt Street,
Southbank.
Gallery hours:
Summer Hours
Tuesday-Sunday 11am-6pm
Winter Hours
Tuesday-Friday 10am-5pm.
Saturday and Sunday 11am-6pm.
Mondays by appointment
Tel: 03 9697 9999.
Admission: FREE
www.accaonline.org.au
For further media information: Katrina Hall on 03 9697 9999, mobile 0421 153 046 or email khall@accaonline.org.au
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