I know Ive been writing about Ken's massive installation on Cockatoo Island for quite some time...so I'm sure that you and I are both relieved that I went out there to see it... and finally ...
zip my lip about it!!!
A Ringing Glass (Rilke) was located in the Turbine Shed - one of the main pavilions on the island - which is filled with massive machinery and relics from its industrial past. This setting seemed to be the perfect match for the scale of Unsworths' work...
Grandeur was clearly one of the themes as A Ringing Glass will now be put into the art folklore books for being one of the most expensive artworks created within our community!!
The welcoming banner started to suggest this grandeur - and as you walked through the entrance you soon realised that the whole piece was in a fully contained marquee!!
Which began with a ballroom...
It was soon made clear that this was Unsworth's 'imagined world' and the ballroom truly felt like a room in Versailles or a schloss castle in Vienna!! This ballroom also contained a stage, two large banquet tables + a dance floor where all the 160 invited guests for the party that Unsworth threw as part of the work - were asked to perform a choreographed dance piece. This dinner party held on the 28th May was a massive night...
and little 'souvenirs' were presented to the viewer in this ballroom - such as the dinner menu and order of entertainment, the chandeliers+candelabras, the red velvet table runners and the props that were placed on the stage (seen above).... These props were part of another performance piece that was commissioned by Unsworth for the night- that involved a professional dance troupe re-inacting the life, death, love and loss that Ken Unsworth experienced after the death of his late wife Elizabeth.
And so it went on as you entered room after room... as Unsworth presented a series of pieces that involved complex signs and symbols ... Angels, red roses, children's toys, hospital beds, bluebirds, pianos and row boats all featured... as well as references to his oeuvre of work such as suspended rocks with multiple sets of wires...
While there I was also able to catch the moment of the skeleton sculpture in the 4th room that moved on the half hour. It spookily tapped away with a stick that was positioned in one hand... like the rapping of Death at ones door .. seemingly suggesting Elizabeth's movement toward death ...
After talking about all that you may think that this was all completely morbid!! But it was an amazing installation -and again- my images and words dont do any real justice to this mammoth piece...It was a work that could have only been accomplished by an artist that is mature and confident - tonally and artistically. Ken pitched the emotion behind each performance, installation + sculpture at just the right level so as to let the audience be totally entranced by the work, but not bamboozled or losed within it... He understood the scale of it all and how to portray his beliefs + ideologies - with style and substance!
I really feel like this is a work that people will talk about long after its gone - a once in a lifetime experience! As Tony Bond from AGNSW said :
He's a real renaissance man. We don't have any others, so he absolutely stands out. Nobody would attempt to do anything as ambitious as this.
Nuff said!
On another note... Sydney Design 09 is JUST about to start ... and in the next day or so Ill give my picks of what to see + do as there is a HUGE HUGE schedule!! Also the new Dumbo Feather is out and from what I have seen of it... it is another brilliant issue...
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