In New Histories Bendigo Art Gallery has invited contemporary artists to re-imagine ten historic works from the historic collection.
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The resulting exhibition is a series of thoughtful and challenging new works displayed alongside their historic counterparts and extending into all three historic courts of the Gallery.
One of the more confronting works in the exhibition (pictured) is a response to German artist Carl Hoff’s painting The Golden Wedding (1883).
FAMILY FIRST! (Devon Ackermann and Paul Yore) have created the work The Birth of a Nation, a kind of oscillating ‘Fem bot’ that riffs off what the artists describe as the ‘alarming wistful, nostalgic rendition of traditional Germanic social order’ portrayed in The Golden Wedding.
Linking German Romanticism and the sentimental narrative detailed in the painting with the rise of nationalism and – subsequently, Nazism – the artists challenge Hoff’s fictitious vision of a (heterosexual) Aryan utopia.
While Carl Hoff may never have possessed this ill intent when created his ostentatious painting, this simple act of re-examining what has ‘always been’ disrupts the status quo and enables a diversity of voices to be heard.
In the case of FAMILY FIRST! and Carl Hoff, a Queer perspective commandeers a patriarchal straight story with comic and terrifying results.
New Histories is on until July 29 and features some of the known and loved favourites of the Bendigo Art Gallery collection alongside their contemporary responses.
Saturday May 5 features a durational performance in Drury Court as part of Bridie Lunney’s work Always Radiant.
See www.bendigoartgallery.com.au for more details.