When Sydney Modern – the Art Gallery of NSW’s new Naala Badu building – opened in 2022, there was great excitement about the new gallery created from former World War II oil tank reserves. The 2200-square metre Tank space, peppered with columns, debuted with a work by Adrián Villar Rojas. Reviews were mixed.
Next came Louise Bourgeois and, most recently, Angelica Mesiti – the Paris-based Australian artist who represented Australia at the 2019 Venice Biennale with a three-channel video.
Continuing the institutional ambition for the Tank, Mesiti has matched that, making the most complex piece in her career. The commission has been in progress for the past four years – right through COVID. Interestingly, the pandemic saw Mesiti leave Paris for a provincial locale, and that along with a connection to nature’s rhythms and seasons, is perhaps the greatest shift we witness in her new work The Rites of When.
A massive, immersive video and sound installation comprising seven screens in a portrait format, the piece combines dance, aerial drone photography, original musical compositions and the percussive use of the body.
These have become hallmarks of her work – to communication in a multidimensional, non-verbal way, often calling on traditional cultural practice – and, in this case, communal rituals in relation the ‘hibernal’ (winter) and ‘aestival’ (summer) solstices. All the elements are there – and yet this feels more fragmented than her earlier work.
The narrative is constantly cycling around the screens. Unlike many of her other works, this piece has a very strong environmental message, from an industrial-scaled corn field that burns mid-harvest – its scale mind-blowing in terms of food production and mechanised harvesting – to the drumming of the body to mimicking torrential rains, all building to a frenetic pace. It’s a kind of all-powerful nature and a contemporary reckoning.
The deep bass tone reverberates through you as a viewer, and as you close your eyes you are transported to your own memories. Another highlight is some of the drone shots that shift our perception; for example, moving from observing a snow covered forest to then embedding the viewer deep within that landscape.
The Rites of When starts with the solstice, and visits it again later in the piece with dancers silhouetted against colours evocative of a shifting sky. Dancing continues to be a constant for Mesiti, and this video work speaks to communities, be it around a fire celebrating the solstice or moshing at a rave party.
There is a lone figure flashing in and out of the screen – aka strobe lights – building from the individual to a connected mass moving intuitively in sync, or in a natural rhythm. There is a kind of optimism for our times that comes with that swelling connectivity.
Exhibition co-curator, Beatrice Gralton, says: “In The Rites of When she invites us to imagine collective responses to our changing world that reference history, yet propel us into a speculative future. As cycles of regeneration in nature have shifted out of sync, and people around the globe increasingly live in urbanised environments, Mesiti encourages us to stand still – if just for a moment – to observe our singular experience and imagine our collective potential.”
My criticism of the piece is that the Tank’s columns are distracting (which is more the space than the artist). There is no single viewpoint to watch the entire piece, and the flow across the screens feels fractured or perforated. Conceptually, that has grounding in terms of the interruption to natural cycles in Anthropocene times.
Maybe in a landscape format, the eye would have more time to track and follow the narrative. It would also be interesting to see The Rites of When presented in a white cube space. What may be gained with those clean sightlines, however, I think may be lost in terms of the aural and immersive quality that the Tank so beautifully delivers. It does force a full bodily experience.
Read: Exhibition review: Lee Ufan: Quiet Resonance, AGNSW
Mesiti has added a further element, mirrored tiles to the floor, like fallen stars. They are largely lost in the darkened raw space. There is so much happening on screen – the incredible soundtrack, and trying to track and follow the narrative, the last thing we consider is what is at our feet. Conceptually, I can understand they are an anchor – the Pleiades star cluster.
Overall, Mesiti has delivered a complex and arresting immersive video work that holds you for every minute of its 35-minute cycle, making you feel, and think and fall into its cyclic rhythm and reverberating tones.
Angelica Mesiti: The Rites of When
Tank gallery
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Naala Badu
21 September 2024 to 11 May 2025.
Entry is free.
