Marina Abramovic: In Residence

Overview

The legendary, controversial, performance artist who does 'nothing' is finally returning to Australia after a 17-year absence. The subject of two major projects (at Hobart's Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), and at Pier 2/3 with Kaldor Public Art Projects), Marina Abramovic is heading our way this June.

Beloved and equally criticised, 67-year-old Abramovic has been invited by both MONA's David Walsh and John Kaldor to create a two experiences for the public — a retrospective solo exhibition at MONA called Private Archaeology, beginning June 13 and running to October 5, followed by Kaldor Projects’ Marina Abramovic: In Residence, with a series of 'exercises' from the Abramovic Method happening over twelve days at Pier 2/3 from June 24 to July 5.

Leading on from the Serpentine Galleries exhibition 512 Hours, the artist's Sydney project will focus on audience participation with intense works like Counting the rice and her famous 'gaze' work — a play on her work The Artist is Present performed in New York's Museum of Modern Art, where you're asked to sit face-to-face with a stranger for a certain period (apparently Kaldor's still in contact with the stranger he sat opposite at the Serpentine). Abramovic will work with collaborator Lynsey Peisinger to create a series of spaces for exhibition visitors that invoke certain physical and psychological states.

"We constantly like to be entertained, to get things from outside. We never taketime to get in touch with ourselves... our inner self," says Ambramovic. "My function in this new kind of performance situation is to show you, through the Abramovic Method, what you can do for yourself." There will also be artist residencies, which will see 12 lucky Australian artists in-house for the twelve-day exhibition, all of whom will have mentoring from Abramovic herself and will hold workshops and performances. From 5-7pm each day, they will share the films that have inspired them and the ideas that keep them awake at night. The 12 Australian artists are Nat Abbott (Melbourne); Frances Barrett (Sydney); Clark Beaumont — comprised of Sarah Clark and Nicole Beaumont (Brisbane); Lottie Consalvo (Newcastle); Nicola Gunn (Melbourne); George Khut (Sydney); Sarah Jane Norman (Berlin & the Blue Mountains); Sarah Rodigari (Sydney); Christian Thompson (London); and zin — comprised of Harriet Gillies and Roslyn Helper (Sydney).

If you want to see Abramovic throw down her ideas on a pedestal, she'll be giving a keynote address in the Roslyn Packer Theatre in Walsh Bay on Tuesday, June 30 at 8pm. This will be her only public talk during her 2015 Australian visit, so you're going to want to lock down tickets asap.

This is a big time pull for Australia, with two of the country's leading private arts patrons, Walsh and Kaldor, both separately approaching Abramovic, and both landing a 'yes'. Kaldor approached Abramovic following her successful involvement in Kaldor Project's applauded group exhibition 13 Rooms at Pier 2/3 — the work, Luminosity, which saw a naked artist wall-mounted on a bicycle seat for long periods of time (and didn't star Abramovic herself). Walsh approached the artist after meeting her over five years ago in Amsterdam. But this isn't the first time Abramovic has been to Australia; before presenting Gold found by the artists with Ulay at the 1979 Biennale of Sydney, the artist spent a cheeky five months with an Aboriginal community in central Australia in the '80s (and raised a baby kangaroo and cuddled this sheep).

Read our feature on Understanding the work of Marina Abramovic in Five Phases.