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About Linden1968

Linden1968 was presented as part of the Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts’ Innovators Program from 7 November – 14 December 2008.

As an exhibition, Linden1968 included a selection of artists who were invited by the project curators to respond to a creative and tight curatorial brief: to devise works and strategies within Linden’s interior and exterior spaces that would reshape, transform and comment on the site’s previous function as a private guest house in the year 1968. The project curators asked the participating artists to consider the significant events that marked 1968 — the disappearance of Harold Holt, the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the earthquake in Meckering, the Paris riots and the opening of the National Gallery of Victoria — in their creative response to the site.

“Where were you when Harold Holt went missing?”

Linden1968 sought to directly engage with the Linden site, including all five gallery spaces and the gardens, by responding to its physicality and history, and using these elements as a stimulus for creation. Place, space, function and time were layered to create a fantastic snapshot of history as both the site, surrounding St Kilda, and contemporary current affairs were reflected on by the artists and their works. By anchoring the show in this historically significant year, it was also hoped that audience engagement with the site and work would be increased as they became implicated within the exhibition context: eg. Where were you when Harold Holt went missing?

Linden1968 sought to establish alternative styles and/or means of communication through focusing on a diversity of materials, working methods and site-specific approaches employed by the artists. The selected group of artists included emerging, mid career as well as more established artists, living and working in Perth. Not all artists were alive in 1968, which added to the diversity of interpretations and highlighted the colourings of nostalgia and the influence of the annals of history. It is also important to note that the participating artists were invited based on the strength and diversity of their individual practices. While they responded to a specific site and historically anchored curatorial rationale, they did so with the visual languages that have become recognizably their own.

Western Australia has a lot to offer in terms of the contemporary arts. Many artists choose to live and work in Perth in an effort to retain a focus on their art practice, which can often be characterised by an ambitious and inquiring interest into the world around us and our relationship to each other. There is also a sense of experimentation and hybridity as visual artists often adopt performative modes within their practice, while performing artists are well versed in visual presentation and interaction with space. The other defining element of those artists working in Perth today is a sense of play and response. The work of these artists is not fixed to a certain tone or outcome but demonstrates fearlessness in exposing themselves and their interests as they change with the world around them. The model of Linden1968 was a perfect fit for these artists as it is conceptually complex yet wide open to interpretation, offering an opportunity for the playful and improvised.

“The… defining element of those artists working in Perth today is a sense of play and response”

The exhibition model employed in Linden1968, that of accessing buildings with pre-existing histories to provide active working environments and exhibiting spaces for artistic inquiry, has been used to great success in Perth by the LAUNCH ART collective. Since 2002, this Perth-based collective have accessed spaces, including a hotel, office building and ice cream factory, and have made them available to visual and performing artists who have engaged with the inherent nature of the site by responding to its physicality and function. The highly acclaimed Hotel6151 saw a group of 60 emerging, mid career and established artists of all disciplines from across the globe transform a 1970s hotel marked for demolition into a site-sensitive temporary exhibition space. The more recent Office6000 invited audiences into an empty floor of an office building for a weekend of office inspired art experiences. In this way, LAUNCH ART has provided new platforms for inspiring, executing and engaging with creative ideas.

Linden1968 was an outrageously successful exhibition and experience. It opened the eyes of Melbourne audiences to the exciting art practices coming out of Perth while also transporting them on a journey through time made possible by strong and evocative art works. For the artists, Linden1968 provided other opportunities – for some it was an invitation to depart from their ongoing practice and make new works that required an improvised response, for other’s it was an opportunity to show existing works in a new context, and for many it was the opportunity to spend an extended period of time in Melbourne familiarising themselves with spaces, places and people. Perhaps most importantly the exhibition brought a critical mass of Perth practioners together and made a stamp on new territory — Move on over or we’ll move on over you!¹

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the artists for their involvement in the project and their unrelenting faith in participating in such an unusual fictional platform for an exhibition. We would also like to thank those that contributed to the National Graphic publication which accompanied the exhibition, particularly Tom Muller who conceived of the publication and also designed the "Mexcellent" project logo! This is a truly exciting and powerful reminder of the scope and energy of the show. Thanks also goes to Caspar Fairhall for his design of the Linden1968 website which will stand tall in the shadow of such an enormous event. And official thanks must also be given to the Western Australian Government and the Department of Culture and the Arts for their generous support which made it possible for the artists and works to travel to Melbourne for the exhibition and to the Australia Council who supported the production of new works by emerging artists in the exhibition. Thanks must also go to the Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts and their program supporters who allowed us to take over the building and travel it back in time.

Hannah Mathews and Ben Riding
Linden1968 curators

This quote is taken from a Black Panthers banner that was reproduced for the exhibition and displayed on Linden’s exterior.↩

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