If you walk away
from the ferries, up the big front steps of the MCA and turn left, you will find
yourself in an airy gallery with a feast of colour.
Tacked onto two
walls are hundreds of spools of cotton, large ones like those on an
industrial over-locker. Some tail end of threads trail into the air and flutter
under the air-con breeze, but most extended out and away from the wall to stay
fixed to garments piled on a table. There you can see everything from delicate
crochets shawls to leather miniskirts and teddy bears.
This is the Mending Project by Lee Mingwei (Korea)
in which visitors bring their clothes with tears, runs and holes and leave them
to be mended. They will live in a pile on a trestle table until the end of the
festival when owners are notified
by email to collect their items.
The installation has been staffed over the months of the Biennale by ten
stitchers – mostly art and design students – who, true to the Lee Mingwei’s
philosophy of celebrating the repair rather than hiding it as would a tailor, make
their mendings more than just visible, but a feature of the garment.
Three large canvases by David Aspden hang on adjacent walls. Still feeling
the warmth of the Mending Project led
me to take in these huge oil paintings of red and yellow hues, throwing light
and bright colour out into the room. Reminiscent of works by John Olsen it
conjured up notions of deserts, horizons and blissful isolation.
It was a shock then to read the title of one piece: Mururoa. Painted in 1973, seven years after the first French
nuclear test on the Pacific atoll, the reds and amber colours to me became
bloodied. The splashes of blue became obscured, poisoned glimpses of a once-pristine
ocean.
Knowing the subject of the work completely changed my attitude towards
it. The happy room of many colours momentarily took on a darker feeling.
Not for long though.The prevailing ambiance was definitely light.
