MAI LONGDag Girl & The Baby in a BoxInstallation view SLOT, acrylic and papier-mache, 2007
Mai Long’s site-specific installation follows from the success of her “Aqua Mutt” exhibition shown at Melbourne’s Incinerator Art Complex in August this year. In a bold move Mai liberated the characters of her densely populated canvases by incorporating them in 3-dimensional papier-mache tableaux’s. In the process, Aqua Mutt and Dag Girl, have become dynamic effigies that move beyond mere alter-ego status attaining a kind of ethnographic skin that speaks about us. As Director of the Casual Powerhouse (which holds a large collection of Mai’s work) Kon Gouriotis describes, “Long has produced series of works, mainly paintings and more recently installations, featuring the motifs of consumerism, nationalism, religion and sexual imagery with a discourse of emptiness and meaning.” Mai first introduced her mythical breed of mongrel Pho Dog in 2006 as part of a group exhibition at Casula. Its cross-breed is a metaphor of Mai’s own colourful weave of individuality, born in Hobart of a Vietnamese father and mother with Irish descendants her childhood was spent moving between Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and Canberra, before later study trips to China and Vietnam. This exhibition carries on in that vein. Mai has injected into this tableaux cross-religious kitsch, which is inseparable from our daily functions at this time of year. How much do we read read of the mixed messages of contemporary Christmas marketing? Mai typically explores societal layering through the Christmas vernacular with great doses of humour and her personal kitsch fetish. Important for Mai is the tale she tells, not only through the objects but the story that accompanies the installation (attached below as a pdf). It is this weaving across cultures, across artistic traditions hovering between craft and art, and melding her Vietnamese roots through the medium, Filipino upbringing with its version of the nativity – the bolen – and a good dose of Australian branding and satire. This is a delightfully fun exhibition that probes. Mai’s story of ‘The Baby in a Box’ and introduction to her Aqua Mutts
Images courtesy the artist and SLOT Mai Long is represented by NG Art Gallery, Chippendale: www.ngart.com.au |
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