Review: Art Gallery of South Australia celebrates Archibald Prize winners and Robert Wilson’s moving portraits

Archie 100: A Century of the Archibald Prize and Robert Wilson: Moving Portraits are sure to entrance with their expert blend of art history and future, traditionalism and controversy. (Image: Flickr)

By Alana Pahor | @Alana_Pahor

Currently showing at the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), Archie 100: A Century of the Archibald Prize and Robert Wilson: Moving Portraits meld seamlessly to pay homage to historical art while showcasing a transition to abstract, futuristic works. Together, the exhibitions dive into the secrets of the human psyche and the disjunction between historical beauty and other-worldly modernity, capturing the nature of art’s purpose and progression.

Let’s turn first to the past, to Archie 100: A Century of the Archibald Prize. Developed by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the exhibition is a centenary celebration of the Archibald Prize competition, whose portraits depict and have endured through world war and various social and political turmoils.

Standout features of the exhibition are its use of thematic organisation and in-depth exhibit labels. As viewers travel from theme to theme, they are encouraged to reflect on different aspects of themselves and Australia’s art history.

Archie 100 creates an intimate, introspective experience for viewers. There is a sense not just of observing, but of acquainting oneself with the portraits and their history.

The selection of the portraits captures a diverse range of artists and sitters from all walks of life. Robert Hannaford’s 1995 portrait of Wangkajunga-Walmajarri painter, Jarinyanu David Downs, and Grace Crowley’s Portrait in Grey (1933), are testaments to the struggles and perseverance of minority groups in the Australian art industry.

Artistic controversy has been rife throughout the Archibald Prize’s past, and the exhibition captures this well. Notably on display is Sydney artist Brett Whitley’s Art, Life and the Other Thing (1978). The self-portrait, which depicts the artist’s experience of heroin addiction, was deemed a divisive prize-winner for its defiance of traditional realism styles typical of portraiture at the time.

By displaying works like Whitley’s, Archie 100 emphasises how the bending and breaking of boundaries in artistic practice has paved the way for prominence of more abstract works.

Taking this concept and leaping into the future, Robert Wilson: Moving Portraits creates a more extreme disparity between the old and the new. Wilson’s exhibition – a combination of historical art pieces and his own bold, HD audio-visual moving portraits – explores surrealism and futuristic recreation of classic art through a familiar lens.

While the moving portraits are uncanny, a sense of familiarity and calmness is created by the sitters themselves, with faces including Lady Gaga, Winona Ryder and Brad Pitt featured.

However, the most notable feature without doubt is Wilson’s manipulation of lighting, which the New York-based artist and director is renowned for. While historical (or historical-inspired) works are bathed in a soft, dim glow, the moving portraits pulsate with a harsh, blue light. This creates the sense that viewers are suspended between past and future.

Wilson’s incorporation of audio and video elements is equally striking. Speakers suspended above each portrait play melancholy music featuring piano and strings. Within the portraits themselves, which appear motionless until closer inspection, the sitters’ gazes shift, their chests rise and fall, and tears etch down their cheeks, creating a viewing space akin to a haunted house.

Wilson’s re-birth of past art is particularly spectacular in Lady Gaga: Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière (2013), with music by Michael Galasso. A recreation of a portrait of the same name by French neoclassical artist, Jean-Auguste-Domonique Ingres, Wilson’s work features Stefani Germanotta as the sitter. Gaga is draped in white and stiffly posed with a single tear rolling down her cheek, as a pure white goose flies by in the background. It acknowledges the past while creating something simultaneously beautiful, melancholy, and modern.

Together, Archie 100: A Century of the Archibald Prize and Robert Wilson: Moving Portraits bring to the AGSA a masterful display of art-historical nostalgia, and eerie, awestruck wonder. The ingenuity of the exhibitions lies in their ability to both pay homage to the past and shock viewers with controversial and futuristic works. They are testaments to our art history, how far art has come, and where it is heading.

Archie 100: A Century of the Archibald Prize and Robert Wilson: Moving Portraits are showing at the Art Gallery of South Australia until October 3, 2022.