Disobedience

Abstract

In our contemporary cultural climate artists are confronted with two choices. They can produce prototypes for social manipulation, in the service of the advertising and fashion industries, thereby lending a human face to the excesses of late capitalism, or they can continue a tradition of social criticism and subversion.

The current research project seeks to present artists whose work invites us, for at least a moment, to look through the rhetorical camouflage produced for the benefit of empire by its vast media and affect industry, and to ponder the reality of the world which it attempts to shield from our eyes.

This research, which takes the form of public exhibition Disobedience curated by David McNeil and Zanny Begg, presented the work of a number of local and overseas artists who make works that register issues of social justice or protest against the brutal excesses of economic globalisation, both locally and internationally.

The research was innovative in so far as it brought together a varied group of artists working across a diverse set of mediums in order to address social and political issues of contemporary importance. With each artist in this diverse group united by their commitment to making art that exposes the contradictions in the practice and ideology of empire.

Disobedience was opened by Will Saunders, one of the two activists who painted "NO WAR" on the Sydney Opera House, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. The exhibition was accompanied by artists’ talks by Dmitry Vilensky, Raquel Ormella, Michael Goldberg and curators, McNeill and Begg, as well as a workshop and film showing.