The old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere “modernity” cannot kill.
—Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897.
We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind—mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods…
—J.G. Ballard, Crash, 1973.
In 1929, the City of Essendon commissioned Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony, architects trained alongside Frank Lloyd Wright, to build an incinerator along the bank of the Maribyrnong River. Though the building’s purpose was to house furnaces to burn the city’s waste, their aim was to create a beautiful yet inconspicuous structure. As Griffin summarised, “the final test of modernism is the replacement of industrial eyesores”. Decommissioned in 1942, the building remained empty until the mid 1980s when it became a hub for arts organisations. Today, its aggressive asymmetry houses Incinerator Gallery, a startlingly contemporary art space for the quiet western suburbs. Aeon Resurrection, curated by Jake Adam Treacy, is a poignant exhibition for the space. As explained in the curatorial text scrolling on a smashed monitor by the entrance, the exhibition explores “collective and rhizomatic future-making” as a means of imagining “reality beyond the human in the crepuscule aftermath of apocalypse”. The exhibition title is spray-painted in messy red letters across a crumpled plastic sheet strewn above the entry, haloed by barbed wire. As the architects intended, the chic modernist container conceals the chaos within.
Tara Heffernan is a blind art historian currently completing a PhD (Art History) at the University of Melbourne on the work of post war Italian artist Piero Manzoni. Her academic work focuses on global modernism and the avant-gardes with an interest in their ongoing aesthetic and political relevance to contemporary debate
