Collective Unease
⬤ The Ian Potter Museum of Art 26 Sep - 3 Jun 2023
Collective Unease is staged by the now-conglomerated University of Melbourne Museums and Collections department. Announced just prior to the pandemic, the incorporation of the University’s main contemporary art venues into the department was coupled with a rebranding of the University’s diverse array of collections, archives, and galleries as the “Cultural Commons,” which has garnered some criticism. A cultural strategy and promotional framing device, the Cultural Commons is not managed by any specific faculty and appears guided by a decidedly non-academic strategy. Conforming to the increasingly dominant therapeutic rhetoric in art and academia, this marketing device’s mission statement boasts, “this is a place for you, our community, to stay connected, inspired and engaged.” In the wake of this restructuring and ongoing refurbishment of the Ian Potter Museum of Art—the University’s art museum—the exhibition finds a home in the stately cloister of the Old Quadrangle at the centre of the main campus. The title suggests the awkward relationship between the institution as a patron and its beneficiaries (artists and academics) and customers (students). The ceremonial space is draped with intriguing ornithological panels and festooned with lively video works that embellish the solemn space.
Scott Robinson is a casual academic, writer and unionist, published in Overland, Index Journal, Arena and demos journal. Tara Heffernan is a blind art historian, currently completing a PhD at the University of Melbourne.
A prior version of this review did not clearly distinguish between the Cultural Commons and the Museums and Collections department. The Cultural Commons is a promotional strategy and cultural framework uniting the University’s diverse array of museums and collections, while Museums and Collections is a department within the University. The prior version also incorrectly suggested that Nguyen himself is depicted in his work An Australian National Song (2022) interrupting musicians by spraying shaving foam, when it is not Nguyen who sprays the foam and the foam sprayed is in fact an architectural expanding foam.
