Minimalist Melbourne Art

• Jasper Jordan-Lang

An adjective and artistic movement, minimalism has had a profound impact on art history and culture globally. Its influence has waxed and waned over time, but it remains a twentieth-century archetype and symbol of modernity. Unsurprisingly, minimalism seems to be having a revival in our uncertain times. It is in one sense nostalgic, but today it is also taking on a new form.

Minimalism has always been inherently global despite its American-centric art history. Other Primary Structures, an exhibition at New York’s Jewish Museum in 1966, demonstrates the extent of its influence. The exhibition included canonical figures like Donald Judd and Walter de Maria alongside their non-Western peers such as Jirō Takamatsu and Lygia Pape. Melbourne, too, has its own flavour and specific variation of minimalism, influenced as much by itself as by internationalism. Minimalism has always been here, but even a few years ago it was scarcely a topic of the conversations that shape artistic consciousness. Now a noticeable group of young artists is joining established practitioners working in the genre to revitalise its aesthetic for a new era. I have heard people call it nihilistic, reactionary, anti-conceptual, boring, bourgeois. Maybe they’re just talking about the Melbourne art world. One thing is for certain: it’s back, but different.