MELBOURNE, Australia — Rekospective, the punningly titled retrospective of Reko Rennie on the Ian Potter Centre, the arm of the Nationwide Gallery of Victoria that homes its Australian assortment, boldly challenges binaristic distinctions between “traditional” Aboriginal and modern artwork by works drawn from the artist’s expansive two-decade profession.
Visually, Rekospective leans into the artist’s road artwork roots. In works resembling “Regalia” (2013), Rennie makes use of a crown image not solely as homage to Jean-Michel Basquiat, but in addition to deal with questions of Indigenous sovereignty and rightful rule in Australia. The artist’s first tag, “OA” (quick for “Original Aboriginal”), can also be ever-present, alongside different indicators of graffiti tradition resembling stenciling and spray paint as each topic and materials. For “Message Stick (Totem Pole)” (2011), for example, Rennie stacked a sequence of spray paint cans atop one another in his model of a message stick, an object carried by Indigenous Australians to speak throughout huge distances.
Rennie is thought for his reimagining of the Kamilaroi diamond sample, which is often carved into bushes as a males’s initiation image, to say the continuity of Indigenous cultures to the current day. This diamond sample is seen throughout a lot of Rennie’s installations, together with ”OA_RR” (2016–17), a brilliant, hand-painted 1973 Rolls Royce Corniche that greets you from the NGV’s lobby. The accompanying video work “OA_RR” (2017) sees Rennie drive donuts in Kamilaroi Nation as a up to date automobile culture-infused homage to sand engravings historically made for ceremonial functions, collapsing the excellence between previous and current.
Reko Rennie, “Message Stick (Totem Pole)” (2011), bronze, metal base, 57 x 2.6 x 2.6 inches (145 x 6.5 x 6.5 cm) (© Reko Rennie; courtesy Nationwide Gallery of Australia, Kamberri /Canberra)
In an analogous act of subverting linear time, Rekospective forgoes the chronological narrative usually utilized in institutional solo exhibitions, bringing works into dialogue through shared themes and symbols as an alternative. On high of the aforementioned crowns and diamond sample, recurring visible motifs embrace camouflage print, kangaroos, the Aboriginal flag, warriors, bikes, and totems. Rennie constantly refers to his again catalog in works resembling “Initiation_OA_RR” (2021), a thematic and visible follow-up to the aforementioned movie work that sees the artist drive a custom-painted pink 1973 Holden Monaro by the streets of Melbourne’s western suburbs, the place he grew up. Within the climax of the movie, Rennie drags the automobile by a sequence of burnouts that visibly mark the pavement, set towards a grand operatic rating. Importantly, his technique of self-referencing doesn’t really feel indulgent due to the urgency of the problems he speaks to, together with police brutality, Indigenous deaths in custody, and land rights.
Rekospective is likely one of the few reveals I’ve seen on the NGV the place the gallery’s usually heavy-handed exhibition design (I hear that they’ve an in-house wallpaper printer) helps the visible and thematic ambitions of the exhibition. As an illustration, Rennie’s use of camouflage print in “ALWAYS” (2021), a set of 4 canvases, continues within the {custom} wallpaper behind the work, metaphorically breaking his painterly expression out of the constraints of the museum object. The vivid palette of pinks, yellows, and blues on canvas and purple, navy, and inexperienced on the partitions additionally challenges stereotypes about “authentic” Aboriginal artwork, resembling its associations with “natural” colours and earth tones.
The NGV missed a chance to match such a big exhibition of a dwelling Australian artist with an accompanying catalog, whereas a set present themed on animals throughout the corridor is accompanied by a slick tome. Nonetheless, Rekospective seems like an necessary artwork historic second. In wall texts, the artist recollects feeling the disconnection between the Aboriginal objects on show throughout childhood visits to the NGV and his personal lived expertise rising up in Melbourne. Many years on, Rennie created an exhibition that I feel his childhood self would have revered.
Reko Rennie, “Message stick (green)” (2011), hand-pressed metallic textile foil, screenprint, artificial polymer paint on canvas (photograph Sophia Cai/Hyperallergic)
Set up view of Reko Rennie, REKOSPECTIVE (photograph Sophia Cai/Hyperallergic)
REKOSPECTIVE: The Artwork of Reko Rennie continues on the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia (Federation Sq., Flinders Avenue & Russell Avenue, Melbourne, Australia) by January 27. The exhibition was organized by the museum.
