“The Innocents”
Mcrae And Vale
26 Aug → 17 Sept 2011

mcraeandvale’s installation is a response to a work by the American artist Mark Dion in which he sent a series of packages to the Art Gallery of NSW. These packages were presented as a collection titled The Return (A Cosmological Cabinet for New South Wales). Dion’s artwork aimed to replicate the importation of European culture to the Antipodes during the years of early settlement. Upon visiting Dion’s exhibit, mcraeandvale were alarmed to discover that one of the packages had been crushed. They wrote to Dion to inform him of the damage. The artist replied suggesting they contact Tony Bond (senior curator at the AGNSW) to have the package x-rayed. Bond graciously obliged, revealing that it contained a figurine of a glass, ceramic deer, or calf that was miraculously, unbroken.

mcraeandvale’s response to Dion’s work is a tableau of kitsch and imported objects, ostensibly presenting the immigration, by sea, of a large number of ceramic deer bound for Australia – ‘settlers’ awkwardly perched upon a fleet of mismatched boats, suitcases and other objects. Recent history, of course, has shown us that both the immigration and exportation of ‘innocents’ by sea remains fraught and volatile, a catalyst for cultural anxieties and cruelties.

mcraeandvale (Donna McRae and Michael Vale) work in film, visual art and writing, and both teach at Monash University. This is their first collaboration. www.mcraeandvale.com