Marina Abramović
Private Archaeology
June 13–October 5, 2015
Museum of Old and New Art (MONA)
655 Main Road
Berriedale, Hobart
Tasmania
Australia
The Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) collaborates with Marina Abramović in a solo exhibition, Private Archaeology, featuring more than 40 seminal works chosen to celebrate her return to Australia after 17 years. While not a retrospective, the exhibition documents a career spanning more than 40 years and explores how Abramović has reduced and refined her work to focus on a central, unifying ideology: what she calls “the art of the immaterial.” This involves the use of objects and simple rituals—either by the audience or the artist herself—to transport each participant to consciousness of the present moment. Private Archaeology includes sound pieces, video works, photographs, sculptures and interactive works using the The Abramović Method.
The exhibition is named for Private Archaeology—a series of four cabinets each including objects selected by Abramović because of their importance to her life, including objects dedicated to her Mona experience.
Curated by Nicole Durling and Olivier Varenne, Mona’s senior curators.
June 14, 13.30h: The conversation: Marina Abramović and David Walsh, Odeon Theatre, Hobart.
Throughout the exhibition Cinemona will run a series of films about the artist.
The catalogue
A 160-page exhibition catalogue, Marina Abramović: Private Archaeology, including a foreword by Mona founder David Walsh, along with essays by Associate Professor Justin Clemens and Mona writer Elizabeth Pearce.
The catalogue includes stills from Abramović’s early performances, as well as extensive installation shots of the entire Mona exhibition, including her transitory works, a new edition of Private Archaeology made for Mona, and Counting the Rice exercise.
Date of release: September 2015; pre-orders available from June 13.
About the artist
Marina Abramović was born in 1946 in Belgrade, Serbia. In 1976 she moved to Amsterdam, where she began working with Ulay, her lover and creative collaborator, and together they explored their cultural identities and personal ritual through performance art. In 2001 Abramović moved to New York, where she now lives and works. In her pioneering performance works she has used her body as both her subject and medium, enduring pain, exhaustion and danger in the quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. She has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide at institutions including the National Gallery of Victoria (1979); the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Victoria (1981), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (1998), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2005), Museum of Modern Art, New York in (2010), the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture, Moscow (2011); and Kunsthalle, Vienna (2012). Abramović’s work was also included in Documenta VI, VII and IX (1977, 1982 and 1992); Venice Biennale 1976 and 1997, with the exhibition of Balkan Baroque in the latter earning her the Golden Lion Award for Best Artist.
For more information: Delia Nicholls, media manager
delia [at] mona.net.au
