Cerith Wyn Evans ...in light of the visible
These are lean times for the Museum of Contemporary Art and there are no bright prospects on the horizon – which is slightly ironic given that the current major exhibition is all about light. Cerith Wyn Evans …in light of the visible, continues a pattern of MCA shows featuring a leading international artist who is almost completely unknown to the Australian public.
In the MCA’s worldview this is all to the institution’s credit because it introduces local audiences to an artist who is widely celebrated in other parts of the world. The museum might feel it is dragging this blinkered country into the contemporary art circuit, giving us an opportunity to see an artist whose work has been collected by all the major global institutions.
Well, that’s one way of looking at it. From a more pragmatic perspective, Welshman, Wyn Evans, like Julie Mehretu and Zoe Leonard before him, is another artist whose fame in the rarefied sphere of contemporary art will not guarantee the numbers the MCA needs to get out of the red and into the black. The show runs for more than five months, and poor attendances will only exacerbate the museum’s woes.