Within Heaven and Earth
Money can buy you a lot of art, but it can’t buy a genuine spiritual experience. When most of the art stories in the mass media are about forgeries and thefts, or works being sold for astronomical prices, we tend to forget that art’s original raison d’être was most probably magical, religious, or simply spiritual. A drawing on a cave wall was a visual prayer, a request for power over the natural world.
After thousands of years, and the evolution of a secular market, art has never shaken off its spiritual associations, even if they occasionally come across as no more than a hollow marketing device. It’s hard, for instance, to understand how Lindy Lee’s Buddhist beliefs justify a $14 million price tag for a sculpture commissioned by the National Gallery of Australia.
The line that separates the spiritual from the material in contemporary art is frequently blurred and crossed, but Fairfield City Museum & Gallery has held its focus with a show called Within Heaven and Earth. It features seven artists with Asian connections, in tandem with writers and composers.