The big problem is whether this display at Sydney\u2019s Museum of Contemporary Art is likely to connect with audiences who generally prefer spectacle to substance. On the day I visited, there were only six other people in the galleries, which doesn\u2019t suggest any attendance records will be threatened, even though the exhibition runs until early November.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Zoe Leonard opens her exhibition Al rio\/To the River at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Rhett Wyman \/ SMH<\/cite><\/p>\n Leonard (born 1961) is an American artist who works mainly with photography and installation. There\u2019s a political dimension to all her subjects, but she takes a wilfully oblique approach. Strange Fruit<\/em> (1992-97), for instance, a memorial for those who died during the AIDS crisis, consisted of old fruit skins that had been sewn together and scattered across the floor.<\/p>\n Al r\u00edo\/To the River<\/em> looks at that once-mighty river, the Rio Grande \u2013 or from the other side, the R\u00edo Bravo \u2013 that forms 2000 kilometres of border between the United States and Mexico. Ever since Donald Trump came down his golden escalator in 2015 and denounced the Mexicans as \u201cdrug dealers, criminals, rapists\u201d, that border has been an incendiary topic in American politics, with the influx of Latin American refugees portrayed as an existential threat.<\/p>\n The catalogue of shameful, sadistic acts perpetrated at the border has grown large over the past eight years, from the inane attempt to build a wall, to the forced separation of parents and children; to Texas governor Greg Abbott putting a row of buoys in the Rio Grande, and razor wire on its banks.<\/p>\n Actions unfold over time: Zoe Leonard\u2019s Al r\u00edo \/ To the River (detail) 2016\u20132022.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Zoe Leonard<\/cite><\/p>\n There\u2019s no shortage of volatile material to be found on both sides of the Rio Grande, but Leonard has avoided the sensational stuff. Beginning in 2016, the year Trump came to power, she has documented the entire length of the river-as-border, from El Paso and Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez to the Gulf of Mexico. What did she see? I can\u2019t improve on the description given in the book: \u201ca sustained observation of the water, the riparian landscape and structures built into and alongside the river \u2013 dams, levees, roads, irrigation canals, bridges, pipelines, fences, and checkpoints \u2013 which control the flow of water, the passage of goods, and the movement of people\u201d.<\/p>\n The word \u201criparian\u201d is a virtual tautology, as it means: \u201crelated to or situated on the banks of a river\u201d. The deadpan checklist of subjects is perfectly accurate. Leonard is not interested in producing sublime landscapes in the manner of Ansel Adams or capturing \u201cdecisive moments\u201d in the footsteps of Cartier-Bresson.<\/p>\n If Leonard were to be identified with any photographic tendency, it would be the New Topographics, associated with figures such as Robert Adams or Lewis Baltz. These photographers are known for combining images of the natural world with the banal structures of the man-made environment. Studiously neutral, usually devoid of human beings, their photos eschewed all vestiges of the picturesque in favour of a stark, \u201cobjective\u201d view of a world degraded by our interventions.<\/p>\n Although she experiments with a range of approaches, the bulk of Leonard\u2019s images would fit neatly into a New Topographics survey. She is not, however, fixated on singular images but on sequences that show actions unfolding over time.<\/p>\n Most of these actions are completely humdrum: cars and trucks passing on a freeway; a queue to a checkpoint seen through a car\u2019s windscreen; a ferry taking passengers from one bank to another; a man on horseback rounding up a cow and a calf; a bridge seen from different angles; cars passing; boats passing; trains passing; empty roads; river in deep perspective; concrete and barbed wire fortifications; people crossing a bridge; goats grazing by the river; carpark by night; a minor security incident seen from a distance; bits of wall; bits of fence; wildflowers (in colour!); birds rising from a field; a helicopter in the sky, viewed in 34 separate shots; water swirling in close-up \u2013 19 shots.<\/p>\n The photographs are modestly sized, presented in long rows on the gallery walls, or as grids. There are no identifying labels alongside individual prints. The dullness of these images prompts one to gaze long and hard, searching for depths that fail to reveal themselves. Leonard is not aiming to entertain the viewer in creating this visual mosaic of small, everyday things that happen on and around the river. These fragments are meant to be assembled in our minds, creating a composite portrait of the Rio Grande\/R\u00edo Bravo as a living entity, not the political abstraction we call \u201cthe border\u201d.<\/p>\n The idea, as I understand it from the photographs, and from the lengthy, diverse texts in the publication, is to emphasise all the aspects of the river that testify to its long history, to its use in agriculture, and the way it has shaped the lives of those who dwell on its banks. Without overt editorialising, Leonard shows the way the river has been dammed, diverted, hemmed in and made into a mockery of its natural state. The ugliness is so patent that all she has to do is present it as she found it.<\/p>\n One may appreciate what Leonard is doing and sympathise with her willingness to explore her theme from every angle, but the deliberate, strategic banality of so many of these images doesn\u2019t make them any more appealing. Despite their conspicuous objectivity, her photos require an ideal spectator who is prepared to invest subjectively in this project, seeing the whole as greater than the sum of its parts. It\u2019s a challenge set by the artist and the museum, prompting us to take a broader view, not get caught up with the niceties of individual pictures.<\/p>\n Deliberate, strategic banality: Zoe Leonard\u2019s Al r\u00edo \/ To the River (detail) 2016\u20132022.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Zoe Leonard<\/cite><\/p>\n I\u2019m not convinced many will make that effort or allow themselves to believe in the sweeping importance of this body of work in the way that curator and MCA director Suzanne Cotter obviously does. This was one of the last shows Cotter presented in her previous job as director of MUDAM Luxembourg, and it is the first show she has brought to Sydney since she took up the reins in January last year. Another recent MCA attraction, Adam Lindner\u2019s progressive dance performance, echoes a Luxembourg show of 2019. Coming up fast is Tarek Atoui\u2019s Waters\u2019 Witness<\/em>, which was shown in Luxembourg from September 2022 to March 2023; and an exhibition by Tacita Dean, who featured at MUDAM from July 2022 to February 2023.<\/p>\n All these exhibitions may be stupendous, but it\u2019s a little strange to see four shows from the director\u2019s previous job repeated in her new job. It argues a tremendous faith in these artists, but also perhaps a lack of imagination. I\u2019m not at all familiar with the art scene in Luxembourg, but I doubt that it is such a precise match for Sydney that we need to see the same shows. I\u2019m all for the MCA putting something new and surprising in front of its audience rather than simply fishing for work with the greatest potential popularity. Nevertheless, it\u2019s disappointing when a new(ish) director can\u2019t stop replaying her own greatest hits. A museum need not pander to the tastes and desires of a local audience, but neither should it be imagined that one size of international contemporary art fits all occasions. When seeking the limits of what paying audiences will accept, I suspect Zoe Leonard\u2019s Al r\u00edo\/To the River<\/em> takes us right to the border.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n