On Kawara TODAY & the Museum of Contemporary Art
- When 5 Apr - 5 May 1990
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Where
IVAN DOUGHERTY GALLERY
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Address
SELWYN ST, PADDINGTON NSW 2021
This exhibition consists of 24 date-paintings by the Japanese artist On Kawara from 1966-1989 and 24 works executed in corresponding years from the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. On Kawara began his Today series, more often called date-paintings, in January 1966. These works record with the utmost regularity and consistency an ordinary fact of daily life. The date of 'today' is painted white on a monochrome background, in the language of the place in which it is painted, on one of five standard formats. The paintings are contained in boxes which usually have a newspaper clipping from the same day pasted inside. The time-span of Kawara's date-paintings is paralleled by the life-span of the MCA (formerly the Power Galllery of Contemporary Art) which began as a collecting institution in 1966 with the appointment of its first curator. This exhibition follows a strange 'historical' path in terms of the collection -the works having been chosen (as they were in the previous exhibitions) by execution dates, not by date of acquisition. To choose works according to this structure from a single collection certainly redefines its particular 'history'.
Artists
Jiri Kolar
Marcel Duchamp
Arturo Schwarz
John Nixon
Christo
Richard Hamilton
Arnulf Rainer
Robert Indiana
Carlo Alfano
Sweeney Reed
Robert MacPherson
Jay McCafferty
Susan Well
Joe Tilson
Klaus Rinke
Tod Watts
Cindy Sherman
Peter Tyndall
Barbara Kruger
Maria Kozic
Lindy Lee
Ian Burn
John Nixon/Mike Parr
—
Curated by Rene Block, Director with Linda Michael
Organised by Biennale of Sydney, Ivan Dougherty Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney