Eugenia Lim, The Australian Ugliness (Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 10/04/19)

Eugenia Lim’s The Australian Ugliness was lengthy relative to the other films in the exhibition (30 minutes), yet was easy to watch (perhaps in part due to the womb like room with giant pillows in which it was being displayed in). It features the artist moving through the space in and around 30 Australian architectural sites. In clip she is sitting around a table of architects, observing them in a detached silence as they discuss plans. In another, she is stroking the concrete support structures of a museum, or holding hands with an old woman dressed up in a costume designed to resemble the building they are standing in front of. There is also footage of people moving through these spaces: for example, we see a group of asian tourists photographing something but we don’t get to see what that is. The work takes its title from a book written by the architect Robin Boyd, which makes a link between the ugliness of Australian architecture and the way Australians see themselves. Lim examines this in her work, as she has written: ‘if architecture is the reimagining of the world as human, what do our buildings say about us? Through choreographed actions and interventions by ambiguous, coloured, ageing or queer bodies into the icons and interiors of Australia, my take on ‘Ugliness’ seeks to question: who holds the right to design our spaces, and who are they designed for? Who shapes our built environment and in turn, how do these forces shape us?’

How does this relate to my work? Although the themes explored in this artwork are very different to those in my own work, I was interested in the way that Eugenia Lim re-contextualised the architecture by presenting it through different people, which is what I try to do with dialogue. On a more formal level, however, I particularly liked the way that three different films were being displayed on three screens next to each other. Although the footage was different on each screen, the images interacted with each other almost creating a new space that encompassed all three videos. The multiple screens felt overwhelming at times, and I didn’t always know where to look, which made me think it might be quite interesting to display the three versions of the romantic comedy script I reinterpreted on separate screens at the same time, instead of consecutively.