Hard at Play: Zaniness and Labour in Contemporary Art

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Heath Franco, Rosie Deacon, Diana Baker Smith and Barbara Cleveland for their effort and time in contributing to this article and sharing images of their artwork.

Supplemental data

Supplemental Figures [s] for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/14434318.2018.1481333

Notes

1. While the phrase ‘tyranny of distance’ is often applied to UK/Australian colonial relations (see Geoffrey Blainey), see also Jody Berland's similar discussion of ‘centers and margins’ relating to UK/Canada relationships in North of Empire: Essays on the Cultural Technologies of Space (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 24, 67–77, 85.

2. ‘It is not simply the product of a colonialist history; nor is it merely a function of geographic location.’ Terry Smith, ‘The Provincialism Problem’, Artforum 13, no. 1 (September 1974): 54.

3. Heather Barker and Charles Green, ‘The Provincialism Problem: Terry Smith and Centre-Periphery Art History’, Journal of Art Historiography, no. 3 (December 2010): 15. See Terry Smith, ‘The Provincialism Problem: Then and Now’, Artmargins (2017), Vol. 6 25 for his agreement.

4. Sianne Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), 182.

5. For more on the connection and slippage between work and play, see Melissa Gregg, Work's Intimacy (Cambridge: Polity, 2011).

6. See Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (London: Penguin Classics, 1999).

7. Jennifer Taylor, An Australian Identity: Houses for Sydney 1953–63 (Sydney: University of Sydney, 1984), 11.

8. Ibid.

9. Rex Butler and A.D.S. Donaldson, ‘Against provincialism: Australian-American Connections 1900-2000’, Journal of Australian Studies 36, no. 3 (September 2012): 291.

10. Smith, ‘The Provincialism Problem’, 54–9.

11. Smith, ‘The Provincialism Problem’, 58.

12. Hoyle, a self-professed ‘anti-drag queen’ who worked throughout the 1990s, was known for his outlandish and satirical characters that starred in videos relying heavily on green screen effects.

13. Heath Franco, conversation with the author, January 2015.

14. Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories, 7.

15. Ibid., 12.

16. Ibid., 184.

17. Edmund Burke was among the first to connect the two in discussions of the sublime. He believed ugliness, as an aesthetic quality, could produce pleasurable and intense emotions; see Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origins of the Sublime and the Beautiful (Simon & Brown, 2013); see also Jerome Stolnitz, ‘On Ugliness in Art’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 11, no. 1 (1950): 1–24.

18. Heath Franco, email correspondence with the author, June 29, 2017.

19. Rosie Deacon, http://rosiedeacon.com.

20. Rosie Deacon, email correspondence with the author, November 20, 2016.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

23. Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories, 185.

24. Diana Baker Smith, Skype correspondence with the author, June 5, 2017.

25. Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories, 192.

26. Baker Smith, Skype correspondence.

27. Ibid.

28. Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories, 8.

29. Baker Smith, Skype correspondence.

30. See also Katherine Guinness and Grant Bollmer, ‘Marina Abramović Doesn't Feel Like You’, Feral Feminisms 3, Winter 2015.

31. Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories, 185.

32. Deacon, email correspondence.

33. ‘The sweat, which, mixed with the powder in his hair, ran down the creases of his face was dripping and marking the upper part of his coat.’ Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories, 190.

34. Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories, 190.

35. Ibid., 191. See also Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism (London: Verso, 2005).

36. Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories, 188.

37. Ibid.

38. McKenzie Wark, General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century (London: Verso, 2017), 106. For more on the problematic relationship between love and work, see Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork, Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).

39. Angela McRobbie, Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Culture Industries (Walden, MA: Polity, 2016), 22.

40. Ibid., 37–8.

41. Ibid., 38.

42. For more about the immaterial nature of capitalist production today, see Yann Moulier Boutang, Cognitive Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity, 2011).

43. Wark, General Intellects, 106.

44. Smith, ‘The Provincialism Problem: Then and Now’, 31.

45. Ibid.

46. David Hodge and Hamed Yousefi, ‘Provincialism Perfected: Global Contemporary Art and Uneven Development’, Supercommunity Blog, Day 34, June 20, 2015, http://supercommunity.e-flux.com/texts/provincialism-perfected-global-contemporary-art-and-uneven-development/, quoted in Smith, ‘The Provincialism Problem: Then and Now’, 28 (accessed June 25, 2018).

47. Smith, ‘The Provincialism Problem: Then and Now’, 32.

48. Ibid.

49. Angela McRobbie, Be Creative, 112. For more on McRobbie's writing on the YBAs, see The Culture Society: Art, Fashion, and Popular Music (London: Routledge, 1999).

50. Wark, General Intellects, 106.

51. Ron English in Mona Chalabi, ‘How is the Internet Changing the Art Market?’, Vice News, July 9, 2017, https://news.vice.com/story/business-of-life-ep-12-art-market?utm_source=sponconFB (accessed June 25, 2018).

52. Wark General Intellects, 109.

53. Baker Smith, Skype correspondence.

54. Deacon, email correspondence.

55. Ibid.

56. Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories, 202.

57. In her work Human Pass the Parcel (2015), Deacon, dressed as a present, filled her costume with small gifts and was bandied about by museum-goers.

58. Ibid., 178.

59. Ibid.

60. Ibid., 199.

61. Ibid., 195.

62. Diana Baker Smith, ‘Mass Action 137 Cakes in 90 Hours’, (2012), http://www.barbaracleveland.com.au/#/mass-action/ (accessed June 25, 2018).

63. Baker Smith, Skype correspondence.

64. Vicki Goldberg, ‘As a Feminist, a King; as a Ballerina, a Klutz’, The New York Times, August 8, 1999, http://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/08/arts/art-architecture-as-a-feminist-a-king-as-a-ballerina-a-klutz.html (accessed June 25, 2018).

65. Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories, 201.

66. Eleanor Antin, ‘Humor, Personas, and Yiddish Theater’, Art 21, https://art21.org/read/eleanor-antin-humor-personas-and-yiddish-theater/ (accessed June 25, 2018).

67. Franco, email correspondence.

68. Deacon, email correspondence.