Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzinger at ACCA

The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. First, it's a beautiful structure - dark mahogany rusting steel plates with impossible angles and right next to the contrasting conventional generous brick structure of the Malthouse Theatre. Kapil 'Knees' Talwar my good friend who's really clued into the subversive, contraversial and creative scene in Melbourne - suggested we see this show at ACCA. We went to see a great work by two Swiss installation artists - Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzinger. This installation piece was on ecology and the state of the environment.
You enter this installation via a freeform 'tunnel' of highly reflective billowing mylar that twists and turns and finally ejects you into what at first impressions initially seemed to be a landscape by Jackson Pollock on LSD experimenting with sculptural art in a flotsam paradise. It was great! Completely with abandon and demonstrating sheer determination and self assurance. The following images can't do it much justice or give you a feel for the scale of this piece. Regarding the environment, judging by what we've successfully done in trashing it, Gerda & Jörg seem to be spot on - the central piece in this work is a commode....

















And then the works continued, we stumbled beyond this exquisite trash-porn and got to this next space that had a water bed you lay (and then wallowed on), with projections an all the sides (and ceiling) - totally disorienting as well as impossible to photograph! Next, beyond this we get to another stark space (shown next) with this freaky kinetic mobiles that gently spun overhead (while you lay on either a swing/suspended bed, or a low cot. It was interesting because your view of the art constantly changes. Above one of the cots was a suspended Meteorite about the size of a large watermelon (on loan from the Science Centre), it was suspended by this multicore stainless steel cable, and out of this world heavy (I mean really unbelievably heavy - I couldn't even budge it), my fondling/handling immediately got a quick response from the young pimply Guardian Of The Rock, who pleaded, "eer c'mon, please don't touch it mate" and then laying under the meteorite, inches above my head and imagining the aviation-grade steel cable unravelling under the load and depositing this incredibly heavy turd-from-space on my face, and being squashed like a pimple, whatever... I had this amazing sensation when I got away - which I attributed to a holistic spacy mumbo jumbo experience, or maybe, just maybe it was the meteorite....







The next last area was filled with framed photographs, each one of o person hugging/lifting another person. It looked like all the images were shot in SE Asia - India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka etc. I thought this was the end, but wait, hang on, there was another tiny, tiny alcove that had a feeling like it might be a personal study, an office, perhaps a clinic? Nope - a Desalination Plant For Tears! Oh no fucking way! Oh yes indeedy, that's right, a desalination plant for tears. And here it is... Boo hoo..