The Artist is (Not) Present, 2024

Medium: Mixed(up) Media

Artist: Maria Rizzo

Description: Conceptual art installation featuring a replica of an administrator’s computer workstation embellished with semi-autobiographical references and decorated with art historical artifacts. The 564 word artist statement/essay is an integral part of the installation.

Artist statement/essay

Welcome, friend.

You may well be wondering, what is a computer workstation doing in the middle of an art gallery?

Whose workstation is it and where is the staff member?

Is she on a lunch break or is the internet connection down?

Has she been replaced by AI?

You may also be asking yourself, why should I be giving it my undivided attention (statistically-speaking no more than 3 minutes).

How are time and effort measured, and more crucially, how are they valued?

And while we are on a philosophical roll here, what is art?

These are pretty obvious questions and they are central to this art installation.

Oh, and by the way, this artwork, and the whole gallery actually, is situated on the (unceded) land of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung People of the Kulin Nation, who are the custodians of country and whose continuing connection to land, sea, sky and community I acknowledge with heartfelt respect and gratitude.

If all art is political, as August Wilson and a whole lot of other brainy people believed, what is the purpose of this seemingly mundane contribution to this year’s non-juried display of creative output by staff in a Creative Arts department?

Through the use of humour, pastiche, irony, and cliché-as-critique the artwork is inviting the visitor to imagine a workplace (and by extension, a world) without administrators and other workers who are at the base of all organisational pyramids. On one level the artwork shines a metaphorical spot light on the many who toil unseen and voiceless, isolated, siloed, removed from the means of production yet vital to the smooth running of operations. These are the unsung heroes of the (customer facing) frontline.

Like plumbers, these are the workers who understand the complexity of systems and what needs to be done to work around the blockages. They are only seen as important when there is a noticeable stench because the cistern (pun intended) is broken.

Paradoxically, the value of these workers is only understood through their absence.

In a Postmodernist, self-reflexive gesture, borrowing heavily from the semiotic toolkit of the Surrealists and the Dadaists before them, the work is intended to challenge the status quota (sic). The staff member also draws inspiration from artworks that subvert the dominant paradigm. It is her hope that you find the work subversive, transgressive, passive aggressive.

The artwork pirouettes on the thin ice of creativity, aesthetic considerations of beauty, form and function, and a superficial understanding of Marxist ideology and all other theories of capital, production and consumption. Beneath the surface of artifice however, lie deeper questions about the human condition and universally-felt anxieties.

The placement of the skull on the desk and the still life painting are all nods to the millennia-old tradition of Memento Mori. These motifs serve to remind us that, dear viewer, you, me too, we all must die.

The title of the work, The Artist is (Not) Present pays reverse homage to the performance art of the iconic Marina Abramovic, in particular her experiential, interactive artwork in 2009 for MOMA titled The Artist is Present.

The work also echoes the lyrics of Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell, written 54 years ago:

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.

Thank you for your time!

- Staff Member #19364

Materials:

ThinkCentre computer, keyboard and mouse, cables, computer desk, ergonomic chair, blu tack, drawing pins, miscellaneous found objects from the artist’s collection, and theatre props borrowed from the Dramatic Arts department.

Acknowledgments:

This artwork is a collaboration between the staff member and ICT, Facilities and Assets, and the Hospitality, Visual Arts and Dramatic Arts departments.

Special thanks to: Nick Thorley, Jenny Lovell, Tania Triantafillidis and Nick McGowan