Attention Tourist:
Cement Fondu, Sydney
During the lockdown, Sydney art space Cement Fondu pivoted to virtual projects such as Safe and Sound, a program inviting local musicians to occupy the gallery and respond in experimental ways to social restrictions, with the resulting performances and writing presented online. This brief hiatus has also given the gallery time to develop major shows for 2021. Cement Fondu has garnered an excellent reputation for its annual pairing of early career artists with esteemed international artists, and in January will present ATTENTION TOURIST, pairing Sāmoan New Zealander Christopher Ulutupu with American artistic duo Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin, whose critically acclaimed multimedia installations have been exhibited at the Prada Foundation, Milan (2019), the Venice Biennale (2013) and the Whitney Museum of American Art (2006). The two selected works by Fitch/Trecartin, Mark Trade and Temple Time, are from the SITE VISIT series (2016), in which they took their signature style ‘outdoors’. The duo are known for their frenetic, amateur style of filmmaking, and hyped-up characters who jabber incessantly about superficial and nonsensical things within confined environments. The exhibition will also feature a new Cement Fondu-commissioned series of video and performance works by Ulutupu that consider first encounters. This will be presented alongside the artist’s cinematic trio of videos, The Romantic Picturesque: The Postcard Trilogy (2016–18), inspired by early 1900s tourist postcards that exoticised Pacific people and presented romantic misconceptions of landscape. Ulutupu’s new series, Can you repeat the questions?, is being filmed this year at Nelson Lakes National Park, and recreates mundane and awkward situations in which Indigenous people encounter the arrival of other cultures. ATTENTION TOURIST will run from January 16 to March 7, 2021.
NOTE: The dates provided are current and speculative. Many Australian and international arts organisations remain closed in accordance with COVID-19 restrictions. Please refer to institutional websites for further details.
