PROFILE
Michael Goldberg is an artist, curator and academic living in
Sydney, Australia. His complex site-specific installations critique
the presentation and staging of historic heritage sites and examine
post-colonial monopoly systems such as real estate cartels and
global financial markets.
He is a Senior Lecturer in Sculpture, Performance and Installation
at the University of Sydney's Sydney College of the Arts.
Artist's statement:'The visual art projects on this website are
informed by themes relating to Australia's early colonial period
and current geo-politics.
In earlier works I explored sites of historical significance
in the Sydney region with a focus on the conventions of museum
display. The installations presented an alternative view of historical
issues, those often hidden or sanitised by cultural institutions
that operate within a limited and prescribed framework.
Site-specific projects have been produced for:
- Elizabeth Bay House, 1830s residence of Colonial Secretary Alexander
Macleay
- Tusculum, residence of colonial entrepreneur, Alexander Brodie
Spark (now Headquarters of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects)
- Royal Botanic Gardens
- Art Gallery of New South Wales,
In more recent work I began an examination of global financial
markets. As part of the sesqui-centenary of the discovery of gold
in Australia, over a four-week period, my project NCM open/high/low/close
focussed on the fluctuating international gold price and its effect
on the share price of the Newcrest Mining Company, which operates
the largest open-cut goldmine in Australia.
I again explored the subject of world financial markets in the
installation catchingafallingknife.com (2002) at Artspace, Sydney.
Here, supported by financial backers/art patrons, I traded shares
in the international media icon, News Corporation in real time.
The work incorporated a website where viewers were able to keep
up to date with the unfolding project.'
Goldberg has staged several landmark curatorial projects The
interventionist installation series 'Artists in the House!' and
'Swelter' featured a number of prominent Australian installation
artists.
Most recently he curated 'The Butterfly Effect' with 13 artists,
including Goldberg, interpreting and interacting with the displays
of the Australian Museum, the country's oldest museum and its
largest museum of natural history.
PROJECTS
Vault
2005
Launch VAULT video stills.
Founded in 1827, the Australian Museum is the country's oldest
museum. Researchers have compiled an extensive and unique collection
of specimens from the natural and geo sciences as well as cultural
artefacts from the Pacific region. It is now reputed to be the
largest collection in the southern hemisphere with the museum
boasting a well-respected international research reputation in
natural history and indigenous studies.
Like most major museums of its kind, the majority of specimens
and artefacts are stored in several locations on and off site
in secluded regiments of compactus storage vaults, industrial
pallet racks, ancient cupboards and solander drawers.
The digital video projection Vault was a contribution to The Butterfly
Effect, which I also curated (see accompanying web-page). Vault
was located on the top landing of an ornate seldom-used staircase
in the north wing of the original building. The space was silent
save for the audible drone of the museum's air-conditioning.
I was granted access to the ethnographic collection storage areas
beneath the museum, and it was as though I was moving through
an ancient sepulchre with artefacts carefully prepared and laid
out for their sleep through eternity. As I walked slowly amongst
the darkened storage racks, the video was shot using the camera's
low-light function. I wanted viewers to experience Vault as if
they were discovering the collection through the eyes of a 'tomb-raider'.
Avatar
2005
Ivan Dougherty Gallery, University of New South Wales, Sydney
Launch AVATAR video stills.
As part of Disobedience,curated by David McNeill and Zanny Begg,
The CGI component of this work was located inside an aluminium
garden shed, which I wedged between two walls in the gallery.
It featured a digital graphics sequence, viewed on a monitor set
up on a work-bench. The shelves carried a computer, audio speakers
and a utility box holding audio components for an external speaker,
which recounted the biblical story of Jonah.
The looped sequence was created on flight simulator software and
commences with a twin-engine aircraft going through its pre-flight
checks outside a Qantas air freight building. Accompanied by realistic
air-traffic control and pilot exchanges, the plane takes off from
Sydney's Kingsford-Smith airport, accurate in all detail. The
flight heads northwest, passing over Darling Harbour with the
city on the right. A short while after passing over the Harbour
Bridge, the aircraft turns sharply right and as it comes out of
its tight turn, the city becomes clearly visible from the cockpit.
Air-traffic control requests radio contact, but the pilot remains
silent. The plane gathers speed, nearing the Opera House. As it
reaches the point of no return over the city, it becomes evident
that the Governor Phillip Tower, with its State Government departments
and financial houses, has become a target.
There is no explosion, no fireball with showering glass. Dream-like,
the plane flies right through the building as if it was a mirage.
Then, the entire sequence starts up again in an endless loop.
The title, Avatar, refers to an identity that participants assume
in interactive computer games.
I wanted to render visible the threat and anxiety that we must
all now live with.
catchingafallingknife.com
2002
Artspace, Sydney - Funded by a grant from the Australia Council
for the Arts
This project explored global finance, the stock market and how
financial markets are navigated by traders using specialized software
and live data from stock exchanges.
I studied all aspects of the share market, opened a trading account,
and for a period of four weeks with $50,000 raised from a consortium
of speculators/art patrons, I attempted to profit by buying and
selling shares in international media icon, News Corporation.
This mega-corporation exerts a major influence on both local and
international financial markets. The company is also a household
name with the public keenly following the personal exploits of
the Murdoch family in the press.
The unfolding project could be viewed on a website, featuring
a chatroom, market commentary, a history of trades, profits and
losses, reports to The Consortium and an ongoing dialogue with
media critic, author and activist, Geert Lovink.The installation
also provided a visitors? lounge featuring a money-management
motivational audio-tape course.
As my avatar, a trader code-named 'McKnife', I rode a roller-coaster
of wins and losses but ultimately failed in my attempt, terminating
the project with a bottom-line loss of just over $1000.
The title, catchingafallingknife.com refers to the rampant speculation
of the recent dotcom era and is the term traders use when taking
on a particularly risky venture.
In interview with Lovink at the time I said, 'I believe that the
real value of the project will emerge in the form of interrogations
from the dark recesses of its implausibilities and not from the
spectacle of successfully meeting its expectations.'
NCM open/high/low/close
2001
NCM open/high/low/close
Bathurst Regional Gallery, New South Wales
Auriferous - The Gold Project, curated by Amanda Lawson and Craig
Judd
This installation/performance was produced for Auriferous - The
Gold Project commemorating the sesqui-centenary of the discovery
of gold in Australia. The town of Bathurst, where the exhibition
was staged, was the site of the first significant gold find in
the country.
Situated just outside Bathurst, Newcrest Mining Company operates
the largest open-cut gold mine in Australia. For four weeks NCM
open/high/low/close tracked the international gold price and corresponding
fluctuations in the share price of Newcrest Mining.
I began each performance day at the stock exchange in Sydney
checking the day's prospects and then flew to Bathurst (some 200
kms away) via a regional airline. Using data from the internet
and direct feeds from the Australian stock exchange, floor to
ceiling charts and graphs were drawn directly onto the gallery
walls, giving an accurate representation of trading patterns as
the work unfolded. I also provided viewers with a daily report
of expected market activity.
Stock movements were updated every fifteen minutes, and while
waiting for changes I would look up and write out all the references
to gold in the Old and New Testaments using an online Bible. These
notations were po'ted on the gallery walls. Thus 'profane' activity
was balanced by the 'sacred'.
I carried out my market surveillance from the top of a 3-metre
platform in the gallery while a CCTV camera relayed my activities
to a monitor in the lobby. When ready to update charts, I would
leap off the platform onto a padded high-jump mat below.
At the end of the trading day I would fly back to Sydney and
begin the cycle again. The detritus of my time in the gallery
was allowed to build up: financial newspapers, pencil shavings,
take-out cartons, etc.
The project's title derives from the stock exchange code for
Newcrest Mining, NCM, and the standard terminology used for the
recording of a stock's daily movement - the opening price, the
high and low price reached, and the closing price.
The Well Built Australian
1999
Art Gallery of New South Wales Project Space, Sydney
Funded by a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts
This site-specific project reflected on the extensive property
development of the Sydney harbour foreshore in the late 1990s,
and the visual and social impact on the surrounding urban environment.
The installation comprised temporary worksite offices, steel-mesh
barrier fencing and builder's formwork used for concrete construction.
An early survey map of Sydney and its coastline provided an historical
context, as did works from the Art Gallery of New South Wales'
permanent collection. The paintings, from the nineteenth to the
early twentieth century, depict the Sydney foreshore in a period
before rampant real estate development on a massive scale.
The art gallery windows were exposed and viewers could gaze down
on the building developments on the wharf below.
The title of the work, The Well Built Australian, was derived
from the corporate tagline of influential property developer Multiplex,
responsible for much of the speculative development in the immediate
inner city area.
Ground Zero
1996
Australian Perspecta: Between Art and Nature, curated by Victoria
Lynn
The project was located in the Old Palm House.The structure was
erected in the 1830s and was the first public greenhouse in the
state of New South Wales.
The Palm House is part of the First Farm Display, presented by
the Royal Botanic Gardens as a theme park dealing with the early
tools, farming methods, and the efforts of the first European
settlers to cultivate the land, circa 1788. The Gardens are the
actual site of the first attempts by settlers to cultivate crops
on Aboriginal territory.
Ground Zero was configured as a temporary museum and drew on standard
museum display methodology such as the use of vitrines and text
panels. However, in this museum there were no artefacts other
than the display cabinets and associated museum material.
Without artefacts, the text panels alone conveyed the narratives,
drawn from historical documents selected from the State Archives.
Unlike the official information panels in the First Farm Display
dealing with settler hardship and tenacity, the Ground Zero texts
attempted to portray a more accurate picture of the First Landing.
These narratives exposed the true motives behind the British Empire's
colonial projects and the violence exercised on indigenous populations,
as well as the re-naming of their territory.
Ground Zero presented evidence that the most effective tools used
to subjugate an alien environment were not the hoe, nor the plough-but
the government-issue firearm.
Full installation texts for this project can be viewed on the
Archive page.
Real Estate
1997
Tusculum House, Sydney, an historic house managed by the Royal
Australian Institute of Architects.
Tusculum was one of the first villas on prestigious Woolloomooloo
Hill overlooking Sydney, built on the 1830s land grants allotted
to government officials and wealthy entrepreneurs.
As Governor Darling stated in 1830, 'The siting and design of
the residences on the land grants were to be carefully orchestrated
if they were to provide an example and chastisement for the debased
populace of Sydney Town.'
Real Estate examined the colonial adaptation of neo-classical
villa design and speculated on its hegemonic resonances. These
resonances were explored with reference to the contemporary Australian
realty market and to what Edward Said referred to as the twentieth
century inversion of the 'business of Empire' into 'the empire
of business'.
The installation was located in the five cellar rooms below the
house and featured a computer supplying print-outs with fifteen
years of real estate transactions and updates concerning some
one thousand residential and business properties which today comprise
the original Tusculum land grant. Viewers could also spend time
in a room listening to motivational tapes on self-improvement
and wealth production. Display cases were devoid of artefacts,
and contained instead contextual history panels.
'A whole history remains to be written of spaces which would
at the same time be the history of powers-from the great strategies
of geo-politics to the little tactics of the habitat.'
Michel Foucault, The Eye of Power
Full installation texts for this project can be viewed on the
Archive page
A Humble Life
1995
Elizabeth Bay House, Sydney, a house museum managed by the Historic
Houses Trust of New South Wales.
This site-specific work was located in the 1830s residence of
Alexander Macleay, Colonial Secretary and renowned naturalist
and collector.
The project was concerned with the relationship between the Macleay
family members and their servants. For the first fifty years of
white settlement in New South Wales, the majority of men and women
assigned to the workforce were prisoners, many convicted of petty
crimes in England and transported to the colony where they served
as a ready supply of labour.
The installation was located in the 'underbelly' of the house,
the food and beverage storage cellars, where servants would have
spent much of their time. The installation intentionally appeared
to be a museum preparation area, with a variety of display cases,
pallet boxes and artefacts, including Royal Doulton figurines
depicting themes such as 'leisure' and 'servitude'.
The title, A Humble Life, was derived from a book written by
Eliza Darling, the wife of the then Governor: 'Simple Rules for
the Guidance of Persons in Humble Life-more particularly for girls
going out to service'. In it she espoused the dictum:
'Do everything in its proper time
Keep everything to its proper use
Put everything in its proper place'
Full installation texts for this project can be viewed on the
Archive page
CURATORIAL PROJECTS
Artists In The House!
June-December 1997
Elizabeth Bay House, Sydney, a house museum managed by the Historic
Houses Trust of New South Wales
Artists in the House! was a 7-month program of site-specific installations
by 14 artists interpreting the history and current presentation
of Elizabeth Bay House. The house was the residence of Colonial
Secretary and renowned naturalist and collector, Alexander Macleay
in the 1830s.
The exhibition series followed on from my own work A Humble Life
staged at the house in 1995.
The Artists in the House! series included critical and personal
responses from some of Australia's foremost installation artists.
Swelter
May 1999 - January 2000
Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney
Swelter, a series of site-specific installations by 8 artists,
reflected on the history of Australia's first botanic gardens.
It followed my own 1996 work Ground Zero on that site.
The project was located in the Old Palm House in Sydney's Royal
Botanic Gardens. The structure was erected in the 1830s and was
the first public greenhouse in the state of New South Wales.
The Palm House is part of the First Farm Display, presented by
the Gardens as a theme park dealing with the efforts of the first
European settlers to cultivate the land, circa 1788.
The Swelter series included critical, personal and more esoteric
responses from some of Australia's foremost installation artists.
The Buuterfly Effect
January-February 2005
The Australian Museum, Sydney, an event of the 2005 Sydney Festival
The Butterfly Effect was an exhibition of thirteen artists' multimedia
works responding to and integrated into the existing displays
of the Australian Museum.
Founded in 1827, it is the country's oldest museum. Researchers
have compiled an extensive and unique collection of specimens
from the natural and geo-sciences as well as cultural artefacts
from the Pacific region. It is now reputed to be the largest collection
in the southern hemisphere with the museum boasting a well-respected
international research reputation in natural history and indigenous
studies.
ARCHIVE
Michael
Goldberg CV
The
Butterfly Effect
2003
Trading
Down: Michael Goldberg and the Art of Speculation
David McNeill
A
Game of Financial and Cultural Speculation
Greed,
Fear and Irrational Exuberance
2002
Catching
a Falling Knife
Geert Lovink
Making
Art, Opinion, Money
Keith Gallasch
Processual
Media Theory and the Art of Day Trading
Ned Rossiter
2001
Heritage
and Hauntology
David McNeill
2000
Trouble
in Paradise - the Swelter project
Full Installation Texts:
- Ground
Zero
- Real
Estate
- A
Humble Life
Website Archive:
- catchingafallingknife.com. This archive is 1057KB. If you are
interested to see the total website, please download zip file
to your desktop here
