One of Australia’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, Angelica Mesiti has created an immersive installation for the former wartime oil bunker beneath Naala Badu, the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ north building.
Occupying the entire 2200-square-metre former Second World War oil tank, Angelica Mesiti: The Rites of When is a video and sound installation that reimagines communal rituals in relation to seasonal cycles, at a time of environmental uncertainty and flux.
The major new commission includes seven monumental video screens interspersed between the Tank’s own forest of concrete columns. Across the screens, a film composed of two sweeping movements conjures collective celebrations relating to the ‘hibernal’ (winter) and ‘aestival’ (summer) solstices: the longest night and the longest day of the year, respectively. Each movement begins and ends with a sequence titled ‘Celestial nebula’, acknowledging the entwinement of seasonal rituals and knowledge drawn from the movement of the stars.
Featuring dance, new musical compositions and soaring aerial drone views, The Rites of When offers a deep reflection upon the age-old and continuing relationship between humans, nature and the cosmos. Ecstatic celebrations associated with specific moments in the calendar – notably mid-winter solstice carnivals and mid-summer harvest festivals – present a portal into a realm where the past, present and future meet: an imagined alternative.
Art Gallery of New South Wales director Michael Brand said the new commission marks the first solo presentation at the Art Gallery for the Sydney-born, Paris-based artist. “Working with artists to make a new, site-specific work in response to the scale, structure and sonic qualities of the distinctive Tank space has fast become a highlight of our curatorial program. Angelica Mesiti has tackled this challenge with impressive ambition and vision, and we look forward to sharing this dynamic work with all visitors to Naala Badu,” said Brand.
“Mesiti’s video practice has long observed the intricacies of human behaviour, utilising choreography and performance with an increasing attention to the natural world. This work marks an important shift from the role of the artist as an observer to her role as a creator of alternative worlds. Mesiti’s interpretation of our globalised existence is a reminder that in times of permanent crisis, culture and community matter deeply.”
The Rites of When is informed by practices of depicting, describing and understanding life via humanity’s shared experience of the night sky. Elements within the Tank reference the Nebra sky disc, a Bronze Age artefact bearing an early depiction of the Pleiades star cluster, a celestial entity that intrigued Mesiti for its connections to seasonal harvest cycles and its significance to cultures across the globe.
“Mesiti’s work is consistently intriguing and intuitive while being meticulously researched and presented. In The Rites of When she invites us to imagine collective responses to our changing world that reference history yet propel us into a speculative future,” said Exhibition co-curator, Art Gallery of New South Wales senior curator of contemporary Australian art and the Brett Whiteley Studio, Beatrice Gralton.
“As cycles of regeneration in nature have shifted out of sync, and people around the globe increasingly live in urbanised environments, Mesiti encourages us to stand still – if just for a moment – to observe our singular experience and imagine our collective potential.’”
Celebrated for her distinctive multi-channel performance, video and sound-based works, Mesiti is known for her artworks that pay homage to individual and communal forms of expression, ranging from sign language, choreographic gesture, Morse code and whistling to ancestral musical traditions, body percussion and communication between non-human species.
Since establishing her career two decades ago, Mesiti has been internationally recognised through major exhibitions and significant commissions. In 2019, she represented Australia at the 58th Venice Biennale with the three-channel video installation ASSEMBLY, exploring notions of plurality and non-linguistic communication that are a hallmark of her work.
Mesiti received the Art Gallery’s 2013 Anne Landa Award for Video and New Media Arts for Citizens band, 2012, one of four works now held in the Art Gallery’s collection. She was the inaugural recipient of the Ian Potter Moving Image Commission in 2012 and the winner of the 58th Blake Prize for Religious and Spiritual Art in 2009.
Her work is held in major Australian and international public collections, including the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Artbank, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki (Aotearoa New Zealand), Musee d’art contemporain (Quebec, Canada), National Gallery of Australia, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Korea) and Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.
The exhibition is accompanied by a stunning publication that charts the development of Mesiti’s commission for the Tank. The book is illustrated with video stills from the cinematic installation and new writing from the exhibition’s co-curators, including an essay by Isobel Parker Philip, the Art Gallery’s former senior curator of contemporary Australian art, and an artist interview by Beatrice Gralton.
Angelica Mesiti: The Rites of When
Art Gallery of New South Wales,
Exhibition continues to
Free entry
For more information, visit: www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au for details.
Image: Installation of Angelica Mesiti The Rites of When, 2024, 7-channel digital video installation, colour, sound, approx 30 min, collection of the artist, commissioned by the Art Gallery of New South Wales for the Nelson Packer Tank, 2024 © Angelica Mesiti, photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Jenni Carter