5 still life artworks and their film counterparts

Deborah Kelly, Australia b.1962 / Beastliness 2011 / Digital animation shown as HD projection, DVD, 16:9, 3:17 minutes, colour, sound / Purchased 2011. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Deborah Kelly/Copyright Agency

Deborah Kelly, Australia b.1962 / Beastliness 2011 / Digital animation shown as HD projection, DVD, 16:9, 3:17 minutes, colour, sound / Purchased 2011. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Deborah Kelly/Copyright Agency / View full image

Running alongside the exhibition ‘Still Life Now’ at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) until 19 February 2023, the ‘Still Lives’ film program from 9 October 2022 until 12 March 2023 screening at the Australian Cinémathèque in GOMA, presents a selection of films that speak to the core exhibition themes of life, death and transformation. Here are five artworks and their filmic counterparts that take a fresh approach to the still life tradition.

#1
Deborah Kelly Beastliness 2011
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos The Lobster 2015

Left: Deborah Kelly, Australia b.1962 / Beastliness 2011 / Digital animation shown as HD projection, DVD, 16:9, 3:17 minutes, colour, sound / Purchased 2011. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Deborah Kelly/Copyright Agency / Right: Production still from The Lobster 2015 / Director: Yorgos Lanthimos / Image courtesy: Sony Pictures

Left: Deborah Kelly, Australia b.1962 / Beastliness 2011 / Digital animation shown as HD projection, DVD, 16:9, 3:17 minutes, colour, sound / Purchased 2011. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Deborah Kelly/Copyright Agency / Right: Production still from The Lobster 2015 / Director: Yorgos Lanthimos / Image courtesy: Sony Pictures / View full image

Ideas of desire and transformation underpin the works of Deborah Kelly and Yorgos Lanthimos. Deborah Kelly’s mind-boggling collage animation Beastliness creates fantastical creatures from the pages of old encyclopaedias and textbooks to make riotous commentary on the nature of life, death, and reproduction. In a similar vein, director Yorgos Lanthimos’s darkly comedic film The Lobster is an absurdist take on the future of love and relationships, where candidates who fail to find their perfect love match are transformed into an animal of their own choosing.

The Lobster 2015

The Lobster 2015 / Director: Yorgos Lanthimos / Now screening in ‘Still Lives’

#2
Marc Quinn Portraits of Landscapes series 2007
Director: Jessica Hausner Little Joe 2019

Left: Marc Quinn, United Kingdon b.1964 / Portraits of landscapes 01 & 05 2007 / Pigment print on 330gsm Somerset Velvet Enhanced paper / 100 x 75cm / Purchased 2008 with funds raised through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Appeal / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Marc Quinn / Right: Production still from Little Joe 2019 / Director: Jessica Hausner / Image courtesy: Rialto Film Distribution

Left: Marc Quinn, United Kingdon b.1964 / Portraits of landscapes 01 & 05 2007 / Pigment print on 330gsm Somerset Velvet Enhanced paper / 100 x 75cm / Purchased 2008 with funds raised through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Appeal / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Marc Quinn / Right: Production still from Little Joe 2019 / Director: Jessica Hausner / Image courtesy: Rialto Film Distribution / View full image

Combining ideas of art and science, nature and artifice, life and death, Marc Quinn’s vibrant ‘Portraits of landscapes’ series uses highly saturated, hyper-realistic colours to bring attention to the scientific practices of genetic modification and cryogenics that are used to alter the natural life-span of plants. Jessica Hausner’s tense paranoid thriller, Little Joe 2019, takes a similar stance, and imagines an alternate future where a genetically engineered plant named ‘Little Joe’ emits a mood-altering pollen, resulting in some sinister consequences.

Little Joe 2019

Little Joe 2019 / Director: Jessica Hausner / Now screening in ‘Still Lives’

#3
Anne Noble Dead Bee Portrait #1 2015
Director: Jan Švankmajer Insects 2018

Left: Anne Noble, Australia b.1954 / Dead Bee Portrait #1 2015, printed 2018 / Pigment on archival paper / 91.5 x 116.5cm / The Taylor Family Collection. Purchased 2019 with funds from Paul, Sue and Kate Taylor through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Anne Noble / Right: Production still from Insects 2018 / Director: Jan Švankmajer / Image courtesy: Athanor

Left: Anne Noble, Australia b.1954 / Dead Bee Portrait #1 2015, printed 2018 / Pigment on archival paper / 91.5 x 116.5cm / The Taylor Family Collection. Purchased 2019 with funds from Paul, Sue and Kate Taylor through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Anne Noble / Right: Production still from Insects 2018 / Director: Jan Švankmajer / Image courtesy: Athanor / View full image

Using electron microscope images of dead bees, New Zealand artist Anne Noble attempts to reanimate the deceased bees through the vehicle of photography, to draw attention to their threatened existence and imagine their secret lives and untold histories. Comparably, the master of modern Czech surrealism, Jan Švankmajer, combines stop-motion animation with live action footage to create a wonderfully bizarre take on the lives and minds of insects.

Insects 2018

Insects 2018 / Director: Jan Švankmajer / Now screening in ‘Still Lives’

#4
Michael Cook Natures Mortes series 2021
Director: Pedro Costa Vitalina Varela 2019

Left: Michael Cook, Bidjara people, Australia b.1968 / Nature Morte (Agriculture) (from ‘Natures Mortes’ series) 2021 / Epson UltraChrome K3 inks on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Bright White 310gsm paper / 122 x 172cm / Purchased 2021. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Michael Cook / Right: Production still from Vitalina Varela 2019 / Director: Pedro Costa / Image courtesy: Pedro Costa

Left: Michael Cook, Bidjara people, Australia b.1968 / Nature Morte (Agriculture) (from ‘Natures Mortes’ series) 2021 / Epson UltraChrome K3 inks on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Bright White 310gsm paper / 122 x 172cm / Purchased 2021. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Michael Cook / Right: Production still from Vitalina Varela 2019 / Director: Pedro Costa / Image courtesy: Pedro Costa / View full image

Michael Cook’s deeply moving, and highly emotive photographic tableaux, Nature Morte (Agriculture) and Nature Morte (Blackbird) from the ‘Natures Mortes’ photographic series emphasise the importance of culture and identity in the wake of grief and past trauma. Similar in tone and in subject, director Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela is a visually striking portrait of a widow embarking on the rediscovery her identity following the loss of her husband.

Vitalina Varela 2019

Vitalina Varela 2019 / Director: Pedro Costa / Now screening in ‘Still Lives’

#5
Chen Qiulin Garden 2007
Director: Jia Zhangke Still Life 2006

Left: Chen Qiulin, China b.1975 / Garden 2007 / SD video (DVD format), single channel projection: 14:45 minutes, stereo, colour, continuous loop SD video (DVD format), single channel projection: 14:45 minutes, stereo, colour, continuous loop / Purchased 2010. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Chen Qiulin / Right: Production still from Still Life 2006 / Director: Jia Zhangke / Image courtesy: Memento Films International

Left: Chen Qiulin, China b.1975 / Garden 2007 / SD video (DVD format), single channel projection: 14:45 minutes, stereo, colour, continuous loop SD video (DVD format), single channel projection: 14:45 minutes, stereo, colour, continuous loop / Purchased 2010. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Chen Qiulin / Right: Production still from Still Life 2006 / Director: Jia Zhangke / Image courtesy: Memento Films International / View full image

Still Life 2006 by renowned Chinese director Jia Zhangke and the video work Garden by multidisciplinary artist Chen Qiulin both take the Three Gorges Dam hydro-electric project — a major engineering endeavour responsible for the displacement of thousands of residents living along the banks of the Yangtze River — as their focus but take two very different approaches to storytelling. Jia Zhangka’s Still Life focuses on the lives of two individuals whose stories take place around the project and, like the cities affected by the dam, are going through a similar process of self-deconstruction. Chen Qiulin’s video work Garden, depicts a group of migrant flower sellers moving through the streets of Wanzhou to deliver bouquets of artificial peonies (a flower which in China represents the fragility of life and its potential for renewal), to make comment on the movement of people in favour of economic progress. Both works are incredibly compelling, and explore notions of displacement, memory and social injustice to make comment on the scale and pace of change in contemporary China.

Still Life 2006

Still Life 2006 / Director: Jia Zhangke / Now screening in ‘Still Lives’

Still Lives

View the program

A Bucket of Blood 1959
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover 1989
Death Becomes Her 1992
Coffee and Cigarettes 2003
Niu pi (Oxhide) 2005
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu 2005
Carnivore Reflux 2006
三峡好人 (Still Life) 2006
Taxidermia 2006
Parque vía 2008
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence 2014
The Lobster 2015
24 Frames 2017
Hmyz (Insects) 2018
Little Joe 2019
That Cloud Never Left 2019
Vitalina Varela 2019
Samtidigt På Jorden (Meanwhile On Earth) 2020
Flux Gourmet 2022

Victoria Wareham is Assistant Curator, Australian Cinémathèque, QAGOMA

‘Still Life Now’ is at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) from 24 September 2022 until 19 February 2023, the ‘Still Lives’ film program is at the Australian Cinémathèque in GOMA from 9 October 2022 until 12 March 2023. View the ongoing Cinema Program.

QAGOMA is the only Australian art gallery with purpose-built facilities dedicated to film and the moving image. The Australian Cinémathèque at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) provides an ongoing program of film and video that you’re unlikely to see elsewhere, offering a rich and diverse experience of the moving image, showcasing the work of influential filmmakers and international cinema, rare 35mm prints, recent restorations and silent films with live musical accompaniment on the Gallery’s Wurlitzer organ originally installed in Brisbane’s Regent Theatre in November 1929.

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    Anything but still

    Moving us into heightened states of observation and bringing attention to everyday narratives, as well as wider historical implications, the works in the exhibition ‘Still Life Now’ and accompanying ‘Still Lives’ film program consider how contemporary artists and filmmakers draw on the ideas of the still-life tradition to explore issues of consumerism, beauty, power, postcolonialism and gender politics. When we think of a picture created in the still‑life tradition, the image that comes to mind might include freshly cut flowers, fruit and vegetables or manufactured objects, frozen in time. Captured in near-perfect detail, these artfully arranged inanimate objects appear to be examples of domesticity; in fact, they are often coded with symbolic references, the artists having used sumptuous imagery to reflect on nature, wealth, exploration and, importantly, mortality. Artists today continue to share, and reject, the concerns of traditional types of still life, such as the memento mori (the stoic visual reminder of the inevitability of death) and the vanitas still life (the use of elaborate spreads to highlight life’s transience) by using strategies of repetition, appropriation and transformation across media, from painting, printmaking and sculpture to performance and time-based works. Contemporary artist Jude Rae disrupts the illusion of realism with SL447 2021 (illustrated) by adding small visual clues in the form of dripping paint marks and brightly coloured haloes. Conversely, Cressida Campbell’s carved woodblock painting The lithographic studio (Griffith University) 1986 (illustrated) transforms a busy print studio — an environment specifically created for the production and manufacture of images — into an image itself. Jude Rae ‘SL447’ Cressida Campbell ‘The lithographic studio (Griffith University)’ Reproduction and representation haunt the still life, almost as much as does its relationship to time. The genre’s popularisation in seventeenth-century Europe transformed image-making into a commodity, imbuing these pictures with heightened material value. Known for his audacious embrace of the art market, artist Damien Hirst plays on the currency of images to emphasise the futility of wealth: the print For the love of God, laugh 2007 (illustrated), of a real skull covered in over 8000 diamonds, and which is itself embellished with diamond dust, transforms this classic motif of death into a glittering object of desire. Damien Hirst ‘For the love of God, laugh’ DELVE DEEPER: Damien Hirst’s ‘For the love of God, laugh’ Artists such as Michael Cook’s ‘Natures Mortes’ series (illustrated) and Salote Tawale, who reclaim historical imagery to consciously reflect on contemporary states of being, create new commentary through works that take the troubled colonial past of the still life and its relationship to trade as their subject. The featured works by Emily Kame Kngwarreye ( Yam dreaming 1995 illustrated) combine ancestral knowledge with rich painterly forms to explore intangible connections to food and Country. The strength of contemporary voices is similarly shown in the collaborative piece Carving Country 2019–21 by Brian Robinson and Tamika Grant-Iramu, who use the process of carving as a way of celebrating life and First Nations cultures through visual storytelling. Michael Cook ‘Nature Morte (Agriculture)’ Emily Kame Kngwarreye ‘Yam dreaming’ DELVE DEEPER: Michael Cook’s ‘Natures Mortes’ series The moving image can also use stillness to bring attention to the passing of time and the fragility of life. Accompanying the ‘Still Life Now’ exhibition is the ‘Still Lives’ cinema program, the selected films in which reflect many of the concerns of the genre on screen. ‘Slow cinema’ is style of filmmaking that uses long shots to create broad narratives that offer space for visual contemplation. Oxhide 2005, directed by Liu Jiayin, and Abbas Kiarostami’s final feature, 24 Frames 2017 (illustrated), each use structured static frames, reminiscent of still‑life imagery, to move us into a heightened state of observation and bring attention to the everyday narratives that unfurl through the experience of living. The darkly comedic films A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence 2014 (illustrated) (director Roy Andersson) and Meanwhile on Earth 2020 (director Carl Olsson) feature suites of vignettes, presenting experiences of death that confront its macabre associations. The still-life tradition of displaying extravagant, excessive spreads of luscious foods is explored in Peter Strickland’s latest feature film, Flux Gourmet 2022 (illustrated), and in Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover 1989, both of which deploy visually lavish, gluttonous depictions of food, ultimately creating a sense of revulsion and disgust. RELATED: ‘Still Lives’ film program In the present, the still life is a space for creative experimentation. Consumerism, beauty, postcolonialism and gender politics are addressed through the contemporary still life, in both the gallery space and on screen, proving that life is anything but still. Victoria Wareham is Assistant Curator, Australian Cinémathèque, QAGOMA ’24 Frames’ Dir: Abbas Kiarostami ‘Flux Gourmet’ Dir: Peter Strickland ‘Still Life Now’ is in Gallery 2.1, GOMA, until 19 February 2023. The ‘Still Lives’ film program is screening at the Australian Cinémathèque, GOMA, until 12 March 2023. Featured image: Production still from A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence 2014 / Dir: Roy Andersson / Image courtesy: Madman Entertainment
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    Damien Hirst rebels against mortality

    Renowned for creating artworks that explore the dilemmas of human existence, British artist Damien Hirst’s For the love of God, laugh rebels against mortality by transforming the human skull into a glittering object of desire. Coated with diamond dust, the print depicts Hirst’s sculptural work For the Love of God 2007, a platinum cast of an eighteenth‑century skull encrusted with 8601 diamonds. A familiar motif in memento mori still lifes, the skull is a haunting symbol of contemplation and foreboding. Our attention is drawn to its smile — the real human teeth the only part of the work not covered by diamonds — bringing a sardonic humour and sense of contempt that suggests victory over decay. Damien Hirst ‘For the love of God, laugh’ 2007 Damien Hirst ‘For the love of God’ 2007 Watch | The making of the sculptural work ‘For the Love of God’ Pharmacy A key figure in the Young British Artists (YBAs) movement in late 1980s and early ’90s Britain, Damien Hirst uses an unashamedly direct visual aesthetic to comment on the transience of life and the futility of wealth. Inspired by Hirst’s site-specific installation Pharmacy 1992, a life-sized replica of a working British pharmacy, the Pharmacy matchbooks draw on the artist’s interest in medicine as a powerful belief system that offers an antidote to mortality. The images that appear on the front of the matchbooks include visual and typographical references to pharmacology, such as blood‑filled vials, pills and medical instruments. Bringing attention to the commercial pursuit of science — to offer a remedy for death and decay — Hirst juxtaposes these images with physical matches, igniting a sense of tension in the work. Damien Hirst ‘Pharmacy matchbooks’ QAGOMA Research Library The QAGOMA Research Library is located on Level 3 of the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA). Open to the public Tuesday to Friday 10.00am to 5.00pm. visit us in person or explore the online catalogue. Access to special collections is available by appointment. ‘Still Life Now’ / Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) / 24 September 2022 until 19 February 2023.