Pea Arts About

27 December 2019 The Netflix film Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable (dir. Sam Hobkinson, 2017) details the first discovery in 2008 of artefacts connected to the exhibition of the same title, and the team of marine archaeologists becoming aware of it through a n online video. Professor Andrew Lerner (pronounced ‘Lerna’ in an English accent?) of the Centre for Maritime Studies, Aberdeen (a plausible fiction) asserts that th e y ‘knew it was worth pursuing, but it was going to be hard to get funding through the usual channels’ . T he film cuts to a montage of news broadcast s about Damien Hirst’s best-known controversies. Claiming the commodification of his work had become unsustainable and that he was looking for a new ad/venture, he combined this with a lifelong fascination with stories – specifically, those told in old movies – about shipwrecks. It is established, then, through implication – little is directly said, mostly intimated in the

20 December 2019 In part 3 of this series I pointed out that given Venice’s history and signs of things to come there was no location more relevant for Damien Hirst’s most ambitious show to date. Looking more specifically now, anyone would be hard-pressed to find more appropriate exhibiting venues. A show as spectacular and excessive as Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable required an appropriate stage – or two, as was the case. For much of 2017 (a biennale year), Treasures spanned Venice’s substantial Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi galleries, marking the first time both were used for a single exhibition of work by a solo artist. Now owned and operated by the Fran çois Pinault Foundation, t he venues are each part of the city’s historical fabric, denoting its once powerful maritime trade and renown for its display and collection of classical and ancient art, adding further meaning, gravitas and a sense of verisimilitude to the myth-based

13 December 2019 Controversy and ethics concerning work attached to Damien Hirst are areas that raise more questions than I can answer, which is one of the draws for me. As I think about these issues, controversy has blown up in the art world around something as simple as a banana taped to a wall . Hirst is no stranger to the found object, or at least taking the concept to another level. Earlier this year when I was writer in residence for Yorkshire Sculpture International I had the chance to see older works by Hirst for the first time. One was Black Sheep with Golden Horns (2009) using the real body of a sheep preserved in formaldehyde. While stayed, the work is ultimately ephemeral, just decomposing at a much slower rate than a fresh banana with no preservatives. i They both raise issues broadly concerning the food industry and livestock or produce as commodities, asking audiences to confront them and question what can be art and possess value as a commerc

6 December 2019 Aspects of Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable would have you believe in its legitimacy, and I enjoyed the difficulties it caused for notions of authenticity, legitimacy and truth. The photographs and documentary footage of monumental sculptures, often with divers, on the ocean floor supposedly recorded during their discovery or recovery are convincing in their implied truths and plausibility, and played an important role in upholding the show’s narrative. As recorded documents, the accompanying still and moving images exuded an indexical quality that suggests liveness and realness that could not possibly have been staged. As I discussed in the previous post , that images of real marine archaeological finds of lost sunken cities have been in circulation for two decades, with increases in news stories about them and the share-ability of articles in the last ten years, at first adds weight to the Treasures images. However, much closer study reveals that the