Output details

Moral Holiday - An exhibition about ethical transgressions in art

Moral Holiday is a large-scale group exhibition staged at Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, conceived and curated by Robinson. The project presented the work of two generations of artists working principally in lens-based media from still photographs to film or video. The research question may be defined as how living artists of two generations – those rising to prominence in the ‘six years’ of 1966-72 and those rising to prominence from the mid-2000s have addressed the issue of ethical transgressions or transgressions of decorum and accepted social standards of behaviour.

The artists stage what might be called 'thought experiments' that query the existing moral order, and dramatise ethical quandaries by inverting social norms or expectations. This question contains two sub-problems: what kinds of behaviour can successfully be executed in public space by artists themselves that stage or lead to moral confrontations or problems for the viewer, but not to their own constraint or legal detention; secondly, how artists are able to document, narrate and re-present ‘alternative’ lifestyles or fundamental moral choices, and/or their consequences.

The exhibition included: loans of key early works by canonical American and European artists working in performance or a performative manner including Nauman, Gilbert & George and Matta-Clark; English premieres of work by younger international artists including Rozendaal, Griffin; and a newly commissioned body of work by emerging artist Clarita Lulic, who had previously exhibited at the National Media Museum.

The experimental curatorial strategy required the audience to imagine artistic behaviours as social as much as aesthetic experiments, acted out in public space with directly visible consequences – as forms of fiction, and as narratives about the moral order we share.

The exhibition was seen by over 6,200 people and over three months, being extensively reviewed in leading journals including Art Monthly and national press including The Guardian.