Red Fragments - Blood rituals

Every day blood is spilled onto surfaces ~ in the delivery room, the operation theatre, an autopsy table. Some who need to, cut themselves. Bloody residue of an altercation turned violent, spills onto the pavement ~ spatters on nearby walls. Blood is ubiquitous ~ it’s everywhere ~ in our lives, on our screens. We avert our eyes as a large water hose cleans and removes blood and skin traces left on the ground after someone purposely falls to their death. The tram I’m on has stopped; everyone has seen the body of the victim removed in a body bag. There's always this unnerving silence. Or, much later we come across someone lying face down in so much of their own blood that we cannot look and yet we do because we've never seen so much blood in one place at the one time. By seeping from the body interior ~ blood has violated boundaries ~ it's crossed over from the absent and unseen to the present and visible. And yes ~ the horror because it signals pain, misery, terror, injury, death. In March this year thousands of red-shirt protesters (rural and poor people) in Bangkok donated 45,000 cubic centimeters of their own blood so that artists could paint 70 meters of canvas with images that expressed their anger over the erosion of democratic rights in Thailand. Red marks on a white surface depict guns, soldiers, destruction, mutilated bodies. In the past, female artists have painted with their own menstrual fluid. Marc Quinn cast the head of his son Lucas by using his own blood. New York artist, Jordan Eagles is well known for using the blood of slaughtered animals in his paintings. His work follows that of Viennese Actionist, Hermann Nitsch who executed, during the 60s and 70s what he called his Orgy Mystery Theatre, a strange re-enactment of the ancient Greek spargmos ~ ritual sacrifice of an animal ~ it’s blood spilt onto the naked body a performance artist. I first saw a video of one of Nitsch’s performances at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1987. The video, which showed Nitsch literally painting a white table-cloth with blood, chicken eggs and other assorted fluids, was screened in a dark space behind a curtain. I remember watching people enter and leave ~ the expression on their faces. I stayed for almost two hours, because something happened. My mind in a strange slip-stream or hallucination of the unique relationship between bodily fluids ~ life ~ art. I realized as I watched, that ‘we’ could paint with anything and peformance artists would be my passion! These are some of the thoughts I take with me this morning as I venture off to see Red Fragments, an installation by Swedish artist Carl Michael Von Hasswolff on Mockridge Fountain in the Melbourne City Square. Perhaps I am already disappointed. So many interesting artworks have been made over the years ~ I’m wondering what more this artwork can say?