The Art Of Chess Organised By Bendigo Art Gallery In Association With Rs&a Ltd, London Your Move: Australian Artists Play Chess A Bendigo Art Gallery Travelling Exhibition 30 October 2010 – 30 January 2011 Education Notes

The Art of Chess Organised by Bendigo Art Gallery in association with RS&A Ltd, London Your Move: Australian artists play chess A Bendigo Art Gallery travelling exhibition 30 October 2010 – 30 January 2011 Education notes Sebastian Di Mauro Australia 1955 Lives and works in Brisbane, Queensland Homeland rule 2010 (detail) mixed media 98 x 300 x 300 cm Courtesy of the artist and Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne Photo: Ian Hill This exhibition is supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of Australian cultural material across Australia. The Art of Chess is organised by Bendigo Art Gallery in association with RS&A Ltd, London 2 Introduction The Art of Chess, an exhibition featuring 15 of some of the most acclaimed international contemporary artists has been secured by Bendigo Art Gallery for Australia. To be opened 30 October 2010 the exhibition incorporates extraordinary, innovative and curious chess sets commissioned from artists including Maurizio Cattelan (Italy), Jake and Dinos Chapman (UK), Oliver Clegg (UK), Tracey Emin (UK), Tom Friedman (USA), Paul Fryer (UK), Damien Hirst (UK), Barbara Kruger (USA), Yayoi Kusama (Japan), Paul McCarthy (USA), Alastair Mackie (UK), Matthew Ronay (USA), Tunga (Brazil), Gavin Turk (UK) and Rachel Whiteread (UK). Facing off against this stellar line up will be Your Move: Australian artists play chess – 13 Australian contemporary artists, commissioned as part of the largest grant ever awarded by Visions of Australia. Artists to be featured in the accompanying exhibition titled Your Move include: Benjamin Armstrong, Lionel Bawden, Sebastian Di Mauro, Michael Doolan, Emily Floyd, Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Robert Jacks, Danie Mellor, Kate Rohde, Caroline Rothwell, Sally Smart and Ken Yonetani. Players in the away team include extraordinary spotted fungal sculptures by Yayoi Kusama; a slick, finely crafted set of glass and silver pill bottles sitting on a surgical trolley by Damien Hirst; a whimsical chess set by US artist Paul McCarthy using objects found lying around his kitchen; a good versus evil set by the Italian Maurizio Cattelan which pits Hitler, Rasputin and Al Capone against Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa and Superman; and a set by the Chapman brothers based upon their trademark mannequins with open mouths and penis noses. In the home town favourite players include heraldic and anthropomorphised animals, literary characters, and beer bottles and coasters set on a playing field of a rickety Australian picnic table. Bendigo Art Gallery has instigated these exhibitions and Australian commissions. 42 View Street Bendigo Victoria Australia 3550 Telephone 03 5434 6088 Facsimile 03 5443 6586 Proudly operated by the City of Greater Bendigo with additional support provided by Arts Victoria 2 3 The Art of Chess Maurizio Cattelan Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan is perhaps best known for his mischievous sense of humour, challenging the mores of the art world and public alike. In 1997 he filled the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale with stuffed pigeons and in 1999 displayed La Nona Ora at the Kunsthalle in Basel, an installation comprising of a waxwork mannequin of Pope John Paul II being squashed by a meteorite (seen in London as part of the Apocalypse show at the Royal Academy). Maintaining the provocative power of laughter in his RS&A commission fabricated in porcelain by Bertozzi and Casoni, Cattelan has decided to populate his highly figurative chess set with good and bad figures, both admired and despised. The king on the black side is Adolf Hitler, opposed on the white side by Martin Luther King. Other notable figures appear as pawns, including Donatella Versace, Rasputin and Ge