The Museum of Copulatory Organs (MoCO) premiered at the Biennale of Sydney 2012, in a dilapidated building in Cockatoo Island, in the middle of the Sydney Harbour. It attracted more than a quarter of a million visitors, of all ages.

MoCO’s collection consists of dozens of anatomically accurate models of what is dubbed by scientists as ‘genitalic extravagance’ among invertebrates. MoCO Museum is part an ongoing research project by artist Dr. Maria Fernanda Cardoso.

2012_Opening Casa Daros_Press Release_EN_Web

On 29th March 2012, a bold, new and significantly expanded Museum of Contemporary Art Australia will be unveiled. Following a AUD$53 million redevelopment, the Museum will be transformed into a major cultural centre for contemporary art and creative learning.

The MCA is Australia’s Museum of Contemporary Art, dedicated to exhibiting, collecting and interpreting the work of today’s artists. The widely anticipated reopening of the Museum is a highlight on the international art calendar. This milestone will be celebrated with a week-long series of launch events culminating in a dynamic schedule of free artist talks and public programs throughout the opening weekend.

The new MCA opens with Marking Time, an international exhibition featuring major works by eleven Australian and international artists. The concept and representation of time — past, present and future — is reinterpreted and revealed across diverse media including drawing, watercolour, sculpture, installation, sound and light.

The MCA has also secured the Southern Hemisphere premiere of Christian Marclay’s groundbreaking 24-hour video work, The Clock, which will be shown in its entirety on the MCA’s opening day, Thursday 29 March 2012, and then played continuously during regular museum opening hours. Every subsequent Thursday there will be another special 24-hour presentation of this work.

For the first time, an entire floor is dedicated permanently to presenting work from the MCA Collection. Work by more than 170 Australian artists in Volume One: MCA Collection, reflects the breadth of Australian contemporary art over the past 20 years.

Local Positioning Systems, curated by Performance Space, brings performance and live art to the MCA under different guises and in several locations. The program comprises performances from six Australian artists and a UK collaborative.

A key feature of the new MCA’s program is a series of site-specific commissions by Australian artists in a variety of media including wall painting, sculpture and video.

Another addition to the Museum are the new rooftop venues. Created to take advantage of their location,the venues offer spectacular views across Sydney Harbour from the Opera House to the Harbour Bridge.

Education is a key element of the redevelopment. The National Centre for Creative Learning (NCCL) will facilitate the Museum’s commitment to innovation and consolidate its role as a leader in contemporary art education.

The MCA redevelopment responds to the growing audience for contemporary art in Australia.

Petrina Hicks – Polixeni Papapetrou – Catherine Nelson Maria Fernanda Cardoso – Murray McKeich

OPENING NIGHT: Sunday 1st April 4-7pm EXHIBITION DATES: 31st March – 29th April 2012 GALLERY INFO: Opening Hours Wed-Sat 10am – 5pm, Sun 11am – 3pm

Cnr Cordelia and Russell Streets, South Brisbane t. (07) 3844 1101 www.qcp.org.au
South of the Border is proudly supported by PIMCO as part of Queensland Festival of Photography 4.

Queensland Festival of Photography

Queensland Centre for Photography acknowledges the
assistance of the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland

Maria Fernanda Cardoso and her participation in the 18th Biennale of Sydney 21012 is supported by the NSW Government through Arts NSW.

When I was researching fleas in order to make the Cardoso Flea Circus in 1994, I came across a fascinating paragraph describing flea genitalia and copulation. It said “Fleas have… the most elaborate genital armature yet known”. Years later, I decided to investigate whether it was only fleas that were so magnificently endowed, or whether other animals had interesting genitalia. To my surprise, there is great diversity and complexity in genitalic structures across the animal kingdom. Taxonomists have long known that genitalia is diverse, and they use it as a useful tool for species differentiation. Most recently evolutionary biologists have been investigating the possible reasons for such complexity, and they are talking about sperm competition, female choice and sexual coevolution. My artworks explore the relationship between the morphology of animal genitalia, it’s evolution and evolutionary forces at play, and the aesthetics of it’s representations.

A common Sydney mangrove snail has been recently named by taxonomist Rosemary Golding after the shape of it’s phallus, which as it’s name says, looks like a medusa head.

My question when I look at this images under the electronic microscope is: Why so much complexity???

Specimen from the collection of the Australian Museum, microscopist Sue Lindsday

Installation shots at ARC One Gallery in Melbourne 2011

2009 
Work in progress. In collaboration with Ross Rudesch Harley.

This video is to be viewed vertically. Mimicry is not only about looks but about behaviour. Stick insects, like a real branch, only move unless there is air movement around them. It takes patience to watch this video.

2009
In collaboration with Ross Rudesch Harley. HD mono channel video.
Juvenile stick insects mimic the movement of a branch as if moved by wind, all while hanging up in the air from a metal rod.

3 min colour video DVD, co-directed by Ross Rudesch Harley and Maria Fernanda Cardoso

The video depicts a parade of animal faces, a procession of anonymous identities. However, each close-up reveals the fascinating peculiarity of their faces – the chickens with their crests like genitalia, the fish that appear to laugh, the bat that looks like a cat. Under the gaze of the camera lens, these animals appear to take on human characteristics. Seductiveness intermingles with repugnance, subtle irony with satire and brutality with menace. This fusion of opposites permeates much of the artist’s work.

A 2007 TV magazine segment about Maria Fernanda Cardoso, her background, development as an artist and involvement in a major exhibition of Latin-American art at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia.

Produced by the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Sunday Arts program, and used with permission of the producer.

These images are a colalboration between Ross Rudesch Harley, myself, and the astronomical photographs of Felipe Rodriguez.

1998
5 min colour video, 1998 by Ross Rudesch Harley

This is the video documentation of a live show of the Cardoso Flea Circus at the Tipi at the Pompidou Center in Paris, as part of the Paris quartier d’ete festival.

2002

This is the tent and video installation touring with the exhibition Material World: 25 years of the Fabric Workshop and Museum. Installation view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia.

1997
8 min colour video, co-directed by Ross Rudesch Harley and Maria Fernanda Cardoso to accompany the Cardoso Flea Circus tent installation produced by the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philladelphia.

These are real live perfoming fleas, with Cardoso performing as Queen of the Fleas.

Cardoso Flea Circus Installation, including video installation, tent, arena, props, audio works, DVD compilation (colour video, duration variable), purchased by the Tate Gallery London in 2007.

2008
4:35 min Colour video by Maria Fernanda Cardoso and Ross Rudesch Harley 2008

This video installation at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre documented emu feather outfits made by Maria Fernanda Cardoso and worn by a professional model.

Part performance, part fashion, part “animal-morphism”, this video sits side by side with the racks of emu wear and wall pieces on display at the Museum.

From their website:
Australian

Casula Powerhouse commissioned Australia’s hottest contemporary visual artists to transform the newly refurbished arts centre into a spectacle of colour, texture and movement. Combined, the artists have 40 biennales between them, and are among the most exciting practitioners today. The exhibition features 12 new works, in a variety of mediums including sculpture, painting, installation and textiles.

Like most Australians the artists have cultural and family ties in other places and it is this which informs their work. Australian celebrates the complexity that makes this country such an interesting place to live and presents some of the freshest and most dynamic work being created in this country today.

Curator
Nicholas Tsoutas
Assistant Curator
Brianna Munting

Artists
Maria Fernanda Cardoso collaborating with Ross Rudesch Harley, Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healy, Shaun Gladwell, David Griggs, Gordon Hookey, Dani Marti, Raquel Ormella, Nike Savvas and Stephen Little, Sardar Sinjawi, Suzann Victor, Savanhdary Vongpoothorn collaborating with Richard Johnson and Guan Wei

2002

I have sheared hundreds of Corriedale sheepskins in geometrical patterns (lines, squares), working in a shearing shed at Gundowringa, a sheep farm in New South Wales, Australia. I came there to hire a professional Shearer, but not finding one available, took upon me the learning of such male traditional Australian skill.

The smell of more than a hundred years of sheep faeces and urine, plus the sweet smell of the lanolin of the wool, provided the atmosphere I walked into every day to work 12 hour a day for weeks of continuous shearing. I am an expert now, and practiced on my first live sheep towards the end of my stay at Gundowringa.

I dyed the sheepskins in earthly and warm colours, to create an orange mural, a yellow mural, and a deep red mural. They look a little bit absurd, with a material as amorphous as wool taking on stripe and square designs.

There are a lot of similarities between Australian and Latin American countries like Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, which relied on cattle and sheep as a main source of wealth and job creation in the countryside. But the wool market has been shrinking steadily for decades now (replaced by artificial fibres), leaving a void of unemployment and despair in the countryside.

2002
4 min colour video DVD, by Ross Rudesch Harley
Video documentation of the process of making the SHEEP series by Maria Fernanda Cardoso, filmed in a 100 year old shearing shed near Goulborn, NSW Australia.

2003
One channel colour video
by Ross Rudesch Harley
3 min.
Video stills at the shearing shed of sheep farm Gundworinga, Australia.