Let's Change It All Performance Image

Czerepok often draws inspiration from the media, examining the contemporary representation of power. Let’s Change it All (2014) took place at Cockatoo Island on Sunday, 30 March and responded to the idea of protest and public demonstration as a negative activity. People customarily remonstrate in objection to events, policies or situations; in Czerepok’s performance piece a group of children carry placards demanding positive things that would improve their lives. In the 2011 version, Polish children marched with banners that ranged from the imaginative and immediate (‘Longer weekends’, ‘More Lego’, ‘No more Barbie’, ‘Free Fridays’) to the insightful (‘Less tax’, ‘Solidarity’, ‘End racism’, ‘Better food in schools’ and ‘Rebuild roads’). It is not every day that we pay credence to the ideas of children on any real political or social level. The artist plays with our perception of the idea of protest and transforms it from a negative event into a positive affirmation. Let’s Change It All is a form of happy anarchy, a demonstration of a utopian aim.

The artist also exhibited the neon work Madness is Like Gravity (2012) at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. A quote from the Joker in the Batman film The Dark Knight, the spiral of letters, differing in size and hue, speaks to the Jekyll and Hyde in all of us, as well as of the precarious balance between sanity and madness, life and death. In both its medium and composition, Madness Is Like Gravity reminds us of Bruce Nauman’s The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths, 1967. Nauman famously said that his statement was both true and not true at the same time; perhaps the same can be said of Czerepok’s message.

The correlation between fact and fiction in historical accounts and records is a source of fascination for Czerepok. Working across a wide range of media including photography, drawing, painting, installation, video and performance, he examines the role of images in visual culture and seeks to explore the way the truth can be distorted by time and how myth and legend come to be accepted as fact.

Investigation of paranormal phenomena and conspiracy theories are recurring themes in Czerepok’s work. In Haunebu (2008), he reconstructs a Second World War conspiracy theory in which German engineers were supposedly designing and building the Wunderwaffe (wonder-weapon), a vehicle shaped like a flying saucer that would be used as a weapon against the Allies. Using available documents, found footage and re-enactments, Czerepok creates a plausible simulation of history that encourages the viewer to question what is commonly believed to be fact. The artist does not intend to prove his hypothesis or refute historical records; rather, it is his aim to breed doubt and encourage his audience to consider the idea that what they know to be fact and what they believe to be fiction might sometimes be interchangeable.

Czerepok graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture and Drawing from the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan in 1999, following earlier studies at Antoni Kenar’s College of Fine Arts in Zakopane. His work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions, including ‘History and Utopia’, Arsenał Gallery, Białystok (2013); ‘Lux Aeterna’, ŻAK I BRANIKA, Berlin (2012); ‘Devil’s Island’, La Criee Centre d’Art Contemporain, Rennes (2009); and ‘Fuckin’ Hell’, Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2006)

Hubert Czerepok, Let’s Change It All, 2014, performance, duration variable. Performance for the 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014) at Cockatoo Island. Courtesy the artist and ŻAK | BRANICKA, Berlin. Originally commissioned by the Polish National Centre for Culture, Warsaw. This version was created for the 19th Biennale of Sydney. Photograph: Gunther Hang