Finding New York ...

Professor Paolo Tombesi, the University of Melbourne’s Chair of Construction, Alumna Mary Tokatlidis and local artist Marco Luccio have joined forces to ensure the success of “New York Found”, a new exhibition of Mr Luccio’s work.

“New York Found” offers its audience striking images which were inspired, Mr Luccio explains, by some of the unusual and bizarre artefacts at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Like Mr Luccio’s earlier work, this latest exhibition delves into the complexities of civilisation, and the objects and buildings that make the urban environment.

These artworks, created in and about New York by mixing media and techniques – water colouring, ink, acrylic, smudging, drypoint, graffiti, stencil, pastel, oil, collage – signal a progression and departure from his earlier work, which almost exclusively explored the fabric and workers of Melbourne.

It is through this earlier work that Professor Paolo Tombesi, Chair of Construction at the University of Melbourne, became interested in Mr Luccio’s work and eventually invited him to participate in the activities of the University.

Professor Tombesi says there are strong synergies between the values and interests of the construction program and Mr Luccio’s art.

“Marco is someone who documents the history of cities in the making (Melbourne, Sydney, Paris, New York) and the lives of the people within it, particularly those who contribute to building it,” he says.

“Not many artists are interested in the process rather than the product in the way Marco is, and this is why I find his work very compelling and revealing.”

Mr Luccio explains: “I have always been interested in civilisation, and thought it was one of the largest themes I could tackle as an artist.

 “Professor Tombesi was interested in the way in which I make images, and the way they depict sites under construction rather than the finished buildings themselves.

 “He sees my work as a historical documentation of our changing metropolis, and its contribution to society.”

The pair previously collaborated to bring an exhibition of Mr Luccio’s work to the University’s Ian Potter Museum of Art to celebrate the opening of the Australian Universities Building Education Association conference. That exhibition included images of the Southern Cross Station roof while it was being built, the Myer and David Jones redevelopments and the Queen Victoria Hospital site on Swanston Street.

Mr Luccio says his work intersects with the work of the University in more existential ways than just his collaborative work with Professor Tombesi and Curator of New York Found and alumna Mary Tokatlidis.

“The University of Melbourne prepares people to contribute to society and civilisation in ways which will outlast their lifetimes,” he says.

“The University is known for bringing the world to its community, and for the way in which it embraces new ideas.

“I think it’s important for the University to engage with artists from outside the university community to foster this philosophy”.

Indeed, Professor Tombesi said he and his colleagues have been inspired and challenged to reflect on construction in a different light by Mr Luccio’s work.

“Marco represents and glorifies the process. The way he fixes construction movement into images that maintain the richness of reality; the way he shows the bustling humanity of building work, how he turns busy sites and noisy equipment into theatrical stages and hieratic sculptures, renders visible and enables us to appreciate something that will eventually disappear. Marco records the past that makes our present possible and meaningful.”

Marco Luccio’s exhibition, New York Found, is at the Steps Gallery, 62 Lygon Street, until Sunday 15 May.

www.marcoluccio.com.