clipped from www.abc.net.au

Artworks

Lyndal Jones: Darwin with Tears

Charles Darwin's book on sexual selection, Descent of Man, has inspired an exhibition called 'Darwin With Tears' at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne. It's a survey show of thirty years' work by the pioneering video and performance artist Lyndal Jones.

On the big rusty wall outside the gallery, Lyndal has mounted, in neon, the words: 'Tears For What We Have Done'. Step inside the gallery and the first thing you see, and hear, is an aviary full of finches -- which have laid eggs during the course of the show.

Otherwise, it's mostly video art: of pomegranates, poppies, a crying man, a woman talking to her analyst -- all explorations of the artist's interest in Darwin and desire, and Freud and feminism.