Witnessing Cultural Identities opened last night

Artists talks today at 2pm.

Curator Sandy Edwards opening Witnessing Cultural Identities

Artist Liz Thompson talking about her project under the guidance of Yingiya Guyula

Jeff Amatto talking about his collaboration with Asher Milgate

Vice-chair of Congolese Association discussing the work of Pam Kleemann

Witnessing Cultural Identities opens Friday 11 May 6-8pm

 

Michael Jalaru Torres,  Liz Thompson  / Yingiya Guyula,  Asher Milgate / Jeff Amatto,  Pam Kleemann

Curated by Sandy Edwards and Arthere

To be opened with a special presentation by the artists

Saturday 12 May 2pm: Artists talks by Asher Milgate/Jeff Amatto and Pam Kleemann
Saturday 12 May 3.30: visit to Boomalli to see Black Fellas Dreaming guided by Joe Hurst

OPEN 11am - 5pm 12 - 27 May  2018

Michael Jalaru Torres  Katina Coffin

This is an exhibition presenting six perspectives on storytelling from contemporary Australia through photography and voice. Each artist (Indigenous or non-Indigenous) is connected to a community, which celebrates its unique identity and then shares this with us. Each is passionate about communicating cultural and intercultural experiences and viewpoints through photography, sound and education. 

What are the responsibilities and issues as a non-Indigenous photographic artist with a burning desire to create social change and work that matters? It is definitely time for non Indigenous Australians to develop the art of consulting and listening to Indigenous Australians in order to truly hear what they have to say. Part of this is to humbly admit to a lack of knowledge and understanding both of history and of our current role in colonial dominance.

The intention of this exhibition is to stir up conversations about these matters while also exploring these different collaborative approaches to art and witnessing.

Artists Liz Thompson (Sydney) in collaboration with senior cultural custodian Yingiya Guyula (North East Arnhemland) and Asher Milgate working in his home town of Wellington, NSW, are portraying communities they have relationship to and because of that relationship, are committed to bringing stories from those communities into the wider world.

Michael Jalaru Torres is a Yawuru and Djugan man from Broome. His vibrant photographic imagery depicts a positive portrayal of the people and issues of his local community. In Jalaru’s case he is perfectly positioned as a photographer to express the Indigenous stories of his own community, for example young women dressed for the annual debutante ball. It is essential that Indigenous community stories are increasingly told through their own voice.

Melbourne photographic artist Pam Kleemann celebrates the Congolese culture of her late husband, the musician Passi Jo, a direct descendent of the Balari Troubadours of Bacongo, Republic of Congo. Passi Jo migrated to Australia in the 1990s and was known globally for his joyful, uplifting music and dance as well as his colourful style. He is proudly dressed in pyjamas 'La Sape' style, in the hospital setting while he was living with cancer. Kleemann had adopted his culture through marriage, and in this tender and humorous portrayal, she endorses his culture as she honours his life and their relationship.

As a photographer and a curator I was exposed early and indelibly to the politics of being Aboriginal in Australia by being asked by AIATSIS in Canberra as a young photographer in 1986 to document the Aboriginal community in Brewarrina, NSW, for The After 200 Years Project and the 1988 Bicentennial.

This exhibition and others have been driven by my desire to explore and get right the power politics of ones birth and place.

Sandy Edwards, Curator of Witness Cultural Identity

Arthere
HEAD ON

COMMON FATE open from Thursday 19 April

Common Fate – Sonja Karl and Liz O’Reilly – Artists-in-residence

Common Fate is an open residency of project work culminating in a series of installations and performances. It is a changing reflection on our personal collections of death and memory objects. It explores the multiple narratives of our inherited possessions and intimacies.

Sonja Karl and Liz O’Reilly, Installation, ‘memento-mori – Narratives of Inheritance’

Articulate will be open 11am-5pm, Thursday to Sunday until Saturday May 5^th during which time there will be opportunities for discussion and interaction with the artists in the evolution of the project.

Saturday 21st April 1 – 4pm

1.00pm Screening of award winning documentary – TENDER

The heartwarming story of a community coming together to challenge mainstream attitudes to dying, death and the business of funerals. 

2.30pm Memento Mori Talking Circle: all are invited to bring a memory object of hand-held size to share in a group discussion

Sunday 22nd April: 2:00 – 4pm

2pm Performance

2.30pm Memento Mori Talking Circle: all are invited to bring a memory object of hand-held size to share in a group discussion

Saturday 28th April: 2.00 – 4pm

2pm Artist’s Talk:  Invited artist Sylvia Griffin presents her contemporary practice of working with memory and trauma.

2.30pm Memento Mori Talking Circle: all are invited to bring a memory object of hand-held size to share in a group discussion

Sunday 29th April: 2.00 – 4pm

2pm Performance

2.30pm Memento Mori Talking Circle: all are invited to bring a memory object of hand-held size to share in a group discussion

Friday 4th May 6pm

Finissage: Performance and closing drinks

Due to the sensitive nature of discussing death and loss, we ask that there be no recordings of performances or talking circles out of respect for the participants and observers.  Please arrive 10 minutes prior to performances thank you.

Sonja Karl and Liz O’Reilly, Installation, ‘memento mori – Narratives of Inheritance.’(detail)

After someone dies there are objects left. We call them possessions, and understand them not just in the sense of literal ownership, but in the complex way an object reflects a person back to themselves. However fleeting or lasting, the intimate connection to an object is something we all have, and when death severs that relationship between person and possession, what becomes of it?

This liminal space of loss is where the project Common Fate resides, as an exploration of collections of objects left behind after death and an extrapolation of their resonance as possessed or known objects or lost intimacies. After death some possessions are highly visible, all over a person's house: next to their bed, in their bathroom cabinet, in the kitchen or in the drawers of their desks. However a great numbers of possessions are hidden, sometimes never seen by loved ones until after death.

Who possesses these visible and hidden objects now? When we see the material things in someone's possessions as a collection of intangible and intimate connections between them and the actual object, we can also see narratives around the transferral, dispersal or disposal of these possessions as layered and intricate relationships, family history and cultural inheritance.

Common Fate aims to reach out to the community; to initiate conversations, to provoke memories and stories, opening up expressions around diverse cultural concepts of death in order to bring to the fore what closure really signifies. 

Sonja Karl and Liz O'Reilly will be artists in residence in Articulate project space from 20 April 2018, using their personal collections of 'death objects' as the basis for Common Fate, from experimentation to installation, incorporating a dialogue with the community, finishing with a closing on the third weekend. 

Sonja Karl and Liz O’Reilly, Installation, ‘memento mori – Narratives of Inheritance.’(detail)

Degrees of Refinement - Clothing as Art, Art from Clothing

shows the work of  Linden Braye, Rachel Buckeridge, Lesley Giovanelli, Anne Graham, Pam Kleemann and  Eva Simmons.

open Friday – Sunday 11am-5pm,  7 - 15 April

Rachel Buckeridge Photo: Peter Murphy

 Karen Dalton sings Katie Cruel 2018 Installation with Towels, cloth, full and empty bottles, table, two chairs, perspex block with coin inside, funky cd player and headphones, cd, glass, posca pens, rafia, masonite, paint, thread, ready made beer belts (they are new), shop dummies, silkscreened cloth, wooden necklace, ceramic dog ashtray, silicone mat 

I love this song, Karen’s amazing voice and the apt words of the song and I love old towels. so why not combine the two. and add a crystal.An ode to Karen and Katie in towels and bottles.

Murder Welcomed 2014 Silk screen embellished with paint and ink 

I usually work with either found or second hand things, making art, clothes, bags, anything really.

Anne Graham Archie's Coat 2018

Archie was a star on the Chinese New Year banners in Sydney 2018  wearing a Chinese jacket . This jacket was made at the Australian Tapestry Workshop, Melbourne, and it is made from Archie's own fur, felted to make a jacket  to keep him smart and warm this winter. 

R: Pam Kleemann IBS Dress (Irritable Bridal Syndrome) 2018

Human and synthetic hair, cotton thread, PVA glue on canvas

African-American artist Adrienne Wheeler invited a number of women to contribute to White Dress Narratives (part of the Pure Power exhibition). Each artist was given a white dress blank canvas, to decorate according to our individual perspectives/interpretations of the white dress. The original white dress was hand-made for her mother's year 8 graduation, and the template was cut from the original dress.

 Lesley Giovanelli Photo: Peter Murphy

Walking past a Madonna on Wei Bao Shan Mountain 2018 clothing Indian and Chinese cottons, Malaysian printed sarongs, American designer fabric.  This colour field began with clothing belonging to myself and friends. We no longer wear them but they represented an era in our lives. I wanted to capture the richness of the material and colour and perhaps some of the fantasy they held for us. The brightness of the colour and the patterned fabric reminded me of a beautiful temple I visited in China.

 Linden Braye 

Culture Vultures 2018 porcelain figurines

Culture Vultures represents the historical and cultural layers of objects.

Linden Braye 

Nature Morte 2018 carpet, plants, earth, fox fur.

This carpet was given to me by a good friend because I always admired it. Two events in my house led to its demise. It has been re-used and regenerated.

Linden Braye Rabbit Warren fur coats silk

This work re-uses the pockets of discarded fur coats. The rabbits are made from silk lining which when in the coats give extra luxury and value.

Eva Simmons Anorgasmia 2018 Aluminium wire/foil, textiles acrylic paint, ball-point pen, kitchen paper, oak dowel, ova glue.

Degrees of Refinement - opening Friday 6 April 6-8pm

Degrees of Refinement - Clothing as Art, Art from Clothing shows the work of  Linden Braye, Rachel Buckeridge, Lesley Giovanelli, Anne Graham, Pam Kleemann and  Eva Simmons.

open Friday – Sunday 11am-5pm,  7 - 15 April

A group of sculptors, who incorporate clothing and textiles into their art works, will come together to create a highly tactile exhibition with colourful installations, freestanding sculptures and wall works. Clothing can represent the body but also signify cultural attitudes and personal beliefs. Degrees of Refinement is a term coined by Christina Murdoch Mills* referring to signs of process which impact on how viewers experience the work, their sensory experience and understanding of it. The process visible in the clothes, the fabrics and the works themselves ranges from rough, crude and raw to smooth and highly finished. 

Individual identities emerge in some of these works.  Anne Graham felts the hair of her friend’s dog. Items of clothing, given by friends, become rich icons in the centre of Lesley Giovanelli’s wall of colour, whilst Pam Kleemann decorates a template based on the graduation dress of the mother of Adrienne Wheeler, an African-American artist. For Eva Simmons it’s a more personal journey, using embroidery and construction to explore her own sensuality and sexuality.

Alternatively, for Rachel Buckeridge and Linden Braye, the collecting of discarded objects, old fabric and clothing offers some distance from a particular owner. Rachel uses old beach towels to create a fictive life for a folk character in one  of Karen Dalten's songs whilst Linden’s reclamation of fur coats and damaged carpets humorously resurrects the forgotten past.

Throughout this exhibition the multiplicity of materials- natural, synthetic, animal and plant as well as the many techniques used, work to create a highly textured and engaging experience.

*Christina Murdoch Mills in Materiality as the Basis for the Aesthetic Experience in Contemporary Art

Eva Simmons

Linden Braye

Lesley Giovanelli

Rachel Buckeridge

Pam Kleemann

Anne Graham