Northcott tenant photographic project
“Tenant by Tenant is a photographic exhibition of tenants who live at Northcott, a public housing estate ion Surry Hills, (Sydney) New South Wales. The works on display are part of an ongoing arts initiative called, Northcott Narratives, coordinated by national arts organisation Big hArt. Tenants are given the opportunity to photograph subjects of their choice, working with Sydney based photographer, Keith Saunders. The selection of 15 works displayed at SLOT during July 2005, have resulted from this collaboration.”
Leah Haynes
In this project Ian Milliss selected a flower paining by the celebrated and historic Australian artist Justin O’Brien, who he identifies as Adrian Feint, which he then gave to Norma
Cherry asking her to copy it. In the sprit of “Chinese whispers” she gave her work to Ian Milliss who copied her work and then handed his work on to fellow artist, Guo Jian who in his own manner copied the work. A reproduction of the picture by O’Brien/Feint and the 3 resulting paintings were then exhibited in SLOT.
“Every day we encounter the language of the urban jungle, whether it is through the bombardment of advertising images or the strong symbols of the road. These road signs that we encounter everyday convey a message to us of obedience and conformity on which we rely for the smooth functioning of the city. Much in the same way we are fed images from the advertising industry that in a sense we must obey in order to keep our capitalist society ‘healthy’ and functioning. Yet the more ‘healthy’ the economy is, the less healthy the environment becomes. These images were created out of slow wanderings through the city in which I recorded this almost hieroglyphic tribal language. I then proceeded to weave and transform this mundane authoritative language into images of peace and unity.”
Marina Dearnley
“A collection of recent images captured with the Holga, a medium format camera, from urban and traditional Japan, rural and suburban Australia.”
Emma Smith
“Andrew Hewish work sits within a fascination for the art-historical readings and tensions of theatrical and monumental form.”
Emma Smith
In art history secession refers to an historic break between a group of avant-garde artists and the conservative European tradition of academic and official art in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Here Billy Gruner is exhibiting posters that advertise exhibitions of avant-garde, Non-objective art as opposed to presenting an exhibit of art works in a traditional sense. In this he is reflecting an aspect of his practice as an artist - that is maintaining art galleries that celebrate non-objective art, notably, SNO - Sydney Non Objective and actively participating in an international dialogue between artists and gallerists who share his interest in Non- objective art.
What is Non-objective art? In the mid 20th century a kind of art began occurring that
concerned its self with the literal material of the art work as opposed to an illusion that the material of the art work might make. Of course there is a pun here as the posters, numbers 3,4 and 5 are in succession.
Alfredo Aquilizan told me that when he, a Filipino was in England studying for his Masters Degree in 1997 he missed his wife Isabel and their children enormously. He went on to say that from time to time he would buy a nappy (diaper) from a second hand shop on his way to the art school and once there drape it in the form of a vagina. As time went by this work evolved.
The piece was exhibited in 2000 at the 7th Biennale De la Habana, Havana, Cuba. Now it is exhibited in SLOT as Re-maKE, which coincidently is a satellite installation to their work in the Biennale of Sydney, Project Be-longing: In-Transit, currently exhibited at the Ivan Dougherty Gallery. It contributes a historical context to their biennale work, which
considers the process of migration - their own, to Australia.
They are now in the position of sorting through their own belongings – what shall come and what shall stay? It is a familiar story that they have explored with immigrant Filipino communities to many countries including Australia by recording their stories of displacement, longing and be-longing. Re-maKE both follows and precedes migration - it is most simply, where we came from.
Filipino installation and performance artist Diokno Pasilan is no stranger to Australia. For the past decade he has moved between Perth and Palawan in the southern Philippines. In Perth he has recently returned to painting.He says of this work, “… it is a personal journey of understanding myself and my new locality in Australia. The narrative images in this painting relate to my everyday life here in Perth and try to recall the memory of my first painting I made, in Negros during the Marcos Regime ... being the first painting I have made here in Australia there is an odd connection in juxtaposing these two states of mind. That’s what I see making art here is all about - studio practice and communities interacting. I want to embrace this and Australia encourages that in a positive way...“
Marina wrote of these works - “Mandalas are found across all cultures and religions throughout the world from Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity to Native American spirituality. They also occur in nature, for example in the sun, moon, a flower or the earth itself. The mandalas created here are an expression of the colourful diversity, energy and life of the inner city.
I wandered through the urban landscape photographing fragments of bold and colourful graffiti that adorns the walls of the inner city. These walls of the inner city were my paint pallet as I sampled random sections of this beautiful gratify. I photographed a line, shape and texture and then out of these random abstracted forms I created patterns that evolved into digitally-generated mandalas.”
Living in Malaysia during 2005 I was surprised by the alert political nature of the art made by both my contemporaries and by the younger artists I encountered in exhibitions around the city. Perhaps it was a legacy of Robert Rauschenberg who had visited as part of his Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI) project in 1989/90 - partly a response to the culturally repressive Malaysian state that censored an edition of Art Forum while I was living there, perhaps? A page was removed and the magazine sold in a sealed package marked “Pages Has Been Censored by KDN (Internal Affairs
Department)”.
One of the most insightful artists, Paiman lampooned the administration by including direct quotes from parliamentarian’s speeches in his drawings. For example – “I think such statements must be made with caution to ensure that they do not touch the sensitivities as well as the sovereignty and territorial integrity of certain countries.” Syed Hamid Albar
I bought this small selection of cartoon like politicised works back to Sydney as a souvenir of an intriguing time spent getting to know a country that shares aspects of our colonial heritage but has evolved into a very different kind of culture - a multi racial society of three factions that the past Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad described as a moderate Islamic state. Islam being the religion of only one of the societies factions.
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