For over a decade, Mark Valenzuela has interrogated colonisation, oppression and territory through a highly personal lens, especially through his Filipino-Australian identity. His new exhibition, as part of South Australian Living Artists (SALA) Festival, explores how personal identity is entwined with the legacies of geopolitical history.
Still tied to a tree at Adelaide Central School of Arts (ACSA) features large-scale installations that combine ceramics, painting and drawing. The exhibition is one of two the artist will present during SALA, with the Art Gallery of South Australia showing a selection of recent Valenzuela acquisitions. The ACSA show, however, exhibits new works.
“Still tied to a tree compresses and compares the two worlds that I inhabit—Australia and the Philippines—to extend my explorations of territory and space,” says Valenzuela. “On a personal level, this exhibition explores the limbo-like state of being caught between two worlds, and my tendency to constantly compare these contexts.
“This exhibition explores the tensions that come from existing in this transient state while experiencing a strong pull from both locations towards a more fixed position.”
Alongside this personal exploration, the show explicitly foregrounds historical conflict and violence in both Australia and the Philippines. The medium of ceramics, says Valenzuela, is particularly appropriate due to its “paradoxical quality of being hard and durable yet also incredibly fragile and breakable”.
From this stems Valenzuela’s striking link of the two countries’ shared colonial violence with his own cultural identity. As he says, “The political context in the Philippines is inherently tied to our complex and violent history of colonisation, and these explorations continually remind me of my own position in Australia, where I now live and work on the unceded territory of First Nations peoples.”
Still tied to a tree
Mark Valenzuela
Adelaide Central School of Arts (SALA Festival)
26 July—16 September
Art Gallery of South Australia (SALA festival)
1 August—31 August
Developed in 2022 by Artback NT as part of Apmere Mparntwe—the Australian Ceramics Triennale— touring exhibition Clay on Country, showing now at New England Regional Art Museum, showcases the diversity of ceramics in the Central Desert.
About Face is a smart piece of marketing. The new book on portrait painting from Australia and New Zealand has a mission to change buyers’ minds about the field. But as Jane O’Sullivan discovers, any sales pitch wears thin if it’s repeated often enough, and the close attention to how portrait painting is received by the market means that other important conversations fade to the background.
In Anmatyerr artist Elizabeth Mbitjana Pitijana’s first solo exhibition in Melbourne—which focuses on the Central Desert food source Arnwekety (bush plum)—the influence and love of her Country and culture is palpable. Elizabeth Mbitjana Pitijana is now showing at Niagara Galleries.
Heide Museum of Modern Art’s summer blockbuster exhibition is unveiling the breadth and beauty of Italian modernism through design. With over 170 objects spanning sixty years, Molto Bello explores the cultural impact of this period of creativity and invention.
Now showing at RMIT Gallery, This Hideous Replica is a holistic experimental art undertaking, co-curated by Sean Dockray and Joel Stern, which encompasses an exhibition, performance programs, publishing and much else.
A new event has arrived in Melbourne’s cultural calendar with the inauguration of the Melbourne Sculpture Biennale: an exhibition that aims to showcase the breadth and diversity of contemporary sculpture in Victoria.
