Data is often described as the ‘new oil’ of the 21st century. Referring variously to numbers, archives, scientific methods and Internet cookies, data is a sought-after asset in our hyper-connected world, and a longstanding instrument of Western colonialism.
The Data Imaginary unearths the ugly history of data and imagines its uncertain future. Against the backdrop of global conversations about data that largely neglect the perspectives of marginalised groups, the show foregrounds First Nations voices. Originally at Griffith Museum of Art in 2021, museum director and show co-curator Angela Goddard explains how data can turn into a reparative force sustaining non-Western histories and systems of knowledge. “Together these works repurpose data,” says Goddard, “to tell stories about the radical imaginary, and open up data as a medium for creative exploration.” Featuring Lola Greeno, Tali Weinberg, Andrew Gall, Judy Watson, and Silvio Carta (among others), The Data Imaginary focuses on the reclamation of colonial archives and First Nations systems of knowledge, as well as climate data and personal online data security.
Each of the 16 participating artists and artist collectives reframe data in new ways, through video, sculpture, weavings and websites. Some reclaim colonial archives listing massacre sites, body measurements, and Aboriginal place names, while others reveal the relentless extraction of online user data for profit. Highlights of the show are several long, glittering necklaces traditional to Tasmania’s Palawa people, made by Lola Greeno and Andrew Gall, which record an enduring cultural knowledge and the threat of climate change.
“We hope that visitors will come away with a better understanding of how information is collected and presented,” says Goddard, “but also with a sense of how artists and designers can shift the ways we think about global challenges in playful and creative ways.”
The Data Imaginary: Fears and Fantasies
Flinders University Museum of Art
26 April—8 July
This article was originally published in the May/June 2022 print edition of Art Guide Australia.
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is an extraordinary account of the unique art of this continent, published alongside a landmark exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art. Necessary and urgent, it tells the story of Indigenous Australian art; a new art history unlike anything we’ve seen. For Jane O’Sullivan, it’s a remarkable and must-read book.
In a new series of illustrated postcards available as a free gift with purchase only at the Art Guide Bookstore, Oslo Davis takes on classic and contemporary art terms and genres and reimagines what they could be referring to.
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
In two new exhibitions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, René Magritte and Cao Fei speak to each other across cultures and eras about the way that perception can unsettle reality—and the places the real intersects with the surreal.
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.
In her latest exhibition at THIS IS NO FANTASY, Ellen Dahl presents works from an ongoing photographic series that has captured many sites—from the Norwegian archipelago Svalbard to Tasmania—creating a dialogue between works that center place.
