Claudia Nicholson, Don’t Let Me Down Let Me Down, (installation view), 2017.
Claudia Nicholson, Endless Rain II: For The Taki Unquy, the Ice Maiden, the Amazons, the daughters of the sun and the moon, La Llorona, La Malinche, The Brown Berets, Las Sillateras de Santa Elena, The San Antonio 4, Mercedes and Maria (full of grace), 2017, Watercolour, pearl pigments, diamantes, bronze leaf, ground down human teeth and glitter on paper.
Caroline Garcia, Rumba Sola (video still), 2014, Digital video, 1.25 mins.
Present, curated by writer/curator Kate Britton (who is also the director of Art Month Sydney), brings together a group of unrepresented artists: Kalanjay Dhir, Caroline Garcia, Get to Work, Samuel Hodge, Claudia Nicholson, and Athena Thebus. For each of these artists, and the trio behind Get to Work, identity is at the core of their practice. Their work seeks to make those who have existed until very recently outside the mainstream, culturally visible.
Britton says, “For centuries there has been silencing, and sometimes violence, toward anyone that can’t fit into what the powers that be deem ideal or default. People of colour, queer and trans bodies, those living in non-nuclear and non-traditional families, for example – who haven’t seen themselves represented in the public sphere – have been made invisible. It is time not just to acknowledge this problem, but to start to rectify it in some small way through platforming self-representation of those who have been ignored and represented by others for too long.”
The work selected interacts with conversations about identity outside the normative and artists who, according to Britton, “refuse to be flattened into one thing, or one label”.
The other element of Present examines changes in the art sector that assist artists who choose to remain outside the traditional model of the commercial gallery. Britton noted, “Some artists prefer a more fluid approach… we’re seeing different models too – studios that encourage critical curatorial engagement, online spaces, public and non-commercial institutions opening up to more experimental practices.” In Present, artists open their experiences, often autobiographical, through their work. Britton concludes, “Each of these artists/ collectives help us to reflect on our own identity, what we take for granted and what needs a closer look.”
Present
Darren Knight Gallery
3 March – 31 March
Have you ever wondered if someone who is no longer alive could create art? In answer to this question, biological artists Guy Ben-Ary, Nathan Thompson and Matt Ringold, in collaboration with the now deceased Alvin Lucier, have extended the experimental composer’s “ideas about the resonance of sound” for their immersive exhibition, Revivification at the Art Gallery of Western Australia.
A quiet power pulses through It’s Always Been Always at Fremantle Arts Centre, where six First Nations women artists reflect on kinship, Country and cultural memory.
Under Sammy Hawker’s gentle guidance, whale song takes shape, ocean water becomes collaborator, salt crystals scatter themselves like stars across analogue film, and ashes murmur secrets onto silver nitrate-soaked paper. Through what she terms “facilitated acts of co-creation,” Hawker gives voice to places, materials, and the more-than-human world.
Now showing at HOTA, Writers Revealed is an ambitious exhibition covering six centuries, presenting manuscripts, letters, illustrations and rare editions from many of the most influential authors in English literature.
Marru translates to “becoming visible” in Danie Mellor’s ancestral Dyirbal language (of Far North Queensland). In his current exhibition Danie Mellor: marru | the unseen visible at Queensland Art Gallery, the title reflects the work’s gentle ruminations on the complexities of the history of colonisation entwined with personal memories.
Every two years, the Ramsay Art Prize opens to Australian artists under 40 working in any medium. Presented by the Art Gallery of South Australia and supported in perpetuity by the James & Diana Ramsay foundation, the prize seeks to spotlight contemporary artists at a formative moment in their careers.
