Salamanca Arts Centre has 3 major exhibitions featuring international and Australian artists in 3 centres this month – Colonial Afterlives at Hobart’s Salamanca Arts Centre, Made in China, Australia at Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston, and Giving Voice: The Art of Dissent at the Gosford Regional Gallery in NSW. The collective body of work represents an impressive range of political and social views on 3 different aspects of Australian society.
Colonial Afterlives at Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart
19 March – 27 April 2015
Long Gallery
Salamanca Arts Centre
77 Salamanca Place
Hobart, Tasmania
Salamanca Arts Centre presents Colonial Aferlives as part of the Tasmanian International Arts Festival 19 March – 27 April bringing contemporary responses to the complex legacies of British occupation from fourteen outstanding artists including Tasmanian artists Julie Gough, James Newitt, Yvonne Rees-Pagh and Geoff Parr.
These responses come from indigenous and diasporic artists living in Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, Britain and Canada. It will incorporate a diversity of views ranging from melancholic eulogies to passionate and sometimes scathing commentaries on the complex legacies of British occupation.
Several of the artists explore multiple identities through performance and photography, including Fiona Foley (Australia), Christian Thompson (Australia), Charles Campbell (Jamaica), Kent Monkman (Canada), and Ewan Atkinson (Barbados). Others are keenly attuned to the nuances and contemporary resonance of the colonial archive – Julie Gough (Australia), Daniel Boyd (Australia) and Lisa Reihana (New Zealand) – while Yvonne Rees-Pagh (Tasmania) examines some of the deep wounds of ‘empire’, as manifested in racist stereotyping and modern forms of frontier violence.
Made in China, Australia at Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston
20 March – 17 May 2015
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery
2 Wellington Street
Launceston, Tasmania
The migration and settlement of any large racial group in a new host country is complex. The complexity of the Chinese diaspora in Australia can be seen in the distinctive and diverse Chinese Australians living here. These categories are often reduced in the popular imagination to a single Asian stereotype. Made in China, Australia portrays how the different and individual processes of acculturation have impacted in diverse ways on the work of Chinese Australian artists.
The exhibition, curated by Greg Kwok Keung Leong, questions how the work of Chinese Australian artists is affected by the particular Chinese Australian heritage and experiences they have had. Some of the artists in the exhibition were born in Australia, others travelled to Australia in the past and some are recent arrivals, which creates subtle differences that arise in the artists’ work due to their particular relationship with the two cultures. Suggest including several names.
Giving Voice: The Art of Dissent at Gosford Regional Gallery
28 March – 17 May 2015
Gallery One
Gosford Regional Gallery
36 Webb Street
East Gosford, NSW
Giving Voice: The Art of Dissent presents artists’ opinions on pressing social and political issues facing the world today. This powerful exhibition sheds light on a global state of distress, from major economic crisis, raging wars, pollution and climate change through to religious prejudice and racism. Audiences are moved to consider the complexities of issues that can often be portrayed in simplistic terms. Artists featured in this exhibition, which is curated by Dr Yvonne Rees-Pagh, include Cigdem Aydemir, James Barker, Richard Bell, Pat Hoffie, Locust Jones, Megan Keating, Michael Reed and Khaled Sabsabi.
Image Credits
Left: Christian Thompson Trinity III from the Polari series 2014, c-type print 100 x 75 cm
Centre: Cigdem Aydemir ‘Bombshell’ 2013 single channel video with sound, 11 min 3 sec
Right: James Barker Lest I Forget (detail), 2014 Cloth, wire, old rope, cast false marble.
