The Bodies That Were Not Ours

18 March - 23 April 2006

Tony Albert (Queensland), Genevieve Grieves (Victoria), Terrance Houle (Canada), Shigeyuki Kihara (New Zealand), Duncan Robinson (Tasmania)

Opens 6-8pm Friday 17 March 2006 with opening night performance by Shigeyuki Kihara

The Bodies That Were Not Ours is presented by Linden and Next Wave as part of Festival Melbourne2006, the cultural festival of the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games. It examines issues such as race, identity and the colonisation of the body, while exposing the growing use of video art by young contemporary Indigenous artists.

Tony Albert is originally from Cardwell in the Rainforest area of Cape York, North Queensland. Now Brisbane based, his work explores his identity through an urban context. Provoked by the stereotypical representations of Indigenous Australians, his ironic use of wordplay in his work i am a young austrAlien examines cultural alienation and displacement. He is a member of the proppaNOW Aboriginal artists collective, a dedicated group of individuals whose urban expression questions the position that is ascribed to Aboriginal people and culture within Australia.

Desire, by Genevieve Grieves, was created as homage to the many Indigenous women who have been represented as objects of desire for a white audience. It is also a statement about sexual relationships on the frontier in Australia and grief experienced by Indigenous men in its wake. Genevieve is a descendant of the Worimi-Kattang nation of mid-north coast New South Wales and of Scottish and Irish immigrants who came to Australia in the early days of the colony.

Terrance Houle explores uneasy cultural reconciliations in his short film The Metrosexual Indian, which plays with stereotypes of the contemporary and urban Indian: the metrosexual against the kitsch gang members dressed in novelty Native American party costumes. Terrance Houle is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary media artist and a member of the Blood Tribe. He has travelled to reservations throughout Canada and the United States to participate in Powwow dancing and other native ceremonies.

Taualuga: Last Dance is a performance video work by Shigeyuki Kihara. The work stems from a traditional Samoan cultural dance known as the 'taulaluga' (last dance). As with all of Shigeyuki's work, this video performance explores the traditional Samoan culture and how its values and principles can be applied to her urban environment in New Zealand. Shigeyuki has been exhibiting internationally since 2000 and is a part of the multimedia performance collective the Pasifika Divas.

The experience of tracking is the premise behind Duncan Robinson's video installation The Tracker, in which the tracker, tracks himself. The images, which were taken on his mobile phone in airport, trains, planes, on assorted floors and in bedrooms, explore Duncan's personal existence and provide him with answers about his identity. Duncan has been exhibiting since 2002. He is involved in the Hobart music scene, has just released his first solo noise album and is currently in the process of writing a film.

This exhibition is accompanied by artist's floor talks with Tony Albert, Shigeyuki Kihara and Duncan Robinson at 3pm Saturday 18 March.

Gallery Hours are Tuesday - Sunday 1.00 - 6.00pm. For further information and/or images please contact Programs Manager Jan Duffy on 9209 6794 or email info@lindenarts.org.

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