Nguurramban: From Where We Are6 July - 12 August 2007 Vicki Couzens, Jonathan Jones, Reko Rennie-Gwaybilla, Vicki West Curated by Jirra Lulla Harvey Four installation artists reflect on the traditions that permeate contemporary Indigenous life. In the language of the Wiradjuri, "nguurramban" means your country, home, and place of birth. But how has this word retained meaning in the face of continual displacement? These artists examine their own connection to country and the dislocation associated with changing environments. They do not necessarily live on their traditional lands yet nguurramban remains a consistent theme in their work. Vicki Couzens blends Aboriginal knowledge and contemporary European drystone walling techniques to create kuuloorr woorrkngan. Translating to lavastone birthplace, the stone installation constructed within Gallery 1 references the traditional houses built along the volcanic lava flow of the Western District. Jonathan Jones uses everyday materials such as electrical cable, household light bulbs, paper and cotton thread to reconfigure traditional notions of Indigenous cultural expression. Jones' White Poles in Gallery 2 uses light and shadow to engage with concerns of land and country, individual and community. With a background in graffiti art, Reko Rennie-Gwaybilla's Blak Urban Guerrillas asserts a continuum of Indigenous presence in the most inner urban environments. The stencilled walls in Gallery 4 ask the viewer to reframe romanticized notions, re-think the mythologizing of culture and be educated on Indigenous struggles. Vicki West uses materials with strong purpose. Like her people, the dodder vine is often considered an unwelcome pest despite being Indigenous to Tasmania. West has woven herself a symbolic shelter, using natural fibres sourced from her homelands. A Nasty Piece of Work in Gallery 3 invites the viewer to question the ways in which their own identity is informed by a sense of place and belonging. "Woven through our traditional lands are complex knowledge systems. Over the years we have grasped, pulled and twisted the threads of this cultural fabric, dragging it with us into the most constricting social environments," says curator Jirra Lulla Harvey. "This exhibition reflects on a complex Indigenous concept that has become simplified through popular use. It reassesses contemporary connections to country and the meaning of nguurramban, from where we are now." For further information or images please contact Nguurramban: From Where We AreIn the language of my people, the Wiradjuri, your country, home, and place of birth are encompassed by one word, nguurramban. But how has this word retained meaning in the face of continual displacement? Four installation artists reflect on the traditions that permeate contemporary Indigenous life and reassess the meaning of nguurramban, from where we are. Connection to country does not have a cross-cultural translation. The concept has become simplified through popular consumption, a catch phrase of mythologized Aboriginal spirituality. Misunderstandings are so tainted with notions of exoticism that they can relegate us to the role of weird and wonderful racial "other". Connection to country is not a term that was forced upon us; it is indeed one that we embrace. But our creative expressions, including language, are filtered through a racial lens and this is where connection to country becomes lost in translation. Our cultural beliefs should not be classed as mythologies, doomed to co-exist with the "tribal nomads" and "noble savages" of past misconceptions. Our culture has a fluidity that has allowed for its survival in the face of a barrage of assimilation tactics. Nguurramban: From Where We Are has brought together artists from inner Sydney, Melbourne, coastal Tasmania and rural Victoria to examine their own connection to country and the dislocation associated with changing environments. The four artists in this exhibition do not necessarily live on their traditional lands, yet nguurramban remains in their work. Jonathan Jones' lightscapes will often draw on the line work of Wiradjuri artists whose motifs were used on scar trees and other ceremonial objects. Vicki Couzens creates stonewall installations that mimic the traditional stories around the dreaming lines of the eel. Reko Rennie-Gwaybilla's urban sidewalk stencils are infused with the creation stories of his people. Vicki West has woven herself a shelter out of organic materials indigenous to her homelands. It is clear that these works have a lot to say about Indigenous relations to contemporary environmental spaces. Woven through our traditional lands are complex knowledge systems. Over the years we have grasped, pulled and twisted the threads of this cultural fabric, dragging it with us into the most constricting social environments. Experiences of forced relocation are commonplace for Aboriginal people. Our recent history is one of confinement, dislocation and claustrophobia that started with mission life. From landscapes etched with ceremony we were herded onto patches of pastoral land. On the missions cultural traditions were outlawed. This meant no speaking in language, no dancing, no singing, no painting of the body, no ceremony. But connection to country cannot be contained within boundaries, it floods beyond - it will never fit. Many families moved from the missions to fringe camps. The corrugated humpies and third world conditions represented resistance and self determination because here on the riverbanks culture could be practiced with comparative freedom. It was from these camps that many children were stolen and placed in homes. Forced assimilation translated to personal alienation so families moved. Each time a whisper of the welfare reached camp families would pack up and move, again and again and again. Some ended up "town Blacks", ostracized from the "fringe dwellers", and some moved to cities, ostracized from their nguurramban. In Victoria, the move to Collingwood and Fitzroy often saw three families under one roof. Today, an educated, apolitical Aboriginal can gain full access to resources. But still, do we fit? As we claim increasing levels of ownership, we challenge cultural typecasting. But the weird and wonderful racial "other" is not as easy to sell once they start shaking up the status quo. Therefore once the traditions are regenerated, the languages revived and the disadvantages tackled, will we still be fashionable? The contemporary Aboriginal arts sector provides an outlet for the regeneration of cultural practices. But it does not necessarily provide refuge from racially based pigeon-holing. The dichotomy between traditional and contemporary art relies on a linear history that is often insufficient. To polarize forms of cultural expression is to regenerate a caste system, where traditional is synonymous with authentic and contemporary with elitist. The racism embedded in this categorization is as subtle, yet complex as the interplays of light and shadow cast from a Jonathan Jones sculpture. Nguurramban represents more than our country, home, and place of birth. It represents connection. Because connection to country is synonymous with kinship, ceremony, rights, laws, for tens of thousands of years it simply meant survival. Dislocation has affected our relationships to nguurramban but it cannot destroy them. Through the creation of symbolic environments Vicki Couzens, Jonathan Jones, Reko Rennie-Gwaybilla and Vicki West have made external, that which we have been asked to repress; from the missions, to the slums to the bureaucracies. Jirra Lulla Harvey, Curator "the arts play a key role in addressing challenges concerning identity, expression, mutual understanding and a sense of belonging". 1 Linden is committed to the continued development and promotion of contemporary Indigenous art to a broad audience. For the past ten years Linden has presented, with the assistance of the City of Port Phillip, an annual exhibition of some of the best contemporary Indigenous Australian art. The exhibition is an integral part of a diverse program that supports our vision here at Linden, to be a vibrant, evolving centre for the creation and presentation of contemporary art; a place where audiences are encouraged to enjoy and support contemporary art and where the artist's own vision is unlimited. Nguurramban: From Where We Are represents an ongoing dialogue between the traditional and the contemporary, between the community and the individual, between artists and audiences. Linden recognises the issues many contemporary Indigenous artists face in trying to establish a profile for their art within their own artistic tradition, while at the same time, establishing themselves as independent contemporary artists within a broader contemporary art scene. Indeed as Hetty Perkins writes "One of the recurring issues with commentary on any Indigneous art project is the inability to appreciate that artists can operate in many spheres of cultural representation outside of their own cultural specificity." 2 Nguurramban: From Where We Are is, above all, a contemporary art exhibition. The artists - contemporary practitioners who seek to explore issues and ideas relating to the here and now but inextricably linked to what has gone on before. Giacomina Pradolin 1. Reconciliation at the Australia Council, 18 May 2007, p.1 Jonathan Jones, (Kamilaroi/Wiradjuri) was born in Sydney where he continues to live and work. His work has been shown in a number of local and international museums and galleries including Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Palazzo Della Papesse Centro Arte Contemporanea, Italy. In 2002 Jones was awarded the New South Wales Indigenous Arts Fellowship Award and in 2006 he was the winner of the inaugural Xstrata Coal Emerging Indigenous Art Award at the Queensland Art Gallery. In 2006 Jones also completed a major public works for the Westpac Bank Headquarters in Sydney's CBD. He is represented by Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney. Jones uses everyday materials; such as electrical cabling, household light bulbs, paper and cotton thread to reconfigure traditional notions of Indigenous cultural expression. Jones' work uses light and shadow to engage with concerns of land and country, individual and community. At first appearing minimal, his work soon reveals highly textural surfaces and often dynamic plays of light and shadow. His better-known woven light works balance a simple use of electrical cabling and light bulbs with sometimes complex weave patterns of his own design. Through a play of natural and artificial light upon these woven reliefs and the resultant shadows, Jones produces beautifully lyrical works that resonate with life and energy. As the natural light changes so too does the intensity, shape and angle of the shadows cast, yet the overall regularity and relief remain constant, serene. By using weaving motifs and repetition Jones also provides a sense of interpersonal connectedness and community, and of traditional practice to his work. Jones' very literal titles like lumination fall wall weave and blue poles echo these visual motifs while capturing the constructive element inherent in his work, as well as drawing a very contemporary bow. Vicki Couzens (Keerray Wurrong/Gunditjmara) is ngapoon/mother to five ngart/daughters and koorrookee/grandmother of four. She received the inaugural Deadly Art award in 2003 and her work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria and numerous public Australian galleries. Together with Lee Darroch and Treahna Hamm, Couzens designed Victoria's largest Indigenous public art display, Birrarung Wilam situated on the north bank of the Yarra at Birrarung Marr. kuuloorr woorrkngan is ... Translating to lavastone birthplace, this work references the woven fish traps and stone houses built along the volcanic lava flows of the Western District. Couzen's worked with Stonewaller, Alistair Tune, to blend Aboriginal knowledge and contemporary European drystone walling techniques. The resulting work reflects on both Aboriginal uses of kuuloorr/lavastone and the European stone walls used to fence the land during colonization. The spiral shape mimics the flow of water as it rushes through traditional eel and fish trap channels, while alluding to the eternal birth; life; death and rebirth cosmology of Aboriginal spiritual life. Its solid structure represents pre-colonization stone houses, the remains of which can still be found in the Western district. The woven wood and grass despite its delicate nature hold the work together. This references the wooden weirs which secured woven grass eel and fish baskets, as well as "evoking the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things, thus suggesting that respect and balance are the keys to survival and harmony." The stones are raw and powerful bringing ancient ambience, strength and longevity to the urban setting. Unrefined living energy direct from the Earth unsettles the rhythms of city life, calling upon the onlooker to reconnect with nature. Vicki West is currently completing her Masters of Fine Arts at The University of Tasmania. Her work is featured in public collections around Australia and she is well known for her creative workshops and commitment to Tasmanian cultural activities. West was commissioned by the National Museum of Australia to participate in We're Here, a collection of works by Tasmanian Aboriginal artists exploring themes of kinship, identity, and political campaigning. Shortly after West's opened her first solo exhibition at Arts Alive Launceston. A Nasty Piece of Work explores West's notion of home, in relation to her own sense of place and identity as a member of Australia's most heavily colonized Indigenous community. Her work assesses the alienation associated with public misconceptions of cultural eradication. In doing so, West celebrates survival in the face of dispossession. West uses her materials with strong purpose. Like her people, the dodder vine despite being Indigenous to Tasmania is often considered an unwelcome pest. Kelp, traditionally used to make water carriers, resurfaces in her contemporary works as a metaphor for cultural survival. Natural fibres, sourced from North Eastern Tasmania, have been woven and sculpted by West to create a symbolic shelter. She invites the viewer to question how a sense of place and belonging informs their own constructs of identity. Reko Rennie-Gwaybilla (Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay/Gummaroi) has a background in graffiti art and an interest in the politics of representation. A full-time journalist at The Age and a contributor to the national Indigenous newspaper The Koori Mail, Reko is regularly confronted with conflicting conceptions of Aboriginality. He is currently completing his Master of Arts at RMIT titled, Remember Me: Searching for Identity and Raising Awareness: A Creative Exploration of What it Means to Be A Contemporary Urban Indigenous Artist. Rock art has become an international symbol of Aboriginality, evidence of a Black history, mythologized for popular consumption. Through stencil art Reko asserts a continuum of Indigenous presence in the most inner urban environments. Blak Urban Guerrillas reflects on the freedom fighters that challenged the attempted erasure of an Indigenous presence through the denial of citizenship rights. Reko's work asks the viewer to reframe romanticized notions, re-think the mythologizing of our culture and be re-educated on our struggles. marree - stones Stones speak to each other, passing on messages Stones are healing marree peeneeyt peeneeyt maleeyeeto marree laka maar, wooka meetako yakeen teertpa leerpeen marree ngootyoong VL Couzens © 2001 Catalogue published by This project was assisted by the City of Port Phillip |
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