20 August – 15 October 2022
16albermarle Challenge Space16 Albermarle StreetNewtown NSW 2042Thu – Sat, 11am – 5pmor by appointment
Presenting the works of seventeen artists—sixteen ladies and one non-binary particular person—from a non-public assortment of southeast Asian artwork, Our Grandfather Highway provides a possibility for Australian audiences to interact with a few of the most socially-engaged and topical artwork produced by up to date artists each rising and established from the area. On the similar time, the exhibition represents an essential lateral connection between Australia and the international locations in her rapid proximity. It’s directly a manner for underrepresented ladies and non-binary artists in Southeast Asia to seek out avenues for inventive expression or political commentary outdoors their native international locations, and an opportunity for Australians to interact with a plurality of pressing views located outdoors, however not removed from, the borders of the nation.
Arahmaiani Feisal (b 1961)
Bussaraporn Thongchai (b 1985)
Citra Sasmita (b 1990)
Emily Phyo (b 1982 )
Fitriani Dwi Kurniasih (b 1981)
I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih (1966-2006)
Ipehnur Beresyit (b 1993)
Kasarin Himacharoen (b 1989)
MM Yu (b 1978)
Maharani Mancanagara (b 1990)
Maria Indriasari (b 1976)
Olga Rindang Amesti (b 1994)
Restu Ratnaningtyas (b 1981)
Sam Lo (twenty first Century)
Sekarputri Sidhiawati (b 1986)
Soe Yu Nwe (b 1989)
Wawi Navarroza (b 1979)
Resistive to one-dimensional readings or an impulse to classify, the varied array of creative practices represented within the exhibition every take a look at the very definitions of gender and place which seem to bind them collectively.Collectively, they converse to a fluidity in id and expertise. Multifaceted, mutable and all the time inflected by temporal and spatial specificities, the works problem assumptions of a common female expertise, or of Southeast Asia as a cohesive and stuck regional entity.
But, it’s from this polyphony of voices that we glean shared issues and connections.Slightly than a monolithic narrative of womanhood, nationhood, or regionalism, the artworks in Our Grandfather Highway are threaded collectively by an emphasis on the physique and its atmosphere. They kind persistent reminders of the immediacy of a lived, contextually-sited actuality, because it wears itself on the physique, generally subtly, generally violently.
Every artist shows a way of self that’s all the time marked by and aware of its environment—in Wawi Navarozza’s (Philippines) intimate photographic self-portrait, and MM Yu’s (Philippines) immersive pictures of quickly urbanising Manila; and within the co-mingling of vulnerability, magnificence, and the grotesque in Soe Yu Nwe’s (Myanmar) glittering ceramic snake, and Bussaraporn Thongchai’s (Thailand) gown of human mammae rendered in gradations of charcoal.
Gathered in an intimate, shared house, the works lengthen an invite to look at, hear, and understand by the artists’ eyes and our bodies new attainable methods ahead—of voicing and staging resistance within the hopes of leaving an imprint.
CURATOR:Jennifer Yang accomplished a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) majoring in Artwork Historical past on the College of Sydney in 2022. Her analysis centres on East and Southeast Asian trendy and up to date artwork, and she or he wasawarded the College Medal for her dissertation on the up to date Chinese language-Indonesian artist Tintin Wulia. Jennifer has beforehand interned with Jakarta-based Museum MACAN’s curatorial and collections division in 2019-20, labored collaboratively with the Artwork Gallery of New South Wales’ public packages workforce for the 2021 ArtExpress Exhibition, and has been awarded for her speech responding to Samoan-Australian artist Angela Tiatia’s work. Her current work contains an essay on up to date Southeast Asian images, printed by the College of Colombia’s Undergraduate Journal of Artwork Historical past, and an article on the “forgotten” Chinese language-Indonesian painter Chiang Yu Tie written with the assist of the Sydney Southeast Asian Centre and printed by New Mandala.
