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- Convenor:
-
Lisa Stefanoff
(CDU UNSW)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Jennifer Deger
(Charles Darwin University)
- Format:
- Laboratories
- Location:
- South Australian Museum, Ngurra exhibit and Radford Auditorium, Art Gallery of South Australia
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 12 December, -, -, -, -, Wednesday 13 December, -
Time zone: Australia/Adelaide
Short Abstract:
A special public symposium in collaboration with the Art Gallery of South Australia and the South Australian Museum, exploring major 2017 TARNANTHI Festival exhibitions and a range of other current Australian Indigenous art and media projects, exhibitions, initiatives and research undertakings.
Long Abstract:
A special public symposium in collaboration with the Art Gallery of South Australia and the South Australian Museum, engaging major exhibitions in Adelaide's 2017 TARNANTHI Festival of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, and exploring a range of other current Australian Indigenous art and media projects, exhibitions, initiatives and research undertakings.
How are current curatorial and experimental art-making processes, new technologies and collaborative and sensory turns in cultural research reshaping relationships between Indigenous artists, anthropologists, major public cultural institutions, patrons and audiences in Australia?
What do the 'shifting states' of contemporary curating mean for what an artful 'shared anthropology' (Rouch) might look, sound and feel like?
Exhibition floor talks, presentations, art-response papers and conversations will explore the engagements, alignments, tensions and potentials of anthropologists, galleries, museums, Indigenous artists and art in Australia today.
Invited presenters include senior curators, artists, artist organisations, anthropologists and art writers.
One of four curated days in the Screen/Media/Art program of the conference.
Free and open to the public.
Meet outside the front doors of the South Australian Museum for a prompt 09:00 start
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 11 December, 2017, -Paper short abstract:
South Australian Museum Indigenous curator and Museum Anthropologist discuss the making of the 'NGURRA: Home in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands' exhibition, part of the TARNANTHI Festival, through a floor talk inside the show.
Paper long abstract:
South Australian Museum Indigenous curator and Museum Anthropologist discuss the making of the 'NGURRA: Home in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands' exhibition, part of the TARNANTHI Festival, through a floor talk inside the show.
Ngurra means home in the languages of Australia's Western Desert people. But it is more than that: Ngurra encompasses of history, memory and relationships. It is the sedimentation of human experience through the prism of place. 'NGURRA: Home in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands' is an exhibition that explores this foundational concept in contemporary desert life and art. It is therefore not simply an exhibition of art, but an exploration of where that art comes from and the world it expresses. The exhibition explores dynamic shifts in material culture and changing relationships to the materiality of 'home'. Through exploring youth culture, the exhibition also unpicks museum conventions in which the practices and traditions of older generations are commonly essentialised or prioritised as 'cultural'.
NGURRA is the product of a multi-year collaboration between the museum and the Ngaanyatjarra artists, and this presentation will explore the curatorial and creative processes that emerged in that relationship.
Paper short abstract:
A floor talk discussion of the collaborative curatorial practices that lie at the heart of the Art Gallery of South Australia's engagement with all exhibiting artists.
Paper long abstract:
Collaborative curatorial practices lie at the heart of the Art Gallery of South Australia's engagements with all exhibiting artists.
In this presentation Lisa Slade, Assistant Director, Artistic Programs will discuss the creation of some of the Gallery's TARNANTHI Festival exhibits through a floor talk in the exhibition spaces.
Artist Raymond Zada will discuss his work currently on show in the TARNANTHI exhibits 'Cicada Press: Under Pressure' and 'New Light'.
Paper short abstract:
The Miyarrka Media collective create screen based installations for museums and art galleries. They will describe their sensuous strategies designed attract and engage international audiences and why they claim this work as a yuta, or new, anthropology.
Paper long abstract:
The Miyarrka Media collective create screen based installations for museums and art galleries. Based in the Yolngu community of Gapuwiyak they have exhibited in the US, Europe, Australia and, most recently, in Taiwan. In this presentation three members of the collective will describe an curation figured in terms of creating a field of attraction, sensation and surprise and why they claim this work as a yuta, or new, anthropology.
Paper short abstract:
Desart supports community art centre artworkers to develop their curatorial skills and knowledge through a range of programs. This presentation will look at past and current work in this area.
Paper long abstract:
Desart supports community art centre artworkers to develop their curatorial skills and knowledge through a range of programs, from photography and writing workshops, to museum and gallery internships and participation in national Indigenous curatorial training initiatives.
Some of the key objectives of this support are to broaden Aboriginal community artworkers' undertandings of the possibilities for art when it leaves the community and to equip them with the skills necessary to take on greater roles and decision-making agency within management of their art centres, especially in relation to special projects and exhibitions.
Desart CEO Philip Watkins will share some stories from the organisation's past and current work in this area.
Paper short abstract:
As Martu filmmaker Curtis Taylor says, 'We are dreaming too, like the old people. We are dreaming with new technology.' Anangu-initiated exhibition Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters-Kungkarangalpa/Minyipuru with immersive experiences in the world's first high-resolution traveling Dome theatre.
Paper long abstract:
The 7m Dome theatre is animated by photogrammetry which projects 360-degree vision of ancient renderings in Walinynga (Cave Hill) in the APY Lands, the only Seven Sisters rock art of its kind. All who lie beneath the Dome are transported and immersed in its intricate 3400-year old images. Paintings, voice and animations track the sisters across the western and central deserts. Snakes slither, appear and disappear; boulders come to life and the eyes of the Sister's relentless pursuer blink in ever-watchfulness, while the quirky tjanpi Sisters twirl and swirl in playful readiness.
The exhibition responded to an urgent plea echoed by David Miller (2010), that 'the songlines have all been broken up' and Anangu needed 'help to put them back together.' How communities use museums rather than how museums use communities defined the curatorial approach, resulting in a curatorium which bought together knowledge holders from Indigenous and western spheres. Cultural, curatorial and anthro/archaeological knowledges were seen as equally relevant.
Apart from the preservation of sites along the Seven Sisters songlines, the trans-generational relaying of knowledge was of acute concern to elders, resulting in an archive for the next generation. New technologies make culture cool. As Mary Louise Pratt says, 'the colonised might not control what emanates from the dominant culture' but they can fashion it to their own purposes and shape it through their encounters. And they did!
Co-presented by Inawinytji Williamson, senior law woman and a custodian of the Seven Sisters songlines.
Paper short abstract:
'Instauring' (Souriau) is work-to-be-done, the impetus that a work has for completion. Curatorially, it contrasts with 'installation'. Are dreamings instaured in Aboriginal Australia? When such art is moved from country to city, does 'instauration' reconceptualise installation?
Paper long abstract:
'Instauring' is a concept from Etienne Souriau (Professor of Aesthetics at the Sorbonne in the early 20th century), picked up recently by Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour.* It refers to the 'oeuvre à faire' (the work-to-be-done), trying to capture the impetus that a work has for its own completion, a spark that is already there in its first moments of creation. In that, from a curatorial point of view, it is in contrast with 'installation', which is the presentation of works deemed complete.
This talk explores the utility of the concept of instauration for Aboriginal Australia, where the 'work-to-be-done' might exist virtually as a dreaming that is always-already poised for realisation in object, icon, song, dance, etc. When art objects are extracted from the context of performance, for instance from country to city, does 'instauration' offer a focus to think again about their installation?
* Étienne Souriau, The Different Modes of Existence, Introduction by Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour, Minnesota, 2015.
Discussant Melinda Hinkson.
Paper short abstract:
A moderated discussion of the major themes that have emerged throughout the art :: anthropology :: art symposium.
Paper long abstract:
The art :: anthropology :: art symposium was designed to canvas questions linking and repositioning artists, curators, anthropologists and major public galleries and museums involved in collaborative curating of Indigenous art and culture today.
Join symposium presenters for a discussion of the major themes that have emerged throughout the day.
Moderated by Jennifer Deger (James Cook University) and Lisa Stefanoff (NIEA, UNSW Art & Design).