Curated by Isobel Parker Philip, Sideshow adopts the spatial logic of the circus sideshow as an allegorical blueprint for exhibition display.
Popular from the 1850s until the mid 20th century, circus sideshows situated each individual ‘exhibit’ within a makeshift tent structure. The architectural logic of these self-enclosed spaces exploited the tension between concealment and revelation. The tents were designed to cultivate anticipation and deliver shock and awe. Their fabric walls masked displays of the exotic and the other; biological or ethnological oddities were placed on podiums and peddled as human spectacles.
Sideshow re-stages the exchange between the unseen and the exposed. A series of micro-exhibitions are contained within freestanding tents erected in the gallery. Pulling back the curtain, the viewer is confronted with a profusion of grotesque and manipulated bodies. In these partitioned and screened spaces the body becomes a curiosity and the object becomes a performative agent.
Exhibition catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by a print catalogue designed by Daryl Prondoso, with an essay by Isobel Parker Philip.
évasion is a multi‐channel moving image and responsive audio installation exploring contemporary and historical cultures and practices of illusionism.
An escape artist seems to be breaking free from a straightjacket but the installation ‘traps’ him and the audience within its 8 channels of endlessly unfolding yet responsive performance.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
Exhibition catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by a print catalogue with an essay by Lone Bertelsen.
Curated by Jasmin Stephens, far and wide: Narrative into Idea explores the relationship between narrative and conceptual thinking in the work of five Australian artists.
Drawn to the momentum associated with any story, these artists are using forms such as oral history, sign writing, the open letter and the diorama to devise and set in train processes that harness and extend the narratives they are working with.
The exhibition considers how they produce a heightened awareness of their thought processes at the same time as creating work that anticipates viewers’ own narratives. These artists deploy precise expressive thinking that reflects both planning and an openness to the ways in which the relationships surrounding art – its intention, interpretation and reception – intersect with the inherent instability of narrative.
Exhibition catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by a print catalogue with an essay by Jasmin Stephens.
Paul Greedy’s Pressure Vessel is an audio installation that explores the dynamics of sound propagation in architectural space.
By mapping the gallery’s resonances, modes and dominant frequencies he will be creating instruments tailored to the particular acoustic qualities of the gallery.
Ultrasonic rangefinders will track a viewer’s movements through the gallery, activating sets of instruments that correspond to their locations; the viewer is both audience and performer, activating and embodying the experience of its characteristic resonances.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
Blue distance explores the disparity between spatial and temporal experience by looking at the prefabricated ruin as a catalyst for the psychological resonances implicit in architectural follies and eye-catchers of classical structures.
This exhibition highlights the ways in which Izabela Pluta adopts different mediums and diverse forms of imagery which relate to and overlap each other in tradition, function and materiality. This eclectic collection of works connote her conceptual interest in serendipitous encounters, the effects of time and how the photographic image operates as a vehicle for witnessing various states of ruin.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
About the artist
Izabela Pluta was born in Warsaw, Poland and migrated to Australia in 1987. She completed her undergraduate studies in fine art at The University of Newcastle (2002) and has a Master of Fine Arts (Research) from COFA, UNSW (2009). She is a PhD candidate in the School of the Arts, English and Media at The University of Wollongong. Pluta works in photomedia and installation and has exhibited widely in Australia. She has received a number of national awards and grants including from The Australia Council for the Arts, The Qantas Foundation and The Ian Potter Cultural Trust. In November 2011 she undertook an Academic Research Exchange at the Art and Design Research Institute at the University of Ulster in Belfast where this project began. Pluta has undertaken international artist residencies in Paris, Barcelona, Beijing and Western Australia. In 2012 Pluta was commissioned to complete a major public art work for the City of Melbourne on the CitiPower Sub Station in the CBD. Pluta lectures at the College of Fine Arts (COFA), UNSW and is represented by Dianne Tanzer Gallery + Projects, Melbourne and Galerie Pompom, Sydney.
Exhibition catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with an essay by Andrew Frost.
Bringing together different countries and language groups from across the Kimberley, Joonba, Junba, Juju is part of a gradually unfolding project that has strengthened these song and dance cycles in the region.
This exhibition is one in a series by an alliance of four leading Aboriginal-owned art centres in the Kimberley working together as Kimberley Aboriginal Artists (KAA). Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency, Mowanjum Arts and Culture Centre, Waringarri Aboriginal Arts and Warmun Art Centre present: Joonba, Junba, Juju – an exhibition focused on the power of material objects made and used for these song and dance cycles, complemented by digital media presentations of these performances.
With rising dust, a thick crust of body paint and songs in diverse Aboriginal languages, the sharing of performance unfolds. Central to this project from its inception has been the concept of wirnan in the East and wunan in the West. In the past, groups travelled on foot to visit neighbouring and distant communities. Wirnan/wunan refers partly to the formal network whereby people exchanged objects, materials and ideas. Transactions were governed by protocols determined by relationships of mutual obligation and kinship. Just as commodities such as shells, spear shafts, honey, meat, fruit and vegetables, wax and string made from kangaroo sinew were traded – so too were song cycles.
These cycles of song and dance incorporate painting, theatre, story and history. A socially significant form of entertainment, they are learned from childhood and practiced throughout life. They are intrinsic to Aboriginal art and cultural practice across the north of Western Australia.
The artefacts presented in Joonba, Junba Juju are cultural documents that are still in use today. The objects and narratives are at once ephemeral and changing yet they hold-steady knowledge specific to the languages and country of their genesis. Handcrafted objects that may appear humble often articulate complex narratives that encode constellations of knowledge associated with recent histories, Ngarranggarni (Dreaming), ethics and deeply personal experiences.
Working together, singers, dancers, objects and the audience become key to the telling and retelling of story. In this show are masks, headdresses, painted dance boards, thread-cross totems, spears, sticks and effigies of animals, characters and other spirit entities. These are objects that have been produced today but they draw from, and are part of, a much longer cultural continuum.
The narratives, choreography, music and design of a song cycle are either developed by senior men and women or they can be gifted by a spirit through a series of dreams. In this way they are spiritual but also very human creations arising from personal experiences, local environments and particular moments in time. These individuals then become the custodian responsible for the direction, performance and circulation of their joonba, junba or juju. There are multiple layers of meaning in operation that are not equally available to every singer, dancer or audience member; one learns and gathers greater depths of understanding over time.
Over the past four years, KAA art centres have worked together to facilitate the practice and sharing of joonba, junba and juju within and between our communities. This project has initiated camps, recordings and public and community performances which have seen senior artists, singers and dancers continue to pass on their knowledge and skills to younger generations.
In many ways contemporary art practice in the north of Western Australia sprang from joonba, junba and juju. The inspiring continuum of this art form will undoubtedly lead to new incarnations and influences across the spectrum of art and cultural practice in the Kimberley today. Understandings of this art practice outside of the region may be in its infancy but the strength of this practice locally is full of possibilities.
These performances have always been exciting, revelatory and shape-shifting experiences. It is in the viewing and appreciation of joonba, junba and juju by audiences today, within and outside of their communities of origin, where revelation now lies.
This project has received support from the Department of Culture and the Arts, Western Australia and the Federal Government through the Ministry for the Arts. It is supported by UTS Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning.
Exhibition catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by a print catalogue.
Too Much is Real brings together recent kinetic light sculptures alongside new works which explore design’s aesthetics of denial.
Inventive New York-based Australian artist, Ian Burns is UTS Gallery’s 2014 Artist-in-Residence. He creates curious and playful kinetic assemblages that combine mass-produced domestic objects with customised electronics. His first solo in Sydney Too Much is Real brings together recent kinetic light sculptures alongside new works which explore design’s aesthetics of denial.
Preoccupied with that revealing moment when we experience the beautiful and the ridiculous at the same time, he creates curious and playful kinetic assemblages that combine mass-produced domestic objects with intricate electronics, sound and light.
His residency has culminated in a charismatic new body of work titled Extended Stage, developed especially for the Goods Lines Tunnel and its 1853 sandstone bridge. Intertwining unexpected phenomena with a wry mix of new media and nostalgia, the project draws on the atmosphere and history of this overlooked site.
Extended Stage has been made possible by the support of UTS, City of Sydney, Bunnings Alexandria, Sydney Trains, RailCorp and Wembly House Pty Ltd .
About the artist
Ian Burns was born in Newcastle, NSW in 1964. Internationally recognised, he has held solo exhibitions in Dublin, Vienna, St. Louis, New York, Melbourne, Hobart, Paris and Madrid. Recent group exhibitions include Dark Heart 2014 Adelaide Biennale, In the Telling, ACMI, Melbourne, the Liege Biennial in Belgium (2012), the Anne Landa Award at the AGNSW (2011) and Housebroken at the Flux Factory, New York (2010). His work is included in public collections, including the Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main; the MCA, Sydney; the Berge Collection, Spain; the Chartwell Collection, Auckland; and the 21C Museum, Louisville, Kentucky. He is a current recipient of a Queensland College of Art, Griffith University Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship and is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery and mother’s tankstation, Dublin.
