FREE Exhibition Tour and Artists Talk: Sat 18 June, 2-4pm
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Featuring Gretta Louw, Lily Hibberd, Brook Andrew, Curtis Taylor, Jenny Fraser, Sharon Nampijinpa Anderson and the Warnayaka Art Centre.
Networking the Unseen is the first exhibition of its kind to focus on the intersection of indigenous cultures and zeitgeist digital practices in contemporary art.
While digital networks manifest physically as tonnes of cabling, and electrical or electronic devices, the social and cultural impacts of the networks remain somehow invisible, eroding clearly felt boundaries of geography, place, culture and language.
Together with artist and curator Gretta Louw, Furtherfield presents an exhibition and event series that brings together concepts and experiences of remoteness and marginalised cultures, with art-making in contemporary society.
Five culturally and geographically disparate Australian artists – Gretta Louw, Jenny Fraser, Lily Hibberd, Brook Andrew, and Curtis Taylor – and artists, including Neil Jupurrurla Cook, Isaiah Jungarrayi Lewis, and Sharon Nampijinpa Anderson from the Warnayaka Art Centre in Central Australia, present work situated at the intersection between avant garde digital, media, and installation art, the sociological study of digital and networked culture, and activism.
Networking the Unseen proposes a radical rethinking of widely accepted stereotypes concerning the impact of networks on contemporary global cultures, digital art, the avant garde, and indigenous art-making.
It tackles subjects ranging from digital colonialism and cultural marginalisation (or, conversely, diversity/empowerment) within an increasingly connected, online world to universal concerns around cultural change as a result of technological migration.
The exhibition extends our focus to the extremities of the global digital network. It subtly proposes ways to claim power back from centralising forces of control to use these tools for positive change; for intercultural exchange and empowerment for marginalised communities.
The Phone Booth Project, by Paris-based Australian artist Lily Hibberd and Martu indigenous filmmaker and artist Curtis Taylor, is a multimedia installation that demonstrates the intricate relationship between community and technology and how this is uniquely affected by local circumstance and environmental factors. Phone booths have all but died out in urban environments, and yet this beautiful and nuanced work, created in the Western Desert region of rural Australia with the indigenous Martu communities, highlights the vital role that they continue to play at the edges of the network – where cell phone reception is often non-existent, and landline phone connections in every house are an infrastructure expense that neither the locals nor the government is willing or able to carry.
Brook Andrew is an internationally recognised Australian artist whose practice in installation, print, neon, and performance often draws on his Wiradjuri indigenous heritage. In Costumes for the Cell (2012) Andrew’s instantly recognisable digitally-facilitated contemporary revision of a traditional Wiradjuri pattern – a powerful example of the blending of old and new culture; tradition and technology – becomes a moving installation as it is worn by performers at the opening.
Gretta Louw’s ongoing collaboration with artists from the Warnayaka Art Centre has produced the two video works Digital Desert and Is the Desert Still the Desert in a Digital World? in 2012, followed in 2014 by the YAMA project – an immersive, on-site multimedia installation built in the remote central Australian desert. The immersive installation at Furtherfield manifests the physical installation in wall paintings, screens, and light. It invites us to explore the nature of cultural change brought about by the arrival of advanced digital technologies.
Name That Beach, a video work by a fore-runner of the indigenous digital art movement Jenny Fraser, is programmed alongside works by emerging artist Curtis Taylor in a fascinating and inspiring insight into contemporary digital media art-making in Australia.
The works in the exhibition invites reflection by non-indigenous audiences on the techno-cultural change within their own society, and their individual relationship to internet technologies.
Exhibition Tour and Artists Talk
Saturday 18 June 2016 – 2-4pm – Furtherfield Gallery & Commons
Join Neil Jupurrurla Cook, artist and Director of the Warnayaka Art and Aboriginal Cultural Corporation, and Gretta Louw, artist and curator, for a curated tour of Networking the Unseen and then head down to Furtherfield Commons for a Show and Tell about their collaboration and work.
FREE – Limited places, booking essential (register)
Free family workshops at Furtherfield Commons
Every Saturday from 23 July to 27 August, 2-4pm
Fun, interactive workshops for local families aged 5 upwards.
Details to be confirmed – Register your interest here
Young digital artists residency at Furtherfield Commons
25 July – 5 August, Monday-Friday, 11am-4pm
Adventures in arts and technology for young people 13-18 living in or attending school in Islington.
Details to be confirmed – Register your interest here
Networking the Unseen – Selfies and Alterity
Thursday 4 August, 6-8pm – Furtherfield Gallery & Commons
6-6.45: Gretta Louw will give a tour of the exhibition Networking the Unseen at Furtherfield Gallery.
7-8 join us at Furtherfield Commons where she will present preliminary work on a Warlpiri (First Nations Australian) selfie and photo editing app, a collaboration with the Warnayaka Art Centre, and discuss the ways in which your emojis are not innocent, digital colonialism, and how selfies, social media, and alterity can be used for social good.
FREE – Limited places, booking essential (register)
Do It With Others – Art and Solidarity in the Age of Networks
Saturday 6 August, 12-5pm – Wysing Poly, Wysing Arts Centre, Bourn, Cambridgeshire.
With Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett, Gretta Louw, Tim Waterman and They Are Here
This day long symposium explores art as a commons (defined as the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society) in the age of networks and neoliberalism. How can the practices, circulation, appreciation and stewardship of arts be emancipated for all? Exploring tensions between digital inclusion and cultural diversity in the digital global hegemony.
FREE – Limited places, booking essential (register)
Brook Andrew is an internationally acclaimed Australian artist of indigenous (Wiradjuri) and Celtic descent. He has had significant exhibitions at world class institutions like the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and the Tate Britain, and been part of numerous international showcases, such as the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art and the Asian Art Biennial. Andrew’s practice is intensely research-based, resulting in interdisciplinary works and immersive installations.
Jenny Fraser is a screen-based artist, curator, and educator. Her work utilises popular cultural references as a bridge to challenge viewers’ frames of reference. She redefines the art of curating as an act of sovereignty and emancipation, and founded the groundbreaking cyberTribe online gallery over a decade ago. A Murri of mixed ancestry, Fraser has received many accolades for her trailblazing work, most recently being awarded a prestigious Australia Council Fellowship in 2012 for her project Midden.
Lily Hibberd is an Australian artist and writer, working between Sydney and Paris. Her practice centres on marginalised people and histories and the restoration of memory through interdisciplinary collaborative social practice. Hibberd’s recent project include major exhibitions at the Musée des art et métiers (2015-16), Paris, and Spaced 2: Future Recall for Perth International Arts Festival (2015).
Gretta Louw is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer exploring the potential of art as a means of investigating cultural and psychological phenomena, particularly in relation to new technologies and the internet. Born in South Africa, she grew up in Western Australia and is currently based in Germany. Her work has been exhibited widely – in New York, Berlin, Jakarta, and Tel Aviv, amongst others – including in a number of public institutions such as the Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Stadtgalerie Mannheim, and Kunstverein Ludwigshafen.
Sharon Nampijinpa Anderson is an artist and educator and one of the directors of the Warnayaka Art and Cultural Aboriginal Corporation. Born near Mt Doreen in the Tanami Desert, Nampijinpa holds a degree from Bachelor College in Darwin, Australia has exhibited her art work widely, including at Galerie Yapa in Paris, Cooee Aboriginal Art Gallery in Sydney, and at the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair. Nampijinpa is passionate about preservation of Warlpiri culture and has been involved in numerous projects to this end, such as the Arts Workers Extension Program in Australia and the production of the 2013 publication Warnayaka Art Centre: Life in the Digital Desert (Ed Gretta Louw).
Curtis Taylor is an emerging Martu Australian filmmaker and video artist. He has had screenings of his work at the National Gallery of Australia, the Fremantle Arts Centre, the Western Australian Museum of Art, and many more public institutions. Taylor is also currently involved in the VR film project, Collisions, which is debuting at the Sundance Film Festival.
Warnayaka Art Centre is a nationally renowned Australian indigenous (Warlpiri) art centre. The centre is home to a number of internationally successful Warlpiri painters including Lily Nungarrayi Hargraves and Molly and Rosie Napurrurla Tasman. Neil Jupurrurla Cook is the lead media and installation artist; he is the Director of the Warnayaka Art and Aboriginal Cultural Corporation and has shown his sculptural and media installations at the Darwin Art Museum.
Furtherfield was founded in 1997 by artists Marc Garrett and Ruth Catlow. Since then Furtherfield has created online and physical spaces and places for people to come together to address critical questions of art and technology on their own terms.
Furtherfield Gallery
McKenzie Pavilion
Finsbury Park, London, N4 2NQ
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