Artist: Jay Hutchinson ‘… and they actually still eat meat pies here! Yes – the women too … yes meat pies …’ Meat pies. That’s a little #flashbackfriday from me calling … My sister? My mother? Anyway, calling somebody after I first moved to Ōtepoti Dunedin. They still eat meat pies. Away from the spaces […]

Hope seems absent when an exhibition featuring around 400 works by more than sixty artists situates decolonisation in the past. Memories of Underdevelopment: Art and the Decolonial Turn in Latin America, 1960–1985 (22 March – 09 September 2018) at Museo Jumex in Mexico City examines a shift in Latin American visual arts towards decolonial thought […]

To be vandal is to damage what you are supposed to revere, to bring to an end what you are supposed to reproduce. If talking about sexism and racism damages institutions, we need to damage institutions. – Sara Ahmed[^1] Dismantling forms of oppression, for instance, involves a certain way of destroying what has been built […]

Artists: Richard Bell (with As Long As It Takes), Marcel van den Berg, Blade, Alice Creischer, Bonita Ely, Ho Rui An, Gordon Hookey, Patricia Kaersenhout, Karrabing Film Collective, Tshibumba Kanda Matulu, Tom Nicholson, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Rachel O’Reilly (with PALACE, Valle Medina & Benjamin Reynolds), Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Ryan Presley, Rammellzee, Farida Sedoc, The Otolith […]

Artist: Selina Thompson The thing about grief is that it is hard to place and yet there are constant reminders of it everywhere. The other thing about grief is that we are conditioned to believe that it is a transient state. What happens when the grief is carried for generations and embedded in one’s history […]

Artists: Damiano Bertoli, Erik Bünger, Catherine or Kate, Michael Cook, Fayen d’Evie and Bryan Phillips, Léuli Eshraghi, Alicia Frankovich, Susan Hiller, Alex Martinis Roe, Angelica Mesiti, Clinton Nain, Rose Nolan, Erik Bünger, Sean Dockray, Hannah Donnelly, Rosie Isaacs, Wrong Solo. Curators: Hannah Mathews, Helen Hughes and Frances E Parker. Cultural geography, language, power Anyone familiar […]

Watch video here » Kalinda Vary’s practice explores ideas of emotionality, vulnerability and power, humour and humiliation, constraints of language and the problems with representations of identity. Her recent work concentrates on queer concerns of the body, performance within social structures and imposed cultural identities. In ‘Paralleling Emotions’ Kalinda discusses using humour as a tool, her […]

Are you worried about the weather? Feel like the seasons are out of sync? Fretting about longer summers, strange storms, or rising sea levels? Fear not; the Bureau of Meteoranxiety (or BoMa) may have the appropriate therapy to calm your climate concerns. Perth-based multimedia artists Olivia Tartaglia and Alex Tate will be running their ‘public […]

What you are about to read is a demonstration of Ara Irititja given at the International Australian Studies Association (InASA) Conference in December 2016.[^1] In the darkened lecture theatre, a clip from the Ara Irititja archive is projected onto the wall. It shows old people including Rene Kulitja’s father Walter Pukutiwara performing inma at a […]

In southeast Australia the Aboriginal population is young; more than fifty percent are under twenty-five-years old. Yet, Aboriginal young people in Victoria remain a minority within the broader community. Many have limited opportunities to engage in programs reflecting their everyday experiences or to identify with others from similar backgrounds. The following is a conversation between […]

Settlers Miners Same Thing – Jacky Green Although I know Aboriginal sovereignty as always present, embedded within country, I find my strongest encounters with specific sovereignties of place often occur in unexpected moments – like a bolt of remembering – chanced upon in the presence of a scar tree or a reference found deep within […]

OLD PEOPLE 2018; NEW PEOPLE 2018; DUE WEST 2018; RUN DEEP 2018; all digital images

Between the subjugation and indifference of colonial governance, Ngurungaeta, William Barak leads the Wurundjeri people in a sustained decolonising movement, seeking land-rights at Coranderrk. They petition ministers, writing letters and walking to Melbourne to protest directly to the Premier. is goes on in the face of dispossession. And, in 1881 there is a rupture in […]

I have long been concerned with memories of colonial violence in the Australian landscape; places that have witnessed harm and continue to hold these traumatic memories in the present. Their existence was something I was attuned to as a child constantly travelling regional New South Wales with my family, visiting places and people, connecting with […]

‘Did you know Barangaroo is named after a courageous and spirited Aboriginal woman?’ So says a section of the Barangaroo website titled ‘The Stories’, the question posed above an aerial image of a glass-walled building. Barangaroo is an urban redevelopment on the harbour of what is currently called Sydney; a place where the ‘past meets […]

A sunset over gentle oceans~ Bondi Beach Awakening Time-lapse shot of a waterfall~ Caressing Waters (alternatively Majestic Beauty, or, Waters of Life) The still course of a waterway,mirroring the bushland above~ River Reflections Uluru during a storm, at sunrise~ Heartland Revival People want peace in their lives and in their surroundings and nothing delivers as […]

We were trying to blast this myth that the non-Western Other exists in a time and place that is completely untouched by Western civilization or that in order to be authentic one would have to be devoid of characteristics associated with the West. It’s reasonable to say that non-Western cultures have a better understanding of […]

Beginning in March 2016, I undertook a two-year period of practice-led research as part of a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) research degree at Sydney College of the Arts. The origin of the research project lay in a self-reflexive inquiry into my attraction to working with steel and other metals in my art practice. Through […]

Georgina Watson currently lives in Tāmaki Makaurau and has recently completed an MFA at Elam School of Fine Arts. Recent projects include ‘Haughty Skies’ in Distracted Reader #3, Auckland, forthcoming (2018), Anxious Garden, Enjoy Gallery, Wellington (2017), Pack Lite Organised by Stella Corkery, NY, LA, Auckland (2017) ‘Collective Fruits’ in Wormhole, Melbourne (2016), amongst others. […]

Lowlee: Can we just talk like now and you can record or…?  Beth: Yeah yeah yeah OK I’m recording now  Lowlee: Ye, kele.  Beth: Ye, ka…  Lowlee: Werte!  Beth (laughs): Werte! Ayenge Arrernte akweke ware akaltye-irre….ke, no – how do I say it in the past tense?  Lowlee: Ke  Beth: ke, akaltye-irreke, akweke ware, ke […]

Through natural dyeing techniques, text- based scores, social practice and installation my work considers the practising of custodial ethics within still colonised and ecologically compromised contexts. The Decolonist Flags came about through imagining an Australian national identity underpinned by First Nations knowledges. Comprised of dyed thread, gum leaves and blossoms Decolonist Flag I is created […]

American contemporary mythologies spring from American founding mythologies. The events of Columbus’ arrival, the American revolution, and the signing of the Constitution washed away terra nullius to reveal the American nation. The enduring desire to avoid facts or truths is evident in America today via the fervor for conspiracy theory.[^1] Nearly fifty per cent of […]