Current Season Current Exhibitions Current Events Future Exhibitions Past Exhibitions Touring Exhibitions Exhibitions for Hire International News Exhibition Proposals Support our Gallery Upgrade ACP Membership FOLLOW US My Account 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 Traffic - Crossing Currents in Indigenous Photomedia 5 September - 12 October, 2003 17 October - 23 November, 2003 Tue - Sun: 11.00am - 6.00pm Galleries One, Two and Foyer Playful, poignant and provocative, this exhibition examines the work of contemporary Indigenous artists from Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. Operating in a zone where the nomadic ideals of the information age meet the paranoiac restrictions of the post-September 11 world, these artists suggest new possibilities for creative dialogue, a dynamic traffic in ideas crossing the often-closed borders of regional politics. While the photographic and digital media presented in this exhibition are relatively new, patterns of artistic and cultural dialogue between the Indigenous people of Australia, Aotearoa (New Zealand) and the Pacific Islands predate the arrival of European settlers. Similarities between distinctive languages, geographical regions and everyday objects attest to a healthy trade suppressed in the process of colonisation. Recent developments in communications technology, however, have provided Indigenous artists with an opportunity to establish these networks of support anew, not just in the Pacific area but in a global context. Drawing on a range of approaches and photographic media, Traffic articulates the unique movement of cultural perspectives in the Pacific region through what is fast becoming a universal language. Vernon Ah Kee hellothere, 2003 austracism, 2003 Queensland artist Vernon Ah Kee's stark digital prints are devoid of images except for those conjured up by their darkly satirical puns. Like Peter Robinson, Ah Kee combines the visual economy of the minimal aesthetic with the conceptual strategy of presenting text as art. hellothere and austracism might resemble the newspaper headlines, billboards and road signs integral to the urban landscape, but they exploit the language of advertising to deliver confronting commentaries on Australian political life. Vernon Ah Kee is represented by Bellas Gallery, Brisbane Destiny Deacon Waiting for Goddess, 1993/2003 Melbourne-based Destiny Deacon, of the K'ua K'ua and Erub/Mer peoples of Maryborough, Queensland, is a mistress of kitsch, manipulating her viewers' senses to perfectly fuse the polarised emotions of humour and horror. Echoing her moving image work, Waiting for Goddess reads like a creepy fairytale, constructing a surreal urban creation story frame by frame around a black plastic doll. The doll has become something of a signature for Deacon, who like Michael Parekowhai uses children's toys and pop culture imagery as a vehicle for her ideas on spirituality in a recognisable retro style. Destiny Deacon is represented by Roslyn Oxley 9 Gallery, Sydney Shigeyuki Kihara Fale Aitu, House of Spirit, 2002 Shigeyuki Kihara's multi-disciplinary art practice embraces elements of performance, photomedia and fashion design, combining the melodrama of Hollywood with the expert theatricality of opera. She has mixed Samoan and Japanese heritage and in 1999 she competed in the Miss Queen of Samoa Fa'afafine beauty pageant, a major cultural event in the Samoan community. In 2002 she performed at the Asia Pacific Triennal in Brisbane as part of the Pasifika Divas who were also invite to In Transit the performing artists festival in Berlin in 2003. The three images from the series Fale Aitu, House of Spirits allude to comedic skits performed by Samoan males at festive occasions, and feature the artist adopting a range of personas, masquerading as both subject and object. Visually referencing nostalgic velvet paintings of sultry native maidens, Kihara uses cultural costumes manipulate identity and defy stereotype. Shigeyuki Kihara is represented by White Space Gallery in Auckland Andrei Jewell / James Pinker / Lisa Reihana Love Will Make Love Foundation Auckland-based artists' collective Love Will Make Love consists of photographer and documentary maker Andrei Jewell, sound artist James Pinker and moving image and performance artist Lisa Reihana. Their video Fantastic Egg emerged from discussions on social and genetic engineering and their possible effects as an impediment to romance and sexuality. Set in an indeterminate near-future urban landscape, it focuses on the reactions of various female figures to a mysterious, almost sacred egg. Referencing on a range of visual styles from Blade Runner and retro futurism to post-war New Zealand painting, Fantastic Egg is less a didactic narrative than an enquiring montage, a neon-lit study of the implications of technological development fusing past, present and future into a kaleidoscope of sound and vision. Lisa Reihana is represented by Mori Gallery, Sydney Michael Parekowhai You’re My Best Friend Part of a series of portraits of action figures, Auckland-based Michael Parekowhai's monumental diptych You are My Best Friend pays homage to the relationship between those icons of the Western, the Lone Ranger and Tonto. As emblems of popular culture, Tonto and the Lone Ranger represent the power relations inherent in the American frontier and the supremacy of 'white cowboy' over the Indigenous 'Indian'. Parakowhai finds vitality in the paradoxes embedded in such cultural interaction. Neither naive nor cynical, he revels in popular culture. Despite their complexity or perhaps because of it, these filmic figures remain symbols of a possible way through, a perfect team. Michael Parekowhai is represented by Michael Lett Gallery, Auckland Nathan Pohio Flag, from a Town called Lawrence / Bullrider / Moonwalker, 2002 Up-and-coming Christchurch artist Nathan Pohio's three short video loops, presented side by side on domestic colour televisions, are continue the playful reworking of that unique icon of Western popular culture: the cowboy. Tough, solitary and heroic, the cowboy is at once the epitome of masculine colonial ideals and an enigmatic outsider figure, reckless and full of abandon yet tied to the pastoral history of his region. Like strange home movies, Pohio's humorous inversions tease out the mess of contradictions at the heart of this powerful cultural symbol, be it through graceful footage of Maori rodeo star Merv Church, a children's dress-up party, or a lonesome cowboy discarding his trademark swagger to moonwalk coolly along the shores of Te Rauone Bay. Rachael Rakena Rerehiko, 2002 Dunedin digital video artist Rachael Rakena plays on 'rorohiko', the Maori word for computer for the title of Rerehiko, her immersive two-channel moving image installation. The submerged imagery of and sound contained within the installation frees Maori culture from physical constraints by suspending a traditional Kapa-Haka in water. Incorporated into the underwater cultural performance of swimming dancing figures is a text based dialog, and like Robinson and Ah Kee's work the text becomes patterned, a language to be read and see. The floating fragments of e-mail text are bi-lingual in English and Maori and are fragments from correspondences produced while developing the project with her local Iwi. By working collaboratively with dancers, musicians and members of her community, Rakena not only expresses herself as an artist but also acts as a spokesperson for Iwi. Rachael Rakena is represented by International New Zealand Artists Natalie Robertson The Souvenir Scarves from the 2002 Tiki Tour series, 2002 The photomedia practice of Auckland's Natalie Robertson is characterised by an interest in the cultural landscape of New Zealand and the relationship between Maori and Pakeha attitudes to the land. She is well known for her photographs of street signs bearing the names of Moari people and places. In Tiki Tour she continues her interest in cartography, representations of the land and cross-cultural dialogue within her home of Aotearoa. In 2002, she began photographing her velvet cushions, collectable spoons and souvenir scarves in an exploration of place, travel and tourism. As with Deacon's work, the symbols depicted on the scarves - ferns, Maori maidens, warriors and artefacts - draw attention to the way in which Indigenous cultural heritage is promoted and defined. Peter Robinson Into the Void, 2001 I Exist I Am Not Another I Am I, 2001 The computer generated minimalist lambda prints of Auckland-based artist Peter Robinson employ the universal artistic vocabulary of binary code, the language used in the operation of computers. Like Rakena's work it draws Indigenous cultures into the digital framework, where an oral and visual culture finds its own way to operate within the contemporary. Each image is composed of ones and zeros, referencing on and off, yes and no, positive and negative, white and black, opposing and complementing forces. This code can be strung together to form eight-digit groups called bytes, creating tense patterns of push and pull. Robinson plays on the idea of presence and absence inherent in the code by incorporating phrases relating to question of existence from a variety of philosophers and scientists, including Stephen Hawking, Dante Alighieri and Albert Einstein. The dynamic code of ones and zeros also forms the word IO, a supreme entity in Maori creation. By combining forms and materials drawn from both mythology and new technologies, Robinson engages with the primitivist tendencies of contemporary art. Peter Robinson is represented by Anna Bibby Gallery, Auckland and Peter McCleavey Gallery, Wellington. Christian Thompson Emotional Striptease, 2003 Christian Thompson is an aboriginal artist of the Bidjara people from the Carnarvon Gorge Springsure region of South West Queensland and has lived in Melbourne since 1999. For Emotional Striptease, Thompson presents studio-based portraits of young Kooris in front of backdrops of iconic Melbourne cultural institutions. The models are armed with Indigenous weapons based on those held in museum collections, and pose in incomplete costumes reflecting the fragmented picture of Indigenous culture that such collections traditionally present. Directly referencing the nineteenth-century 'noble savage' portrait, these images question the relevance of these institutions to aboriginal people. Christian Thompson is represented by Gabrielle Pizzi Gallery, Melbourne Image Credits: •  Nathan Pohio, Moonwalker (still), 2002 •  Vernon Ah Kee, hellothere, 2003 •  Destiny Deacon, Waiting for Goddess, 1993/2003 •  Shigeyuki Kihara, House of Spirits, 2002 •  James Pinker and Lisa Reihana, Fantastic Egg, 2003 •  Michael Parekowhai, You're My Best Friend, 2002 •  Nathan Pohio, Moonwalker (still), 2003 •  Rachael Rakena, (still), 2002 •  Natalie Robertson, The Souvenir Scarves, 2002 •  Peter Robinson, I Exit I am Not Another I am I, 2001 •  Christian Thompson, Emotional Striptease, 2003 Policies & Legal Notices  |  Copyright: Australian Centre for Photography, 2012. All Rights Reserved. Site by Suture Net  |  Hosting by Dreamhost  |  ADMIN