BREATHING LIFE
Pigment ink printed on cotton linen
Textile panels, (130cm x 250cm)
'UNITY' was exhibited in the curated exhibition 'Landing Points' at Penrith Regional Gallery & Lewers Bequest. Along with commissioned essays, 11 contemporary artists look to Tracey Moffatt’s work as a starting point in consideration of the last 20 years of race, place and identity in Australia.
Eleven artists (established and early career) produced new works for the show, across the mediums of painting, performance, photography, film, installation and blogging.
These artists are: Tim Johnson, Jason Wing, Alana Hunt, Caroline Garcia, Victoria Garcia, Carla Liesch, Nicole Monks with Luke Butterly, Mark Shorter, Cigdem Aydemir, Hayley Megan French and Joan Ross.
The artists responded to the cultural complexities layered in the Australian landscape and our relationships to it.
‘ UNITY’ is a layered, interactive graphic installation that examines landscape and identity. Audiences are encouraged to become part of the artwork and the landscape it depicts, by wearing the garments adorned in the same pattern, documenting their experiences through photograph, and potentially sharing it in the digital landscape.
The artwork depicts an alien, floating landscape populated with native flora and fauna, inspired by my personal experience of Australian bushland growing up in Leumeah. It explores a series of contrasts—personal and universal, belonging and not belonging, Western and South East Asian values, chaos and order, the natural and the man-made, and our real, imagined and digital lives. This work is also infomed by the notion of ‘belonging to the land’ found in Indigenous groups in both Australia and the Philippines.
