At GoMA this afternoon, for the second in the Gallery’s Contemporary Australia exhibition series "Contemporary Australia: Women" — celebrates the diversity, energy and innovation of contemporary women artists working in Australia today.
Monika Tichacek: To All My Relations - relates to the two and a half years Tichacek spent in the jungles, mountains and deserts of South and North America, where she immersed herself in solitude in the natural environment. Here, Tichacek spent extended periods of time in the Amazon experiencing the lifestyles of Shamanic traditions of the native inhabitants. This profound meeting with nature is reflected in this new body of work as the vast mystery of life and the various aspects of human experience are explored.
Judith Wright, has made A wake 2011. Her first major figurative installation, it marks a new development in her long meditation on the loss of her daughter, who died shortly after birth many years ago. Wright says ‘the power of the shadow to conjure absence’ directed her to make A wake. The ancient Greeks associated shadows with the soul, and this is true of Wright’s musicians: their shadows are the soul of their music. The title of the work also suggests that to be awake to the memory of the departed is the only way left to give them life — they persist in our memories as fleeting shadows: we glimpse them only out of the corner of our eye. Thus, these fantastical musicians are assembled to accompany, with pomp and ceremony, the passage to the afterlife: every shadow is a ghostly refrain of that original loss. Wright had previously collected antique masks for her works — in this work, she has gathered obsolete antique instruments that embody the memory of the music they once made.
Therese Ritchie, is a resident Darwin artist, photographer and graphic designer. Long involved with what she calls a practice of propaganda through her graphic design work, Ritchie brings a component of that strategy to her art. There is an element of these works that is didactic, persuasive, making a case. But in these art works, where she is freed from graphic art’s demand for clear, direct communication, Ritchie explores the complex and paradoxical terrain of human and race relations.
Amata painters, The Amata community is located in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands of north-western South Australia. For ‘Contemporary Australia: Women’, grandmothers, their daughters and grandchildren at Tjala Arts, along with other family members, have collaborated to produce a magnificent group of seven large paintings, which they regard as their most significant body of work to date. The Gallery has forged an enduring relationship with the Amata community — they know where their paintings are held and appreciate that they will be viewed and enjoyed by the public, while remaining accessible to their Anangu families for generations to come.
Natalya Hughes, The After Party 2012 — a perverted parlour room overrun with discomforting ornamentation. Beautiful from afar, the work is, on closer inspection, overflowing with imagery: the wallpaper features a colony of purple beavers gnawing at one another, paintings taunt us with suggestive forms and kooky patterns, and a bizarre dining suite sits plumply at the heart of the installation.
Brisbane's Sandra Selig made her name with her sublime site-specific installations, where curving planes are suggested through the regular disposition of threads strung through the gallery space between architectural points, suggesting weightless ephemeral geometric forms.
The Long Gallery and River Room, located on level 1 is a striking contemporary space filled with natural light. With its towering ceiling and impressive display of contemporary art, features floor-to-ceiling glass windows which provide the best Brisbane river and city views.
It is huge to have such an amazing concentration of Art works.
Amazing exhibition, really inspiring, thanks GoMA!
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