SafARI: Kate Blackmore, Dale Harding, Laura Moore. LIve Francis Barrett, Linda Brescia. curators Liz Nowell and Christiane Keys-Statham — 14 March to 5 April 2014

Curators: Liz Nowell and Christiane Keys-Statham
Cross Conversation: curators with the artists on Saturday 15 March at 3pm
Exhibition dates: 14 March to 5 April 2014

Live: Francis Barrett, Saturday 22 March from midday
Live: Linda Brescia, Saturday 29 March from 3 to 6pm

SafARI 2014

SafARI flies the flag for the alternative spirit, collaboration and exchange. SafARI highlights the ‘grassroots’ venues that are the breeding ground of future creative generations — the Artist Run Initiatives (ARIs). When Sydney hosts the Sydney Biennale, SafARI shows visitors the city’s alternative visual arts landscape of experimental, conceptual and time-based venues.

For the tenth edition, independent curators Liz Nowell and Christiane Keys-Statham have devised two major exhibition components: SafARI and SafARI LIVE. SafARI presents the work of fourteen emerging and unrepresented artists (including three collaboratives) across venues ranging from Artist Run Initiatives to public spaces. Over the exhibition period, SafARI LIVE presents six performance artists. Participating spaces are Alaska Projects and The Cross Art Projects in Kings Cross; The Corner Cooperative, DNA Projects and Wellington Street Projects in Chippendale; and Conductors Project in St James Station in the city.

Laura Moore, Proof #5, 2013. Pigment print, 80 x 120 cm

Kate Blackmore, 2014

Kate Blackmore & Jacinta Tobin, Ngallowan (They Remain), 2014.

SafARI at The Cross Art Projects

Kate Blackmore

Kate Blackmore is a Sydney-based artist whose performance and video practice often explores themes of violence, power and control. For SafARI 2014 Blackmore has collaborated with Dharug Elder Jacinta Tobin on a new video work titled Ngallowan (They Remain). Through performance and song, Blackmore and Tobin each respond to the metaphor of ‘white washing’, creating an interplay between presence and disappearance that questions the way in which history is written and recorded. Blackmore is a founding member of Brown Council (with Kelly Doley, Frances Barrett & Diana Smith) whose live performances and video works have been shown in a range of Australian and international contexts including Museum of Contemporary Art (Syd), Artspace (Syd), National Museum of Contemporary Art (Seoul), and Gallery of Modern Art (Bris). In 2013 Blackmore toured Europe with Brown Council and also undertook an Australia Council for the Arts solo studio residency in Barcelona.

Dale Harding
A descendant of the Bidjara and Ghungalu people, Dale Harding was born in 1982 in Moranbah, Central Queensland. Still in the early stages of his career, Harding’s work has received critical attention and has been included in a number of high-profile exhibitions. In 2013 these included String Theory: Focus on Contemporary Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and My Country, I still call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane.

One of Dale Harding’s Elders shared a childhood experience from Woorabinda Mission in Central Queensland. As a child they were witness to what is known as ‘the punishment tree’. The punishment tree should be understood as a torture device. The authorities of Woorabinda Aboriginal Mission, Taroom Reserve and other Aboriginal missions around Queensland employed punishment trees as a form of corporal punishment. The punishment tree on Woorabinda was a large hardwood tree on the outskirts of the settlement that was solid and rigid enough to be used as an involuntary anchor. The tree had horizontal holes bored through it at right angles to each other so that two steel bars could be passed through the tree to form a horizontal cross, approximately two and a half feet off the ground. Forged at the four ends of the crossed bars were steel rings. These steel rings completed the cross so that the bars could not be passed back through the tree. This formed the Queensland Crucifix. The word crucifix comes from the Latin cruci fixus — meaning fixed to a cross. The act of crucifixion was most often used to punish political or religious agitators, slaves and those who had no civil rights. It was performed to terrorise and dissuade its witnesses.

Dale Harding, Punishment tree: Queensland Crucifix, video component. (Sound only; no image.)

Laura Moore

Laura Moore is an emerging photographer based in Picton, NSW. Her work examines identity and representation, using her own body and those of her friends and family members to evoke everyday experiences, observations and memories. Her work acknowledges the difficulties of travelling from childhood to the realities of adulthood and the marks of change and time on the human body. Laura is also interested in the depiction of women, the effects of sunlight and portraiture throughout the history of art, film and photography. Winner of the 2012 ID Portraiture Award, Laura has also recently undertaken an artist residency at PICA in Perth.

SafARI LIVE

Reflecting the strong presence of performance art in the Sydney scene, SafARI LIVE features the work of seven Sydney-based performance artists and collectives. The artists present interventions and new work at the SafARI 2014 venues: Alaska Projects, Conductors Project (St James Station), The Corner Cooperative, The Cross Art Projects, DNA Projects, Wellington Street Projects.

Occupation: a new performance by Frances Barrett. Saturday 22 March: The Cross Art Projects from Midday.

Every Saturday throughout SafARI, Frances Barrett’s Occupation performance, will consist of taking drugs to produce a state of sleep in the SafARI exhibition spaces of Alaska Projects, The Cross Art Projects and The Corner Cooperative. Occupation explores the notion of occupying, transforming and disrupting space — both physically and psychologically.

Curators: Christiane Keys-Statham is a freelance curator, writer and photographer who has worked in Germany, the Netherlands, Outer Mongolia, Thailand and the UK in diverse areas of the arts and culture sectors. Liz Nowell is an independent Sydney-based curator, writer and project manager who has worked for diverse organisations including Tandanya, Country Arts SA and Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre.

Installation view, 2014 showing Laura Moore and Kate Blackmore. Photography by Lara Merrington.

Installation view, 2014. Photography by Lara Merrington.

SafARI 2014. Photography Laura Moore

Links

Kate Blackmore at http://www.kateblackmore.net

Dale Harding, Punishment Tree, Queensland Crucifix (detail), 2014 soundtrack at https://vimeo.com/88742829

Live artists

Linda Brescia at lindabrescia.com

Francis Barrett at http://francesbarrett.com

Contemporary Art and Feminism at https://www.contemporaryartandfeminism.com/

Contemporary Art and Feminism event Transgressive Teaching at Sydney College of the Arts, Saturday 29 March 2014, 10am to 6.30pm.

Venue:  Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, Park Drive, Lilyfield NSW (enter opposite Cecily Street).