TALKING ART & IDEAS
This segment of Talking Art and Ideas features distinguished Kalkadoon and Arrernte curator Hetti Perkins and Kokatha and Nukunu artist Yhonnie Scarce in conversation with Fiona Salmon, Director, FUMA.
Friday 25 June 2021
Online event
Yhonnie Scarce, Hollowing earth (detail), 2016-17, blown and hot formed Uranium glass, dimensions variable, Collection of the artist, © the artist, courtesy THIS IS NO FANTASY, Melbourne. Photo: Janelle Low
TALKING ART & IDEAS
Fiona Salmon in conversation with Hetti Perkins & Yhonnie Scarce
Looking Glass: Judy Watson & Yhonnie Scarce
Organised by TarraWarra Museum of Art and Ikon Gallery with curator Hetti Perkins. Touring nationally with NETS Victoria.
Flinders University Museum of Art
Flinders University I Sturt Road I Bedford Park SA 5042
Located ground floor Social Sciences North building, Humanities Road adjacent carpark 5
Looking Glass is an important and timely exhibition which brings together two of Australia’s most acclaimed contemporary artists—Waanyi artist, Judy Watson and Kokatha and Nukunu artist, Yhonnie Scarce.
At its heart, the exhibition is both a love song and a lament for Country; a fantastical alchemy of the elemental forces of earth, water, fire and air. Watson’s ochres, charcoal and pigments, pooled and washed upon flayed canvases, have a natural affinity and synergy with Scarce’s fusion of fire, earth and air. Watson and Scarce express the inseparable oneness of Aboriginal people with Country, a familial relationship established for millennia.
Together these artists offer a far-ranging and holistic portrait of Country where the creation and experience of art recalls the lived, remembered and inherited history of Aboriginal people. Yet, while their works may refer to specific events, their enigmatic and often intimate forms, gestures and marks also imply an immersive timelessness outside of a linear chronology; an existence today that is more than the ‘now’. Colloquially, this is often referred to as the Dreaming, an extraordinary perception of the connection of Country, community and culture.
Watson and Scarce, like all Indigenous Australians, share recent and personally painful histories of the destruction, exploitation and degradation of not only the land, but the people of the land. Essentially, this exhibition is about Australia’s secret and dirty war—a battle fought on many fronts from colonial massacres to Stolen Generations, from the Maralinga bomb tests to the climate emergency. In their works, the artists poignantly remind us how the pursuit of the Great Australian Dream is not what it seems. It is, in reality, a nightmare, a shimmering mirage, a candle in the coming storm
Exhibition Supporters
NETS Victoria Organisational Partners
Flinders University Museum of Art
Flinders University I Sturt Road I Bedford Park SA 5042
Located ground floor Social Sciences North building, Humanities Road adjacent carpark 5
Telephone | +61 (08) 8201 2695
Email | museum@flinders.edu.au
Monday to Friday | 10am - 5pm or by appointment
Thursdays | Until 7pm
Closed weekends and public holidays
FREE ENTRY
Flinders University Museum of Art is wheelchair accessible, please contact us for further information.
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