Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
PROGRAM
CONTENTS
TREASURED OBJECtS
YVONNE CARRILLO-HUFFMAN LISA HILLI MIchAEL KISOMBO JD MITTMAN
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ENGAGING CoMMUNItIES
TALOI HAVINI DION PEITA KEREN RUkI LEA RUMWAROpEN ThELMA ThOMAS-LESIANAWAI
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ARtFoRMS RE/NEWED
RUTh McDOUGALL JULIA MAGEAU GRAy RITA SEUMANUTAFA GALE MANdy TREAGUS
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NELoKoMpNE RISES AGAIN: THE RE-AWAKENING oF pAINtING BARKCLotH IN ERRoMANGo, SoUtH VANUAtU
YVONNE CARRILLO-HUFFMAN
This presentation explores the importance of indigenous memory as a vast reservoir of knowledge in spite of a tragic history of Erromango islands, south Vanuatu contact with the outside world. This ongoing encounter over years nearly resulted in the islands dramatic depopulation and cultural fragmentation. It is a story of indigenous determination to revive cultural traditions. A crucial element in this process was the physical reconnection with Erromango cultural objects held in the Australian Museum that were collected a century ago. The presentation will showcase a short lm made in Erromango island in 2008 with Chief Jerry Taki Uminduru and Sophie Nemban, both Vanuatu Cultural Centre eldworkers for south Erromango, personal perspectives with a short introduction of this ongoing project which began in 2002.
TREASURED OBJECtS
AWAKENING CoLLECtIoNS: THE MCLEoD GIFt CoLLECtIoN - A VISIoN FoR tHE FUtURE
JD MITTMAN
In 2001 Dandenong Ranges resident, artist and eld collector Neil McLeod donated part of his personal Aboriginal and Pacic art collection to the Shire of Yarra Ranges. The McLeod Gift Collection, managed by Burrinja Cultural Centre on behalf of Council, is a unique and rare collection of objects from New Britain and Ireland Provinces in Papua New Guinea. Most of the items are ceremonial objects which had been produced in the second half of the 20th century. Until recently, the collection saw little light of day. Fragility of the objects, logistical challenges and lack of contextual information seemed to place these remarkable objects in the too hard basket. With the exhibition Secret Ingiets at Burrinja Gallery last year the collection has been opened up for future presentations and publication. Burrinjas Curator and Manager of Collections JD Mittmann will outline a vision for the collection for the future.
ENGAGING CoMMUNItIES
ACKNoWLEDGING THE BLooD GENERAtIoN
TALOI HAVINI
Acknowledging The Blood Generation is a collaboration between artist Taloi Havini and contemporary photographer Stuart Miller. In this presentation Taloi will speak about her dissatisfaction on the early history of photography on Indigenous peoples, which led her to collaborate on a new bold series of contemporary portraits titled, The Blood Generation. Featured within each frame are members of a tribe known as the Blood Generation - a term that was used throughout the 1990s to describe all children who were born into war, triggered from external interests in mining and sustained by local acts of resistance. Bougainvilles Indigenous landowners remain disheartened, displaced, and dissatised. The land issues remain unresolved and we ask ourselves who is responsible for the Blood Generation?
insiders perspective as a Collection Ofcer with the Australian Museums Pacic collection. It also looks at community engagement experiences from both perspectives of being within, and outside of this context and draws on experiences of working on recent Pacic art projects in and around Sydney.
ARtFoRMS RE/NEWED
with people and events across time and space. Textiles created throughout the Pacic are also carriers of vast stores of knowledge. Children and young adults learning about materials and techniques gain important information about their local environment. In social groups they receive and share stories, become grounded in their communitys cultural structures and beliefs, and are versed in how to read the genealogical threads found within particular patterns. This presentation aims to discuss several key questions in relation to the collection and display of Pacic textiles: When textiles are hung on walls or placed behind glass, what gets lost in our appreciation and understanding of their meaning, function and context?
What can textiles communicate about the Pacic that written texts and other aesthetic objects cannot?
How do we provide ways for visitors to engage with textiles in museum collections while still adhering to the duty of care in relation to their conservation? How are these collections of textiles perceived by contemporary Pacic Islanders? Can collections be made more accessible for Indigenous as well as Australian communities?
lauga faasmoa (Samoan oratory), establishing that this genre of Samoan music is indeed traditional Samoan music, despite the contemporary musical instruments used, context of performance and use of modern musical structures. My continued study of Samoan music (2014) will incorporate the same ethnomusicological approach, focusing on modern and traditional music in the Samoan communities of Australia.
Where does tradition end and the contemporary start? is part of what I am exploring as an artist who is co- curating and provocateur for the performance season of Stitching Up the Sea at Blacktown Arts Centre in Western Sydney in August 2014. Stitching Up the Sea is a meditation on the borders between the ephemeral and the permanent. An exploration of culture as a continuum and a questioning of what is valued and preserved in museums and the personal lives of individuals and communities. Over a month period, Blacktown Arts Centre will open its old church doors to diverse Pacic Islander communities to explore, practice, pass down and exchange cultural practices with
a focus on the implicit narratives in gatherings, rites and ritualistic performance. In my practice and in this role I have many questions around what is performance? Who is the performer, and who is the audience in a Pacic cultural context. What constitutes a cultural performance in a western facility and how do we ascertain its traditional and contemporary components and how is it validated as a cultural performance. My presentation/performance will be an open-ended public research discussion/challenge of concepts that Im exploring both in my practice and as curator for the Pacic performance program for Stitching Up the Sea. As a performance maker I like to construct performative conditions to investigate and realise some of my ideas through an activation of my embodied archive. I consider this platform as part of my artistic process and will discuss these provocations to extend contemporary contexts of performance and minimise the continual limitation of how Pacic people perceive their cultural performance possibilities in a contemporary context.
NAvIGAtING IMAGES
ANGELA TIATIA
Angela Tiatia is a multimedia artist and curator whose work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Mexico City, Honolulu and throughout New Zealand and Australia. Through her practice, Tiatia explores structures and exchanges of power - at an interpersonal, group and international level - and how these interactions affect identity, with particular consideration to their impact on the commercialisation and representation of the Pacic.
often through their food induced naps, to lend their voices. I remember thinking this must be the sound of heaven. I sang my way through life. Using my voice as a means to activate spaces of resistance and hope - vocal activism, self-determination and love informs my creative practice. Negotiating spaces of power through voice is not a new concept. Le Va O Leo, investigates the power of voice and story telling to connect spaces, people, communities and energies. To heal, stimulate, elevate, ground and engage. As an artist of Samoan/Oceanic heritage I dont see art as something that is removed from me, it is essential part of my being, my essence its a continuum of thousands of years of knowing and transference of knowledge through my lineage, my bloodlines. This is my heritage. As a Samoan woman who was born and grew up away from my ancestral homeland I have documented my contemporary stories mainly through song and oratory capturing moments.