LAU MANU

Lau manu is a digital fresco of a prophetic vision; when the wounded sky and sea swallowed one another and only the fragile essence of a being remained.  In the not-so-distant gaze into the horizon they work and perform customs from the old world seeking the survival of the ancient song birds for future assurance of the continent. The unforeseeable healing is at an unprecedented stand still.  

Lau manu means birds, plural in my indigenous language of Tongan. In this work I want to poetically identify the power of birds in Oceania as spiritual and visceral guides in the anthropogenic ecocide. 

This project was supported by

Australia Council for the Arts – Resilience Grant.

Create NSW – Arts Rescue & Restart funding

Blacktown Arts

The Invisibles

My home is nestled between Katoomba and Leura. I was inspired (like many) during the lockdown period to find new walks in the Blue Mountains national park, that I could do literally by placing my foot beyond the doorstep. I also wanted the experience of regularly repeating walking routes, until they were so familiar that my home space had the possibility of extending into the forest. I attempted to search with my body, the energy and form of the images I had for The Invisibles, on the sandstone rock landscapes, amidst the eucalypts, ferns and black cockatoos. This experience has added a layer of intimacy in my connection to the country of the Gundangurra and Darug people, in which my family and I live on.

WeiZen Ho 2020

The Moth and The Bat

A Cautionary Tale from the Pandemic.

The lockdown was an opportunity to try to make sense of the message that Nature is trying to send us. I noticed that most of the bushwalks around my suburb of Earlwood were taken over by increasing numbers of people, escaping their homes, seeking to connect with nature. What exactly were they seeking? The reserve at Wolli Creek is home to a large number of species. This work was inspired by the creature and the plants I see there.

There is always a dilemma…. how should humans negotiate their space in Nature? What happens when the balance in this relationship is disturbed? We never seem to learn. Nature gives, but she takes back!

Carlos Gomes 2020

All of a flutter

When presented with the opportunity to create 360 degree video I thought of a circular tower of paper, so I would be surrounded on all sides. The reference is to Borges’ “The Tower of Babel.”

Inspired by artists Boris Nieslony, Mike Parr and  Richard Serra, I have made several performances in which I use reams of either black or white A4 paper.

In this video the paper does not represent the life of an office worker or administrator, but rather the more Kafkaesque image of a man overwhelmed both by paper’s materiality and by its implications: responsibility, authority, obligations, and the impossibility of a truly blank page.

Allan Schacher 2020

Kali Madonna, a post- pandemic Goddess.

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to reflect on their past, and imagine the aftermath. We have entered a portal, a parallel universe, between one world, the known past, and the world of the unknown future. Imagination and transformation are keywords in this pandemic-effected work that seems timelier than ever. The apocalyptic nature of events unfolding over the pandemic led to the concept of this work.

For centuries the religious iconographies of the Madonna and the Goddess Kali have shaped the spiritual and social construct of Catholic and Hindu societies. As Kali Madonna, a composite of hybrid iconographies, I am both artist and sacred art, drawing the audience through a mythical portal inhabited by the "terrible divine feminine" - the monstrous female who incorporates birth and death, giver of life and slayer of ignorance. The body becomes a conduit for transformation through ritual, dance, and embodiment, as you, the virtual pilgrim, travel through sacred terrain to worship at the inner sanctum of Kali Madonna, the post-apocalyptic Goddess.
Rakini Devi 2020