Alt/Text
22 July 2023 - 24 September 2023
Curator: Jenna Lee
Artist: Damien Shen, Ebony Birks, Jazz Money, Jenna Lee, Kait James, Libby Harward, Mackenzie Lee, Steven Rhall, and Tony Albert
Artists:
Location: Main Gallery
Alt/Text brings together First Nations artists who engage in acts of alteration, intervention and transformation of found objects. By deploying text, language and visual symbols, they each alter narratives of representation, identity, community and country.
This exhibition presents diverse practices and narratives spanning across assemblage, installation, painting, poetry, jewellery and works on paper by local and interstate artists.
“Inspired by my own obsessive collection of vintage books written about us, without us - I wanted to bring together artists whose practices demonstrate how we as First Peoples use materials, processes and language to create new narratives of self-determined representation.”
- Jenna Lee, Alt/Text curator and artist.
Opening Night
The opening night will be held on Friday, 21 July, from 6pm, at Incinerator Gallery alongside exhibitions Collective Breath and Lomiga Lua: i Luga ‘o le Moana (Issue Two: Over the Ocean): Leitu Bonnici
Artist Bios
Damien Shen is a South Australian man of Ngarrindjeri (Aboriginal) and Chinese descent. As an artist he draws on both of these powerful cultural influences to create works of intense personal meaning. In using his artistic talent to share his story he aims to open the eyes of viewers to new ways of seeing Australian identity and Aboriginal art.
Damien Shen constantly pushes his practice across different mediums. From time consuming, labor intensive drawings and paintings to bleeding watercolors, printmaking and photography, he is constantly constructing and deconstructing the world around him. Through this imagery he better understands his identity and the identity of those that help to shape the world he lives and the content remains relevant to contemporary Australian issues around race, history and politics.
In February 2016, Damien Shen was the winner of the Blake Prize (emerging category), December 2015, the winner of the Prospect Portraiture prize, and a finalist in the prestigious Whyalla Art Prize and Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award along with being hand-picked for the Art Gallery of South Australia’s Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art.
Damien Shen lives and works in Adelaide, South Australia.
A proud descendant of Kamilaroi and Dunghutti people, Ebony draws inspiration from her cultural background when creating her hand-crafted pieces. EB jewellery takes artistic inspiration from an enduring sense of identity and Ebony’s personal relationship to country. Through the minimalist, understated designs, Ebony demonstrates a contemporary and distinctive aesthetic free from influence of the commodified and short lived trends that saturate the current jewellery market and media.
Her studio currently in Brisbane, Ebony identifies as one of an emerging class of young designers hoping to render a distinctly local aesthetic to her art and jewellery. Using recycled precious metals, all leftover cuttings are placed into jars to be melted down for later use. Ebony’s brand aims to have minimal to zero waste, as ethical and transparent practises are fundamental to the brand. She hopes to demonstrate the significance of environment, both through the jewellery design; as well as through maintaining sustainable and environmentally friendly craft and supply practises.
Jazz Money (she/they) is a poet and artist of Wiradjuri heritage producing works that encompass installation, digital, performance, film and print.
Their writing has been widely published nationally and internationally, and performed on stages around the world, including: TEDx Sydney, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Sydney Opera House, Literature Live! Mumbai, Performance Space New York, PEN International, and a wide range of arts and literary festivals in every Australian state and territory.
Jazz's first poetry collection, the best-selling how to make a basket (UQP, 2021) was the 2020 winner of the David Unaipon Award. In 2023 she is a Clothing Store resident artist at Carriageworks in Sydney.
As a cross-disciplinary artist their work has been presented in public settings and leading institutions including: HeK Basel, Switzerland; The Shed, New York; Pivô, São Paulo; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; ACMI, Melbourne; Powerhouse, Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, Sydney; Carriageworks, Sydney; Fremantle Biennale; Hyphenated Biennale; and others.
Working across different mediums, Jazz’s practice is centred around questions of narrative and legacy: place memory, First Nations memory, colonial memory and the stories that we tell to construct national and personal identity.
Utilising Punch Needling techniques, she embroiders kitsch found materials, such as souvenir tea towels, that reference colonial settlements and histories, and subverts them with Indigenous imagery and familiar references.
Through the use of humour and vivid colours, Kait addresses the way white western culture has dominated Australia’s history, and her personal reflections on her Indigenous heritage.
A descendant of the Ngugi people of Mulgumpin (Moreton Island) in the Quandamooka, Libby Harward creates artworks that break through the colonial overlay to connect with the cultural landscape, which always was, and always will be here. Her political practice, in a range of genres, continues this decolonising process. Libby describes her practice as a process of simultaneously listening, calling out to, knowing and understanding Country.
Libby’s arts practice spans over twenty years, initially as a community, street and graffiti artist. During the past 7 years her focus has been on developing a conceptual arts practice, resulting in regular invitations to exhibit works both nationally and internationally. Major recent works include the ALREADY OCCUPIED series on Yugambeh Country (Gold Coast), and DABIL BUNG (Broken Water) with First Nations along the Bidgee and Barka (Murray-Darling River system).
These works engage a continual process of re-calling – re-hearing – re-mapping – re-contextualising – to de-colonise, cultural landscapes, utilising low and high-tech media with elements of sound, image, installation and performance, engaging directly with politically charged ideas of national and international significance.
Mackenzie Lee is a writer and editor currently studying Creative Writing at the University of Canberra. Having been passionate about writing for all of their life, Mackenzie has accrued over ten years of evolving knowledge and experience in both personal and professional writing that has allowed them to grow as an author and as a person. As well as writing, they also have a strong passion for editing, and have experience in proofreading and editing multiple forms of writing; creative, academic, and professional.
Though they am open and able to conform to nearly all forms of writing–whether it be fiction, non-fiction, professional or academic–Mackenzie's greatest strengths lie in creative writing. They personally enjoy challenging themselves by trying different styles, topics, and genres, however they favour fiction and creative non-fiction, as it allows for expression of their creative side.
Public Program
Public Program
Saturday, 16 September, from 2pm
Free – registrations preferred
Join Alt/Text curator Jenna Lee and participating artists as they discuss how the act of altering found objects becomes an act of resistance and reclamation, celebrating First Nations’ artistry.