Sub~Lingual
11 November 2022 - 27 November 2022
Curator:
Artist(s): Serwah Attafuah, Visaya Hoffie, Alexander Powers, and Athena Thebus.
Location: Main Gallery
Sub~Lingual is an exhibition of play and subversion through the pluralisms of language and translation.
From the Latin ‘under the tongue’, Sub~Lingual speaks with a vital breath, looks beneath the surface, and articulates the coded languages of club/sub/pop cultures, cyberworlds, and chthonic architectures.
Bringing together material language including painting, sculpture, video, and dance – new commissions together with existent works posits text and language as movements to dismantle existing power structures that govern our bodies, tongues, gender, sexuality, and desire.
Sub~Lingual is a participating exhibiton in Neighbourhood Contemporary Art Festival, a festival of music, performance and visual arts based in the western suburbs of Melbourne.
Co-presented by Incinerator Gallery, Footscray Community Arts and The Substation, Neighbourhood Contemporary Art Festival will take place over 18 days from the 11th - 27th November 2022. The curatorial framework of the festival is based in expanded ideas of language and translation. Neighbourhood Contemporary Art Festival will reinvigorate the arts ecology and domestic art tourism post-COVID to further position creativity and culture in Melbourne's western suburbs as vital to local cultural revival.
Serwah has collaborated and been commissioned by clients including Mercedes Benz, Nike, GQ, Adobe, Paris Hilton and Charli XCX. Recent notable achievements include her participation in Sotheby's 'Natively Digital': A Curated NFT auction and 'Apotheosis': a live motion capture experience with Soft Centre at The Sydney Opera House.
Visaya Hoffie is an artist based in Meanjin/Brisbane. Her practice extends ‘expanded painting’ that incorporates sculpture, printmaking, ceramics, design, animation, leatherwork, haberdashery and a range of craft media. Her imagery brings together the observations made during her extensive experiences in other cities, and her love of the incidental, the everyday, the local, the overlooked, the rejected, the dejected, and the downright stupid. She often brings these together in immersive installations that locate the viewer as an essential and performative element in the work.
She considers all her creative production as essential to her role as an artist and continues to work on a number of cross-disciplinary commissions that include fashion accessories, ‘zines, calendars (for Koboyashi Bookshop Press, Mexico); advertising and merchandise for various musicians. In 2022 her work was included in the Risomania exhibition at Perc Tucker Gallery, Townsville. She is currently working towards exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne scheduled for 2022.
Alexander Powers
Alexander Powers is an artist residing on Wurundjeri land in Melbourne, Australia, whose work spans experimental performance, electronic music, DJing and event organising.
Her choreographic work has been performed at Brunswick Mechanics Institute, The Immigration Museum and most recently in video form at Foundation Fiminco, Paris. As a dance performer, she has most notably performed in Luke George’s work Public Actions as part of Dance Massive Festival 2019; as well as in What Am I Supposed To Do? by Rebecca Jensen and Sarah Aitken, 2019.
As a DJ, performing under the name Female Wizard, she has gained national and international recognition, having played at festivals including Golden Plains, Dark Mofo, Boiler Room, Soft Centre and Hybrid, created mixes for Discwoman, NTS and Boiler Room’s Hard Dance series, and holding down a five year long residency at the cult underground queer night Le Fag.
Athena Thebus is an artist whose work deconstructs desire. Based on Gadigal land/Sydney, she has presented solo and collaborative work at Next Wave Festival, Liveworks, Sugar Mountain Festival, Campbelltown Arts Centre, ACE Open, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA), and Verge Gallery. Athena’s practice spans sculpture, drawing, and writing. Her practice is driven by the desire to generate an atmosphere by which queer life is sustainable. Part of figuring that out is to make sculptures and installations that use materials that are connotative of capitalism’s excess, nuanced with past shame and queer hope.
The opening night will be held on Friday, 11 November, 6 - 8pm at Incinerator Gallery alongside exhibitions Ritual Ceng Beng: Jayanto Tan and Proximity of connection: past, present and I: Mita Chowdhury
The myth: Alexander Powers
Saturday, 26 November, 1-2pm
Join us for the debut of The myth at Incinerator Gallery as part of the exhibition Sub~Lingual, participating in Neighborhood Contemporary Art Festival.
The Myth of Er is a reincarnation myth told in the final pages of Plato's book The Republic. This myth is the basis for a new choreographic process from choreographer and musician Alexander Powers, which sees her expand her interests in exhaustion and duration into an exploration of the essence of human experience. Birth, life, death and rebirth fall in on each other as two dancers rub up against gravity, breathlessness and each other, finding new experimental momentums through time.
The myth is choreographed and performed by Alexander Powers, with performer Gabriella Imrichova .
This is a free event, and bookings are essential.
Please note that this event will feature loud sounds.
Relaxed sessions are an opportunity for visitors who could benefit from a quieter gallery experience to access exhibitions with fewer people and reduced sensory stimuli. This may include people with autism, disability, dementia, mental health or chronic illness conditions. All ages are welcome.
Sessions occur:
Wednesday, 16 November, 11am-4pm
Sunday, 20 November, 11am-4pm
Incinerator Gallery is an accessible venue. Our friendly staff are happy to assist all visitors with their access requirements.
If you would like more information, contact the Gallery on 03 9243 1750 or incinerator@mvcc.vic.gov.au