"A-17P: a new Collective" Golding, Long and Rudd 13 July 16 August 2009 The artist Mai Long has curated our mid-year show exploring notions of multi-cultural framing in Australia, sighting her own work alongside that of Melbourne artists Van Rudd and Dominic Golding. Named after new collective formed this year - "Artists of the 17th Parallel" - its title speaks to the demarcation that split Vietnam to create North and South Vietnam and contributed to the Vietnam War. Psychologically it represents a rift in self...a will to find the middle path between political extremes, a recognition of sameness and differencein this space of absence. This exhibition will pose an interesting dialogue between the frictions of self-perception and art-world labels of multi-cultural Australia. WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are advised that one of the images may contain references to the deceased.
Curatorial Statement: Curatorial Statement: The 17th Parallel: The Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone established as a dividing line between North and South Vietnam as a result of the French Indochina War. During the Vietnam War, it became important as the battleground demarcation separating North Vietnamese territory from South Vietnamese territory (wikipedia). When the Directors of SLOT invited me to curate a show for SLOT, it was a very specific series of events that I was intensely working through, a few serendipitous happenings, and then a final gut feeling that inspired me to invite Dominic Golding and Van Thanh Rudd to hang with me. If I had any reticence at all, it was the fear of further perpetuation a stereotypical Asian-Australian construct. I came to know Rudd during that period when there were complaints that my work was politically and culturally insensitive to the Vietnamese Community of Australia (VCA). During that same week Rudd was ironically having his own censorship issues with City of Melbourne. He admitted to me he was a socialist absolutely taboo in the context of VCA issues. Golding appeared in my lounge room via an ABC Compass program. My TV reception is shockingbut I could make out this charismatic guy in a cowboy hat and in the next instance he was on stage in army fatigues shouting and carrying on. Golding explained to me that in his performance and theatre production his key area of expression to date no one is spared criticism. Rudd and Goldings works are brave: exerting a strong irreverent, honest searching: both are asking hard questions - of themselves and others. As this group here, we each have our individual paths but in common we are trying to make sense of todays world. We find that this inevitably leads us in one way or another to those Vietnam War issuesand, more specifically, the 17th Parallela schism of self and psyche. This project has led me to an understanding that we have formed A-17P not because of any racial or political affiliation, but by force of history and circumstance. Personally, over that 20 June 2009 coffee when the collective crystallised, I felt like this was the long-awaited tangible evidence that we can talk to each other an effort that is sometimes earnestly snuffed out by what I consider the inward-looking and fear-driven elements within the Vietnamese community Vietnamese language media. It is a widely known fact that the large majority of Vietnamese in Australia have arrived as refugees or through the family reunion scheme. It is a less appreciated fact that Vietnamese Australians are not one homogenous group and a lesser celebrated fact that many Vietnamese also arrived in Australia before the Vietnam War (eg. via the Columbo Plan Scholarship scheme). We are all Australians. The question is: what does this mean and who defines this This is a first project and, perhaps more than anything, a symbolic event. However, I look forward a continued dialogue on what A-17P represents. a-17p.blogspot.com Mai Long 12 July 2009.
Dominic Golding: What are you Fighting for (2009) Artist statement: To be free is to remember everything happens ideologically, for a reason. War needsto bejustified. America has always fought for freedom, in all its wars. With my SLOT work, the question is really aimed at two audiences: the mainstream Aussies and the Indigenous locals - asking us all who and what are we fighting for, whose freedom, what does freedom mean and would you take up arms to defend it A-17P relevance statement: As an adoptee (Operation Babylift 1975) I have grown up with the history of war. My history occurred south of the 17th Parallel. This was America's war. As an artist I have since crossed to the north of the DMZ (Demilitarised Zone) at the 17thParallel. My visual art and my performance work is about decisions, divisions and the resulting wars that powers exert overus.
Van Thanh Rudd: From the queens land to...(2009) Artist Statement: The director of The Promotion has successfully lobbied for a major release of the film in the year 2018. It will join a series of films created by the same director (titled 200 years of genocide in Australia) to bereleased the same year. The celebrations surrounding the directors successful deal with major studios such as Time Warner have been unprecedented. According to many global human rights groups this has been a long time coming.http://www.van-thanh-rudd.net/ A-17P relevance statement: My father was a Vietnam veteran and met my Vietnamese mother during the war. I needed to find a position that best explained the War in Vietnam to me, and my existence. Other members of A-17P may have differing views on this, but we are united in our struggle to make sense of what happened. It is a perspective that unwaveringly supports the struggle of a majority poor of the world. I support the view that things can change for the better via direct engagement with the people in my community and abroad.
Mai Long: Inu & Spiirydko: the Rebirth (2009) Artist Statement: How many times does one feel they know nothing and must start all over again, from the beginning.The feeling that ones own skin is barely recognisable or the skin of others is equally as foreign. Is power and the illusion of it a shifting entity: facts that slip and slide In any community or society there will always be a majority machine and a minority voice.Who is setting the measure Inu and Spiirydko (a girl named "dog"' and her "spirit dog" friend) are constructing their own universe together. Sometimes it seems beyond logic. Inu wantsto own her anger and grow up in a new world of hope; to accept loss and our shifting perception of things and move on. Paramount are ones feelings: they are real and can lead us through understanding justice and violence. |
