The Multiverse
Bundoora Homestead
Bundoora, VIC

Role: Independent Curator

In the Multiverse, all possibilities exist. Artists often ask us to reimagine the world we know into different variations; some dark, some utopian, some absurd, some just a small step sideways. Reconstructing reality reveals the arbitrary parameters that define our world, but perhaps shouldn’t - and somewhere in the multiverse, might not.

If our world is truly an accidental outcome of the infinite, how much of it can we control, shape and shift to change the dominant narrative, turning left instead of right, to reposition the values that define it.

In both an online experience and physical exhibition, five artists and collectives each occupied a space hosted by Bundoora Homestead. Transformed into parallel worlds, we find the artists’ doppelgängers engaged in dismantling the mainstream, each offering us a portal into what could be, in their alternative realities within The Multiverse.

22 January - 29 March 2021

You Are Here
Town Hall Gallery
Hawthorn, VIC

Role: Curator

For the First Peoples of Australia, and  those of us who arrived more recently, our relationship with the Australian landscape is defined by a deep sense of cultural belonging coupled with a history of conflict and displacement. Interrogating our place within the landscape remains a complex undertaking for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian artists. To authentically locate oneself within the land, to say ‘Here I Am’ is to take on the layered history of a country continuing to be impacted by cultural and environmental change.

Expanding on traditions of landscape photography, each of the artists in this exhibition have centred their connection and disconnection to the land. Through still and moving image they have reinserted themselves into the landscape, exploring ideas of home and identity within the environment informed by cultural, personal and historical narratives.

New Commissions: Miriam Charlie, Bhenji Ra (as part of Club Ate with Justin Shoulder) in collaboration with Tristan Jalleh, and Anne Zahalka.

Featuring: Duha Ali and Justine Youssef, Ophelia Bakowski, Nici Cumpston, Tammy Law, and James Tylor.

Catalogue

21 March - 10 May 2020

Do I have to spell it out for you?
Online - Town Hall Gallery
Hawthorn, VIC

Role: Curator

In a world over-saturated with information and misinformation, many artists are turning to more direct modes of communication to expose and reclaim the cultural and political power of words.

Do I have to spell it out for you? brings together a group of artists incorporating language and text into their work to speak directly to their audience. Through puns, song lyrics, spoken word and personal musings, the artists highlight the complexities of language to create community, define identity and tell stories.

The combined works reveal the potency of language as a means of resistance, cultural artefact, joke, and tool of sovereignty.

Featuring: Benjamin Aitken, Chun Yin Rainbow Chan, Kate Just, Nasim Nasr, Claudia Nicholson, Kenny Pittock, Christian Thompson and Shevaun Wright.

05 September - 25 October 2020

The Lives of Celestials: John Young Zerunge
Town Hall Gallery
Hawthorn, VIC

Role: Curator

This solo exhibition presents John Young Zerunge’s History Projects (2007 - 2019). Created through intensive research-led investigations, the works pay homage to the remarkable characters and important events that have shaped Chinese-Australian history over the past 150 years. The resulting stories of migration, trauma, and cross-cultural exchange seek to redress the historic invisibility of non-western narratives within Australia’s public memory.

In the works, archival images, newspaper clippings, oral histories, and interviews are re-imagined and integrated with artistic reflection into large grid-formations of chalk drawings and recomposed photographs. Together with Young’s video work and abstract paintings, The History Projects examine the role of empathy and cultural subjectivity in the telling of history, and reflect on the forces of survival, memory and othering that continue to shape Australia’s contemporary social context.

31 August - 20 October 2019

Undercurrent: Peta Clancy
Koorie Heritage Trust
Melbourne, VIC

Role: Curatorial Manager, Curator, and Publication Editor

During a 12-month residency, Bangerang artist Peta Clancy collaborated with the Dja Dja Wurrung community to research, develop and create a major series of large format landscape photographs responding to a massacre site on Dja Dja Wurrung Country. Using cutting and layering techniques, Clancy’s works reveal the emotional and cultural scars left in the landscape by frontier violence, which has been historically and physically covered by subsequent colonial occupation.

The exhibition featured 8 new photographic works, a 30 metre wallpaper installation, and recorded soundscape with Dja Dja Wurrung community members Mick Bourke and Amos Atkinson.

Catalogue

09 March - 28 April 2019