‘‘The Freedom of the Migrant’’, Matthew Galloway
Dunedin Public Art Gallery
IN many respects, Matthew Galloway’s exhibition turns on the irony of its title, ‘‘The Freedom of the Migrant’’, as we live in a time where ‘‘The Unfreedom of the Migrant’’ more accurately describes the global inequity and violence forcing millions from their home countries. Galloway is concerned not only with the refugee crisis, but the ways in which this humanitarian crisis compels us to think about what nation states, belonging, borders, citizenship and responsibility mean, regardless of where in the world we live. For Sir John Key, New Zealand’s relative distance from terrorist attack and the refugee crisis was a point of difference, a leveraging tool and a marketing tool to garner future investment. Galloway’s critique of this position is evident in the visual, textual and architectural forms he assembles in this impressive installation that comprises enlarged newspaper articles, flags, abstract shapes and architectural structures. Galloway balances the density of text (newspaper articles) with skeletal architectural forms that potentially stand in for houses, prisons and buttressing frames, and with spare formal shapes of red vinyl adhered to the gallery walls. If collected together, these vinyl fragments would possibly form an icon of the globe (a circle with longitudinal and latitudinal lines), which itself appears in part and full throughout the texts and walls of the exhibition. Galloway’s takeaway newspaper contains indepth interviews with scholars and editors.