EYE OF THE MIGRANT
Hoda Ashfar, Khadim Ali, Zanny Begg, Elizabeth Day, Jenna Lee, Eugenia Lim, Georgia Morgan, Khaled Sabsabi, Slippage (Phuong Ngo & Hwafern Quach), Shireen Taweel, Tintin Wulia, Justine Youssef
Curated by Nina Miall and Jiva Parthipan Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre Open Tuesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday, 10am – 4pm
Until August 8
Galleries are open again and it’s very likely time to get out there and check out what’s been going on in the local arts scene after a challenging time. Some spaces kept up their rhythm (and there was a lot of good work to check out on the internet in many cases), but the Salamanca Arts Centre went into hibernation, preserving Older Than Language for the moment when it could open the doors again.
I’m very glad they did. Older Than Language is a hefty, complex show that digs into what the experience of a migrant is in Australia right now. This is daring territory. Migrant identity and history is amazingly complex, but what this really points to is how much Australia itself is composed of diverse migrant cultures that have come to this country and made a new life. This is a strong statement for an exhibition to make, but it’s also a celebratory one.
This is not to reduce the impact of the individual works themselves; a lot of discussions and ideas are being presented in this show. There’s a lot to take in and I found some works stood out.
Zanny Begg’s Stories of Kannagi is a film about Tamil writers in an immersive installation setting that even uses scent as part of the work. Stories of Kannagi is emotionally potent work that shared a voice I had not heard much before. This eye-opening revelation is a very strong aspect of Older Than Language – one of the things it does very well is offer new information and perspectives. There is an educational aspect that is not didactic but more like sharing.
Hoda Ashfar’s portrait series The Westoxicated parodies and critiques the way Islamic women are portrayed in Western media. Strikingly constructed, these works are energetic and charismatic, using satire to make a strong point. Sharp and pointed humour like this is hard to pull off, but Ashfar really nails the concept in a clear way here.
The series of works from Slippage (the artist team Phuong Ngo & Hwafern Quach) presents a complex examination of Vietnamese-Australian identity, mixed in with questions about French colonialism and the experience of a communist nation. Somehow these complex strains are interwoven into some really beautiful, beguiling work – it’s a great example of strong aesthetic sense drawing one in to the conceptual framing.
Justine Youssef’s Under the table I learnt how to feed you really charmed me. This work focuses strongly on a community in western Sydney and reveals both work at a bakery and a secret world of women and children. The work shows tiny fragments of daily life that I found familiar and fascinatingly new.
Older Than Language is intoxicatingly rich and it’s been waiting in stasis to be seen and experienced.
NONFICTION Fire Country Victor Steffensen Hardie Grant, $29.99
With a dire continuing bushfire outlook, indigenous fire management is finally getting a mainstream hearing. The author of this timely title was initiated into traditional cultural burning decades ago by two revered elders, George Musgrave and Tommy George. A descendant of the Tagalaka people, Victor Steffensen knew little about his heritage growing up but has dedicated his adult life to keeping traditional fire knowledge alive and sharing it more broadly through films, The Firesticks Alliance and, now, this book. Look around when you next see a burnt patch of urban interface bush that has been subject to a seasonal burn off. Is the canopy scorched? Then it’s not a low, ‘cool’, controlled type of burning Steffensen advocates. Highly readable, Fire Country is a memoir with a message: how traditional techniques could help save Australia.
FICTION Slow Horses Mick Herron Hachette
When a MI5 Agent makes a mistake, they don’t stop being a spook … instead they’re banished to Slough House, as a Slow Horse: Damaged, wronged and inevitably forgotten. River Cartwright has spent eight months in spy-purgatory: Skimming the transcripts of phone conversations, looking for threats, going through the garbage of a forgotten far-right journalist, and fuming at the one mistake that put him in Slough House. When a fellow Slow Horse goes out on a covert ‘Op’, events spiral into the unknown and all the misfits in Slough House have to pull together to save a young kidnapped man, and clear their name from a conspiracy that goes right to the top. A slow beginning, but a thrilling race to the end, Slow Horses is a return to the classic spy novel, where they won’t be saving the world with guns blazing, but quietly working to save themselves.
Get your discounted copy of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses using the coupon below.