Ritual Slaughterer
Isabella Hone-Saunders
16 Nov–3 Dec 2022
This project is a multi-layered examination of the intersections of Judaism and queerness. It engages Jewish culture and ritual and autobiographical/ autohistorical study to explore the formation of my own experience as a queer person/ settler with Jewish ancestry. This project builds upon four years of self-led research with focus on the continuities and discontinuities of ritual across different subcultures, their malleability and their potential to be adapted to suit marginalised relationships to spirituality. Ritual Slaughterer investigates queer club culture, by way of examining the commonalities between a place of worship and a nightclub, Jewish migration to Australia and transgressive readings of Judaism and associated rituals.
Artist Talk Saturday 3 Dec 12-2pm
All Welcome.
This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.
Isabella Hone-Saunders (she/they) is currently practicing as a curator, arts worker and artist in Naarm (so-called melbourne, australia), on the unceded lands and water ways of the Boon Wurrung and Woi Wurrung (Wurundjeri) people of the Kulin nation.
Their curatorial practice is concerned with accessibility, representation and shared social responsibility, while examining with criticality, the inclusivity of public art spaces. They aim to interrogate and implement methodologies towards an ethical and activist informed curation.
The exhibitions and public outcomes that IHS curates endeavour to present multi-phonic positions and de-centralise any notion of an authoritative curatorial power position in favour of platforming and supporting and nurturing the artist's perspective.
Hone-Saunders’ artistic practice frequently utilises movement, with the use of video as preferred medium, often centering their body as a focal figure. IHS explores ideas of body idealisation, physicality, residual body-language, identity, and embodied readings and representations of history and ritual.