“If contemporary life leaves us feeling ill, exhausted and uncared for, how might we care for each other differently?”1
Imagine a delicate thread as strong as spider’s silk woven through the works in All of us. A multitude of personal narratives bound together to signify the affinity between artists, their collaborative modes of creative practice and the emphasis they place on compassionate engagement with audiences. As curator Jessica Clark puts it, the exhibition provides “an exploratory space to reflect on what it means to be a greater we”.2 Blindside, as an artist run initiative that is now ten years deep, provides the kind of safe and supportive environment that enables these artists to fully realise work led by an ethos of collective-making. All of us, while acknowledging that the neoliberalist agenda coerces all humans to adhere to a strict individualism, also acts as an antidote to that suffocating pressure. There is a sense of the works sustaining each other, forming a vital ecology within a broader framework of contemporary and experimental practice.
Teresa Hsieh’s inflatable sculptures reveal the internal mechanisms of the body: the lungs inflating, an expansion of the chest as it fills with air (that life-giving element we do not often pause to consciously consider). Hsieh has given form to these ontological membranes, externalised but still requiring a support system – nothing exists in a vacuum. The viewer is reminded of their own physicality, and vulnerability in the moment of letting the body go: what are the implications of not having a trusted person to catch your fall? Is it enough to rely on yourself, to push through the anxiety, panic and nervousness without the reassurance of another stabilising presence? The artist opens us up to an existential experience, resisting attempts to define and confine the art object; just allowing it to be, and to occupy space. Trust for One is defined by three essential components: making/process, transparency and family attributes (to give and to care). Above all, Hsieh wishes for the viewer to be enlightened by what they witness, and to tap into their childlike curiosity as they interact with the work.
Karen Casey’s handshake project is a manifestation of “the affective labour of human contact and interaction”,3 inspired by the University of Adelaide’s commission for a public monument marking Aboriginal reconciliation. In an event hosted by the university in 2006, Indigenous and non-Indigenous people were seated facing each other and asked to clasp hands as they exchanged personal anecdotes. What made this process particularly unique was the wet plaster being moulded in the space between their hands, forming shell-like objects as a record of each encounter. These hand-shells subsequently shaped the public monument. The casting process took 20 minutes from start to finish; Casey was struck by the capacity for people to transcend a potentially awkward scenario with a complete stranger to develop meaningful connections across cultural boundaries. Let’s Shake – Handshakes for Reconciliation was repeated numerous times in Melbourne as a series of public performance events and there have been several hundred hand-shells cast and exhibited in various locations. These objects are imbued with the energy from each person’s hand, taking on a sacredness as tangible outcomes of an extended gesture.
In a similar manner, Mutti Mutti and Boon Wurrung artist Maree Clarke has foregrounded collaboration and collective-making with members of her family – Mitch and Molly Mahoney, her niece and nephew. The artist transfers her cultural knowledge to her young family members, reasserting the intergenerational bond that exists between them. Emu feather tutu overlay symbolises Molly’s experience of two diverse worlds: life at home with her family, immersed in art and culture; and her tenth year at school, where she performs ballet. Dance is the intermediary between these worlds, and Molly has created her first work to reflect both her Aboriginality and love for ballet, as well as her life journey to age 16. Possum skin cloak is Mitch’s interpretation of traditional stories relating to different creatures along the Murray River, each representing an important character. Bunjil the Eagle is a powerful being in Mitch’s life; Mum is the owl, watching over her son; Dad is the wise crow, and Molly is the turtle. Handprints of family members are placed around the perimeter of the cloak, epitomising the love and kinship poured into this work.
Jody Haines celebrates the achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sisters and Elders from south-east Queensland who have made a vast impact on their communities in Women Dreaming, seen here as documentation of the original projection work. Collectively, the smaller images that formed the projection sequence depict these women sitting for Haines, their portraits repeated on a vibrant gradient background. Each has been chosen for their leadership and commitment by other outstanding Aboriginal women: Dr. Jackie Huggins, Dr. Sandra Phillips and Dr. Chelsea Bond. Women Dreaming came out of a weekend spent “yarning, listening and learning”4 and is based in relational portraiture, where the process and conversation during the making is equally important to the work’s final outcome. In the words of Haines, these images “acknowledge our sisters’ strength and womanhood, their community and knowledge, their spirit and songline”.5 The identities of these women are inextricably linked with the community-based work they perform, having chosen to devote their lives to the people around them.
Art-making as a social practice generates wellbeing and communality among participants. Adorned is a group of culturally and linguistically diverse artists and craftspeople based at Western Sydney’s Parramatta Artists Studios. Since 2014, they have collaborated on a wide range of projects facilitated by artists Liam Benson and Kiri Morcombe. Adorned operates on an “open door” policy, providing a friendly, safe and accessible creative hub to the wider community. The second gallery at Blindside will house the video work Adorned – Wisdom, Memory and Song, an arresting collaborative performance featuring handmade wearables that are also displayed, for the first time, in an exhibition setting. Through movement, song and dreamlike narrative, the Adorned women explore life events that have shaped their identities. One artist recounts her persistent attempts to ruse her grandmother into playing cards as a young girl, just so she could figure out what this crafty elder was making – a salusalu, or Fijian floral necklace. Another artist dances with Benson and Morcombe, her internal monologue playing out as a series of fragmented musings, arriving at a resolution: “Embrace what I’ve become, and where I am”.
Justine Youssef’s performance-based work an other’s Wurud interrogates the role that settler communities play in replicating colonial power structures by filling the gallery with the intensely sweet smell of Burnet rose, a species introduced to Darug land in 1821 in order to subjugate native plant life. Youssef’s recipe for rose water was taught to her on Darug land by the women in her family, substituting the traditional method of steam distilling the Damask rose for a “hybridised act of sorts”:6 simmering the Burnet rose. This speaks to the ingenuity of migrant cultures in maintaining cultural practices with whatever is readily available to them in diasporic contexts. Youssef wishes to highlight that just as Darug land was desecrated by an imperial flower in the 19th century, so the scent of Burnet rose will occupy Blindside and remind those present that the legacies of colonisation are ongoing. an other’s Wurud explores the medicinal properties of rose water and the potential to transform the gallery into a space for healing and reflection.
All of us presented a contemporary framework by which to explore the importance of collaboration and the connections between artists, their practice, and the audiences they reach.
Chloé Hazelwood is a curator, arts writer and arts manager living and working on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation.