Two Texts on Whiteness
Andy Butler and Diego Ramirez
Always There And All Apart, Blindside Emerging Curator Mentorship 2017
Always there and all a part presents works that interrogate the complexities of navigating race in the arts. Whiteness is at the foundation of the sector, and the exhibition plays with the tension between diversity and inclusion discourse and the institutional Whiteness that frames the practices and bodies of non-White artists. Spanning both gallery spaces of BLINDSIDE, Always there and all a part unpacks what it means to make work for a White artistic community that is invested in creating an aesthetics of inclusion, while simultaneously only extending conditional invitations to diverse artists from within White spaces. The exhibition troubles these aesthetics and power dynamics at their borders and boundaries, across photography, performance, printmaking, video and installation.
Curator, Andy Butler's mentorship with curator Emily Cormack, focused on curatorial research and the development of an exhibition at BLINDSIDE that interrogates Whiteness in the Australian arts sector. The exhibition and related programs critically interrogate Whiteness in the Australian arts sector. A key research question was to investigate how cultural diversity and inclusion discourse circulates in the arts, and to ask artists from different cultural groups to respond to the hegemonic and Eurocentric values that form the foundation of visual art in Australia.