Close Contact
Close Contact, curated by Firstdraft, presents five new commissions by Tom Blake, Jazz Money, Amy Claire Mills, Athena Thebus and Leo Tsao.
Each artist traces zones of contact that intersect with our present moment: the new relationship between public surfaces and public safety; the deep histories and practices of First Peoples landcare displaced by First Contact; the politics of touch and those marginalised from the embrace of the public sphere; skin, the biological interface that both binds and separates us; and finally, the choreographies of resistance that drive bodies together and against each other, and against power.
Jazz Money
Jazz Money is a Wiradjuri poet and filmmaker currently based on sovereign Gadigal land in Sydney, Australia. Her poetry has won numerous awards, been widely published and reimagined as murals, installation and film. Jazz’s debut collection how to make a basket is forthcoming in 2021 with University of Queensland Press.
Jazz Money, £100000, 2021, vinyl, soil, dimensions variable, installation view, No Show, Carriageworks, Sydney. Commissioned by Firstdraft. Photo: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy the artist.
£100,000, 2021
With thanks to Gadigal custodians
The Carriageworks site is celebrated as the historical birthplace of Australian rail industry and of union movements that spread across the continent. That history dates back to 1880, when the site was bought for £100,000 – more than $16 million today. But to whom was £100,000 paid? £100,000 was not paid to the Gadigal people who have continued to care for the land since time immemorial; whose relation to the land could never be bought, sold or traded. Scratch the surface of the Carriageworks facade and there is 100,000 years of sovereignty beneath this concrete. – Jazz Money
In her site-specific installation £100,000, Wiradjuri artist Jazz Money reveals the shallow memory of colonial history. By literally unearthing layers of text through soil laid down on the concrete floor of Carriageworks, Money invites the audience to consider the complexity of Country that has always existed – beneath their feet, within the skies, throughout the waterways. Sovereignty never ceded.
