Of All Others

Curated by Kate Britton

Opening 03.05.17 6-8pm
Artist Talks 25.05.17 6-7pm

This exhibition celebrates ideas of family not formulated through ‘the exclusion of all others’. The artists within embody and propose modalities of the familial that are queer; post-colonial, post-Freudian and post-nuclear. They seek to escape and transcend rigid familial models based on bloodlines, patriarchal inheritance and the Oedipal trinity; models which perpetrate violence on those that exist beyond their bounds; all others.

In proposing a broader understanding of family, Of All Others enacts a utopic futurism based on unruly inclusion. Our families are not chosen, extended, traditional, or open; they are families. These artists each explore what it means to belong – or not – to a family or families, and the ways in which this belonging structures identity and experience of the world. Of All Others imagines family as it could be; formulated through the inclusion of all others.

There will be performances on opening night. Bring your mum and your babies.

Biographies

James Nguyen

James Nguyen is a Sydney-based artist. Completing a Masters of Fine Arts at Sydney College of Arts (the University of Sydney), he undertook a collaborative Fellowship in New York at UnionDocs. This fellowship in experimental documentary arts was supported by the Anne & Gordon Samstag Visual Arts Scholarship. James has exhibited in Australia and is currently a PhD candidate at UNSW Art & Design.

Liam Colgan

Liam Colgan is a multi-disciplinary artist and curator based in Perth. Colgan’s work broadly investigates the fields of sexuality and queer theory in relation to art practice. Their work often deals with the normative social structures within everyday life and draws from their personal experience of queer identity. Their investigations predominantly take the form of video, performance and installation. Through these media, Colgan considers how individuals might challenge social power structures and navigate complex emotional and psychological states. Since graduating with honours in 2014, Colgan has shown in multiple exhibitions including Hatched National Graduate Show at PICA, Passing/Parades at Success ARI and King Single/ Expanded Queen at FELTspace.

Samia Sayed

Samia Sayed, a Sydney based artist and writer. Her work explores the experience of being raised in Australia amongst first-generation families, of travelling to homelands from which these families have been removed, of the tensions between these two worlds, and of the loss and violence that she experiences amongst these contexts. Shaped by her experiences, her work explores the fragility of love/violence through food, eroticism, politics, culture, religion and sadness – and establishing these connections through her personal relationships. Although her work has appeared in many publications, she mostly self-publishes. You can access her work at: https://browneyes86blog.wordpress.com/

Amrita Hepi

Amrita Hepi is an emerging independent choreographer and performance artist descending from the Ngapuhi tribe in Northern New Zealand and the Bundjulung people in northern New South Wales, Australia. She is focused on making work that explores the identity of the divine other, and how movement has the capacity to be alchemically sacred. She has exhibited and performed at the Museum of Contemporary Arts Australia (alongside Tony Albert and Richard Bell for Black Christmas), been involved with the Sydney Opera House, Spinifex and VIVID Festival to choreograph and perform Play, as well as collaborating with artist Jimmy Pike and Sydney-based iconic fashion label Desert Designs to create the piece Together Towards the Water at MBFWA. Amrita was Dance and Theatre Programmer for Sydney Festival 2015, and represented Australia at Banff Centre of The Arts in Canada on an Indigenous Dance Residency alongside six other first nations countries to create a new work called Trace. She recently completed a secondment in Melbourne with Lucy Guerin Inc.

Sione Monu

Sione Monu is an interdisciplinary visual artist of Tongan decent. He uses instagram (visit @sione93) as an art tool, to create artworks that utilises the platform as a way of re-indigenising space and creating a narrative relevant to queer indigenous bodies for his community to engage with the works. A recent member of the arts collective, FAFSWAG. His is a graduate of a diploma in fine arts from Campbelltown Tafe, Sydney. He has shown work at Object space, Fresh Gallery Otara, and recently Public enjoy Gallery as part of collective, WITCH BITCH. Sione is currently based in Auckland New Zealand.