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at pitshanger manor and gallery, london
january 22 - march 13 1999
and axiom arts centre, cheltenham
october 30 - december 4 1999
curated
by Alana Jelinek
for terra incognita
empire
and I was the work of 9 visual artists, who were commissioned to respond
to the impact of colonial thought and history on contemporary ideas
of 'race' and nation.
The influence of this historical inheritance is a racialised hierarchy,
a way of looking at the world that profoundly shapes our understanding
of who and what we are, defines us in ways that we have not chosen,
ways that are not representative, flexible or elective.
As a result, the exhibition is fundamentally concerned with representation,
how we represent ourselves and are represented, how we see and are seen.
It's an opportunity for artists to mount a challenge to old-world arrogance
and 'acceptable' prejudice from distinctly individual perspectives and
for us all to re-examine our involvement in a colonial inheritance.
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Colin
Darke
"The Right of Nations to Self
Determination" 
(vestibule of PMG gallery)
Colin Darke's installation work derives from a product of
the 'troubles' in the north of Ireland, namely the 'comm'.
This is the name, abbreviated from the word 'communication', given to letters
smuggled, in and out of gaol by and to Republican prisoners. These are written
in tiny lettering on cigarette papers, wrapped in cling film and hidden
in the body.
Darke has made work in the form of large-scale comms, incorporating Marxist
texts, in order to explore the love/hate relationship between republicanism
and socialism.
This led to his installations in which the socialist literature is written
by hand onto gallery walls.
Here he aims to question the levels of artistic autonomy in the face of
restrictions imposed by galleries and the art establishment in general.
Anthony
Key
Great Wall
(PMG gallery)
and Free
Delivery
(Axiom gallery, see below under Alana Jelinek)
'Great Wall' is a sculptural installation, a demarcation of boundary, made
of a thousand moulded take-away cartons.
'Free Delivery' re-maps Britain as Britain re-mapped her colonial territories,
depicting a nation under negotiation, a site of re-definition and re-vision.
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Alana
Jelinek
The
Spectators
(Axiom gallery)
'The Spectators', a 12ft x 7ft figurative painting, places a group of
white tourists in the Australian desert, the 'terra nullius' or virgin
territory that Australia was conceived as before it was yet 'discovered'.
What are they doing there and what are they looking at?
The work raises the kind of questions that tourists/colonisers rarely
do.
The use of the 'traditional' medium of figurative painting serves as a
reminder of the constructed, stylized nature of representations of the
world, which are 'framed' and filtered through established patterns of
thought.
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Rea
EYE/I'MMABLAKPIECE
(Axiom gallery)
A four-part digital photography piece that traces colonial history inscribed
on the black female body.
The dress is typical of those worn by Aboriginal women on outback cattle
stations and represents the body as the site of various ideological constructs,
from 'Traditional' (wooden beads), 'Christianity' (cross)
to 'Civilization' (pearls). 'Blakpiece', the final image,
presents a subversion of colonial codes, in which the artist steps into
the frame to take control of her own imagery and the camera, the means
of representation.
Rea's work appeared courtesy of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists' Co-operative.
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Tertia
Longmire
Eyeing
up the Nation's Wealth (a game for 1 or more players)
(manor, ground
floor breakfast room)
and
Unfinished,
Nude
(PMG gallery)
'Unfinished,
Nude' refers to the white human body. It is precariously positioned. The
surface is raw and untreated. Like a blank canvas it absorbs our perceptions,
a screen on which to map revisions of 'post colonial' thought.
'Eyeing up the Nations Wealth (a game for 1 or more players)' (above)
uses the mathematical unit of the sphere as a representation for and of
the globe.
Positioned to mimic an artefact on display, it is a fly on the wall scenario
of the 'colonial fathers' shameless play for expansion, protected from
the responsibility of the cultural and philosophical assault that was
to condition the legacy of an empire that we inherit today.
The sphere occupies the most central part of the room and echoes the endless
dominion of the open blue sky painted across the domed ceiling above it.
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Shaheen
Merali
dig.'Native'
(Axiom gallery)
'dig.'Native' is an installation that examines the way we collect and
receive images of people originally from outside of Europe in our everyday
lives and products.
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Lorrice
Douglas
Photographic portraits and diary extracts of Margaret Pracy, Town Crier
of Brighton & Hove.
Niema
Khan
Lyallpur
(manor, staircase and ground floor small drawing room)
A photographic installation that refers to the town in Pakistan in which
the artist spent her early years: Lyallpur, named after a British lieutenant-governor
and laid out in the design of the Union Jack. With references to family
memory, the work explores ways in which individual identity interacts with
history and myth.
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Erika
Tan
From China to Chintz
(manor, first floor drawing room)
Sited within the museum itself, Erika Tan's work responds to the residues
of history, architecture and design characteristic of the Victorian Manor
House.
A catalogue
accompanies empire and I includes information on the exhibition
and previously unpublished text by Professor Catherine Hall of University
College, London called Empire and Us and Juliette Brown of terra
incognita called Thinking about 'race' and nation.
ISBN: 0 9535045 0 6
The catalogue
contains other images of the work on exhibition.
empire and I was presented in association with Visiting Arts, the Arts
Council of England through the National Lottery and London Arts Board.
Curated by Alana Jelinek for terra incognita.
| AAVAA online 2006| The
Third Wing 2006 | curio 2002 | empire
and I 1999 | Racist Australia Day 2000 | between
borders 1999 | Point of Entry 1997
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