Tuesday, 7 February 2012
A striking exhibition of unique artefacts and artworks placed in an Australian bushland setting will turn the City Gallery into a life-sized diorama during the Inaugural Indigenous Arts Festival this month.
Contemporary and historical art will be placed in amongst a life-size stencil of a young gumtree for the Incident in Swanston Street exhibition.
Incident in Swanston Street will focus on one of the 7,000 pieces of art in the Melbourne City Council's Art and Heritage Collection. William Rowell's painting, 'An Incident in Sturt's Trip Down The Murray River in 1831' is a painting that once hung in the Town Hall, but then moved to the heritage collection
store.
Now it has been returned to Swanston Street.
Future Melbourne (People and Creative City) Chair, Councillor Jennifer Kanis said The City Gallery with its superbly central yet curiously hard to find location, is the perfect space to house Incident in Swanston Street.
“We can all play a part in recognising Melbourne’s culture and heritage. Incident in Swanston Street is a great exhibition that adds value to the first Melbourne ndigenous Arts Festival – a celebration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, and a celebration of our past, and our future. I encourage everyone to head down to the town hall and engage with this important exhibition,” said Councillor Kanis.
Exhibition curator, Wemba-Wemba and Gunditjmra descendent Paola Balla, contrasts the painting’s European take on the encounter between Sturt and boriginal people of the Murray with some storytelling of her own.
Paola says Incident in Swanston Street highlights Melbourne’s shared history and identity.
“We are asking people to come in and reconsider Australia’s shared and conflicted history,” she said. “The exhibition creates a space where people can think about a Koorie perspective of story and place.”
“Incident in Swanston Street will reposition the painting as an historical marker, part of non-Indigenous story making about our shared past but placed to illustrate its relevance in time and place to Koorie history - survival, and resistance and it’s place in contemporary Australia,” said Paola.
Incident in Swanston Street is part of the inaugural Melbourne Indigenous Arts Festival, a three day festival which demonstrates the breadth of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island contemporary and traditional artistic expression.
Incident in Swanston Street opens at The City Gallery on February 9 at 6pm and runs until April. For more information visit www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/citygallery or stop by at The Melbourne Town Hall – Swanston Street, Melbourne CBD.