UTS ART

Angela Tiatia ‘Tuvalu’

Alice McAuliffe — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 04:48:36 +0000

Angela Tiatia’s 3-channel video Tuvalu shown in the exhibition IMPACT, UTS Gallery 9 May – 30 June 2017, was originally created for the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF). The original exhibition intent was to develop…

an exhibition concept; new media works reflecting the cultural identity, environmental, social and political issues that concern Indigenous communities in Queensland and the Pacific region. (Julietta Park the curator) approached two artists from Queensland and two artists from the Pacific to present works that explore the close cultural ties that exist between the two regions and the cultural, environmental, social and political issues that are shared between the communities.

Tuvalu depicts the changing daily life of the people of the island of Funafuti, the largest atoll of the small Pacific nation, Tuvalu. Tuvalu suits at an average of less than 2 metres above sea level. Like many of the small nations in the Pacific, the changes occurring on the island due to climate change can be seen as an indication of what is to come for other parts of the world

The Pacific is the canary in the global mine. We can see a glimpse of the challenges we may face in our collective future by looking at life in some of our smallest nations.

–Angela Tiatia

Tiatia’s video captures the water bubbling up from below ground, the incoming tides and the debris that is brought with them. Council workers and locals clear rocks and garbage on a daily basis from the roads that run along the sea edge. Dead palm and coconut trees can be seen in some images, destroyed by the saline environment. The local airport’s carpark is filled to knee level and the water creeps on to the tarmac eventually covering it completely.

There is no music in Tiatia’s composition, and this is a conscious decision by the artist to remove suggestive, emotive content from the documentation. Instead the soundscape is filled with local noises, silence and the island’s evening church bells calling the majority Christian community to prayer.

Christianity has developed on the island mixing with a strong Pacific Islander heritage that is particular to Tuvalu. It is a unique culture and Tiatia’s video documentation acts also as a recording of a culture that seems to be facing inevitable annihilation.

(Tuvalu) is a staggeringly beautiful place that has a complex culture stretching back thousands of years. But we are facing the seemingly inevitable prospect of losing Tuvalu over the coming decades as it gradually slips beneath the rising waters now bubbling from underground to the surface. This work is lament to what we are losing.

– Angela Tiatia

Tiatia extends her critical view of the environment and focuses on the effects of climate change on people’s lives, in Tuvalu, in the South Pacific. Her video directed audiences to witness a serious impact on their neighbor country, in Tuvalu, and to have a sense of urgency for their own land.

– Julietta Park, curator IMPACT Cairns Regional Gallery

To learn more about Angela Tiatia’s work and the exhibition IMPACT visit the catalogue and exhibition page

Suggestions for teachers:

In class activity – Students form into groups of 3 with one smart phone between them. Each group considers the word impact and the many ways it can be communicated visually. E.g the impact of two things meeting, the impact of falling over, the impact of a hard or gentle word, the impact of critical mass, the impact of sound.

Students are asked to make a short 20 sec clip on their smart phone. These are then uploaded to computers that have simple editing software such as iMovie. As a group watch the different videos and then play with editing. Consider repeating one action multiple times, book ending one or two actions with another.

Returning to small groups students work on a computer editing a video. Outcomes can be compared and discussion around different editing decisions and impact of those decisions can be had amongst the group.

Vanessa Inkamala ‘Dialysis Homeless Diabetes’

Alice McAuliffe — Fri, 17 Mar 2017 00:42:41 +0000

Vanessa Inkamala

Watercolour and Acrylic varnish on paper

Tjurita (West MacDonnell Ranges, NT)

Dialysis Homless Diabetes 2015

“We want to send out [a message] to those people who are selling Coke and Kentucky Fried Chicken to our people. We got so many people in dialysis, with diabetes, heart problem, lung problem and all that, all this grog, they’re selling it. Our people are buying these grogs and these foods.”

– Clara Inkamala, Hermannsberg artist

The Australian artist Tony Albert and Indonesian artist Timoteus Anggawan Kusno were invited to run a number of workshops at the Many Hands Art Centre during a cultural exchange residency they were undertaking in Alice Springs supported by Asia Link.

The Many Hands Art Centre is the home of the ‘Hermannsburg school’ of watercolour artists, made popular through the work of the late Albert Namajira. The artists at the centre are the grandchildren and relatives of Namatjira and his style of painting has been passed down through the generations.

Vanessa Inkamala watched her father paint as a young child, which inspired her to become an artist, painting her country of the Central Desert. She says of this work made during Albert and Kusno’s workshop:

“My partner needs to go to dialysis 3 times a week. This is due to eating fatty foods and sugars. A bit of people in my surroundings go to dialysis regularly.

I have diabetes. Again, due to the food I consumed I got this disease.

Homeless – Many people in my community re waiting for years to obtain a house to live in, for example my brother Reinhold has been waiting for years.”

Article written by UTS Art Collection curator, Janet Ollevou for UMag:

Arguably one of Australia’s best-known Aboriginal artists of the 20th century is Albert Namatjira (1902-1959). Namatjira’s distinctive landscape paintings gained him international celebrity in the 1930s and 40s. His fame led to an offer of citizenship for himself and his wife at a time when Aboriginal people had few rights or legal recognition.

More than 50 years after his death, Namatjira’s artistic legacy continues. His children and grandchildren, and those of the other artists associated with the Hermannsburg School (an art movement that began on the Hermannsburg Mission in 1930s) continue to express their connection to their land through finely painted watercolour landscapes.

Namatjira’s grandniece Vanessa Inkamala is part of this new generation of painters, and took part in a recent project with artists Tony Albert and Timoteus Anggawan Kusno – this year’s recipients of the Kerjusama artists in residency program through Asialink and Artback NT. The paintings produced through this collaboration feature landscapes rendered in the Hermannsburg tradition, but with the addition of text painted in clear varnish. Each artist has chosen powerful words that address issues of health, housing, mining, and copyright – reflecting the extreme social and political issues affecting their community.

In this most recent addition to the UTS Art Collection, the artist (Inkamala) has written the words dialysis, homeless, and diabetes – all issues that have had direct impact on her life and those around her, and all potentially preventable or mitigated through appropriate action. Just as her great-uncle’s artworks contributed to the wider recognition of Aboriginal people, so these most recent works tell the story of the journey made by Indigenous Australians since Namatjira’s time, and how much further we all have to go.

Video: Resilience, survival and thriving – Vernon Ah Kee ‘Grandfather Gaze’

Alice McAuliffe — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 04:41:02 +0000

Art educator Alice McAuliffe and academic Jennifer Newman discuss artworks from UTS Art Collection in relation to the eight essential understandings that comprise the REM Framework that underpins UTS Health Faculty’s Indigenous Knowledge graduate attribute program.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This work is currently on display of the UTS Tower, level 6 CB01.06

You can read more about Vernon Ah Kee’s work in the Indigenous art form UTS Art Collection resources

Watch more videos:

Social Justice – Marrnyula Munungurr ‘Bawu’

Heterogenity of Indigenous Australians – Archie Moore ‘Flag’

Health, social and emotional wellbeing (1 of 2)- Trevor Nickolls ‘Dream Time Machine Time’

Health, social and emotional wellbeing (2 of 2) – Vanessa Inkamala ‘Dialysis Homeless Diabetes’

Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing – John Mawurndjul ‘Mardayin Design at Milmilngkan’

Spirituality – Dorothy Napangardi ‘Salt on Mina Mina’

Colonisation, racism and chronic disease – Michael Cook ‘Civilised #13’

Transgenerational Trauma – Tracey Moffatt ‘Up in the Sky’