Interfacial Intimacies

You are listening to the audio description of a sculpture titled Always Room for One More on a Sinking Ship, created by Australian artist Bruno Booth in 2022, where it was first exhibited at The John Stringer Prize at John Curtin Gallery, Western Australia.
Booth was born in 1982 and has used a wheelchair for most of their life.

The mixed materials of this large sculpture include steel, rubber, aluminium, medical-grade plastic, vinyl, batting, webbing, rope, and embroidery. Its dimensions are 199.2 centimetres long, 65 centimetres wide, and 72 centimetres high. The metal, rubber, and vinyl materials are primarily shades of grey and black, creating a neutral, industrial palette.

The starting point for the form is a familiar object: a manual wheelchair. In this sculpture, the wheelchair has been cut in half and extended sideways, transforming the single seat into an elongated bench that can accommodate several people. The hybrid form of the metal framework and components retains the familiar geometry of a wheelchair.

A defining feature of this sculpture is its descending diagonal angle, tilting from right to left, which causes the elongated bench to slope downward and appear to be dipping into the gallery floor, creating the impression that it is slowly sinking.

On the right end, there remains a full set of wheels made of grippy rubber and cool, smooth tubular steel and aluminium, a large wheel and its small castor, anchoring that side. On the left end, the large wheel has been cut in half, and the small castor wheel is absent. The missing wheel parts mean that the left end lacks the same height and structural support as the right.

The seat spans the length of the extended frame. The seat surface is upholstered with vinyl, padded with batting beneath, and supported by webbing or rope underneath.

The vinyl is smooth, slightly waxy, and maintains ambient room temperature, usually a little cooler on first touch and warming slightly under contact. The padded batting gives the surface a gentle firmness.

On the back of the seating, at the left end, is a hand-stitched, rectangular embroidered patch with Booth’s characteristic subversive messaging that is conspicuous against the otherwise grey and black materials of the bench. The text reads “Re-tyre NOW”, with “Re-tyre” embroidered in yellow and black above “NOW” in red capital letters. A yellow embroidered border surrounds the text. If traced by hand, the thread would feel like small, raised lines or ridges.

Always Room for One More on a Sinking Ship occupies nearly two metres of floor space, giving it a presence that encourages visitors to move around its length to fully experience and understand its altered form. Its downward angle shifts the viewer’s sense of balance. The work’s materials, industrial, medical, and domestic, create a fusion of functional, clinical, and familiar. The repeated wheelchair elements reinforce both the original function of the mobility device and the transformed, communal seating, reimagining its capacity to invite more, while the tilt and uneven supports make the concept of structural or systemic imbalance both subtle and tangible, allowing the viewer to appreciate the sculpture’s full structure, presence, and impact.

You are listening to the audio description of Bruno Booth’s 4K, nine channel, nine minute video with audio called Body Shots 2022 as part of Interfacial Intimacies an exhibition of photography, film, painting, installation, textile, and performance by artists who hold and express tenderly the multiple aspects of their selves through a series of portraits and anti-portraits. The exhibition has been curated by Caine Chennatt, developed by the Plimsoll Gallery and toured by Contemporary Art Tasmania.

Bruno Booth (b. 1982) has used a wheelchair for most of his life, interrupted by a short and unsuccessful career as an amateur stilt walker when he used prosthetic legs as a child. In his memory these leather and metal devices would not have been out of place on the set of some dystopian, apocalyptic epic – not in a cool and attractive Fury Road sort of way, more like the zombies in the original Walking Dead. The experience of wearing restrictive equipment left him with a dislike of tight-fitting clothing, a love of speed and a need to reach over his head in supermarkets – as a child he made the decision to use a wheelchair as his primary mode of transport – and he’s never looked back (probably because he’s too busy looking out for sand pits on dark footpaths). Having a disability has been a constant background hum throughout Bruno’s

life. Kind of like a social tinnitus – you know it’s there but you try not to talk about it. It was only when he started to call himself an artist, without cringing too much, that he began to engage critically with what it meant to be categorised as disabled.

The content of the videos show candid views of the disabled body – juxtaposed with familiar landscapes and scenes. A foot that looks like no other lies on a bed of green grass, a knobbly, scarred knee rests on a sandy beach gently washed by the tide. These views link across multiple screens, forming new and unusual bodies that float in space, quietly moving and unapologetic in their existence.

Quoting Booth: Disability is not a sexy adjective.

“The word itself conjures up images of hospitals, of concessions made and of thoughts of

what could have been. As a child in the 90’s, disability was absent from the media outside

of the Paralympics and the occasional human-interest story. The closest thing disabled

people had to counterculture role models were characters in cartoons. Mutants and the

misfits in these animated worlds had superpowers and were loved not in spite of their

differences but because of them. It can be argued that we’ve progressed and these days

there is a much more nuanced idea of what it means to have a disability. However, the

word is still there and still evokes those same thoughts of pity, fear and unease.

Body Shots seeks to address these issues by confronting the audience with the disabled body in extreme detail, forcing them to recognise the beauty created by such unique forms.

The work is an extension of the themes the artist has been developing in their practice over the last three years.

The number nine is a reference to the 9% of visual artists that identify as disabled - it is used throughout the exhibition to draw attention to this woefully low statistic. Across our population as a whole roughly 20% of Australians identify as having some form of disability. Why is there this gap in an industry that prides itself on equity and inclusion? Where are the other 11% and why is it that disabled people are under-represented in contemporary practice?”

The nine channels or screens, 8 of which are displayed in portrait orientation, one in landscape are spread out across a horizontal wide plane, on a free-standing steel frame, in the space.

From left to right, the first screen is at ground level, in portrait, the next two, also in portrait, are arranged in an ascending step pattern side by side.

The next three, somewhat centre, and ascending also, have 2 arranged in portrait, one in landscape that is beneath the two above.

The 7^th and 8^th screens, in portrait, are on top of each other.

The ninth screen, in portrait, is positioned in the top right-hand corner of the steel frame.

A series of close ups, of Bruno’s foot and knee subtly moving, and always on the edge of every shot and every screen, each video contains their foot in three different locations and environments with varying timings and duration, where the audience is able to view and experience multiple screens and images simultaneously.

Video 1- foot appears in water, in wire fence, in wet sand on a warm sunlit day.

Video 2- foot appears hovering above ocean, with bush in background, in hot, dry sand.

Video 3- foot appears in foreground to the setting sun behind, on asphalt, resting on a metal bark bench.

Video 4- foot on a colourful upholstered fabric seat, a rock with the river running by, from a height with freeway traffic running below.

Video 5- the foot appears on a riverbed rock, between the slats of a wooden crate, on the upholstered fabric seat again, with the telltale yellow aluminium bar revealing that it may be a bus, tram or train.

Video 6- the foot waves in the foreground with the bush behind, resting on the frame of a swiftly moving wheelchair, with a dawning sky in background.

Video 7- the foot appears on lush green grass, against the pavement,

Video 8- the foot resting on the rough bark of a tree, amongst an assortment of plastic toys, and against the wire fencing once again.

Video 9- the foot taps against the top crate, painted red, which is stacked on top of a blue crate, which is stacked on top of a yellow crate.

All the footage was shot on Booth’s iphone, and the audio they edited comes from different field recordings and conversations with friends and strangers.

You are listening to the audio description of Amrita Hepi’s HD video work called Scripture for a smokescreen: Episode 1 – Dolphin House, as part of Interfacial Intimacies an exhibition of photography, film, painting, installation, textile, and performance by artists who hold and express tenderly the multiple aspects of their selves through a series of portraits and anti-portraits. The exhibition has been curated by Caine Chennatt, developed by the Plimsoll Gallery and toured by Contemporary Art Tasmania.

Hepi’s artwork is in two parts: 1. A smokescreen projection that is played on loop, projection mapped onto a flat surface upon entry. 2. Dolphin House, a 15 minute video work, with sound, dialogue, and open captioning.

Opening titles in red capital letters against grey smoke pluming in the background.

The video starts with the back of a person, hair in a bun, wearing an orange t shirt with the words Dolphin temporary help services printed onto the back.

They stand, back to the camera, in the backstage corridors of a building, readying themselves before they walk down the passage, on to a closed stage, where they part some black curtains, and then enter onto another closed stage, where different crew members climb ladders, set up lights and cameras on tripods. Another person walks past them carrying a shiny inflatable dolphin balloon. The main person walks onto a completely white set and is now seen alone in this vastness.

They eventually turn, and face the camera and slowly, ever so slowly bend into a forward stretch, reaching down to touch their feet before slowly rising up again.

Raising one arm, they spin a slightly off-kilter pirouette, and dash off screen right.

Next, they stumble into a rosy red-lit set. They have changed, now wearing a black short sleeved leotard, their dark brown shoulder length hair loose and down. They stand centre, brightened by a soft spotlight, restfully looking into the camera.

Walking closer to the camera, to the viewer, they steadily step backward again.

They raise their right arm straight, palm out, and then move it in waves in the air, the left arm and hand join in, and together, in parallel both create broad vertical waves in the air.

The image of them now flips, where their upper half is upside down at the top of the screen. Their dark form with bare swaying arms swiftly slides across the top left to right to left again. The background and surrounding light is a much deeper tangerine than before.

The camera pans to a wider shot of their full body repeating fast downward dog yoga poses, and in the seemingly edgeless space, they hover, settled, flat on their belly, upside down, hands sweeping the floor, which in reverse may perceived to be the ceiling.

Meditative and revitalising yoga-like movements and stretches continue in changing flows and tempos.

Resting on inter-crossed legs their hands scan and swipe closely across their open staring eyes.

When they rise again, image still upside down, their hair cascades and licks like flames in their fired-up moments, matching the burnt tangerine tones of the space they are within.

At 6 minutes the space and image on screen has changed.

A single light-skinned arm extends horizontally in from the right. A visual effect has been applied to make it appear as if the hand is creating ripples in clear water as it moves. The hand ebbs in and out of frame, distorting, and only looking undistorted when it is completely still.

The dancer on screen is whole body and upright again in their black leotards, without any rippling, in the white space. In slow motion, and with an effect that elongates the body with every movement, their form, lines and silhouette stretch and morph in abstracted ways.

In the next shot oversized single pages are haphazardly strewn across the white floor, some are rolled up. One open page contains black and white images of a dolphin in water, with a bikinied person sitting on the pier nearby, and has the headline The Dolphin House written above.

Next, we see bare feet walking in from the top of screen and as they enter, we see they are wearing white pants and a white top. It is the same dancer who has entered. They kneel by a roll and slowly unravel it.

The page is a colour photograph of a dolphin and human in the water together. The headline reads Communication between human and dolphin.

The dancer sits beside it, taking it in.

And walking around they unfurl another sheet.

They rearrange the sheets and with the camera panning away to a wide shot from above we next see them lying on all the sheets resting.

It quickly cuts to a close up of a wet mirrored surface that has a mess of pastel-coloured jelly-like globules all over it. One mirrored surface is angled 45 degrees to the other that is flush on the floor. Jelly-like globules continually slide down the ramp. The dancer in a black wet suit with two white stripes down the front, then slides in and slips along the wet and messy runway. Similar to the slip and slide of yester-year eras, they continue to flail and flop, dive and glide, squirm and steer like a dolphin, feet clasped together, hands clasped together, they are one long slippery form.

At 10 minutes 20 seconds, there is now a car in the studio, a small white station wagon with its interior lights on. The dancer is positioned in the driver’s seat. The lighting is blue, nocturnal, nightly. They smile happily, joyfully, content. From above and outside a silvery blue inflatable dolphin balloon floats in descending on to and just above the car’s rooftop.

Next with the image of the car front on, headlines bright, the dolphin can be seen in the passenger seat facing the driver, and both are in deep togetherness.

The interior lights switch off, the space within and around, darkens.

Next an image of the person submerged in water taken from above, pops an orange ping pong ball from their mouth. The ball bobs on the surface, to gather with many many more. The balls drift and gather around the persons face as they rise and shift position, breathing air.

Back in the tangerine lit studio, the dancer crawls in from the right, towards an upright triangular prism that has a mirror surface. They are reflected on its surface, and both forms peer into each other’s eyes. They stare at this fixed point while the rest of their body moves without disrupting the gaze.

Close up of fingertips connecting on the flat surface. They arch their back, disconnect, and back away. They back away, facing away, from the prism, and as the camera tracks and follows their departure from a new angle, the mirrors surface reveals an audience of watchers who are sitting beyond the edges of their space, including the camera person themselves.

The camera pans around 180 degrees. The final shot is of the dancer from behind on the floor looking out to the row of observers looking in.

Amrita Hepi, born in 1989, is from Townsville of the Bundjulung/Ngapuhi territories. They are an award-winning artist whose practice is concerned with dance as social function performed within galleries, performance spaces, video art and digital technologies. She engages in forms of historical fiction and hybridity —especially those that arise under empire— to investigate the bodies relationship to personal histories and archive. Amrita is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery.

You are listening to the visual summary of Leuli Eshragi’s 2 channel video work with sound called afiafi (2023) as part of Interfacial Intimacies an exhibition of photography, film, painting, installation, textile, and performance by artists who hold and express tenderly the multiple aspects of their selves through a series of portraits and anti-portraits. The exhibition has been curated by Caine Chennatt, developed by the Plimsoll Gallery and toured by Contemporary Art Tasmania.

Afiafi, which means ‘day’, ‘afternoon’ and ‘fire' in Sāmoan, was made in Naarm with Spacecraft Studio and in Honolulu with kekahi wahi and a multigenerational cast of local performers and collaborators, and was commissioned by Aupuni Space, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, the University of Tasmania, and Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden.

The 2 screens of the 5 minute 42 second video work are displayed side by side on the back wall, as part of an installation that also features vinyl text presented on the two perpendicular adjacent walls either side. All walls are painted warm yellow. In the foreground of this area, to the left and above, a 2.5 by 1,5 metre cotton ‘ie’ or sarong drapes between 2 bars on the ceiling, and to the right, another 2.3 by 1.5 metre cotton ‘ie’  hangs from ceiling to floor. The ie is tan and was made using screen printing techniques and feature hand-drawn motifs inspired by 18th and 19th century Sāmoan bark cloths that the artist discovered in French, British, German and Australian colonial collections. Both ends of the sarong have zig zag edges.

Afiafi belongs to an ongoing series dating from 2020, which proposes a tropical futurism where sensuality, pleasure and sexuality co-exist in harmony the natural, physical and spiritual realms and affirms the joy of communities bound by other forms of connection and kinship.

Eshragi states “Afiafi is a tender yet rigorous offering for today’s challenges of intersecting violences against queer, trans and non-binary bodies, and of Indigenous territories spanning the Great Ocean bearing the brunt of climate catastrophe.”

The videos feature plain coloured slides with multilingual poetry written in Samoan, English and French, at various intervals throughout.

The gathering of 10 people are by the sea, overlooking the ocean.

Their ‘ie’ in the opening scenes are made of metallic foil. Some wear red coloured ie’s, others yellow, and each in their own unique way, as skirts, shawls, wraparounds, tails without coats, with either bare skin, or a few with black undergarments.

Some sit, some stand, some touch the rocks, as the waves wash in.

The image changes. There is a person on right, another on left who are being adorned with a braided lei by another, after which one pair will honi, greeting each other nose and foreheads touching, while the other pair hold an intimate embrace. Another shot is of a trio, 2 of whom circle a long lei around the third person who stretches their arms towards to the sky, looking up.

The middle 2 minutes feature all except two in cotton printed ie’s, flute glasses full of liquid in hand, some standing, most sitting on woven and overlapping mats, where in the middle a spread of foods in ceramic and wooden bowls and plates sit.

They gently smile at each other, show acts of care and connection, leaning into each other’s napes. They are happy. They toast before eating and feeding each other.

The final images of the videos show people laying on the rocks by the water again, connected to each other in various comfortable positions, resting peacefully.

Léuli Eshrāghi, Seumanutafa Sāmoan, Persian, and Cantonese, born 1986, intervenes in display territories to prioritise global Indigenous and Asian diasporic visuality, sensual and spoken languages, and ceremonial-political practices.

In 2022, Eshrāghi presented new work at the Tate Modern (London), the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, and the Centre d’exposition de l’Université de Montréal.

Their work is held in the Royal Bank of Canada and Regional Contemporary Arts Fund France, and in private collections in Australia, Canada, and Norfolk Island.

You are listening to the visual summary of Bhenji Ra’s three-channel video installation called Trade Routes, 2023 as part of Interfacial Intimacies an exhibition of photography, film, painting, installation, textile, and performance by artists who hold and express tenderly the multiple aspects of their selves through a series of portraits and anti-portraits. The exhibition has been curated by Caine Chennatt, developed by the Plimsoll Gallery and toured by Contemporary Art Tasmania.

Trade Routes was co-commissioned by Plimsoll Gallery/University of Tasmania and TarraWarra Museum of Art. Direction and camera work by Bhenji Ra. Production by Bhenji Ra, Jen Atherton, and André Shannon.

Displayed across 3 screens, playing simultaneously, in separated spaces, all videos are highly textural and layered with multiple different moving images, never the same, but each containing similar motifs of trans-versing and self-filming along paths and root systems in Oaxaca, Jamaica, Philippines, Los Angeles and Tiwi Islands.

Trade Routes is the work of body capture, shot on mobile phones seen and unseen, and is a form of archiveology. Scenes merge and move. Various characters emerge and fade, out of sync and in synch,. Trade Routes refuses narrative comprehension, in place of choreographic editing.

The following descriptions are a collage of moments, layered, interweaving and are only some, and not the whole sum, of the many paths and ways one can notice, observe, feel and experience this work.

All screens commence with a flaming tropical tree, broad green leaves burning.

Markets, roads, bridges, train station, no, an airport, an aerial view, topography of farmlands, housing.

Shopping centre, lone but not alone, a person holds camera to capture the other documentor, or is it their whole scene in reflection, including the long-haired dancer dancing freely behind them, for them, for themselves…or another.

General store, outdoor market, vendors, 2 friends walk through, never stopping, passing through and by.

Streetscapes with friends, gatherings, against, upon, in nature, to rivers and bodies of water.

Nightlife, public spaces, hot pink neon light blares and glares on the dancefloor.

The market walkers, the friends, carry on with shopping bag in hand, sometimes looking over shoulder, is the camera following, keeping up, smiling.

Mobile on the dash of the car, another mobile in hand travelling, hanging onto a vehicle, at the back, wind blowing, scenes and scenes passing by, close up of smiling faces, faces in the heat.

Market walkers start running, fast and past, to restaurants, eateries, families, eating, sitting.

The dancefloor highlights a constant central dancer, who becomes more prominent with the stay and sway, swinging their long hair, playing to camera, posing, enjoying.

In a car, gathered, side mirror shows glances of those inside outside, crates of fresh fruit.

Kitchens, walking dirt paths, down streets, from sunhats to carrying umbrellas, corridors, passages, to new gatherings, club, dancing, crowded, flashing night.

Against an evening, darkness, fence illuminated, people walk.

While on another an outdoor sunny scene, positive people in exercise clothes, sticks in hand, do not combat, and talk instead, conversation long, engrossed, happening, with a sense of waiting, it is beginning and continuing and continuing.

By the water side, by lake, its day, screen goes to blue.

On the microphone, karaoke, singing, in a hair salon it takes two to dry hair with hairdryers from all angles.

By 9 minutes blue is gone and paths around the lake, the lake take friends around, past slippers in the mud. Dancing is layered with pineapples and pineapples and bananas, yellowness.

The nightclub continues on another screen, flashing lights, dancer centrestage, juxtaposed to view of club or building exterior, outside, people on street, some just dance, others stand.

Touchscreen fingers zoom and move along the google earth coastlines of Indonesia, Australia and curiously around.

With the dirt of the outback, a road, car travellers, to their left beyond trees is the sea, water, sea.

The stones texturizes the market and pineapples, with grainy, speckled surfaces.

Slow motion cutting, clever peeling of the skin with broad blade knife, then swiftly stripping, exposing juicy pineapple flesh.

An elder and younger folk dancing in space. Screen goes to blue.

Folk dancers dance in a video, held in hand as if showing another over a plate of an eaten fish dish, table of bottles, plates, the gathering, has otherwise finished and moved on.

A bulldozer, a digger, digging earth and land, fruit at market again, cat in a crib grooming. People playing ball. Fabrics, flags, cloth become sky, tree tops, in the wind, overcast cloudy.

Airport, gates of departures and arrivals, an escalator, grid lines over people from home, on land, on route.

A coiling sculpture.

Handheld camera.

Texture of leaves and leaves on the forest, land, floor, green saplings and shoots, as the camera keeps following and travelling forever more.

Bhenji Ra (born 1990) is a transdisciplinary artist currently based on Gadigal land, Eora Nation. Her practice combines dance, video, illustration and community activation. Her work dissects cultural theory and identity, centralising her own personal histories as a tool to reframe performance. She is the mother of Western Sydney based collective and ballroom house SLÉ.

You are listening to the audio description of Aleks Danko’s work called Incident – ambivalence (1991-1992) as part of  Interfacial Intimacies an exhibition of photography, film, painting, installation, textile, and performance by artists who hold and express tenderly the multiple aspects of their selves through a series of portraits and anti-portraits. The exhibition has been curated by Caine Chennatt, developed by the Plimsoll Gallery and toured by Contemporary Art Tasmania.

Incident- ambivalence is a sculptural wall installation displaying 10 identical red cartoonish faces. Each is a painting 28 x 27.5 centimetres in dimension, made of wood, galvanised steel and synthetic polymer paint and varnish.

Each face has large, round eyes with black pupils, thick black eyebrows, a straight black line for a nose and a mouth with 5 rectangular teeth showing. The face is outlined in black. The red is bright and vivid similar to the colour of a ripe tomato.

The faces are arranged in a pattern on a light coloured background wall.

There is one face in the top row on the far right. There are 8 faces in the middle row displayed side by side spaced approximately 30 cms apart, and another single face in the bottom row on the far left.

The following is quoted from the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia- ‘Aleks Danko describes the face in this painting as that of an idiot. This brainless, disembodied head is a recurring motif in his work, first appearing in Taste in 1988 and again in the installation Taste: the DUH-HEADS in 2013. With its staring eyes and foolish grin it could register any emotion, from surprise to terror to embarrassment. Danko uses it to signify a kind of mindlessness, clustering a number of the vacantly staring faces in his installations to create a sense of a mob mentality; the unthinking and unblinking conformity of the crowd.’ The recurrence of this face in Danko’s work is a reminder of the importance of independent thought, outside the bounds of convention and conformity.

Aleks Danko is an Australian performance artist and sculptor, born in 1950 currently living Victoria. The son of Ukrainian migrants, he was born in Adelaide, and educated at the South Australian School of Art and the Hawthorn Institute of Education. He started exhibiting in Adelaide in 1970.

Drawing actively on Australia’s political and cultural history, Danko combines irony, humour and sarcasm with aesthetically sophisticated and materially confident gestures to interrogate the social, political and cultural landscape of Australia.

Incident- ambivalence is a Collection loan from the University of Tasmania.

You are listening to the audio description of Cassie Sullivan’s work called Country is calling, 2021, as part of Interfacial Intimacies an exhibition of photography, film, painting, installation, textile, and performance by artists who hold and express tenderly the multiple aspects of their selves through a series of portraits and anti-portraits. The exhibition has been curated by Caine Chennatt, developed by the Plimsoll Gallery and toured by Contemporary Art Tasmania.

Country is calling is a framed coloured photograph. It is 110cm wide x 67cm high x 14cm deep.

The landscape photograph shows a person standing centre on a small, rounded patch of sand that is surrounded by a large body of water.

The water is calm and reflects the person, who serenely looks into the camera.

They are wearing a white dress with thin shoulder straps. Their shoulder length hair is blonde.

They wear a black and white checkered belt around their waist and a black beaded necklace around their neck.

In the background there are mountains. The sky is clear with a light blue colour and there is a bird flying into the distance.

Their left hand holds the pelt of a grey-furred animal. The black tattoo is visible on an inner forearm.

In their other hand a long light-coloured necklace dangles by their side.

The artist’s statement writes:

“Georgia stands on nuenonne Country, calling in our ancestors. Their presence appears as a bird, swooping and surrounding her. They are talking and we listen. As we exist here on the sand, our ancestors have travelled for tens of thousands of years, we heal. We heal our family, we disrupt our colonisation, we unbury the past and we form new pathways forward.

Georgia through education and activism, I through art and research, both of us through story.

In her left hand she holds an animal skin and in her right, a shell necklace, these are items of reverence and belonging that tie her to culture. This is what we look like now. Strong and sensitive indigenous women raising the voice of contemporary Aboriginal Tasmanians on an island that often feels isolated with a reflection that often feels distorted.”

Cassie Sullivan, born 1985 is a lutruwita /Tasmanian Indigenous contemporary Artist. She has a responsive, intimate, and experimental practice that crosses disciplines of moving image, photography, writing, sound, installation and printmaking. Cassie is currently exploring themes of intergenerational experience and trauma, bodily memory and knowledge holding.

You are listening to the audio description of Georgia Morgan’s work called This dream is real, 2021, as part of Interfacial Intimacies an exhibition of photography, film, painting, installation, textile, and performance by artists who hold and express tenderly the multiple aspects of their selves through a series of portraits and anti-portraits. The exhibition has been curated by Caine Chennatt, developed by the Plimsoll Gallery and toured by Contemporary Art Tasmania.

This dream is real is a Fine art inkjet print 120 cm high x 80cm wide.

The portrait is of Georgia Morgan an in this image shows them standing outdoors next to a large artificial looking palm tree with oversized leaves, on the bank of a river.

The background features a body of water and a forested area.

Draped around Morgan’s shoulder is yellow netting that looks like a golden shawl, and a blue tarp is wrapped around their torso.

The palm tree is made of strips of dark green plastic for leaves, and curved carboard tubing for branches. It is held upright with long lengths of tethered light blue rope.

Morgan stands barefoot in the dark silty moist earth of the riverbank, smiling softly, looking directly into the camera.

This dream is real references the Malaysian kampong (village) that her mother grew up in and in the telling of stories, Morgan said: “She is remembering and I am imagining.”

Georgia Morgan is a Tamil Australian artist born in 1992 in Sydney, now living in lutruwita / Tasmania, whose practice is devotional and aspirational. Their multidisciplinary works include large-scale site-specific installations, photographs, videos and ceramics where materiality, play, intuition and imagining inform their process. She writes:

“It is storytelling.

I am in one place and longing for another (that may or may not exist).

It is what I say it is. You believe cause I believe.”

Her work recollects fragmented narratives through the rearrangement of material and architectural hierarchies.

She was awarded both a Commendation Prize and the People’s Choice Award in the 2020 Churchie Emerging Art Prize, and won the 2021 Tasmanian Women’s Art Prize (Emerging). Her work has also most recently been acquired by Artbank.

You are listening to the audio description of Cigdem Aydemir’s work called Stasis (a map of home), 2019, as part of Interfacial Intimacies an exhibition of photography, film, painting, installation, textile, and performance by artists who hold and express tenderly the multiple aspects of their selves through a series of portraits and anti-portraits. The exhibition has been curated by Caine Chennatt, developed by the Plimsoll Gallery and toured by Contemporary Art Tasmania.

Stasis (a map of home) is a framed coloured photograph. The simple black frame is 110 cm wide and 65 cms high. The landscape photograph is centred in the middle of the frame surrounded by the white border of the mountboard.

Stasis is a portrait of the artist lying back, propped on their elbows, on a sandy beach.

The light-skinned person has their eyes closed and appears to be relaxed. Their face is sunlit. They are wearing a tight long-sleeved white top and around their neck a white silk scarf drapes over and behind one shoulder, as if blown by the wind, much like their brown hair sweeping back onto the sand also.

The sand around them has a wavy texture. The person’s body casts a long dark shadow across the sand’s surface behind them.

The person has a strong tan line across their forehead.

In the artist’s words: “In this work I present a map of sorts, it is the tan line of my veil produced while sitting under the sun.

It is my attempt at connecting with my 13-year-old self, who loved spending time at the beach. It is also about consolidating multiple ideas of home, like a true nomad, and finding peace and comfort in them all.”

“When I look at the artworks I have made over the last fifteen years I sometimes feel like my 13 year old self would be disappointed. I would have thought it was deceiving for a non-veil-wearing woman to make artworks wearing the veil. I am comforted, instead, by the words of feminist theorist Rosi Braidotti who writes about identity as being under constant reconstruction, “Identity is retrospective; representing it entails that we can draw accurate maps, indeed, but only of where we have already been and consequently no longer are.”

She also emphasises that as nomadic subjects, we are not always in motion. In fact, we need moments of rest, or stasis, in order to grasp our nomadism. Stasis could also be thought of as a moment of equilibrium, where opposing or conflicting forces lie in balance.

Cigdem Aydemir, born in 1983 is a Sydney-based artist working in the mediums of installation, performance and video art. Much of her work expands on the veil as a culturally constructed site and as material realisation, while exploring the veiled woman cipher as resistant female other and as lived experience.

Cigdem was the 2013 recipient of the Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize, in the Emerging Artist category, and the Edna Ryan Award for Creative Feminism in 2012. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally receiving support and opportunities from Australia Council for the Arts, Arts NSW, Ian Potter Cultural Trust, Freedman Foundation, Performance Space (Sydney), Salamanca Arts Centre (Hobart), and Vryfees (South Africa).

Stasis (a map of home) is Courtesy the artist and Finkelstein Gallery.

You are listening to a summary description of David Rosetsky’s single-channel, high-definition digital video work called Gaps, 2014, as part of Interfacial Intimacies an exhibition of photography, film, painting, installation, textile, and performance by artists who hold and express tenderly the multiple aspects of their selves through a series of portraits and anti-portraits. The exhibition has been curated by Caine Chennatt, developed by the Plimsoll Gallery and toured by Contemporary Art Tasmania.

About David Rosetsky.

Born in 1970 Rosetsky is a Melbourne-based contemporary artist working across photography, video and installation. His black-and-white photographs and double exposures often allude to different psychological and emotional states, identity and selfhood. He is known for the elegance and aesthetic rigour of his art, which draws on the visual languages of contemporary advertising and cinema.

About Gaps.

Gaps embodies Rosetzky’s ongoing exploration of personal identity and the relationship – or ‘gaps’ – between self and other through speech, movement and dance.

Rosetzky’s collaborators on Gaps include choreographer and performer Stephanie Lake, co-writer Anna Zagala, and performers, Jessie Oshodi, Lee Serle, Rani Pramesti and Dimitri Baveas, and sound design by long time collaborator David Franzke

Drawing from material Rosetzky gathered conducting interviews with his cast, this new work is an oblique survey of the transition from rehearsal to performance, in both art and life.

The artist’s process involved in-depth workshopping of the material with the performers, who come from acting and dance disciplines. Lake’s choreography, which integrates naturalistic and stylised movements, was also developed with input from the cast and Rosetzky during this rehearsal period.

Gaps is 35 mins and 7 seconds long, containing movement, text and sound. The work does not need to be seen from beginning to end, as viewers are invited to approach and engage with the work at any point throughout the duration.

The video, moving between close ups and wide shots at different speeds, rhythms and intensities, features four diverse dancers/performers across two rehearsal spaces- a black curtained dark studio, and a white windowed sunlit studio.

Starting in the dark space, Lee, tall, thin, light-skinned with facial hair wears a grey tshirt and grey trackpants. Dimitri next to them, shorter, muscular, olive-skinned and dark-haired wears a black singlet and light grey trackpants rolled up to their knees. Jessie next to Dimitri is about the same height, a person of colour with brown curly voluminous hair wearing a white close-fitting tshirt and brown leggings, and Rani, born in Jakarta Indonesia, wears a loose leopard print top and baggy pants tapered at the ankle, short hair.

Over 35 minutes, rhythmic gestures and sequences are introduced and repeated, with text, based on interviews with the performers. The visuals in the first half of the film, 17 minutes, are exactly the same as the second half, however the text you hear in both halves of the film, although the same, are spoken by different bodies.

From an interview Rosetsky discusses the transposition of text from one subject to another, or it being shared amongst a group of performers, is used in part to provoke questioning and to potentially destabilise assumptions that the audience may have about any particular set of characteristics of the on-screen subjects.

In regard to Stephanie Lake’s choreography for Gaps, Rosetsky describes their approach ‘as beautiful, precise and intuitive…able to bring a range of different emotive tonalities, speeds and textures.” giving physical form to what hangs in the air between the four performers…where fingers tremble or limbs fold, like unspoken sentences or manifestations of inner conflict.

At times performers stretch and express in space solo alone, and when side by side or opposite, they mirror and echo each other in momentary pairs and when altogether near to each other, their movements overlap, connect, sometimes touching, and manipulating the other to shift and bend, being manoeuvred while manoeuvring others.

A sequence that is repeated in both rooms are when all four performers are on their knees side by side in a row. All hands are splayed on floor in front, before one at the end starts an abstract coded pattern of some kind, that passes to the other, between and around the gaps of arms and fingers, and like a chain reaction continues to get passed along, to the next set of hands and down the line, interpreted.

The physical messaging goes up and down the line several times, and at each loop the performers rise from floor to knee to standing upright.

The audible percussive sounds at 1 minute are where 3 performers slap, tap, pat parts of their body in unison- thighs, upper arms, chest, neck, face, forehead, and hands, before turning inward to face each other in triangle formation, when Rani comes in to place a chair for Dimitri to sit upon before they deliver their monologue. Lee and Jessica will continue to move around Dimitri, connecting parts of their body to theirs and each other, and at times shifting Dimitri into new shapes and positions while they talk.

At nearly six minutes and then again at 24 minutes Rani and Jessica sit on the ledge where the roller doors to the light studio have been opened, having a cup of tea, while Rani voices the same text in both of those moments.

At 8 minutes Dimitri walks across the white studio space past Rani and Jessica who have come to stillness after mirroring each other’s movements. The studio floor is made up of 5 rows of cream coloured Tarkett linoleum laid out. Dimitri grabs the end of one and rolls it back halfway across the length of the space, revealing old wooden honey-coloured floorboards beneath.

Rani and Jessica join them to do the same, collecting an end of a roll, rolling it back, until half the floor is completely uncovered. They then part a white curtain at the back of the space, to together carry in an old wooden dining table from the other room, they place it in the middle of the studio. Jessica lays down on it on their back looking up, Rani lays their head on Jessica’s stomach, in side position, curled atop the table also. Dimitri stands behind, looking into the camera, before text is spoken by all three.

The near halfway mark of the video, before it loops again, takes Jessica and Rani’s earlier mirroring duet from the white space into the black studio, this time without text or speaking, and in silence, they stand cross armed, checking each other out, pointing away and towards, stepping apart, testing distances, before sitting on floor, coming to their knees, and towards each other until they meet forehead to forehead, swaying connected. Lying apart again, arms reach out to fingers almost touching they come to standing, never breaking their gaze at each other, until they turn away completely and walk off. The visuals of the film recommence and run 17 minutes to end.

You are listening to the audio description of Shea Kirk’s work called Machar (left and right view) 2021, as part of Interfacial Intimacies an exhibition of photography, film, painting, installation, textile, and performance by artists who hold and express tenderly the multiple aspects of their selves through a series of portraits and anti-portraits. The exhibition has been curated by Caine Chennatt, developed by the Plimsoll Gallery and toured by Contemporary Art Tasmania.

Machar is an Archival pigment print on Canson Platine Fibre Rag 310gsm.

It is 63.5 wide x 51 cm high and is part of an edition of 5 + 1 Artist Proof.

Machar is a black and white dual-portrait of a seated young and shirtless dark-skinned man with muscular build. The image of the man appears twice, one next to the other in horizontal arrangement. The man’s hair is braided very closely to the scalp.

They are looking directly at the camera with a serious expression.

They wear dark jeans with a leather belt.

The background of the subject is plain and light.

They have facial hair on their chin and above their lip. Their chest is bare.

The veins on their gently resting arms are protruding and visible.

Their skin creases in three straight lines across their otherwise flat abdomen.

Shea Kirk uses a dual large-format camera set-up, to simultaneously capture two images from slightly different perspectives to make a stereoscopic pair – emulating the natural vision of the left and right eyes.

Kirk says: “For me, they are complete together as a pair, as separate side-by-side images, as a single view, or combined as a three-dimensional experience.”

They go on to say:

“Within photography there’s this idea of getting the one ‘right angle’ to display or reproduce as a document,” and “A lot of the time, a portrait is reduced to face and hands, but the body is the record of our being. There’s a strength and power in being photographed as you are – markers of wealth, class, time and era disappear when you remove those external layers of cloth.”

Shea Kirk, born in 1985 is a Melbourne-based visual artist working with traditional photographic methods and techniques. They have been a finalist in the Olive Cotton Award (2019); National Photographic Portrait Prize (2019) and the Head On Portrait Prize (2018), and has participated in a number of group exhibitions across Victoria.

Machar (left and right view) is Courtesy of the artist.