In Her Footsteps: A Tribute to Matrilineal Legacy
exploring materials and storytelling in painting, portraiture and writing. Sarah Elson creates intricate sculptures from found seed casings and recycled materials, reflecting nature's resilience and the nurturing strength of motherhood. Darcey Bella Arnold explores aphasia, using her mother's speech patterns in text-based works that blend wordplay, metaphor and humour to capture memory. Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal artists D Harding and Kate Harding honour their matrilineal ties to Carnarvon Gorge through textile art, focusing on a quilt made by Kate for D's tenth birthday. Presented with PICA – Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts
Seven contemporary Australian artists pay tribute to women who have shaped their lives, offering powerful insights into womanhood, motherhood and colonial histories. Using indigo and rust-dyed fabrics Zali Morgan's textile and print works trace the journeys of Yooreel Fanny Balbuk, a Whadjuk Noongar woman who defiantly walked her ancestral paths in Boorloo despite colonial encroachment. Melbourne artist Lauren Burrow captures the crocodile attack of environmental philosopher Val Plumwood in sculptures made using centrifugal force and beeswax, referencing the crocodile's death roll. Walyalup/Fremantle artist Tom Freeman’s works connect his family history with personal memory,
Laure Prouvost Oui Move In You
Bhenji Ra Biraddali Dancing on the Horizon
Filipina-Australian artist Bhenji Ra's 30-minute film, Biraddali Dancing on the Horizon , documents a process of ancestral, intergenerational learning. The work intertwines cultural heritage with themes of gender and identity, challenging Western dance norms and sparking dialogue on colonial perspectives and personal histories. In 2019 Bhenji studied pangalay, a pre-Islamic dance of the Tausug people, with her teacher and collaborator, Tausug elder Sitti Airia Sangkula Askalani-Obeso. In an interview with Mariam Ella Arcilla, Bhenji explains this fingernail dance tradition. ‘Pangalay is this performance that doesn't need a real cultural traditional framework [because] it's constantly in rotation and constantly spiralling around itself. It doesn't need a song, it just needs
the body to manifest itself. When I was 17, I took folk dance classes in Manila, and that's when I came across Pangalay. I was like, damn, it's so much like voguing! You had these women that were framing everything within their hands. It's also this celestial form that slips through gender, and through traditional and nontraditional spaces. There were these post- colonial ideas about this being a gendered dance; how men were not allowed to do Pangalay, but the Tausug Elder collapsed these ideas for me. It's like that with Filipino culture: there's something very progressive about the way we slip between genders and flip through all kinds of colonial constructs.’ Presented with PICA – Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts
French artist Laure Prouvost has captivated contemporary art audiences for over a decade, winning the Turner Prize and representing France at the Venice Biennale. Celebrated for her imaginative and experimental videos, often set in unique installation environments, she examines the subjectivity of the human experience with a sensitive and poetic playfulness. Using a distinctive lexicon of recurring symbols and themes, her work considers notions of language and pre-verbal communication, aspects of family and biography, selfhood and our relationship with others and the environment. Inspired by the radical pathfinding figures who have shaped Laure both personally and artistically, Oui Move In You explores the cumulative influence of our relationships and experiences over time. Through a series of independent works, collectively suggestive of a life cycle, the exhibition conceptually explores the roles and legacies of our forebears and the evolution of familial connections and relationships over time. The exhibition reimagines PICA's gallery as a labyrinthine, otherworldly space, leading from the depth of the womb to the light of the sky. It begins with Four for See
Beauties (2022), an evocative piece featuring three women and a newborn amidst aquatic imagery, symbolising life's origins. The journey continues with Shadow Does (2023), where a young girl's shadow play recounts daily life to a distant grandmother, illustrating intergenerational change. The experience culminates in Every Sunday, Grand Ma (2022), where ‘Grandma’ (a recurring character throughout Laure's work) transforms into a winged figure, shedding earthly ties in a display of ultimate freedom. In a 2024 interview at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Laure remarked “I call myself a translator, rather than an artist … I like the idea that I translate an emotion, or a moment, or sensation.” Extending from this is the related possibility for misunderstanding and ambiguity, alluded to in the exhibition title Oui Move In You , a humorous combination of English and Laure's native French. Oui Move In You invites you on a transformative journey, reflecting the profound narratives of life, legacy and liberation.
Annika Kristensen , Curator
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Presented with PICA – Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and Australian Centre of Contemporary Art, Melbourne
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