Ground Floor, Building F Monash University, Caulfield Campus 900 Dandenong Road Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia

Presented by MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART BORDERS, BARRIERS, WALLS: MEDIA KIT

Tony Schwensen, Border Protection Assistance Proposed Monument for the Torres Strait (Am I ever going to see your face again?) 2002, road barriers, buckets, Floaties, water. Courtesy of the artist and Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney.

www.monash.edu.au/muma Telephone +61 3 9905 4217 muma@monash.edu

Curated by francis E. Parker

EXHIBITION DATES30 April – 2 July 2016

ARTISTS Lawrence Abu Hamdan (LBN), Allora & Calzadilla (USA & CUB), Karen Black (AUS), Gunter Christmann (AUS), Jin Chul Kyu (KOR), Shilpa Gupta (IND), Guan Wei (CHN), Khaled Hourani (PSE), Raafat Ishak (AUS), Isaac Julien (UK), Sonia Leber & David Chesworth (AUS), Kai Löffelbein (DEU), Ricky Maynard (AUS), Carlos Motta (USA), Tony Schwensen (AUS), Amy Spiers & Catherine Ryan (AUS), Danae Stratou (GRC), Judy Watson (AUS)

CATALOGUE The exhibition catalogue features commissioned essays by Professor Gillian Triggs, President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, and Yanis Varoufakis, founding member of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 and former Greek finance minister, along with a curatorial overview.

INTRoductionBorders, barriers and walls delineate this group exhibition of Australian and international artists. It reflects on how these contested and complex forms shape the world, producing situations of separation, isolation or thwarted passage across the globe. Whether they be physical constructions, psychological constructs or natural defences, the exhibition considers the forces by which these divides are either upheld or breached.

Borders, Barriers, Walls features more than twenty-five artworks covering video installation, painting, photography and sculpture. The exhibition includes a new commission by local artists Amy Spiers and Catherine Ryan.

Director Charlotte Day: “This is a timely exhibition that continues MUMA’s commitment to contemporary art that engages critically with the social, political and cultural issues of our times.”

Curator Francis E. Parker: “The exhibition takes place against the backdrop of the global refugee crisis and seeks to add to the voices speaking out against the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers by the Australian Government through offshore detention.”

Almost fifteen years after the September 11 attacks, many of the works in Borders, Barriers, Walls address the subsequent shift in geopolitics and political unrest that has resulted in the displacement of peoples and the dramatic increase of refugees world-wide. While the exhibition is focused on recent and contemporary events, history informs several of the works that detail government policies of restricted movement and exile in relation to both Indigenous Australians and people all over the world.

The exhibiting artists share a concern with the geographies that delineate nation states: oceans, air space, land, as well as the modes of transport that enable passage between them. A number of video and immersive soundscape works foreground narrative and emphasise documentary form as a mechanism for personal and cultural reflection. Through lyricism, humour, satire, essay and documentary forms, the artists in Borders, Barriers, Walls seek to disrupt systems of control – political, militaristic, bureaucratic – as well as reflect on past injustices, sites of trauma and the importance of bearing witness.

MEDIAFor all media enquiries please contact Kelly Fliedner kelly.fliedner@monash.edu | +61 418 308 059

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BORDERS, BARRIERS, WALLS

Presented by MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART BORDERS, BARRIERS, WALLS: SELECTED ARTIST PROFILES

Isaac Julien Isaac Julien (b. 1960, London, United Kingdom) is an installation artist and filmmaker. Julien has held major solo exhibitions at the Tate Modern, London, 2015; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2013; Tate Liverpool, 2010; Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2005; and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2005. Julien was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2001 for his films The Long Road to Mazatlán (1999), made in collaboration with Javier de Frutos, and Vagabondia (2000), also choreographed by de Frutos. Isaac Julien is represented by Roslyn Oxley9, Sydney.Julien’s multi-channel video installation Western Union: Small Boats (2007), was made in response to the loss of life in clandestine crossings of the Mediterranean from North Africa to Sicily. It meditates on migration and the hope for a better life, juxtaposing the baroque splendour of the Palazzo Gangi – the location for Visconti’s film The Leopard – with the deadly voyage.

Khaled Hourani Khaled Hourani (b.1965, Hebron, Palestine) is an artist, designer and critic based in the Palestinian West Bank city of Ramallah. He has exhibited at Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany, 2012; Seeing is Believing, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2011; and a retrospective of his work was held at both the Center for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow and Gallery One, Ramallah in 2014. Hourani worked as the Artistic Director (2007-10), then the Director (2010-13) of the International Academy of Art Palestine, an organisation known for its innovative contemporary art program and institutional model. He was the curator of the Palestinian Pavilion for the São Paulo Art Biennial, Brazil, in 1996 and 2002, and the 21st Alexandria Biennale, Egypt, in 2001. Recently he was awarded Creative Time's Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change in New York City. Hourani’s video documentation Picasso in Palestine (2012) follows the bureaucratic negotiations and border crossings of a cubist portrait by Picasso on its journey from the Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands for exhibition at the International Academy of Art Palestine in 2011.

Danae Stratou Danae Stratou (b. 1964, Athens, Greece) makes large-scale installations and tactile audio-visual environments. In 2010 she co-founded the non-profit organisation Vital Space, a global, interdisciplinary, cross-media art platform addressing the pressing issues of our time. She is one of the three members of the D.A.ST. Arteam collective who created Desert Breath in 1997, one of the largest Land Art projects on the planet, covering 100,000 square metres in the eastern Egyptian Sahara bordering the Red Sea. Stratou's work has been exhibited widely, including in the 48th Venice Biennale, Italy, 1999; the 1st Valencia Biennale, Spain, 2001; the Bienal International del Deporte en el Arte, Seville, Spain, 2005; the 5th International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Gyumri, Armênia, 2006; the 1st Thessaloniki Biennale, Greece, 2007; La Verrière, Fondation d’Enterprise Hermès, Belgium, 2010; Istanbul – Culture Capital of Europe 2010 International Program, Turkey, 2010; Restless, Adelaide International Festival, 2012; and the annual international exhibition Icastica, Arezzo, Italy, 2015.Stratou’s video installation The Globalising Wall (2012) is based on a text by Yani Varoufakis and bears witness to the spread of seperation walls in places such as Cyprus, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Ethiopia, the West Bank, Kashmir and Mexico.

(from top) Isaac Julien, Western Union: Small Boats (The Leopard) 2007 (still), single screen projection, super 16mm film transferred to DVD/HD, 5.1 surround sound. Courtesy of the artist.

(central two images) Khaled Hourani, Picasso in Palestine 2011 First photo: Khaled Jarar. Second photo: Sander Buyck.

(bottom image) Danae Stratou, The Globalising Wall 2012 (video still). Courtesy of the artist.

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Presented by MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART BORDERS, BARRIERS, WALLS: SELECTED ARTIST PROFILES

Tony SchwensenTony Schwensen (b. 1970, Sydney) lives and works in Boston, USA. Recent solo exhibitions and performances include: SCABLAND – 48HR Incident, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, 2015; Performalism, Station Gallery, Melbourne, 2014; Monument, Waterloo Center for the Arts, Iowa, 2010; Regret, Remorse, Repent, Le Lieu, Quebec City, Canada, 2010; and Post Colonial Cluster Fuck (with Trace Collective), Artspace, Sydney, 2009. Recent group exhibitions include: support material, soft furnishings, RMIT Project Space, Melbourne, 2016; Art as a Verb, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2014; Perform! Cooperate! Now!, Burgtheater, University of Hildesheim, Germany, 2014; and Indicating Boundaries, 4th International Live Art Conference, University of the Arts, Helsinki, 2013. Tony Schwensen is represented by Station Gallery, Melbourne, and Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney. Schwensen’s Border Protection Assistance Proposed Monument for the Torres Strait (Am I ever going to see your face again?) (2002) satirised the Howard Government’s tightening of Australia’s border security.

Allora & CalzadillaJennifer Allora (b. 1974, Philidelphia, USA) and Guillermo Calzadilla (b.1971, Havana, Cuba), based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, have a long-standing collaboration as installation artists. Recent solo exhibitions include: Apotome, REDCAT, Los Angeles, 2014; Fault Lines, Gladstone Gallery, New York, 2014; Intervals, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2014; Vidéo et Après, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2013; Stop, Repair, Prepare, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2011; and RETHINK Relations, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, 2009. Allora & Calzadilla’s works have been included in major international surveys such as Documenta 13, Kassel, 2012; the 54th Venice Biennale, United States of America Pavilion, 2011; and the 29th São Paulo Biennial, Brazil, 2010. Allora & Calzadilla are represented by Gladstone Gallery, New York, and Lisson Gallery, London.Allora & Calzadilla’s Under Discussion (2005) was made following the departure of the US military from its Naval Training Range on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques in 2003.

Judy WatsonJudy Watson (b. 1959, Mundubbera, Queensland) is a Brisbane-based artist whose work takes inspiration from the land and traditions of Waanyi culture. Recent major solo exhibitions include The Scarifier, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2016; sacred ground beating heart / experimental beds / heron island suite, Noosa Regional Gallery, Queensland, 2013; and heron island suit, which toured regional galleries in Western Australia, New South Wales and Queensland in 2010. In 2005, The University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane presented a survey of her work Judy Watson: Selected works 1990-2005. Recent group exhibitions include: Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia, Harvard Art Museum, USA, 2015; Artists and Empire: Facing Britain’s Imperial Past, TATE Britain, London, 2015; Contemporary Indigenous Art from Australia, Musée de la civilisation, Quebec, Canada, 2015; Daughters, Mothers (part of Future Feminist Archive), SCA Galleries, Sydney College of the Arts, 2015; Salt Water Country, Gold Coast Art Centre, 2014; Conflict: Contemporary responses to war, The University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, 2014; Theatre of the World, La Maison Rouge, Paris, 2013; and My Country: I Still Call Australia Home, Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2013. Judy Watson is represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane. Watson’s painting From Dusk Till Dawn: Five Brisbane Shields (2003) addresses the imposition of curfews on Indigenous people in cities like Brisbane up until the 1940s that saw them driven outside the ‘boundary streets’ at dusk.

(top image) Tony Schwensen, Border Protection Assistance Proposed Monument for the Torres Strait (Am I ever going to see your face again?) 2002, road barriers, buckets, Floaties, water. Courtesy of the artist and Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney.

(middle two images) Allora & Calzadilla, Under Discussion 2005 (video stills). © Allora & Calzadilla.

(bottom image) Judy Watson, From dusk till dawn: five Brisbane shields 2003, ink, chinagraph pencil and acrylic on canvas. © Judy Watson/Licensed by Viscopy, 2016. Photo: Carl Warner.

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Presented by MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART BORDERS, BARRIERS, WALLS: SELECTED ARTIST PROFILES

Amy Spiers & Catherine Ryan Amy Spiers (b. 1982, Sydney) and Catherine Ryan (b. 1983, Melbourne) are Melbourne-based artists and writers. Their collaborative work has been presented in exhibitions in Australia and internationally, including: Sorry You Missed Me, Royal College of Art, London, 2016; Während der Ausstellung ist das Museum geschlossen, Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg, Germany, 2016; MONA FOMA Festival, Salamanca Art Centre, Hobart, 2016; Performing Public Art Festival, Vienna Biennale, Austria, 2015; MAF Edge: Social Capital program curated by Jacqueline Doughty, Melbourne Art Fair, 2014; Festival of Live Art, Arts House, Melbourne, 2014; Site Dedicated to the Active Effacement and Complete Disregard of History, Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik, Berlin, 2013; and Ibrahim the Algorithm, Mathematics of Small Numbers group exhibition curated by Anusha Kenny, Footscray Community Art Centre, Melbourne, 2012. Their 2014 work, Nothing to See Here (Dispersal), was nominated for a Green Room Award for Outstanding Contemporary and Experimental Performance. In 2013 they were finalists in the Substation Contemporary Art Prize.

Amy Spiers and Catherine Ryan will devise a new performative work for Borders, Barriers, Walls.

Jin Chul KyuChul Kyu Jin (b. 1988, Seoul) has presented works in numerous exhibitions in South Korea and internationally. Recent exhibitions include: Portfolio for Future, Art Center White Block, South Korea, 2015; REAL DMZ PROJECT 2015, Art Sonje Center, Seoul, 2015; Dongbang Yogoi_ Triangle Art Festival, Space K, Gwangju, 2013; VIDEO RELAY TAANSAN, Insa Art Space, Seoul, 2013; and Mentor & Mentee, Hanwon Museum, Seoul, 2012.

Chul Kyu’s video, Kite-flying in Cheorwon D.M.Z. (2015) is a poetic reimagining of the kites flown over the Demilitarised Zone between North and South Korea to drop propaganda.

Sonia Leber & David ChesworthSonia Leber (b. 1959, Melbourne) and David Chesworth (b.1958 Stoke-On-Trent, United Kingdom) create large-scale sound and multimedia installations for public spaces and art institutions. Their work has been included in major survey exhibitions such as: All the World’s Futures, the 56th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2015; Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Russia, 2014; You Imagine What You Desire, 19th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, 2014; and Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 2013. They performed their Richter/Meinhof-Opera at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney in 2012 and at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne in 2010.

For Borders, Barriers, Walls Leber and Chesworth reprise their sound installation from the 2014 Biennale of Sydney, This Is Before We Disappear From View, which responsed to Australia's mandatory detention of so-called ‘illegal’ asylum seekers, a policy that stages deterrence in offshore prisons of hopelessness and dread.

(top image) Amy Spiers and Catherine Ryan, Closed to the Public (protecting space) 2016, performance, Freiburg, Germany. Photo: Marc Doradzillo.

(central two images) Jin Chul Kyu, Kite-flying in Cheorwon D.M.Z. 2015 (video still). Courtesy of the artist.

(bottom image) Sonia Leber and David Chesworth, This Is Before We Disappear From View 2014, 4-16 channel audio. Installation view, 19th Biennale of Sydney. Courtesy of the artists.

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