Acknowledgement of Country

Dharug

Bayadyinyang budyari Dharug yiyura Dharug Ngurra.
Bayady’u budyari Dharug Warunggadgu baranyiin barribugu.
Bayady’u budyari wagulgu yiyuragu Ngurra bimalgu Blacktown City. Flannel flowers dyurali bulbuwul.
Yanmannyang mudayi Dharug Ngurrawa. Walama ngyini budbud dali Dharug Ngurra Dharug yiyura baranyiin barribugu.

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English

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of this Land, the Dharug people, and their continued connection to Country.
We pay our respects to Elders from yesterday to tomorrow.
We extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples of Blacktown City where the flannel flowers still grow proud and strong.
We will walk softly on this land and open our hearts to Country as the Dharug people have for tens of thousands of years.

*Please be advised that the 4, 11 and 18 October sessions of Elders in Residence will not go ahead. More info
See You in Hell

See You in Hell presents a collection of playful and subversive works by artists Louise Zhang and Jess Bradford exploring Chinese concepts of the afterlife.

Audiences will journey through the exhibition space encountering various hellscapes and mythology presented in painting and sculptural installation

Diyu, the Chinese Buddhist concept of Hell, is both a starting point and a meeting place for the artists to explore personal experiences and complex relationships to their shared Chinese cultural heritage as ‘third culture kids’. The exhibition is a bridge between their practices, and includes individual and collaborative works.

See You in Hell has been restaged for Blacktown Arts by Curator Talia Smith.
Download the original See You in Hell exhibition catalogue here courtesy of Wagga Wagga Art Gallery.

Bios

Jess Bradford is a Singaporean-born and Sydney-based artist, working across painting, ceramics, video and installation. Her work explores her mixed-race identity and Chinese heritage by questioning representations of cultural or national identity. Her current work focuses on a Chinese cultural theme park in Singapore called the Haw Par Villa / Tiger Balm Gardens. Having frequented the park as a child, Bradford uses the site to explore her ambivalent connection to Singaporean-Chinese culture; and concepts of collective memory and cultural inheritance.

Louise Zhang 张露茜 is a Chinese-Australian multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture and installation. Zhang explores the dynamics of aesthetics, contrasting the attractive and repulsive in order to navigate the senses of fear, anxiety and a sense of otherness reflecting her identity. Her work is inspired by horror cinema, Chinese mythology and botany, adopting and placing symbols and motifs in compositions of harmonic dissonance.

Presented by Blacktown Arts, supported by Create NSW, Blacktown City Council and commissioned by Wagga Wagga Art Gallery. Louise Zhang appears courtesy of N. Smith Gallery.

         

Image Credits:

Louise Zhang and Jess Bradford in Louise Zhang’s studio, photography by Garry Trinh
Jess Bradford, photography by Garry Trinh
Louise Zhang, photography by Garry Trinh

Spring 2024

Spring 2024

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I’m an Artist

Blacktown Arts supports artists through annual opportunities across prizes, exhibitions, funding opportunities, and studio spaces for local creatives.

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Blacktown City Art Prize

Blacktown City Art Prize

Blacktown City’s annual acquisitive art prize open to artists across Australia, with a prize pool of over $23,500.

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