Throughout June and July 2016, Blacktown Arts Centre presented It’s Our Thing: More History on Australian Hip-Hop (Part I).
Curated by Kon Gouriotis and Paul Howard, this first iteration of the exhibition series was inspired by chance encounters between some of Australia’s founding hip-hop crews and visual artists in Blacktown in the early 1990s.
The exhibition revisited the emergence of this dynamic sub-culture, examining how the collaborative practices and styles of hip-hop culture have influenced the work of contemporary artists Khaled Sabsabi and Minky Rawat. Sabsabi and Rawat presented new and archival artworks, alongside works by some of the most iconic artists of the 20th century – Joseph Beuys, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol.
It’s Our Thing: More History on Australian Hip-Hop (Part II)
22 June 2017 – 12 August 2017
This second iteration presents the work of 14 contemporary performance and visual artists who continue to explore the explosion of hip-hop culture in Blacktown during the 1990s and its impact on current artistic practices.
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Image Background: Khaled Sabsabi, 70,000 Veils, 2014, digital 1080 Progressive Scan PAL HD Video, MP4 Format, each channel 700 seconds, 100 parts, H 400 x L 1320 X W 100cm. Foreground: Street Level Archive & It’s Our Thing Plinth Installation. Photograph by Sharon Hickey.