Giraru Galing Ganhagirri,
Myths & Legends, Water Woman
Blacktown Arts presents a new exhibition of works by Joel Bray, Amala Groom and Taree Sansbury.
Image: Giraru Galing Ganhagirri, Dance film installation, Joel Bray
Artists Joel Bray, Amala Groom and Taree Sansbury are linked by continuous connections to Country through stories, knowledge of resistance, and survival.
Bray, Groom and Sansbury reflect on the power of water, wind and earth to restore strength and connection with Country through Giraru Galing Ganhagirri, Myths & Legends, and Water Woman, respectively.
Blacktown Arts acknowledges that we stand on Dharug Ngurra, and pay respect to the continuous connection of Dharug peoples and ongoing custodianship of Country.
The artists were part of the year long Terra inFirma program which invited 20 artists working across visual arts, performance and cultural practice to mark the 250th anniversary of the arrival of James Cook in Australia and its ongoing impacts on communities represented in Blacktown.
Friday 9 September to
Saturday 8 October 2022
The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre
Giraru Galing Ganhagirri
Joel Bray
Giraru Galing Ganhagirri means ‘The Wind Will Bring Rain’ in Wiradjuri. It speaks to the ancientness and implacable forces of Country; of the assurance that, in nature, one thing follows another. Whatever happens, the wind will always bring the rain.
The birth-child of an exciting new collaboration between Wiradjuri choreographer Joel Bray, filmmaker James Wright and composer Daniel Nixon, Giraru Galing Ganhagirri is a multi-channel screen video installation of pure dance – a poetic, choreographic meditation on the elements.
Choreographically, Bray’s body evokes water, air and earth, and the various combinations and forms these take in Nature- rain, storms, clouds, dew, wind, breezes, creeks and rivers.
Giraru Galing Ganhagirri was commissioned by the National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra for the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony, created in consultation with Uncle James Ingram and Wagga Wagga Elders, and with support from City of Melbourne, Phillip Keir and Sarah Benjamin (the Keir Foundation), City of Port Phillip, Create NSW, Blacktown Arts, Arts Centre Melbourne, and Yirramboi Festival 2020.
Image: Giraru Galing Ganhagirri (Still FAVE), Dance film installation. Image by James Wright, courtesy Joel Bray Dance.
Myths & Legends
Amala Groom
Across western ‘thinking’ the Aboriginal experience of transdimensionalism is positioned as ‘fantasy’ and defined as science fiction. Myths & Legends seeks to reposition this with fifty interventions into popular fantasy illustrator Steve Hickman’s posters, overlaid with bold statements in red text that position aspects of western operations that upon deeper reflection are only ‘real because we believe in them’.
This series invites the audience to question the power and authority that we as a populace acquiesce to in a civic space; when we are ‘willing subjects’ – not because we choose or decide to but because we are not ‘not willing’.
Throughout, Groom inverts the four letters of the English alphabet that spell LOVE as a poignant reminder of the Wiradyuri practice of Marrumbang (love and kindness).
Amala Groom is represented by BlackArtProjects, Melbourne.
Image left: Myths & Legends: Common-Law, 2022, courtesy of the artist.
Image right: Myths & Legends: Debt-Fiscal-Economy, 2022, courtesy of the artist.
Water Woman
Taree Sansbury
Our land masses are all connected by water. What is going to happen when the water rises, expanding across country, awakening creatures of the deep? A creature whose watery domain envelops the surface world, watches and waits.
Water Woman asks the question, can cultural knowledge of the oldest living culture on this planet reverse the damage done? Or has our greed, corruption and polluted politics already signed the deed to the awaiting creature, the Water Woman.
Part contemplation, part prediction, part warning, Water Woman explores the near future of our world, one where water plays a threatening role and our complicit part in all of it.
Water Woman is an offshoot of dance work mi:wi. This screen adaptation explores old stories of the river creature, the Mulyawongk, from the Ngarrindjeri community of South Australia.
Water Woman was funded by City of Gold Coast and Arts Queensland through Karul Projects.
Image: Water Woman, Dance film installation. Image by Thomas E.S. Kelly, courtesy Taree Sansbury.
Artist Talk with Joel Bray on the meaning of Giraru Galing Ganhagirri
Joel Bray’s, ‘Giraru Galing Ganhagirri’ meaning ‘ The Wind Will Bring Rain’ in Wiradjuri explores the ancientness and implacable forces of Country; and the assurance that, in nature, one thing follows another. Sparked during the era of Covid-19 in what felt as an apocalyptic time, Bray’s meditative process behind his work focuses the on scale and cyclical promise of whatever happens, happens. ‘Giraru Galing Ganhagirri’ is a multi-channel screen video installation as part of the exhibition, ‘Giraru Galing Ganhagirri, Myths & Legends, Water Woman’, along with Amala Groom and Taree Sansbury.
The exhibition is showing at The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre until Saturday 8 October 2022.
Video credits: Videographer, James Wright Sound Designer, Daniel Nixon Produced by Lucie Sutherland & Michaela Perske
Myths & Legends: a didactic | Performance by Amala Groom
Thursday 29 September 6 pm to 7 pm
The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre
Join Amala Groom as she performs Myths & Legends: a didactic to accompany the current exhibition, Giraru Galing Ganhagirri, Myths & Legends, Water Woman.Across western ‘thinking,’ the Aboriginal experience of transdimensionalism is positioned as ‘fantasy’ and defined as science fiction. Switching between modes of lecture and storytelling, this performance seeks to reposition this fallacy as Groom invites the audience to question the power and authority that we as a populace acquiesce to in a civic space; when we are ‘willing subjects’ – not because we choose or decide to but because we are not ‘not willing’.
Image: Amala Groom, Myths & Legends: Popular Sovereignty, 2022, courtesy of the artist.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body. Proudly funded by the NSW Government in association with Blacktown City Council and Blacktown Arts.
Myths & Legends: a didactic was commissioned by Melbourne Art Fair 17-20 Feb 22 for GALLERY NIGHT/LIVE presented by Glenfiddich and the Broadsheet LATE NIGHTS program, supported by the City of Melbourne.
Provocateur + Dramaturgy by Madeleine Collie.
Development supported by Parramatta Artist Studios.
Amala Groom is represented by blackartprojects, Melbourne
Free – registrations encouraged
Bios
An artist living on Kulin Country (Melbourne), Joel Bray is a proud Wiradjuri man who trained at NAISDA and WAAPA before pursuing a career in Europe and Israel with Jean-Claude Gallotta, Company CeDeCe, Kolben Dance, Machol Shalem Dance House, Yoram Karmi’s FRESCO Dance Company, Niv Sheinfeld & Oren Laor and Roy Assaf, and returning to Australia to work with CHUNKY MOVE. Joel’s choreographic practice includes making dance, dance-theatre and works for young audiences.
Joel’s solo performance Biladurang won three Melbourne Fringe Awards. His second work Dharawungara was commissioned by CHUNKY MOVE and was a choreographic lament for the ceremony stolen from him by the Coloniser. Daddy was commissioned by Yirramboi Festival, Arts House and LiveWorks.
Joel was the 2019 National Library of Australia Creative Arts Fellow, and from this research is in development for his new work, Garabari, to be presented in Naarm in late 2022 with Chunky Move and Arts House.
In 2020 with the ever-changing industry, Joel adapted Biladurang to a live-streamed performance for the VCR Fest and presented a short work in the Asia Discovers Asia Meeting (ADAM). He also undertook a CHUNKY MOVE “Solitude_1” residency, re-imaging Instagram as a choreographic form, and made the multichannel video instillation, Giraru Galing Ganhaagirri, for the National Gallery of Australia’s 2022 Ceremony exhibition curated by Hetti Perkins.
Joel’s practice springs from his Wiradjuri cultural heritage. His works are intimate encounters in unorthodox spaces, in which audience-members are invited in as co-storytellers to explore the experiences of fair-skinned Aboriginal people, and the experiences of contemporary gay men in an increasingly digital and isolated world. His body becomes the intersection site of those songlines – Indigenous heritage, skin-colour and queer sexuality.
Amala Groom is a Wiradyuri conceptual artist whose practice, as the performance of her cultural sovereignty, is informed and driven by First Nations epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies. Her work, a form of passionate activism, presents acute and incisive commentary on contemporary socio-political issues. Articulated across diverse media, Groom’s work often subverts and unsettles western iconographies to enunciate Aboriginal stories, experiences and histories, and to interrogate and undermine the legacy of colonialism. Informed by extensive archival, legislative and first-person research, Groom’s work is socially engaged, speaking truth to take a stand against hypocrisy, prejudice, violence and injustice.
Across her practice, Groom proactively seeks to dismantle the Colonial Project by asserting the argument that colonialism is not just disadvantageous for First Peoples but is, in fact, antithetical to the human experience. On a deeper note, Groom intends to make work that speaks to the union of all peoples and to the indivisibility of the human experience that traverses identity, culture, race, class, gender and religious worship.
Groom is a solo practitioner who works with her family, community and extensive economic, cultural, political, legal and social networks to both inform, lead and drive her practice. Groom works collaboratively with individuals and groups on a project by project basis.
Taree Sansbury is a performance artist and emerging choreographer. In 2013 Taree graduated from NAISDA Dance College. Taree’s bloodlines connect to Kaurna, Narungga and Ngarrindjeri nations.
Taree works with her cultural knowledge to inform her creative process alongside a mixture of contemporary dance, theatre and language revival. In 2018 Taree premiered her first full-length work, mi:wi, at Next Wave Festival, with successive tours to various venues in South Australia in 2019 and Queensland in 2020.
In 2018 Taree became Co-Director of new performing arts company, Karul Projects. Taree has performed in numerous Karul Project’s works including [MIS]CONCEIVE, CO_EX_EN, SILENCE and more recently WEREDINGO which premiered at Brisbane Festival in 2021.
Started with Thomas E.S. Kelly, Karul Projects is a performing arts company that tells more stories of Indigenous knowledge and its relevance and responsibility in modern and future Australia’s identity.
Karul is a Yugambeh word which means ‘everything’. Named so because Karul will be doing everything it can, using whatever it needs to use, to tell whatever story needs to be told, to strengthen and empower the cultural knowledge of this land so future generations of any background can continue to learn and enjoy from Aboriginal Australia’s rich heritage.
The project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts. Proudly funded by the NSW Government in association with Blacktown City Council and Blacktown Arts.
Giraru Galing Ganhagirri was commissioned by the National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra for the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony, created in consultation with Uncle James Ingram and Wagga Wagga Elders, and with support from City of Melbourne, Phillip Keir and Sarah Benjamin (the Keir Foundation), City of Port Phillip, Create NSW, Blacktown Arts, Arts Centre Melbourne, and Yirramboi Festival 2020.
Water Woman was funded by City of Gold Coast and Arts Queensland through Karul Projects.
