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Home Terra inFirma The Naming of Things | Darrin Baker

The Naming of Things | Darrin Baker

by beth sorensen

The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre
Coming soon | In development
Free admission

 

The Naming of Things is a multiscreen video and sculpture installation by artist Darrin Baker, exploring the naming of the suburb, Pemulwuy, and stories of the Aboriginal resistance leader for whom the suburb is named, featuring interviews with traditional knowledge holders, historians, and residents of the suburb.

The act of naming things is an essential human action. But the act itself is not without violence, because names have a complicated set of functions to perform. They act as markers, as ways to navigate space and time, they pay homage and memorialise, they define territory and links to the land, and they erase what has gone before them. This exhibition seeks to explore these notions through the prism of Pemulwuy the person, and the suburb named after him.

The Naming of Things is part of our Terra inFirma program. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body. Blacktown Arts gratefully acknowledges the support of Cumberland City Council.

We are currently working on a public consultation on The Naming of Things exhibition.


Image: Still from The Naming of Things, 2021, courtesy the artist.