Arafura Craft Exchange remembrance of things past
September 15th, 2008
Jane Hampson , Contributor , Darwin, Australia
How fitting that an art exhibition dwelling on memory should be the subject of an exchange between Indonesia and northern Australia.
There is a long history of trade between the North — the Top End of Australia’s Northern Territory, as it is called — and Indonesia. It is a history barely known to the broader Australian public, but in the north, Australia’s vast and last frontier, it is a constant point of reference.
The exchange then was between two peoples — the Yolngu inhabitants and Macassan traders who came to the Top End in search of trepang, sea cucumbers.
Evidence of their presence remains today, in the banyan trees they planted which still stand on Darwin’s streets and in Yolngu words (bapa and rupiah, for father and money just two examples) borrowed from Macassarese.
When the Australian government banned the trade in the early 1900s, the North’s links with Indonesia, once driven naturally by trade winds and tides, were relegated to memory.
Fast forward to 2005, and the advent of the Arafura Craft Exchange, a project initiated by The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and championed by the Indonesian consulate in Darwin, a program which has effectively resurrected these natural links, now in the realm of the arts and culture.
The Arafura Craft Exchange is a series of three triennial exhibitions featuring Australian and Indonesian artists.
The first in 2005 focused on fiber art. The second, on at present, focuses on ceramics and is curated by Sudjud Dartanto, an academic at the Indonesia Institute of the Arts in Yogyakarta.
Titled “Trajectory of Memories, Tradition and Modernity in Ceramics” the exhibition features the work of seven artists, four from Indonesia and three from Australia.
Memory as a bridge between past and present is the central theme: It is the traces of the past remaining in a newly created whole that interest Mr. Dartanto and the artists.
The work of Sydney ceramicist Jenny Orchard, for example, references directly her childhood spent in Zimbabwe and the benign animal spirits who were believed to keep the nearby Shona village safe.
Her glazed totems incorporate elephant heads and human eyes, talons, tentacles, human skulls and roses.
Orchard literally piles one element of memory on top of another to create oddly naive and fragile fantasy figures, the tallest of which threatens to topple down and smash reality.
The figurines in Indonesian Titarubi’s installation Silent Sounds of War (2002) reference memory and childhood in a different way.
The figures — torsos only, no legs — stand in a line which extends from biggest to smallest. The installation works as a metaphor for memory as a bridge between past and present.
The figures are modeled by hand and subtly different in form and pose. Yet, placed in a line as they are, arms outstretched to create an undulating wave, the figures are imbued with a sense of uniformity.
This is a line made up of individuals which, like a Broadway chorus line, works as one. Titarubi admits the body referred to in the work is her own and the subjugation and conformity implied speaks volumes about the politics of the female body and the evolution of female self-perception.
The confluence of tradition and modernity is another theme in Dartanto’s exhibition, one particularly pertinent to Indonesia as modernization steamrolls through the archipelago, often damaging traditional ways of living.
Asmudjo Jono Irianto’s Broken Brigade takes on “the immaturity of modern society” as it pertains to Indonesia, displaying uniform figures with rocks on (or in) their heads. Irianto directly questions the notion of modernization as progress and laments the loss of traditional wisdom.
Two other artists in the group pay homage to traditional culture. Dona Prawita Arissuta with Never end 1 has assembled a collection of jars filled with ceramic sweets. These are Javanese treats remembered from her childhood and associated with traditional celebrations.
Noor Sudiyati is another artist who references Javanese culture, reinterpreting ancient fertility symbols (Peri Daun, or leaf fairy) in her rough-textured totemic figures formed from hand-collected clay.
Likewise her Yin-Yang is a reminder of the need for balance in life and reworks an ancient symbol.
“Trajectory” implies a sense of firm direction, a sense of where things are heading. Yet often in this exhibition, works are guided more by a sense of where things have been and revolve around the point where collective and individual memory meet.
Michael Doolan’s ceramic figures, teddy bears glazed in lurid pop-art colors and metallic finishes, lead us to contemplate the collision of individual and collective memory. The teddy bear may be a universally recognized symbol of childhood, yet for each person there is but one so fondly remembered.
In an entirely different manner, Harvey Ottley embraces a traditional ceramic technique used by Native American Navajo and Acomo nations.
At the peak point during kiln firing, Ottley introduces thin veins of horsehair onto the surfaces of her vases. The hairs then leave traces, in their own delicate random trajectories, across the vases’ smooth contours.
Clay is the most elemental of media. Tactile and of the very earth itself, it is shaped by hand and set by fire into forms ranging from the most brittle of china to solid brick. While the works in “Trajectory” utilize clay and involve artisanal processes, the end products confirm the notion of ceramics as art.
Dartanto has put together a subtle and thoughtful show, with works displaying both intellectual rigor and technical mastery. It is a modest-sized exhibition which punches well above its weight, incorporating multiple themes and providing an overview of contemporary ceramics practice.
As this exhibition indicates, exchanges, artistic and otherwise, are a natural trajectory for Darwin and Indonesia, and the potential outcomes of creative dialogue are full of promise.
Source: The Jakarta Post
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