Exhibition Isle of Refuge Opening: 5.30-7.30pm Thursday 12 June by David Bitel, President, Refugee Council of Australia
Exhibition Talk: 1.00pm Thursday 12 June - Ivan Dougherty Gallery 12 June - 19 July IVAN DOUGHERTY GALLERY Isle of Refuge highlights the plight of asylum seekers in detention centres in Australia and the South Pacific. Isle features artworks by 13 prominent Australian visual artists united in their opposition to the recent treatment of refugees by the Australian government. Through painting, installation, sculpture and video, the artists have engaged with issues including: the conditions inside the detention centres, the children overboard affair, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, their own experiences of refugeehood, and the history of former refugee arrivals who now form an integral part of the Australian community. Many of the artists came to Australia as a result of war and political or racial persecution. Chinese-Vietnamese artist My Le Thi, who is both one of the curators and an exhibitor in Isle, has been visiting the Villawood Detention Centre for some months now, where she has been encouraging detainees to work through their trauma by creating artworks for the exhibition. George Gittoes, painter and maker of the documentary "Tales from a Suitcase" (screened on SBS TV), will exhibit works he produced as a result of his experiences in pre and post-war Afghanistan. These confronting images give us a powerful sense of some of the conditions Afghan refugees have fled, and those to which they fear to return. Indigenous Australian painter Gordon Bennett's take on these issues is slightly different. He says his overpowering feeling of empathy with the detained refugees comes from the fact that Aboriginal people have a deep historical understanding of the reality of imprisonment - both in the physical sense of internment but also in the psychological sense of being excluded, reviled and isolated. Meanwhile, Reg Mombassa (Chris O'Doherty) takes a much more satirical perspective on the situation through works such as his "Australian Jesus Welcomes the Boat People", as well as his representation of himself as a nerdy, thick-accented, gumboot-wearing refugee from New Zealand to Australia. What emerges most strongly from the show is a sense of how Australia has been an invaluable isle of refuge for many of the exhibitors, and the determination of all that it should continue to offer refuge to those in need now and in the future. Artists: Gordon Bennett, George Gittoes, Tim Johnson + Karma Phuntsok, Chris O'Doherty aka Reg Mombassa, Sue Saxon + Anne Zahalka, Laurens Tan, My Le Thi, Albertina Viegas, Savanhdary Vongpoothorn, Guan Wei, Mahmoud Yekta Curators: Ashley Carruthers, Rilka Oakley and My Le Thi For further information, please contact Rilka Oakley at Ivan Dougherty Gallery TEL: 9385 0726 [EMAIL PROTECTED] cnr Albion Ave & Selwyn St Paddington NSW -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]