Page 64 - Tropic Magazine Issue 36

TROPIC • CAIRNS ART GALLERY

Identity on display

EXHIBITIONS
Cairns Art Gallery has curated
an exhibition examining the
idea of blak/black identity,
which is presenting alongside 2
works by multi-media artist
Dylan Mooney.

Complementing the hive of activity CIAF of junk around him. Eyewear is a series technology, including television, mobiles
brings to the city, Cairns Art Gallery of self-portraits in which the artist wears and the internet to explore issues of
is presenting FACELESS: Transforming elaborate eyewear made from repurposed identity. Hobson uses props borrowed
Identity: a collection of commissioned pieces of garbage and junk. These from popular culture as head/face
works from North Australian Aboriginal, assemblages resemble ornate wearable adornments that operate as windows into
Torres Strait Islander, and African and masks while simultaneously referencing contemporary Indigenous youth culture.
African Diaspora artists. the lifestyle and culture of Kenya and its The result of Hobson’s work, along with
The exhibition is two years in the making obsession with the trappings of fashion the other artists’, is evidence of the
for Gallery Director Andrea Churcher and film stars.” group’s experimentation of ‘the face’, and
and her team, and the extension of Another featured artist is Naomi Hobson, how manipulating it can present more
the Gallery’s critically-reviewed 2019 one of the most revered in the Far complex readings shaped by historical,
exhibition, Queen’s Land. North. Her photographic work is based political, and social contexts.
“FACELESS extends the research in her hometown Coen and explores
of Queen’s Land into the idea of ways in which the community’s young FACELESS: Transforming Identity runs from
representation, or lack thereof of people engage with pop culture and 25 June to 2 October.
Indigenous people since colonisation,”
she said.
“Many contemporary Indigenous
artists are using the face as a way of
expressing their own identity and culture
in their new works. The artists in the
exhibition are looking to challenge the
established notions of identity and
how interpretations of identity can be
manipulated or redefined by blak/black
artists, through a revisioning of the face
using devices such as embellishment,
erasure, and disguise.”
Involving 23 different artists, the
exhibition brings together more than 80
commissioned and recently completed
works across a range of art forms and
media. Among them is the work of
Kenyan artist, Cyrus Kabiru.
“Working across sculpture, photography,
and fashion, he transforms trash into
objects that challenge concepts of
consumerism and waste,” Ms Churcher
said. “As a young child he was fascinated 1
by the idea of giving new life to the objects

64 • Tropic • Issue 36