Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre: online, collection highlights!

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Hello again! First things first, I am absolutely gratful to Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre for including my work in their online collection. And it is not just for being included in their online collaboration with Google Arts & Culture. My gratitude is also for being reminded that, back in the day, everyone at the Powerhouse, the community, the AECG Mil-Pra, the artists, were a really groovy, hard working & welcoming bunch, who made you feel part of the community and something big. That my work was included back then, to me was both community & creative validation. These exhibitions, helped build my confidence and my practice. It was always exciting to exhibit & do work for the exhibtions. Having my work included in this collection, makes me think, these things live on at the Powerhouse.

I remember how it felt to make these works and the feel of pastel on my fingers. They’re more about the human spirit and finding connection to ancestry and land, rather than about our humanity in the modern world. Having said that, I remember these works and that it was an emptiness in the modern world that fuelled me to draw this series. The whole thing is complicated by the medium – modern world materials to try to illustrate the search for connection with an ancient culture, ancestors and spirit. In short, hold on to the spirit within and the spirit of family and community because no matter what paths we take in life, I like to think we will all find our Belonging.

Although these works may not intially seem connected to my character, Sister GlitterNullius,

There are enduring themes of identity and Indigeneity, entangled, complex relationships, failure and fragility between my early and current work. Today these are contextualised within decolonisation frameworks, Indigenous cultural revitalisation, simultaneously responding to environmental crisis. One of my practice goals is to create projects that prioritise collaborative solutions, shared knowledges, social engagement with challenging, complex issues. I hope to contribute to community capacity and strengthened relationships through performances, storytelling short videos and workshops.

Sister GlitterNullius is the post-traumatic, recovering personification and representation of the hypocrisy dilemma that is the Anthropocene. A nun, imprisoned by her love-hate relationship with plastix and all things, consumerist, capitalist, catholic and post-colonial. Through humour, irony, and a pinch of sarcasm, GlitterNullius stands with the in-betweeners, the failures and the lost, trying to navigate a greener decolonised path Home. Can someone lend her a map?

Perhaps then, the issues I explore in my practice remain fundamentally similar, if not the same in some ways.

Thankyou for visiting!

Your Friend in & out of plastix!

Juundaal

Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre: online collection highlights!

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Journeys of Spirit, 2003, mixed media on board, (53.5×71.5), Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre: collection, (Accession #CP614), online publish, 2021, https://collection.casulapowerhouse.com/objects/193/journeys-of-spirit. Winner of the Bruce & Carol Kendall OAM, Memorial Award & Exhibition, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, NSW.

Hello again, I hope you’re well & staying groovy! I’m very grateful to have my work included in the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, online collection, highlights. Although these worx come from much earlier days, I am reminded that there are enduring themes of complex relationships, nature & the environment, indigeneity & identity, then and are present in my work as Sister GlitterNullius, now. I imagine, most people want to feel they belong to something, a community, a family etc. Belonging to a culture so ancient, Cultural knowledges being revitalised, I imagine, has many of us, reaching out in the ways we know.

I’ve included these works in the blog site because, it brings me to ask, how much has changed? Where are we now? How much of all the different knowledges, can now come together to save the Earth, as we endeavour to save ourselves? It’s the same thing, right?

You can check out the other worx in the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre by following the link above. Thanx for dropping by.

Your Friend In & Out of Plastix, Juundaal.

The Birth of Sister GlitterNullius…

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Editor: Jesse Tyssen, 2020.

Nigh yiggun binggirribah…birin…yamba… Ngay garni yugen jagun…gudjim, gami, wadjan…jahdjam…Niugh yiggun mamirbu…ngubu…yugirbah… Gannga… wahra…dhinda-djindi…yamba…jagur, jagul, jagur, jagul, jagur, jagul, stranger…stranger…stranger…

I am glad you are here…hurry child. We have a long way to go from this place but come with me. Step forward, step with me and come. I am old and I am weary but I am strong. I am not lost. Not today…not yet…

Talk to me, tell me what burdens you in this modern plastic world? It seems to me, you are caught in a web? Keep me company while we travel and unburden yourself of your web. Confess your worries…your arrival is timely so, tell me about your entanglement with plastic…?

Sister GlitterNullius