Existing works will stand alongside groundbreaking new pieces as the galleries open with exhibitions by three prominent artists, connected by a deep relationship to place and community.
Two major new works will premiere as part of Perth Festival. Renowned artist Kate Mitchell presents Idea Induction - an immersive, interactive installation in the main gallery. Ballardong artist Dianne Jones will debut The Beach, inspired by, and created in Walyalup/Fremantle. This will be exhibited alongside Jones’s earlier photographic series Australian Photographs – in which the artist inserts herself, smiling and waving into analogue images that place contemporary indigenous identities into Australian narratives.
Mervyn Street’s powerful Stolen Wages is a significant solo exhibition featuring Kimberley history and resilience, while also celebrating his recent landmark victory against the State Government.
Fremantle Arts Centre Curator and Collections lead Abigail Moncrieff added, “The Perth Festival exhibition is an eagerly anticipated event at FAC and this year we are pleased to co-present three incredible artists who all bring something different.
Kate Mitchell’s Idea Induction will feature the artist in the exhibition, inviting viewers to sit at her ‘singing chair’ and experience the source of creativity. Dianne Jones’s joyous and powerful work The Beach features her family on the beach at Walyalup, while Mervyn Street presents a personal body of work. A notable figure in the Kimberley, Mervyn traces his experiences and memories working as a stockman, made all the more significant for his part in the recent $180 million class action against the government for Stolen Wages.
The three artists offer audiences a multiplicity of experiences, from Mitchell’s interactive work, Dianne’s powerful and joyous photography and Mervyn’s painting that documents his experiences in The Kimberley.”
‘Where do ideas come from?’ - Kate Mitchell poses this question in Idea Induction and asks for participation, inviting audience members to sit and ask a question, or solve a problem, aided by a monochord singing chair – allowing for a full-body experience of deep resonant sound, facilitating a relaxed, creative state.
Idea Induction features several other prompts throughout the exhibition, inductions from the artist to transport the viewer into their own creativity.
Dianne Jones made the photographic series Australian Photographs more than twenty years ago, using analogue processes to re-photograph and destabilise Australian beach narratives. Reworking iconic Australian beach photographs such as artist Max Dupain, she places herself in these images- queering these sites and inserting contemporary indigenous aboriginal identities into these scenes.
Alongside these works, Dianne will unveil a new large scale photographic work responsive to Manjaree (Bathers Beach) in Walyalup / Fremantle and its spiritual importance as a site of kinship and meeting in Noongar culture.
Stolen Wages from Meryvn Street features newly commissioned and existing works that continue Mervyn’s legacy of telling truth to power, following his historic court victory over the State Government for decades of wages stolen from the cattlemen of the Kimberley.
Stolen Wages is presented by Fremantle Arts Centre with Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency and commissioned by Perth Festival.
Idea Induction and The Beach are curated by Abigail Moncrieff, Fremantle Arts Centre. Stolen Wages is curated by Emilia Galatis.
Image: Dianne Jones, At Newport 2003, digital Print
