August Exhibition Opening
Published on 12 August 2024
On August 10 two new exhibitions opened at Shoalhaven Gallery, Urritjara by Tim Georgeson, and The Crab's Dream by Wade Marynowsky. The event was opened by Aunty Ruth Simm, a local elder and respected leader in Aboriginal Education, who gave a Welcome to Country. Aunty Ruth, who is in her eighties, is the longest standing Aboriginal Education Officer (AEO) in NSW, she spoke about her experiences teaching at TAFE over twenty years ago in the building now occupied by the gallery. Aunty Ruth stressed the importance of Education and sharing knowledge of First Nations stories and her excitement at seeing a crab referenced within the gallery spaces; the crab is an important part of her cultural heritage.
The Crab's Dream is Wade's first solo exhibition at Shoalhaven Gallery. Growing up in the South Coast, Wade Marynowsky spent a lot of his youth exploring the beach and bush tracks of the Shoalhaven. Whilst attending Nowra High School he became obsessed with Modern Art, specifically the works from the Dadaist, and the Surrealist movements. Marynowsky moved to Sydney to attend art school at the College of Fine Arts, UNSW where he became immersed in the intersection between art and technology, majoring in Time-Based-Art. He completed his PhD in Robotic Art in 2011 and is currently a lecturer in Interaction Design, at the University of Technology, Sydney and an established artist.
Emerging from the Sydney-based Imperial Slacks artist collective (1998-2000) Marynowsky’s practice is characterised by large-scale robotic, sound, light, and interactive works that combine humour, and a host of unnerving thematics to absorbing affect. He works interdisciplinary across artforms including sculpture, robotics, immersive and interactive performance and installation, music and video. His work has been presented in major festivals, biennales, and survey exhibitions including, The International Triennial of New Media Art, Beijing, The International Biennale of Contemporary Art, Poland, Siggraph Tokyo, Japan, The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, and MONA FOMA Tasmania. His mid-career survey exhibition: Nostalgia for Obsolete Futures was held at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2014. Marynowsky’s work is held in collections of The National Gallery of Victoria, Artbank Australia, UTS art collection, Bundanon Trust and private collections inter-nationally.
In the Main Gallery Tim Georgeson exhibited Urritaja, a collaboration with Finke performer Derik Lynch. Filmed across the dry salt bed of Lake Bumbunga on the lands of the Narungga people in South Australia Urritjara means ‘movement’ in Lynch's Yankunytjatara traditional language. For Lynch, who was born and raised in the Aputula (Finke) Community in Central Australia, dance has always been a large part of his culture and practice. In Urritjara, his debut performance in a movement-based work, Lynch reveals various gestural forms and responds to the space around him to the sounds of Kalkani, a composition by Kalkadunga vocalist, composer and didgeridoo virtuoso William Barton, and improvising cross-genre violinist and composer Véronique Serret.
Tim Georgeson lives and works between Australia and Canada. In 2021 he undertook a residency at Bundanon where he first worked with William Barton. Their collaboration for The Hidden (2022) was presented at Bundanon Art Museum in Parallel Landscapes. Following the 2019-2020 Black Summer Bushfires, Georgeson collaborated with leading Yuin fire knowledge Elders, Indigenous Desert Alliance and Fire Sticks Alliance to produce a new body of work that focussed on First Nations’ fire keepers and Aboriginal fire management practices around Australia. This work is in the Shoalhaven Gallery collection.
The exhibition is on until October 12 and is not to be missed.
Photo by Alex Robledo.