Neither Here Nor There, as part of Dark MOFO 2016

• By admin

Wednesday 15th June, 6pm – Sunday 19th June, sunrise
Location: pedestrian tunnels beneath Railway Roundabout (aka. Fountain Roundabout), Brooker Highway

Descend into the tunnels beneath Railway Roundabout, as artistic minds merge in confined spaces.
Neither here nor there brings together two artists and an architect based in Tasmania, and three mainland artists, to explore creative practice in public spaces through distant collaborations.
Collaborations: Lucy Parakhina (TAS) and Natasha Manners (VIC), Karin Chan (TAS) and Todd Fuller (NSW), James Wilson (TAS) and Connie Anthes (NSW)

Curated by Rebecca Holmes

Dark MOFO festival 2016

• Northern Tunnel
• Eastern Tunnel
• Southern Tunnel

• Destination: West Coast
  by Natasha Manners and Lucy Parakhina

  Responding to the architectural influences of the Memorial Fountain, Manners and Parakhina have transposed a slice of 1950s Californian sunshine into a wintry Tasmanian tunnel. Utilising geometric shapes, warm lighting and select imagery, the installation alters pedestrians views from within the tunnel, reframing scenery and perspectives of the site.

  

• Water Index, 2016
  by Connie Anthes & James Wilson
  in collaboration with the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre

  The artists would like to acknowledge that we are working on Aboriginal land. We pay respect to the original owners of this land, the Muwinina people. We pay respect to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community who have never ceded ownership of this land and we pay respect to elders past, present and future.

  Water Index is a site-specific participatory artwork that asks passers by to tell a story in language over 3 days by writing it out word by word in water on the floor of one of the Memorial Fountain tunnels. The artists have built large scale custom brushes and installed a janitors locker and instruction panel on site to guide the action.

  Visitors are supplied with a series of palawa kani* words which are at once a list or ‘index’, as well as a story of that particular place: plants, trees, birds, animals, soil, water and weather. As it was before invasion, before the Park St Rivulet was enclosed, before the traffic and spray of the fountain.

  Stories and lists are ways of remembering. Over three days these words will accumulate and evaporate, bringing awareness to a place that most people now only pass through and almost never spend time in. It is also an acknowledgement of the continuing trauma of cultural loss for Aboriginal people, of which the loss of language is one important part. Because language records the experiences of people who live or have lived in a certain place – their relationships, beliefs and shared knowledges of that place – reclaiming language is a powerful way to reclaim collective cultural memory.

  * palawa kani is the revived language of Tasmanian Aborigines, taught and spoken within the Tasmanian Aboriginal community through the work of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre. Thank you to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre for their generosity in sharing palawa kani language, and their assistance with this project.

  

• The pink eclipse
  by Karin Chan and Todd Fuller

  According to the North American Innu Nation, Kuekuatsheu was the original lover of the moon who was tricked into leaving the spirit world, taking the form of a dog and losing his partner. Similarly Chang’e and Hou Yi from the Chinese Mid-Autumn festival were destined to watch one another from afar after drinking a magical elixir. In both stories, two lovers, yearn for each other from afar. Starting with the Railway Roundabout Memorial fountain as a meeting place, Chan and Fuller offer these dispersed lovers an opportunity to reunite for one last duet; by the pink light of a tunnel in Tasmania.

  Todd is represented by Brenda May Gallery, Sydney.