Rupture & Residue

For the love of place.
Rupture & Residue is a project that incorporates international and regional exchange through shared field trip experiences. The project sets a troupe of artists on a meandering journey pinpointed by sites of creative activation—an east coast road trip embodying the environment between places and the destination venues along the way.

Transitory passages risk fleeting encounters. However, in a post-colonial world, understanding Indigenous absence in the environment also transforms the perception of wild-ness into a cultural landscape. We are involuntary accomplices to the residue of British colonisation and European emigration in Australia. The Black Indigenous cultural landscape ruptures the insidious presence of colonisation in unceded lands. But, it is not a matter of colour or race for this ephemeral project rather an act of bearing witness to non-material traces. A communication with place becomes a brief moment, a choreographic encounter, a short improvisation. The tangible recollection of stories and the presence of objects become histories contrasted by the unfilled spaces of the past. This project documents moments of artistic ritual and experience within the fault-lines of time.

Our perceptions of natural environments include a reinterpretation of sensitivity associated with place, including cross-cultural contexts for appreciation of wild landscapes as cultural sites. We occupy a world of contrasts. While technology drives to supplant the natural order, and globalisation pushes identity away from endemic places towards association with brand/genre allegiance, what are the possibilities for interdisciplinary and hybrid art practice to identify through proximity to the natural environment?

Through articulating a body topography as a performative intervention, it is possible to facilitate significant embodied artistic engagement within sensitive endemic locations without marking the site—a process of reconciliation towards natural environments as an engagement with the body and its surround. Working with the body and the environment allow grounded ecological approaches to expand into the imagination. As a result, experiences become both visceral and virtual.

artists:
international visiting artist: Simon Whitehead (Wales, UK)
international consultant: Lee Wen (Singapore)
Bonemap: Rebecca Youdell and Russell Milledge
Jim Denley (sound)

venue:
Emerald End Artcamp (Muluridji, Mareeba)
KickArts Contemporary Arts (Gimuy Walabura Yidinji, Cairns)
Umbrella Studio (Bindal and Wulgurukaba, Townsville)
Artspace Mackay (Yuwibara, Yuibera and Juipera, Yuwi)
Sandhills Collective (Woppaburra, Wop-Pa, Wapparaburra, Keppel Sands)
Griffith University, School of Art (Yugambeh, Gold Coast)

interview:
Bonemap: Resonant residues
Sophie Travers talks to Simon Whitehead

sponsors:
KickArts Contemporary Arts (Australia) | The Substation (Singapore) | Chapter Arts Centre (Wales, UK)

Video documentation: