He Xiangyu, The Death of Marat, 2011, fiberglass, silicone, fabric, human hair and leather, life-size. Courtesy the artist and WHITE SPACE BEIJING.
4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art announces its latest exhibition, Tell Me My Truth featuring newly commissioned and existing works presented in Australia for the first time, and brings together eight significant Australian and international artists from Indonesia, Germany, and the USA. Both thought-provoking and challenging, Tell Me My Truth gives form to alternative narratives and histories mediated through technology, fiction, documentary, remembrance, and surveillance to explore what it means to be an individual within a group.
Artists include Simon Fujiwara (Berlin), Helen Grace (Sydney), Amala Groom (Sydney), FX Harsono (Jakarta), He Xiangyu (Beijing), James Newitt (Tasmania), Tony Schwensen (Boston), John von Sturmer (Sydney). Tell Me My Truth is the second exhibition installment of MASS GROUP INCIDENT, a major five-monthmulti-stage project at 4A.
Aaron Seeto, Director of 4A says: “We are proud to present these artists and significant works in Australia. 4A continues to lead an expanded discussion of how artists reflect our social and cultural environments. Tell Me My Truth looks to the ways in which our immediate realities, and those things which we hold true are mediated by tools of their representation. Revealing–in the case of FX Harsono’s investigation into the persecution of the Chinese in Indonesia’s modern history–the hidden and the suppressed, or a tendency torwards fictions, as in Simon Fujiwara’s StudioPietà and John von Stumer’s Twitter intervention.”
FX Harsono, Pilgrimage to History (still), 2013, single-channel video, 13.40mins. Courtesy the artist.
Indeed influential artist, FX Harsono’s video work, Pilgrimageto History (2013) explores the politically charged era of Indonesian history through a process of contemplation at various mass gravesites in Indonesia, while Sydney-based Indigenous artist, Amala Groom’s installation Ceremony (2014) fuses Indigenous and Christian methodologies and symbolism to comment on contemporary Australian politics and race relations.
Amala Groom, Ceremony, 2014, sculpture, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist.
In his video work, Studio Pietà (King Kong Komplex) (2013), Simon Fujiwara creates a dense and comical drama interweaving fiction, autobiography and political history restaged from a single photograph remembered from childhood. This work was commissioned for the Sharjah Biennial 2013.
Also in Tell Me My Truth, Chinese conceptual artist, He Xiangyu’s The Death of Marat(2011)–a life-sizesculpture of Ai Weiwei made of fiberglass and silicon–is presented as a video documenting the work in a Beijing storeroom, after the sculpture was refused a temporary export permit by Chinese authorities for this exhibition.
The exhibition opens at 4A on Thursday 26 March from 6pm-8pm and will be launched by Michael Snelling, Director and Chief Executive, National Art School, Sydney.
Tell Me My Truth is curated by Pedrode Almeida, Toby Chapman, and Aaron Seeto.About the exhibition
EXHIBITION OPENING: Thursday 26 March 2015, 6pm– 8pm, to be launched by Michael Snelling, Director and Chief Executive, National Art School, Sydney
EXHIBITION DATES: 27 March – 16 May 2015
VENUE: 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, 181 – 187 Hay St, Sydney NSW 2000
4A opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11AM –6PM, closed on public holidays.
Courtesy of the artists and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, for further information please visit www.4a.com.au or contact Joanna Bayndrian, joanna@creative-asia.net (+61) 405 933 896 or Yu Ye Wu, yuye.wu@4a.com.au(+612) 9212 0380.
