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MEDIA RELEASE

cacsa projects 2013 project 1

YOU ARE INVITED TO THE OPENING OF

PAL E S T I N E
Tom NICHOLSON [Australia] Michael RAKOWITZ [USA] Larissa SANSOUR [Palestine] Khaled HOURANI [Palestine] Cornelia PARKER [UK] Curator Alan Cruickshank

THURSDAY 28 FEBRUARY 68PM


Tom Nicholson, Comparative monument (Palestine), 2012 Photo courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane

The rhetorical ubiquity of the Arab Spring in the international media and global consciousness continues. One slap, and then the striking of a match, has set off an incalculable number of political and personal events. The landscape of this Spring is constantly transformingfluctuating, slipping, reshaping, like shifting sand. Neither the banality of the phraseused repeatedly now by global media and socio-historical/cultural commentators alikenor geographic witticisms should undermine the reality of a region experiencing dramatic and often unpredictable change. From this panorama of Middle Eastern turbulence there has emanated an international attention focused upon art and artists. The relationship between politics, media and the visual arts for such practitioners has never been as compelling a topic for debate and scrutiny as it is now, compounded by art market pressure placed upon them to both respond to The Revolution and Arab Spring-themed exhibitions. With this in mind, the second exhibition of the Shifting Sands seriesP A L E S T I N E, does not seek to acknowledge or reiterate any particular Spring thematic; rather focusing on emerging power points. They present a glimpse of what the greater idea is all about without trying to substitute for itit is still there to be speculated; the power point only stimulates the motivation to do so. P A L E S T I N E encompasses video and installation that presents alternative readings of an ongoing regional political conflict. Tom Nicholson (Australia), Cornelia Parker (UK), Khaled Hourani (Palestine), Michael Rakowitz (USA) and Larissa Sansour (Palestine) are all eminent and internationally recognised artistsTom Nicholsons, Cornelia Parkers and Khaled Houranis works are coming to us from the inaugural Qalandiya International in 2012 (West Bank) curated by 2012 visitor to CACSA and the Adelaide Festival of Arts Jack Persekian, with Michael Rakowitz and Larissa Sansour showing in dOCUMENTA (13) and the Australian Centre for Photographys (Sydney) Beyond the Last Sky exhibition respectively, both 2012. The catalyst for this project is Australian artist Tom Nicholsons Comparative monument (Palestine) work shown late 2012 at the Qalandiya International and now transposed into an Australian exhibition context. Throughout Australia, war monuments bear the name Palestine to commemorate the presence of Australian troops in Palestine during World War I and, in particular, Australian involvement in the 1917 British capture of Beersheba (in turn a critical city in the events of 1948 and the Nakba). These monuments also reflect the realities of the 1920s (when they were erected) and the era of the British Mandate, when the name Palestine implicitly invoked the shared position of Australia and Palestine within British imperialism. Comparative monument (Palestine) begins with a complete photographic record of these monuments bearing the name Palestine in and around Melbourne. Figuring this material into a Palestinian contextboth a kind of homecoming and exile for these Australian monumental formsbecomes a way to reanimate these linkages between Australia and Palestine. In these forms dedicated to 1917, Nicholson implicates the events and repercussions of 1948 with their echoes of Australian Aboriginal experiences of dispossession and colonial violence. Comparative monument (Palestine) is an attempt to rethink the possibilities of the monument in the face of these histories of dispossession and the acts of imagination and solidarity these histories demand. EXHIBITION DATES 28 FEBRUARY7 APRIL, 2013

CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA


14 PORTER STREET, PARKSIDE, ADELAIDE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA 5063
Tel +61 [08] 82 72 26 82 Fax +61 [08] 83 73 42 86 cacsa@cacsa.org.au www.cacsa.org.au
THE CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE OF SA IS ASSISTED BY THE COMMONWEALTH GOVERNMENT THROUGH THE AUSTRALIA COUNCIL, ITS ARTS FUNDING AND ADVISORY BODY, AND THE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT THROUGH ARTS SA THE CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE OF SA IS SUPPORTED BY THE VISUAL ARTS AND CRAFT STRATEGY, AN INITIATIVE OF THE AUSTRALIAN, STATE AND TERRITORY GOVERNMENTS

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