Finding refuge[es] in art

This is the edited version of the opening speech I gave at Jugglers Art Space on September 3, 2016 at the “Refugees Exhibition”.

“If our life is poured out in useless words

We will never hear anything

and in the end,

because we have said everything

before we had anything to say,

we shall be left speechless

at the moment of our greatest decision. “

Thomas Merton, American Mystic and Trappist Monk, Peace activist and anti-nuclear campaigner who died in a tragic accident in Bangkok, 1968 at 53.

As  a disciplined hermit and mystic, Merton, in advocating silence as the only way to approach and maybe touch mystery which he saw as the edge of god, or god’s thin whisper, continues to have a profound impact on genuine spiritual inquirers and social activists.

His life of inner dwelling was wrapped in nature in his hermitage in Kentucky, USA. While for a busy person the desire for this as an essential for the hearing of the whisper is almost impossible my intentional experiencing of silence in constant search for the thin whisper was given some time in the nurturing areas of Connemara and Kerry, Eire.

Art, when it springs from silence and mystery, pain and suffering either voluntarily or involuntarily is, in whatever form, however naive or sophisticated, affecting. It will and does have something to say to those who listen.

That is why this event, so wonderfully conceived of and managed and curated by Jugglers QUT intern Moojhan Kheiri – is so important.

In this room  “the words of the prophets [are]written on the [subway] walls” are the “Sounds of Silence”

You have come here tonight as artists, former refugees and asylum seekers, friends, family and supporters to see, to support and more than that I hope to hear, listen and sense what these artists are saying so cogently even if it takes time to find the spaces where the whisper lives.

Art exhibitions can easily be decoration or they can be banging a wedge into wall crevices  to open up the possibility of that thin whisper from the heart and pain and voice of the artist. That is what this exhibition is.

The art can be collectible, it can be ugly, it can be beautiful [in the narrow sense of that word] it can be dark, it can be light but if it is more than decoration then it will be arresting, grabbing, silencing.

This exhibition is all of those. We are here compelled to listen to the thin whispers and under this compelling we begin to hear a rising shout.

I returned from Ireland this morning where I was linking up with my sibblings to celebrate some milestone birthdays and to find our relatives – a good Australian thing to do. While we were there we visited Shankhill Road and Falls Road, small suburbs in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

The history of Ireland is the history of religious wars and colonisation by the British. The Irish people have fought to return to self-rule and so 100 years ago this year the Easter Rising in Dublin saw the start of the last revolution that led to the establishment of the Republic of Ireland in 1922. But the British, after handing back the South, kept a foothold with the annexation of Northern Ireland. With the Northern Ulster groups mainly Protestant and pro-British, the Catholic Sien Fein and now demobilised IRA presence in the North continuing to agitate for a total end to British rule the conflict continues. In this conflict two very famous roads/suburbs in Belfast – Shankhill Road and Falls Road are full of patriotic fervour and ground holding.

Shank hill Road is pro-British and protestant.

Falls Road is anti-British and Catholic.

Right down the centre of this area is “the wall” – a 7 metre high 1o00 more long wall built by the British armed forces.

 

The Protestant side is constantly covered in graffiti. The Catholic side is a static exhibition space of Marxist and pro-justice workers rights murals. I could not find one tag on that section of the wall. This does not mean I am anti Marxist. Far from it but I found that the living graffiti art on the Protestant side indicated an organic development rather than a party specific one.

On the day that we visited, we were told that not so long ago – about 2 years – our Republican number plated hire cars would not have been welcome in the protestant sector.

So what has changed? Why were we allowed in now?

It seems that it is the graffiti on the Protestant side that is having the change effect. A writer who was there and who knows Jugglers alma mater Sofles, Fintan Magee and Guido van Helten and who comes from the south to run workshops with young people there told me that it has been the workshops, graffiti and art focus that has seen the reduction in slogans and the decrease in animosity as people have begun to embrace the positive affect of this arts practice. The protestant gate keepers in the houses opposite the site began to visit the site and bring beer to the artists and writers. Their view was that this art wall was the best thing that had happened for a long time as a means of peace making.

Art changes the world.

Former refugee Sha Sarwari art installation boat burning, April, 2016.

Art creates conversation, builds respect, drives wedges to let whispers leak out, shouts to those who are listening – or not listening just as this work does here tonight.

Brisbane trains as art canvas after the 2011 floods.

This exhibition, as with Amensty International’s upstairs body of work is about justice. Justice, welcome and kindness for refugees, asylum seekers and aboriginal people and children in adult jails. This is about exposing how we as a nation under our representative governments have failed to act, have failed to work from that value base of justice, kindness and welcome for all.

Art influences policy makers as it reflects values starkly and subtly.

It is critical that we celebrate these artists as significant voices, listen until the thin whispers begin to be heard, let the change change us and celebrate the artists’ skills.

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Christopher Inwood is inward – painting to think

Chris Inwood de-installed his exhibition “Vouyer” from the Level 1 space at Jugglers today after two weeks and no art sales. He has secured a show at the BCC Square gallery in the city in 2017 after some serious lobbying and foot work and in a climate of closing spaces and an expanding artist cohort in Brisbane this is a significant success. His work as a new and emerging artist was expensive for Brisbane but it sometimes happens that good work – his work is good – and conceptual exhibitions like his fail to connect with collectors. Chris is a philosopher with a serious focus on understanding and meaning. It is a good thing that he has begun Art History at UQ as even though his self taught arts practice has reached a level of aesthetic impact with viewers, he has an obvious passion for making sense of his world and the world in general using his art as a spring board. This is not to say that he isn’t passionate about his arts practice as it seems that he is, but his ability to frame his work as scaffold for conversation and dialogue move him on from artists who only seem interested in their practice. As a collector and Director at Jugglers I am fine with that focus and the hundreds of artists and art works I have seen here attest to my passion for the aesthetic. However,  to find someone so young who has a well developed grasp on at least the process of inquiry into a range of visual impacts is refreshing. Chris’s artist talk on the Saturday afternoon was a lively and helpful group discussion that he led with a mature group approach rather than a lecture.

His installation including 2 data projectors suspended from the ceiling included the scrolling of thousands of text messages between him and his girl friend Kate  – who was the subject of the main body of painted work – and a series of GIFS he had collated into a looped stream. The theme of his work was around vouyerism as a habit that we have now all been drawn into where a “like” and a short sharp GIF means that our minds are being fast tracked away from a more reflective approach to art and life, a kind of shallow acceptance or rejection of commodified visuals. Chris’s skill as a painter and as one able to bring art movements onto canvas where some of his painting triptychs were intentionally art movement influenced, focused our eyes and inner responses into more than the well resolved works that he had painted. We were forced to assess what this was really about and why one photorealistic painting might not have been enough. As a young person influenced by the market driven world but with obvious understanding of its limits and of the benefits of a fairer and perhaps socialist world, he still had marketed himself with cards, printed books and TShirts which he did make some money from. We have been treated to a well thought out exhibition that had firm foundations and where Chris should move towards a successful career in bringing some impact on the deepening of our culture and our understanding of what it’s all about. Peter Breen.

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A day of mutilpe trajectories.

Today was a full lurching kind of day. From the moment I drove into Jugglers with a group of over 75’s from the University of the Third Age standing across the entrance I knew it would be one of those days. Then there was the installation of the new dishwasher that didn’t fit that led to a leaking drain spilling water across the office floor to 3 kids helping mum deinstal  her show by running and leaping around the gallery space to drafting a budget for the Stairwell Project’s Australia Council grant application and then hosting a political party’s ( The Greens) attempt to understand the state of the arts and artists post the Australia Council’s slash and burn policy in favour of a consumerist model. There were spaces in there where other things happened like taking paracetamol for cold symptoms and doing a phone referee interview for a former studio artist. Not forgetting the wonderful Dom keeping an even keel and sending me off to buy dinner and our intern making seat covers and our other intern helping me carry and hang paintings in between painting the outside loo a beautiful socialist revolution red! This was part of my day, rich in texture and impact for countless people. Not the least being me. 

“Decoy” – A right of passage.

James Mulholland’s pencil and charcoal on paper drawings at Jugglers Art Space Level 1 gallery space are captivatingly haunting works, an unpacking of his own experience as a young male attempting to make sense of maleness incorporated as it so often is in young adult male violence, threat and fear. Self identity and a sense of self comes out in this body of work as a pathway still clouded with uncertainty.

Even the clenched hands have an element of nervousness and the shadowy self-portraits carry a feeling of lostness or shrouded desire, a common feeling in young white males in Australia. There have been excellent programs and money spent on key issues such as once punch can kill, drug fuelled violence, depression and suicide but reaching male maturity in Australia in both indigenous and the white community seems to have become stuck. Perhaps not everywhere but from my observation certainly in the general population. Some schools, mens groups and churches have developed programs and support networks and books such as Biddulph’s “Manhood” are making a significant impact. My view is,however,  that we need a spiritual, legitimate and honoured process of leaving boyhood and entering adulthood that is celebrated by all families,and mothers in particular. James works are confronting and arresting with a powerful ability to hold the gaze. They are aesthetically appealing and his drafting skill second to none, but as one couple confessed to me at the opening, they didn’t want such confronting work on their wall. Perhaps their, or rather her feelings evoked by these drawings, are part of the confrontation that needs to happen. Art is the nerve end of the culture. Over the weekend after this show opening I watched “Kes” a 1970 movie made about Billy [David Bradley] whose desire to not follow his father into the coal pits of northern England is an impossible dream until he finds, trains and becomes enamoured with an injured Kestrel [hawk]. The bullying, belittling and victimisation of Billy reflected cultural norms of the late 60’s in the UK but the view of James Mulholland would be that in 2016 in Australia, the same kind of attitude is rife. Young males are trapped by a system unable to see itself or find a way to wholeness or full humanness. As a stark contrast I also watched a short video of Our Lady of Gethsemane, a Trappist Monk monastery in Kentucky, USA where the reclusive anti nuclear activist Thomas Merton lived before his untimely accidental death in 1968.

Merton had lived a wild “normal” life as a young male until his epiphany and conversion and “call” to his reclusive life as both a theologian, poet, activist and spiritual biographer. The stark contrast to Billy’s journey and Jame’s drawings is profound but I am not sure that Merton or any of his brothers were any more sure of their own maleness than the rest of us. The stark contrast however is that there is no violence in such a place, nor in the careful loving training of Kes by Billy. Gentleness is a path less travelled by men but it is in stillness, silence and reflection – along with courage, ritual and hard physical work – that men find missing parts of their maleness lying dormant under layers of bravado, fear and ego. James Mulholland’s “Decoy” is an important addition to the conversation and action so urgently needed if young men from twelve to twenty are to find a new way of being that is free of violence, force and ego. A helpful follow on to this exhibition would be an artist’s talk with small group discussion to follow. Peter Breen.

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Burning the boat

Early last Wednesday morning, before sunrise,  I drove to a small beach in Northern New South Wales with a handful of artists and students. We had been invited to the burning of a boat, the next phase of an art project by Sha Sarwari, a former Hazara asylum seeker from Afghanistan and graduate of Griffith University [Queensland College of Art]. Sha has become a close friend over the past 3- 4 years through his work which I see as a very public journaling of his journey from asylum seeker/ refugee/detainee to Australian citizen and justice advocate. When not caring for his new son and developing his arts practice, he works as an interpreter for asylum seekers and detainees under the Australian Government’s “pacific solution.”

As I crept around the house at 2.30am I found myself in some kind of imagined world where Sha and other asylum seekers were quietly leaving a coastal village in Indonesia to board a boat only twice as big as his sculptural work. For 5 days – and one day with a broken down motor – they sailed across calm seas towards Australia and finally to a confrontation with an Australian customs vessel. Christmas Island and then Curtin detention centre led finally to his release and approval of his application for asylum. This was before Kevin Rudd’s pacific solution and the inevitable different trajectory of his life had he attempted asylum in 2016.

A full moon sunk majestically down on a still and glorious morning beach as the grey lights of dawn filtered up over the horizon and the moment of burning arrived. The symbolism of the burning was wrapped up in the theatre of the event as the turps fuelled paper and cardboard fire took hold. Sha invited me to pour the turps on the vessel with him and so it seemed like baptism, a preparation for death and rebirth. The moment had a deeply spiritual sensibility about it for me. There was a sensual almost romantic element to this morning’s fire on the beach and Sha’s walk to the water’s edge evoked images of New Testament mythology around the Jesus person’s post resurrection breakfast on a secluded stretch of Palestinian sea with his friends.

As we watched in a mesmerised trance fueled by metaphor, symbolism, tragedy, determination, kindness and luck Sha’s palpable relief broke into a smile on his handsome face. There was no closure, a word only applicable to doors, but there was a sense of being in a liminal space a space opened through this threshold experience.

The cooling embers were smothered in water and sand but not before a couple of kilograms were gathered into bowls for the next project – an ash brick.

The art making process seems to be a never ending exercise if both the aesthetic and emerging story are held as unfolding chapters. It is possible that in the attempt to construct meaning an essence statement or position arrives and there is an approximation to meaning but until that moment the making must continue to validate its beginning. My view that cultural and spiritual inquiry must be inextricably tied to the infinite creative core to hold their integrity and authenticity has Sha’s project as a fine example. There is yet more to be told of this man’s courage, pain, grief and growth and we do well to take our time to be present both to him and his work slowly and with respect and humility. The lesson is that if we are sidetracked as artists, designers, makers and collectors into only the ephemeral and utilitarian then our output and contribution to bringing understanding, meaning and depth to ourselves and our culture will be diluted.

* Sha added another element to this story on the beach as the boat was burning down to the sand. It seem that the burning ritual had set him free to tell me another chapter. His cousin had wanted to come to Australia from a refugee camp in Pakistan and to do as Sha had done, come by boat. Sha had discouraged the boat idea but in a horrible twist of fate his cousin was killed in a suicide bombing in a pool room on his way home with friends. He had been in the room when the first bomb went off and as he went to help the wounded, the second bomb was detonated – a well tried terrorist strategy – and he was killed. The ash brick is, I suspect, part of a memory shrine for Sha and his family.

Peter Breen [c] 2016

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Taking more time with art

We have recently added an extra week to exhibitions at Jugglers. That is, we have increased shows from one to two weeks. This has been driven by the need for less pressure on the organisation’s core staff and interns and to allow more time for the exhibiting artists to promote their work, to build a following and maybe to secure more collectors. The collecting of original art by emerging/mid career artists is one of life’s joys for me and from the regular sales we have at Jugglers, it is a joy for others as well. Buying art from Jugglers helps secure our future as a small artist run organisation and gives a sense of determination to artists who sell.

What I have found is that in the slower turn around and the gradual exorcism of maniacal activity that our weekly shows had become, I am contemplating the works more and I am standing still in front of pieces of art with increased levels of serious inquiry. What is the story here, why am I pulled into this, why is the aesthetic so mesmerising ? It is very easy in this world obsessed with consumption and an oversaturated visual landscape via all platforms of media to be DNA wired to jump along the line in an art exhibition, to consume the image or painting and to buy into quick fix turnaround visual orgasm or vomit! A simple management decision that was value driven is contributing to the need for slowness and enjoyment without feelings of cash flow and artistic demand. Even if applicants need to wait a bit longer for a show, the benefit of our slower pace is already bearing fruit at least in me. I am also spending a bit more time with the artists. I had fallen into a commodity trap! Artists are reclusive and need time to engage with their concepts, media and then, the public and the curator. A sense of rush never achieves considered well resolved good art, nor does it leave the artist passionately planning to return to the gallery. We like working with artists who want to come back, to build the family links. We have certainly done that but our hope is that this very small change will build on the values we hold which had slipped away from us engaging with effectively.

 

 

 

A community of artists

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This year Jugglers hosts another BARI Festival, a series of events to champion Artist Run Collectives in Brisbane. With the demise of The Hold Art Space ( West End) and White Canvas ( Fortitude Valley) spaces and places for artists to exhibit seem to be sliding off the radar. BARI makes a strong case for temporary spaces, accidental & short lived artist collectives and an event that exposes these collectives to the public. That has always been challenging as Brisbane is still growing into its art collective awareness having become used to a more linear white cube commercial and sometimes unadventurous ( or irrelevant extremes of) art. BARI was begun in 2008 by Randal Breen and Sam Eyles from Jugglers to create awareness and exposure for ARI’s. It has been a successful experiment and this bi-enniel (non) festival is due, again, under creative Directors Jac Bates and David Don to chip away at the ongoing transformation of Brisbane’s art DNA.