The Neighbour at the Gate: Ancient Connections, Contemporary Voices

The Neighbour at the Gate is a reminder that ancient connections between First Nations people of northern Australia and the peoples of Asia and the Pacific  are ongoing.

Three curators (Clothilde Bullen OAM, Michael Do and Zali Morgan) have worked with six contemporary artists — Jacky Cheng, Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson, Dennis Golding, Jenna Mayilema Lee, James Nguyen and James Tylor — to create an exhibition that uses both ancient and modern strategies to explore questions of culture, memory and space.

People enter through Jacky Cheng’s Chinese gate monument that includes fragments of a half-remembered poem. Memory is also key to Dennis Golding’s homage to the bingo nights run by his grandmother and aunt in Redfern before it became posh. Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson’s video speaks to experiences of Bahai refugees from the Ayatollah’s Iran, while Jenna Mayilema Lee uses the lotuses that float in the waters of northern Australia and south Asia to examine at her mixed Aboriginal/Chinese/Japanese/Filipino heritage. James Tylor’s daguerreotypes of birds whose Kuarna names come from their song are matched with a QR code so that the viewer hears blends of birdsong with human music. James Nguyen strikes a sombre note with his giant textile, dyed with Agent Orange pollution from the Parramatta River, but this evil is banished with the purifying incense burnt in the many tiny pinch pots that guide visitors up the stairs.

National Art School Gallery