A Journey to Freedom

The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

June 8 - July 29, 2018

 

“A Journey to Freedom” is first of all an artistic statement. Artists chosen for the exhibition are so for the artistic power and beauty of their works. “A Journey to Freedom”, inasmuch it intends to promote any form of creative freedom, is also a political statement – but the artistic statement comes first, the political one ensuing from the art itself. “A Journey to Freedom” will be a beautiful and powerful journey.

While “A Journey to Freedom” is essentially an international exhibition, it also proposes works specifically relating to Australia and/or to Tasmania, such as the VR work by worldly recognized Australian artist Shaun Gladwell, works by other Australian artists, i.e. Ricky Maynard and Sam Wallman, as well as the work produced in situ by Nicolas Daubanes.

The exhibition “A Journey to Freedom” brings together both renown artists who have been working on imprisonment and younger ones for which imprisonment is the essential theme. The exhibition aims to get the viewers into a state of openness, to stimulate them thinking about their own imprisonments, the history of jails and the current worldwide status of imprisonment/jailing. This exhibition requires the viewers to take and give their time to the images. The time given should not be perceived as a loss, but a gain of insight. Along these lines, “A Journey to Freedom” proposes many moving images: videos/films in the exhibition will necessarily require «viewing with time». Indeed, video – as stated by Pier Paolo Pasolini when talking about cinema – is as much a philosophical investigation as a visual and a linguistic one. It provides not only images, but an “environment”, (Sean Capone) that permits us to think of the world differently. Video art is also the most contemporary artistic medium of our time as it goes with the uninterrupted flow of moving images that submerge us. But video art opposes the flow of images and time, resists the tide and forces it to stop; it is the backflow, the creative counter-flow from the moving image. Video art generates a contemplative time, one of immersion and offers a unique new space-time. Video art is an art of resistance.

 

The works

Filmic works in “A Journey to Freedom” will include videos by Janet Biggs, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Ali Kazma, and Jhafis Quintero, as well as a virtual reality video work by Shaun Gladwell, placing the viewers within the interior of a skull – isn’t the human skull our primary jail? Other works will be in situ installations by Nicolas Daubanes, mounir fatmi, Rachel Labastie, Ricky Maynard, Robert Montgomery, Jean-Michel Pancin, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige (video and installation) and Sam Wallman.

 

Hobart, June 2018