The Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery at The University of Western Australia will launch its 2021 Season 1 program with three new exhibitions exploring experiences of migration, paper-based art practice and animal representations from across Indigenous Australia.
All three exhibitions will open on Saturday 27 February: Olga Cironis: Dislocation, presented in association with Perth Festival, Paper Cut, featuring works from UWA's Cruthers Collection of Women's Art, and Creatures: Ochred, Pokered, Carved and Twined, presented by the Berndt Museum.
The Season 1 program features artworks and objects from the University's cultural collections, as well as some of the best of contemporary Australian art practice.
Presented in association with Perth Festival, Olga Cironis: Dislocation surveys 30 years of practice by leading Australian contemporary artist Olga Cironis. Based in Perth, Cironis's powerful, multidisciplinary artworks explore experiences of migration as well as the impact of history and memory on personal and shared identity.
Cironis said her work explored the space between the haves and have nots and the human desire to belong.
"Experiencing and seeing the injustice of how people — migrant people, women, children, people in poverty — are treated by others in our democratic system is embedded in my work," she said.
Paper Cut, an exhibition of works on paper from UWA's Cruthers Collection of Women's Art, will also open on 27 February. The 'cut' in the title refers both to the technique and to the incisive commentary of the works on display.
The exhibition is a mass showing of paper works that reveals the particular strengths of the collection, and the remarkable breadth of material. Featuring many works publicly displayed for the first time, Paper Cut will also rotate artworks once over the course of the exhibition to present an entirely new selection of material.
A Paper Cut residency program will complement the collection display. It showcases print media and paper forms currently being produced by four local groups in dialogue with the themes, materials, strategies and processes of the exhibition.
The final exhibition in the program is Creatures: Ochred, Pokered, Carved and Twined. Presented by the Berndt Museum, Creatures delves into the depths of the museum's object collection, illuminating a diverse menagerie of animal representations from across Indigenous Australia.
The exhibition showcases more than 100 years of creation practices by Indigenous Australian peoples, for whom the creatures of the land, water and sky were, and forever will be, deeply ingrained in their culture and beliefs.
Open until 5 June 2021, Olga Cironis: Dislocation, Paper Cut and Creatures: Ochred, Pokered, Carved & Twined will be accompanied by a series of free public programs, including talks, tours, performances and more.
UWA recently realigned its internal governance of the LWAG and the Berndt Museum to enhance public visibility and engagement with these unique and significant collections across the wider community and strengthen their integration into learning and teaching programs.
Full public access to the Gallery and all 2021 exhibitions will continue as scheduled. The Gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday from 12pm to 5pm and admission is free. For more information, visit the LWAG website.
