Cultural Dialogues at Verge Gallery

Artists working with oral history/Oral historians working with artists panel talk presented by Oral History NSW in partnership with Verge Gallery. The Accessible Conversations project was supported by Create NSW’s Audience Development Fund, a devolved funding program administered by Museums & Galleries of NSW on behalf of the NSW Government.

Videographer: Tim da-Rin

Continuing the compelling series of talks at Verge Gallery, artists, scholars, historians and curators reopen some of our most critical cultural dialogues.

Critical Bodies considers the pervasiveness of the body in art and therefore it’s locus as central to critical discourse. The artists in Critical Bodies demonstrate the extent to which the body in art can continue to pose questions. For this new generation of artists, the body is a critical site for  challenging its own representation and for the negotiation of femininity and masculinity, the visibility/invisibility of queer bodies, and bodies as a site of voyeurism and violence. Corporeal connections between bodies is also important. For many of the artists in this exhibition, connections between young and old, between the strong and the weak, between human and animal, are made explicit.

Join Dr. Donna West Brett (USYD academic and art historian), Natalya Hughes (UTS academic and artist), Julie Rrap (co-curator), Cherine Fahd (co-curator), Danica Knezevic (exhibiting artist), & David C. Collins (exhibiting artist). This talk coincided with the exhibition Critical Bodies curated by Cherine Fahd & Julie Rrap shown at Verge Gallery from 5 July to 11 August 2018.

Join speakers Deborah Beck, Fabri Blacklock, Therese Sweeney, and Dr. Paula Hamilton discussing ways in which artists have worked with oral history: the practice of making memories through a planned interview between two people. How are narratives being used as a resource in the production of creative work? If digital technologies mean that oral history is more readily available to be worked with than ever before, what ethical challenges do artists working with oral history have to consider? How is the interpretive capacity of oral history being extended through contemporary artistic practice?