27 MARCH - 20 APRIL

Songs to uncover what is there

Curated by Eleanor Scicchitano

Songs to uncover what is there brings together artists to explore the music, songs, and sounds that shape our understanding of, and connection to memory and the past. Whether songs of celebration or mourning, music has the ability to trigger complex emotions and memories, connecting across generations.

Curator Biography

Eleanor is a Kaurna Country Adelaide-based independent curator and writer. She is currently Director of Post Office Projects, a new volunteer-run studio and gallery space located in Port Adelaide.

Scicchitano’s curatorial practice commonly involves working with artists to explore identity and the body. She has curated numerous independent exhibitions across Australia, including at the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, the Australian Experimental Art Foundation, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Signal Point Gallery, Goolwa, praxis ARTSPACE, Adelaide, Walkway Gallery, Bordertown and Artbank, Sydney. In 2022 she was the curator of the Gertrude Street Projection Festival, Melbourne, titled A Soft Pulse.

FRONT GALLERY

Chun Yin Rainbow Chan 陳雋然

Chun Yin Rainbow Chan (VIC)’s As Far Away As Heaven From Earth (2022) is an installation comprising silk paintings, backstrap loom weaving and sound. Chan has worked collaboratively with her mother and extended family to uncover bridal and funeral laments, which have been revived, layered and amplified in the gallery space.

Artist Biography

Chun Yin Rainbow Chan 陳雋然 is a Hong Kong-Australian interdisciplinary artist and pop musician. Her practice explores (mis)translation, diaspora, love and grief. Chan has exhibited at Firstdraft, Sydney; Liquid Architecture, Melbourne; 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney; Gallery Lane Cove, Sydney; and I-Project Space, Beijing. She was a finalist in the 2022 NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship (Artspace, Create NSW, NAS). Her documentary for Radio National, Songs From a Walled Village, was a finalist in the 2021 ABU Awards. Her latest record Stanley was released on Eastern Margins (UK, 2021).

BACK GALLERY

Brad Darkson

Brad Darkson’s songlines (2024) infuses the gallery with a sense of nostalgia. His work captures the monotony and familiarity that characterised the fortnightly trips between his mother and father’s houses in his youth. The soundtrack, broken and fading in and out, mimics both the glitches in our memories, and the way in which we snap in and out of concentration on these long journeys.

Artist Biography

Brad Darkson is a multidisciplinary artist currently working across various media including carving, video, sound, animation, sculpture, painting and site-specific installation. ‘Cultural-revival-activism’ permeates his work, regularly focusing on connections between contemporary and traditional cultural practice, language and lore. His current research interests include traditional land management practices, bureaucracy, seaweed, and the neo-capitalist hellhole we’re all forced to exist within.

Select exhibitions include Between Waves, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2023 (national tour confirmed); Dream Job, Disclaimer X Sydney Opera House co-commission (online, 2023); Ruled Us, Ruled Us, Ruled Us, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental with the Santos Museum of Economic Botany, Adelaide Botanic Gardens (2023); Make Yourself Comfortable, Post Office Projects, Adelaide (2022); Neoteric, Adelaide Railway Station (2022); Experimenta Life Forms (nationally touring 2021–2024); Adelaide//International, Samstag Museum, Adelaide (2020); VIETNAM – ONE IN, ALL IN (nationally touring 2019–2021); The Return, Dark Mofo, Hobart (2018); and Lux Aeterna, ISEA, Gwangju (2019).

FELTdark

Daniel Mudie Cunningham

Proud Mary (2007, 2012, 2017, 2022 ongoing), by Daniel Mudie Cunningham, compresses four “Daniels”, shot 5 years apart, and places them in contrast and comparison with each other. This is a joyous work, celebrating the artist as he ages, while acting as an object for reflection.

Artist Biography

Dr Daniel Mudie Cunningham is artist, curator, critic and lecturer at the National Art School.

Daniel’s practice draws upon and remixes the image streams of art history, queer politics, pop culture, performance and music. His recent career survey, Are You There? at Wollongong Art Gallery spanned 30 years of practice. Curated by James Gatt, the exhibition is accompanied by a career-spanning monograph supported by Creative Australia (forthcoming 2024).

Primarily working in video and photography, his work has been presented in public galleries, museums, and artist-run initiatives since the early 1990s,including participation in Sydney Festival (2021), Cementa (2015) and MONA FOMA (2012). His work is represented in public collections such as Art Gallery of Western Australia, Artbank, City of Sydney, Western Sydney University, Macquarie University, Murray Art Museum Albury, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Wollongong Art Gallery, and private collections including the Museum of Old and New Art. His archive is housed at the National Art Archive at the Art Gallery of NSW.

Like many people, I have created an internal soundtrack to my life, one I continue to add to as I age. The songs in this exhibition hold aspecial place for these three artists, each one being used as a conduit that connects them with their past and present, compressing time between these moments.

——- Eleanor Scicchitano

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

(c) Eleanor Scicchitano, Chun Yin Rainbow Chan, Brad Darkson, Daniel Mudie Cunningham

Eleanor would like to thank the artists for their generosity and trust in sharing their works, FELTspace for their support in the presentation of this exhibition, the City of Adelaide for their financial support and her family and friends for their ongoing and tireless support across the years.

Songs to uncover what is there has been generously supported by the City of Adelaide.