Image: Sue Kneebone, Pamplemousses Garden, 2020. Digital projection with mixed media installation (detail)
BACK GALLERY: SUE KNEEBONE (SA) - PAMPLEMOUSSES GARDENS
Through tracking ancestral migrations across time and place I am seeking to bring the spectre of lost stories and hidden truths from a colonising history back into sharp focus in the present. More recently this research took me to the remote Indian Ocean island of Mauritius where I found several of my forebears buried in the old French cemetery at Pamplemousses. This cemetery is located alongside the Pamplemousses Gardens, one of the world’s oldest botanical gardens constructed in 1770. The gardens were once a site of horticultural experimentation, where fruiting trees and crop plants such as sugar cane were cultivated for potential distribution to other countries around the world. Thus the gardens played an implicit role in the grander scheme of colonialist expansion through plantations and forced labour. Part botanical archive, part bunker, Pamplemousses Gardens (2020) reflects back on this botanical garden’s horticultural history as a utopian vision of colonial expansion into an unforeseen and unsustainable future.
Image: Sarojini Lewis (Netherlands/India) with Sue Kneebone (Australia) & Vanii Suki (Madagascar) Inhabiting Memories(2020), video screen shot.
FELTDARK: SUE KNEEBONE (SA) - INHABITING MEMORIES
Inhabiting Memories was filmed in Mauritius during the International Partage AIR and workshop ‘Conflict Zones’ in April 2019. The dialogue was recorded at the significant site of Le Morne which has world heritage status in recognition of it as a place of resistance to slavery during the eras of French and English occupation when the mountain was refuge to shelter escaped slaves. This project was initiated by photographer and video artist Sarojini Lewis who saw it as a way for us to share our ancestral stories and reflections in the presence of this site, and to feel and understand the shadow of this history. Sarojini Lewis describes our encounter as a crossroads of Madagascan, British and Indian origins that in the era of colonialism had crossed this space we encountered in the present. An edited 2020 version of this video will be shown for FELTdark.
Angelfire - Susan Kneebone - Sep 2008
Opening - 12:00 AM - Thursday, 4th of September
Artist Talk - 5:30 PM
Running - 4 Sep 2008 - 20 Sep 2008
