50 × 50 cm each
Tom Nicholson’s Comparative Monument (Palestine) engages a peculiar Australian monumental tradition: war monuments that bear the name “Palestine”. Countless of these monuments were built immediately after World War 1 to commemorate the presence of Australian troops in Palestine. The Australian troops had entered Palestine in 1917 after fighting the Turks threatening the Suez Canal with the British, when the main focus was on the European fronts rather than on the Middle East campaign. Scattered all over Australia, these monuments also reflect the realities of the 1920s (when they were erected) during the era of the British mandate, when the name Palestine implicitly invoked the shared position of Australia and Palestine within British imperialism. Comparative Monument (Palestine) takes the form of nice stacks of posters for visitors to take away. Each poster is a proposal for a new monument bearing the name “Palestine” in and around Melbourne. Re-animating these linkages between Australia and Palestine, the posters implicate the events and repercussions of 1948 Palestine war till today, along with their echoes of Australian Aboriginal experiences of dispossession and colonial violence. Each poster features different forms such as pavilions, rotundas, obelisks, cenotaphs, and elevated statues of Australian soldiers. The stacks never exceed knee height. Visitors are encouraged to remove posters and display them elsewhere, in the process partially privatizing and diluting this particular memory with other, unknown, memories. Comparative Monument (Palestine) attempts to rethink the possibilities of the monument in the face of Australia’s histories of dispossession, and the acts of imagination and solidarity these histories demand. The work also deploys printed matter to generate ephemeral public actions, in particular through processes of distribution that generate a field of dispersed social encounters.
Tom Nicholson is trained in drawing, a medium which he has used to think about the relationships between public actions and their traces, between propositions and monuments, and between writing and images. He has made a number of works engaging aspects of Australia’s colonial history, using combinations of drawings, monumental forms, and posters, often articulating these histories in relation to the histories of other places. His work is often nourished by his disciplinary training in drawing, and particularly drawing’s character as a prospective form, or a process dedicated to meditating upon forms that are yet-to-be. Works like Comparative Monument (Palestine) (2012) and Unfinished Monument to Batman’s Treaty (2011) deploy printed matter to generate ephemeral public actions, in particular through processes of distribution that generate a field of dispersed social encounters.
Victory at Sea is a simple mechanism made from cardboard and found materials that mimics the Phenakistoscope, an early cinematic apparatus...
In Studies of Chinese New Villages II Gan Chin Lee’s realism appears in the format of a fieldwork notebook; capturing present-day surroundings while unpacking their historical memory...
This work refers to the “Dream Machines”, an experimental object invented by the painter and writer Brion Gysin and the scientist Ian Sommerville, and which is composed of a light bulb with light passing through slits in a rotating cylinder...
Birender Kumar Yadav comes from Dhanbad, India, a city built on its proximity of iron ore and coal and once forested and inhabited by Indigenous people who compose the Gondwana...
Tender reading: A review of Loss Adjustment by Linda Collins | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles January 28, 2021 By Grace Foo (650 words, 3-minute read) Not many people can endure the traumatic experience of losing a child to suicide, let alone be of sound mind to write about it in a painfully self-aware manner...
Drowned Wood Standing Coiled (2011) consists of two sculptures, inextricably linked...
The photograph Proxy II (Beetles) by Robert Zhao Renhui belongs to a series, titled Christmas Island, Naturally, that focuses on the ecology of Christmas Island; a remote volcanic land formation in the Indian Ocean...
In a Material World: IMPART Collectors’ Show 2020 & Justice for All | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints Courtesy of artists January 3, 2020 By Aditi Shivaramakrishnan (1,200 words, 5-minute read) When it comes to analysing an artwork, the artist’s choice of materials can be as revelatory as other elements in suggesting what they might wish to communicate...
Ticket to Paradise: An Interview Whitney Oldenburg at Chart Gallery advertise donate post your art opening recent articles cities contact about article index podcast main December 2023 "The Best Art In The World" "The Best Art In The World" December 2023 Ticket to Paradise: An Interview Whitney Oldenburg at Chart Gallery By CLARE GEMIMA December 13, 2023 The intellectual landscape of sculptures and drawings in Whitney Oldenburg's latest exhibition, Ticket to Paradise (notably the work in the show entitled Feeding Frenzy), scrutinizes the intricate dynamics between protection and waste in the context of contemporary consumption...
Weekly Picks: Indonesia (11 - 17 March 2019) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Weekly To Do March 11, 2019 Top Picks of Indonesia art events in Jakarta and Bandung from 11-17 March 2019 The Jakarta Arts Council and Bekraf is back with its Teater Arsip program...
RUINER III by Nikita Gale is part of an on-going numbered series of abstract sculptures in which various ancillary materials necessary for sound production and recording such as towels, foam, and audio cables, are riddled around piping resembling crowd control bollards, lighting trusses, and other like stage architecture...