(Untitled) Nimoa and Me: Kiriwina Notations

2015 - Installation (Installation)

63 x 43 cm

Newell Harry


(Untitled) Nimoa and Me: Kiriwina Notations by Newell Harry brings together a litany of contemporary politics—mobilization around enduring racism, the legacies of Indigenous and independence struggle, and the prospects of global solidarity against neocolonialism and social injustice. Yet what makes his stance unique is his idiosyncratic ‘anarchival’ method, developed over twenty years of living, working, and gathering in and around the South Pacific. From the resulting miscellany, Harry elicits thought-provoking new connections between collected artefacts; photographs and impressions authored by himself; and items drawn from journalist, activist, and documentary archives. The neatly gridded wall installation gives a formal consistency to Harry’s miscellaneous encounters and anecdotes, resisting any linear or monolithic narrative, well-known hazards of documenting “other cultures”. This photographic series consists of framed and matted black-and-white photographs, some accompanied by typewritten vignettes, describing an event or episode from the artist’s expedition to Kiriwina Island in Papua New Guinea’s Milne Bay Province. The largest of the Trobriand Islands, Kiriwina is a highly loaded location—the site of Bronislaw Malinowski’s celebrated anthropological field studies of island life, sexuality, and that archetypal model of non-capitalist exchange, the Kula ring. Kiriwina has long been a quasi-sacred site for the human sciences, but while attentive to the facts of non-linear economic and symbolic exchange, Harry’s candid photos and diaristic reflections paint his “island friends” with decidedly profane humor and matter-of-fact contemporaneity. (Some text adapted from Samuel Lee, Antenna , Summer 2021, vol. 2 )


Newell Harry’s practice traces an intimate web of connections and histories linking Pacific island cultures (especially those of the Vanuatu archipelago)–via Australia, where he lives, and the Malay world–to South Africa’s Western Cape Province, the home of his extended family. He is known for acid text works featuring pithy appropriations of Pidgin and Creole languages, marrying a concrète poetics with craft traditions of the South Pacific. But his art is rooted in a studious kind of gathering , of stories, images, and artefacts, both on the ground in the course of his travels and in archives, markets, and collections. Harry has long explored island societies’ unfinished histories of exploitation and epistemological upheaval, as well as the cultural friction of colonial migration and its legacies concerning race and identity. His own South African and Mauritian descent affords a dissonant perspective on present-day Australia, a nation whose schizoid settler imaginary—as both colony and Pacific colonizer—is plagued by its uneasy history in a region looming ever larger in global affairs. Through the lenses of journalism, documentary practice and his own family’s experience, Harry’s recent research uncovers transnational solidarities and the contradictions of white multiculturalism in a certain geography of decolonization, lately called the ‘Indo-Pacific’.


Colors:



Related works sharing similar palette

100 Boots
© » KADIST

Eleanor Antin

1973

Comprised of fifty-one photographic postcards, Antin’s 100 Boots is an epic visual narrative in which 100 black rubber boots stand in for a fictional “hero” making a “trip” from California to New York City...

U: Repair the cowshed after losing the cow = Too late
© » KADIST

Seulgi Lee

2018

The Korean title for U: Repair the cowshed after losing the cow = Too late is —a famous Korean proverb meaning “you are doing something when you are already late to do it”...

Sodiq, Tobi, Nonso and Tonnex
© » KADIST

Sabelo Mlangeni

2019

The Royal House of Allure is a name of a safe house on mainland Lagos where members of the queer community in need of boarding, due to various circumstances, live together...

How Ai Weiwei Marries Advocacy and Art at Home and Abroad
© » LITHUB

How Ai Weiwei Marries Advocacy and Art at Home and Abroad ‹ Literary Hub Craft and Criticism Fiction and Poetry News and Culture Lit Hub Radio Reading Lists Book Marks CrimeReads About Log In Literary Hub Craft and Criticism Literary Criticism Craft and Advice In Conversation On Translation Fiction and Poetry Short Story From the Novel Poem News and Culture History Science Politics Biography Memoir Food Technology Bookstores and Libraries Film and TV Travel Music Art and Photography The Hub Style Design Sports Freeman’s The Virtual Book Channel Lit Hub Radio Behind the Mic Beyond the Page The Cosmic Library The Critic and Her Publics Emergence Magazine Fiction/Non/Fiction First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing Future Fables The History of Literature I’m a Writer But Just the Right Book Keen On The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan New Books Network Read Smart Talk Easy Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast Write-minded Reading Lists The Best of the Decade Book Marks Best Reviewed Books BookMarks Daily Giveaway CrimeReads True Crime The Daily Thrill CrimeReads Daily Giveaway Log In How Ai Weiwei Marries Advocacy and Art at Home and Abroad From His Graphic Memoir, "Zodiac" Via Ten Speed Press By Ai Weiwei, Elettra Stamboulis and Gianluca Costantini January 30, 2024 The following is from Zodiac: A Graphic Memoir by Ai Weiwei with Elettra Stamboulis, illustrated by Gianluca Constantini...

Art Collector and Credit Suisse Head José Olympio da Veiga Pereira Is the New President of São Paulo Biennial Foundation - via The Art Newspaper
© » LARRY'S LIST

The organisation oversees the city’s international exhibition, as well as the country’s representation at the Venice Biennale and other projects...

Sans titre (Horse Day serie)
© » KADIST

Mohamed Bourouissa

2017

In his photographic series Périphérique (2005–2008), Mohamed Bourouissa used the composition of classical paintings to stage the portrait of friends and young people in the banlieue s (suburbs)...

Text and image: Laurie Fendrich and Peter Plagens
© » TWOCOATSOFPAINT

Text and image: Laurie Fendrich and Peter Plagens – Two Coats of Paint John Coplans photo portrait of Peter Plagens and Laurie Fendrich, c...

Guggenheim Axes Ten Employees
© » ARTFORUM

Guggenheim Axes Ten Employees – Artforum Read Next: LOUVRE RAISES TICKET PRICES BY NEARLY 30 PERCENT Subscribe Search Icon Search Icon Search for: Search Icon Search for: Follow Us facebook twitter instagram youtube Alerts & Newsletters Email address to subscribe to newsletter...

Nadie sabe de la sed con que otro bebe (No one knows the thirst with which another drinks)
© » KADIST

Nicolás Consuegra

2012

A residency program in the blazing hot city of Honda, Colombia, inspired artist Nicolás Consuegra to consider the difficulty in understanding the needs of a distant community...

Artists “Make LA Graffiti History” by Painting on Abandoned High-Rises
© » HYPERALLERGIC

Artists "Make LA Graffiti History" by Painting on Abandoned High-Rises Skip to content Oceanwide Plaza was covered in graffiti by dozens of artists...

New Town Ghost
© » KADIST

Minouk Lim

2005

New Town Ghost (2005) is one of Lim’s trio of large-scale video installations...

Michigan Central Station
© » KADIST

Stan Douglas

1997

Michigan Central Station is part of a larger photographic series, Detroit Photos , which includes images of houses, theaters, stadiums, offices, and other municipal structures...

May
© » KADIST

May Editor in Chief, Catherine Chevalier and artist Jay Chung spent the month of November 2011 in San Francisco developing the 8th issue of May, a bilingual (French/English) quarterly journal based in Paris, France...

Carey Young - Conflict Management
© » KADIST

Internationally acclaimed artist Carey Young will offer free professional mediation service for any two or more parties who have a dispute – personal or professional – to resolve...

Perrotin announces new Los Angeles space.
© » ARTSY

Perrotin announces new Los Angeles space...

Flag (Thames) 2016
© » KADIST

John Gerrard

2016

Flag (Thames) 2016 depicts a small section of the Thames River—one that is adjacent to the Palace of Westminster in London—as an algorithmic representation on an LED panel...

Noted Hong Kong Art Collectors Make Large Donation of Works to New Museum M+, Mostly by Local Creators - via SCMP
© » LARRY'S LIST

Hong Kong visual culture museum M+ announced it had approved a donation of 90 contemporary artworks, most of them by local creators, from William Lim and his wife Lavina....

The Art World This Week: Art Basel Miami, Anselm Kiefer Sculpture Stolen, US Repatriations, and More
© » MUTUALART

Everything you need to know about the most important headlines from the world of art in the last seven days...

Gabriel Sierra: ( )
© » KADIST

This publication marks the 2012 residency and public exhibition of ( ) by Gabriel Sierra, including text and translation by Christopher Michael Fraga and photography by Jeff Warrin....

British Museum Theft: Accountability Crisis Amidst Inside Job Allegations
© » ARTLYST

The British Museum is grappling with an internal crisis due to the loss and damage of approximately 2,000 artefacts, including valuable Roman gems...