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Tuesday, 27 September 2016

Art that transports people to Iran, celebrates the strength and diversity of feminism and reveals how humans have mapped the WA coastline will be on display at a new series of free exhibitions opening at The University of Western Australia’s Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery.

UWA Chief Cultural Officer Professor Ted Snell said the final exhibitions for 2016 would run between Saturday 8 October and Saturday 10 December, with the gallery open 11am-5pm, Tuesday to Saturday.

“We’re proud to present work from significant Australian artists and those working locally, blending history with current practice, showcasing Aboriginal art and culture and aligning traditional art forms with the most contemporary,” Professor Snell said.

“From Hossein Valamanesh’s exploration of the main bazaar in the Iranian city of Arak, through an investigation of the similarities and differences between European and Aboriginal ways of mapping the sky, the sea and the land, to Kelly Doley’s subversive textual experiments, this is a program that will challenge, delight and inform.”

Char Soo, created by Iranian-born Australian artist Hossein Valamanesh, is a four-screen projection that captures what a day is like in an Iranian bazaar.

In collaboration with his son Nassiem, Valamanesh filmed simultaneously in all four directions of a grand bazaar’s central intersection. Watching from the centre of four stationary camera shots, the viewer is immersed in the grand bazaar’s scenes and sounds. With a myriad of shops and the bazaar’s traditional architecture of pointed arches, brick ceiling and a tiled pool, the viewer can follow the movement of people from screen to screen.

Char Soo has been commissioned by the UWA Cultural Precinct with Carriageworks, Adelaide Film Festival and Samstag Museum of Art.

Kelly Doley: Things Learnt About Feminism is a provocative and unapologetically contradictory investigation of feminism today.

In 2012 Australian artist Kelly Doley invited 16 people from very different backgrounds to teach her about feminism. Using those conversations as source material, Doley created Things Learnt About Feminism, a series of 95 hand-painted posters that play on the tropes and clichés of political slogans.

Presented by the nation’s only public collection of art by Australian women, the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art, the exhibition is a funny, sincere, and vibrant celebration of feminism’s strength and diversity.

Saltwater Mapping aims to respond to the 400th anniversary of Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog’s landing in Western Australia.

Drawn from the Berndt Museum Collections, Kerry Stokes Collection, State Library of Western Australia, and more, the exhibition speaks of the complexities of ownership and land. It explores the universal ability to tell stories and to picture the world from the viewpoints of the Australian Aboriginal peoples of the west coast, early Dutch explorers, and the Indonesian fishermen and traders who visited Australia’s north-west coast.

Media references

John McCarten (UWA Marketing Officer Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery) (+61 8) 6488 3888

Jess Reid (UWA Media and Public Relations Advisor)                                                                (+61 8) 6488 6876

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