Reparative Aesthetics: Rosângela Rennó and Fiona Pardington, Griffith University Art Gallery

Reparative Aesthetics: Rosângela Rennó and Fiona Pardington

Exhibition dates: Saturday 30 April 2016 – Saturday 2 July 2016

Guest curator: Professor Susan Best

Portrait of a life cast of Matoua Tawai, Aotearoa/New Zealand, from 'Ahua: A beautiful hesitation' series 2010, archival pigments on 308gsm Hahnemuhle photo rag, 146 x 110cm. University of Sydney Art Collection. Purchased with funds from the Renshaw bequest 2014. Courtesy Musee de l’Homme (Musee National d’Histoire Naturelle), Paris.

How do artists represent the disempowered without evoking pity or voyeurism?

Rosângela Rennó and Fiona Pardington, artists based in the southern hemisphere (Brazil and New Zealand), take a reparative approach to this topic. Their powerful portraits are not, however, redemptive or restorative in the straightforward way one might suppose. For them, reparative aesthetics signals the capacity to assimilate the consequences of destruction and violence.

 

Panel Discussion

Ambivalence and The Archival Turn

2pm Saturday 7 May 2016

Join exhibiting artist Fiona Pardington, photographer, anthropologist and curator Michael Aird and artist Vernon Ah Kee, chaired by exhibition curator Professor Sue Best, as they explore the use of historical archives as sources in contemporary art that can highlight oppressive or unjust historical events, and consider how ambivalence overcomes the need to privilege aesthetics over politics or politics over aesthetics.

Website

Image: Portrait of a life cast of Matoua Tawai, Aotearoa/New Zealand
from ‘Ahua: A beautiful hesitation’ series 2010
archival pigments on 308gsm Hahnemuhle photo rag
146 x 110cm
University of Sydney Art Collection.
Purchased with funds from the Renshaw bequest 2014.
Courtesy: Musée de l’Homme (Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle), Paris, France.

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