recent art in melbourne during the federation festival
I like to imagine that, besides people, objects can migrate, ideas can migrate, even nations can migrate. Perhaps Australia as a nation is migrating. In the year of the Centenary of Federation, how far have we migrated in our ideal of nationhood? 1
Exhibitions dealing with issues of cultural identity were plentiful during the Centenary of Federation festivities in Melbourne. Many highlighted the experiences of migration and the role of immigrant populations in transforming definitions of Australian nationhood. Indeed, much of Australian history is one of migration, and acknowledging the place and participation of the diverse cultural and ethnic groups which have shaped Australian history is crucial to understanding contemporary Australian society. While recognition of Australia's European (for example, Italian and Greek) immigrant populations has been substantial, it is only more recently that the history of Asians in Australia has been acknowledged, coinciding with Australia's political and cultural reorientation towards the Asia-Pacific region. This shift was evident in several art exhibitions in Melbourne during the Federation Festival.
In The Australia Projects, a feature exhibition of the Federation Festival, curator Juliana Engberg presented the work of seven contemporary Australian visual artists, addressing a range of perspectives on Australian identity including views from indigenous and recently arrived immigrant artists. Of the latter, Chinese-born Sydney-based artist Liu Xiao Xian offered both witty and deeply complex insights into cultural identity through his installation, Game- a series of three board games which satirise tensions within Australian culture. The first of these games represents emblems of Australian popular culture such as the Aussie lifesaver, the Chesty Bonds man, Ned Kelly, the swagman, the traditional tribal Aboriginal man, Vegemite and VB in the form of game... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline