Home - Gwangju

Home-Gwangju is an Asialink partnership between the Gwangju Biennale, curator Alia Swastika and the artists.

Artists: Hiromi Tango and Craig Walsh

Curator: Alia Swastika

Residency: 10 August – 10 September 2012
Workshops: 11 August – 6 September 2012
Biennale: 7 September – 11 November 2012

Hiromi Tango and Craig Walsh began working collaboratively on Home, 2010 – 2011, as part of Digital Odyssey, a Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney) touring Project that took place in regional locations across Australia. Engaging with people from diverse backgrounds and situations, Craig made video portraits of people talking about how their personal histories and experiences have shaped their perceptions of home, while Hiromi invited people to bring items that symbolize home with them to workshops, which they collectively stitched with textiles and objects to make projection screens that provided a charged backdrop for Walsh’s video recordings.

Parts of the screens and recordings created through the regional tour will become interwoven in the Home - Gwangju for the Gwangju Biennale, along with new content created on-site during a four week residency in Gwangju. As Hiromi began preparing the screens from regional installations for shipping – repairing ephemeral materials damaged by weather, wear and tear, as well as removing unprocessed plant and animal materials that can not be shipped across borders, she reflected on the instability and uncertainty of home for many, including herself and Craig through their nomadic existence as artists.

The idea of home was once synonymous with security and familiarity. While for many this may still be the case, it may equally call to mind a sense of sadness, loss, dislocation or anxiety. Together, Tango & Walsh, use contrasting media and methods to investigate their shared concerns. Home - Gwangju poses many questions around the fragility and instability of contemporary existence, as well as our assumptions about the universal nature of this ideal.

Catalogue

Home - Gwangju was an Asialink partnership with the 9th Gwangju Biennale: Roundtable. The project was generously supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Australia Korea Foundation.