Kerjasma 2016

Artback NT,
Alice Springs, Australia.
18 May - 26 June 2016.

During their joint residency in Australia and Indonesia, artists Tony Albert and Timoteus Anggawan Kusno (Angga) quickly formed a strong collaborative relationship. Together they presented artist talks, joint exhibitions and workshops.Tony Albert’s practice interrogates contemporary legacies of colonialism from an Aboriginal perspective. Based in Sydney, Albert uses visual motifs and references from pop culture to explore personal and political themes within a global context.
His Kerjasama collaborator, Angga works across drawing, photography, performance, video and installation. Based in Yogyakarta, his practice challenges historical memory and paradigms by articulating questions around remembering and forgetting.

During their six-week Alice Springs residency, the two artists connected with Iltja Ntjarra Many Hands Art Centre, an Aboriginal owned Centre producing landscape paintings in the tradition of the Hermannsburg School. The pair ran a workshop, attended by artists interested in integrating political elements into their work.

Making art with Tony Albert and Aboriginal artists from Iltja Ntjarra was a great opportunity for me to grasp the insights and the stories of people, places, and culture … [it] became the gateway for me to get into the history, memory, and the social landscape of Alice Springs.

At the end of the six weeks the artists presented a joint exhibition of new studies, sketches and collages, along with the collaborative works made with the artists at Iltja Ntjarra. Says Albert, “I am really happy with the [residency] outcome, not only for me but for the communities we worked with.”

Cemeti – Institute for Art and Society,
Yogyakarta Indonesia.  
8 September - 20 October 2016.

After a three-month break, Albert and Angga reconnected in Yogyakarta.

During the six weeks at Cemeti, Albert developed a new series of photographs, collages, embroideries and sculptural objects that expanded on his ongoing exploration of kitsch motifs and the concept of the ‘alien.’

Reflecting on the distinctive motif he developed throughout his Kerjasama residency, Albert explained:

I am fascinated how seemingly innocent objects such as ashtrays transform into menacing symbols of race relations. Although such objects belong to a different era, their contemporary relevance is found in the mass production and use (or mis-use) of images of Aboriginal people and cultural objects as icons of Australia and the world.

Angga also expanded on ideas embedded in his practice, developing a performance, interactive installation and series of visual pieces focused on the institutionalisation of history and personal memory.  This body of new work was presented at Cemeti in 2015 alongside Tony Albert’s work in an extremely successful exhibition titled Kerjasama #3.

Following the official Kerjasama residency period, Tony Albert and Timoteus Anggawan Kusno continued their collaboration in a joint exhibition of works at Sullivan and Strumpf, Singapore in February 2017. The exhibition showcased two highly refined bodies of work built on the ideas explored by the artists in both Yogyakarta and Alice Springs.