Blank canvas
Site Location: Block 95
Atherton Towers, Building Atherton Gardens Estate Cnr Napier and Gertrude Streets Fitzroy Victoria Australia. During 2016 and 2017 I collaborated with two different artists to explore issues of place and identity through the development of large scale projected works as part of the annual Gertrude street Projection Festival, Fitzroy Victoria Australia.
Fractured: GSPF 2016
Gertrude Street Projection Festival 2016.
Site Location: Atherton Towers, Building 95
Artwork Title: Fractures
Artist: Jacob Tolo & Susan Maco Forrester.
Fractures is a collaboration between Jacob Tolo and Susan Maco Forrester that explores fragmented identities through performative acts and cultural aesthetics. The artists aim to address the complex issues associated with mainstream whiteness, creating a powerful work that is both a critique of the stereotyping of identity and a proud assertion of it.
Future Is NOW - GSPF 2017
'An endless voyage, blurring boundaries of past, present and future. We navigate raging seas of connection and disconnection to our home and to our identity, by the guiding stars of our ancestors. We arise, Queen Tanley-Boneyer and Queen Arawelo, our sails swell with fearless breath. Our siren songs ebb and flow, across time, with infinite knowledge, until we find safe harbour, upon the foaming shores of our creation. We map our journeys, longitude and latitude in the Blak space, where we are the future and the future is now!'
In 2017 I collaborated with Photographer and Artist Jody Haines. The theme for the 2017 GSPF was 'unfurling futures'. Jody and I shared my Somali and her Palawa cultures to respond to this site, an enduring traditional meeting place for Aboriginal people and more recently also home for many Somali people. We worked together to bring our cultural knowledge and imagery and project ourselves big and proudly returning the gaze of the 'other'.
Susan Maco Forrester and Jody Haines Projections (C) Haines/Forrester/Azidis Concept (C) Forrester/Haines Documentation (C) Jody Haines