Waves flow. Across multiple frequencies and in varying ways, through absorption, transmission, reflection, or refraction. Waves, more often than not, reside beyond the scope of vision. Still, they carry memory and meaning and have a profound influence on the body, materiality, place, and space. In essence, waves both visible and invisible, guide a transfer of energy from one place to the next; within, beyond and between what can be seen. In the momentum of ocean waves, there is a moment held between the rise and fall of two waves, which may conjure both silence and solace, but also uncertainty. Will the wave that follows roll gently over, or will it swell and thump down hard? Will the body resist its momentum or welcome it?

Positive, negative

present, missing

floating, bound¹

The exhibition Between Waves (2023) embraces the tension held and released by the tide, while simultaneously drawing to the fore, the energy fields, flows and forces at play in the day-to-day that influence self, relationships, and experiences of the world. The curatorial framework enfolds concepts related to waves of light, time and vision—and the idea of shining a light on the times as expressed by the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung word Yalingwa. This word also locates Between Waves within a lineage of Indigenous-led commission-based projects that have been presented as part of the Yalingwa Visual Arts Initiative; a program supported by the Victorian Government in partnership with the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) and TarraWarra Museum of Art.

In a region that has historically, and often still is, curatorially overlooked, the Yalingwa Visual Arts Initiative asserts that First Nations creative and cultural practice has been thriving throughout the Southeast since time immemorial and continues to do so. In response, the Yalingwa program provides a critical platform to celebrate the incredible breadth and national significance of contemporary art practice by First Nations artists connected to and/or based in Southeast Australia. Through a biennial-style series of First Nations identified curatorial positions, commission-based exhibition outcomes, and artist fellowships that recognise established artist’s significant contributions to creative and cultural practice in Victoria, Yalingwa celebrates and is underpinned by a history of presence rather than absence.

As the curator of the Yalingwa initiative’s third iteration at ACCA, it was important for me to consider and reflect on the exhibitions that had come before; on who and what forms of contemporary art practice had previously been featured, and the curatorial frameworks that had been explored. The inaugural Yalingwa exhibition A Lightness of Spirit is the Measure of Happiness (2018) was curated by Hannah Presley at ACCA, and the second, WILIAM BIIK(2021) was curated by Stacie Piper at TarraWarra Museum of Art. Presley’s exhibition brought together a range of contemporary art practices by First Nations artists in the Southeast and from across the country, an approach that emphasised the national significance and connection between creative and cultural practice beyond state borders. Following this first iteration, Piper’s exhibition opened-up an important curatorial dialogue between historical collections and contemporary art practice, while also carving out a crucial space for First Nations artists working in regional Victoria.

My curatorial approach was also informed by broader historical oversights and assumptions about Aboriginal art and artists in the context of the Southeast. I derived this knowledge from my doctorate, a curatorial practice-led research project that investigated the representation and presentation of Aboriginal art in exhibitions of Australian contemporary art, which at the time was being finalised and moving toward conferral. Further, as a palawa/pallawah woman and curator, born in lutruwita/trouwerner and now calling Wurundjeri Country in Naarm home, my own cultural positionality was considered, prompting the intention to curate an exhibition that expanded what is understood as the Southeast.

This third iteration of the Yalingwa exhibition series evolved in conversation with artists, about the ideas that yalingwa conveys—light, time and vision and the idea of shining a light on our times—in relation to the artists lived and felt experiences. While grounded in Victoria, the exhibition also engages contemporary art practices by First Nations artists working and connected to lutruwita/trouwerner (Tasmania), Tartanya (Adelaide), and Southern NSW. In response the participating artists—Maree Clarke, Dean Cross, Brad Darkson, Matthew Harris, James Howard, Hayley Millar Baker, Jazz Money, Mandy Quadrio, Cassie Sullivan, and this mob—developed reflective and site-responsive projects that explore and experiment with the intersection of material and immaterial realms of knowledge and knowing. What manifested is Between Waves, an exhibition that explores various visible and invisible energy fields and flows set in motion by these ideas.

[…]

Consigned to oblivion by Matthew Harris lines the far back double-height gallery wall. The series of ochre and charcoal paintings depict rows of archival boxes, the contents of which are unknown. Collectively, they are representative of a standard museum storage facility. Consigned to oblivion grounds the exhibition experience and confronts the dark and sinister history that connects all museums and collections that for years have been shrouded in secrecy. Harris’s paintings materialised in response to a personal experience of a macabre exhibition on ‘human evolution’ within a renowned international institution, which presented an Aboriginal ancestor’s skull as a centrepiece. Through his delectably layered painterly reflections, Harris highlights that despite an ongoing repatriation inquiry, tens of thousands of Aboriginal ancestral remains continue to be held hostage by private and public collections throughout the country and the world.

[…]

The ethereal soundscape tied to Jazz Money’s infinite iterative piece circulates inside and outside of Entr’acte’spurpose-built container, leading back into the light. A momentary poem materialises and dissolves in an instant across the three visual portals that Jazz Money’s infinite iterative piece opens-up. An ever-evolving horizon line emerges that presents a range of land, city, and sea scapes encountered on Money’s recent travels throughout the country and the world. Overlaid with a ‘lost line’² of text derived from previous writing projects that unfold randomly across three adjoining projection screens, infinite iterative piece generates a space for contemplative resistance. What emerges is a moment of pause amidst the onslaught of light, data, and noise that is forced upon human experience; to breathe and just be.

[...]

Through a range of contemporary artforms including video, installation, poetry, projection, photography, painting, sculpture, sound, printmaking, and a digital zine, Between Waves ruminates on the interrelationship between life, materiality, people and place, and the urgent need to find balance. Through an artist-led embrace of internal and external worlds, of presence and absence, weight and weightlessness, the known and unknown, the exhibition stages a call for relational accountability and ethical responsibility. The ten ambitious new commissions that feature prompt reflections on life shifts and cycles, and centre notions of remembering, rehabilitation, regeneration, and reclamation. The participating artists, traverse sensory and cyclical rhythms of light and sound, thinking and feeling, listening, and seeing, interwoven with ideas of material memory. Together, they have brought into being an exhibition that illuminates interconnected shapeshifting ecologies within, beyond and between what can be seen. By embracing the push and pull dynamics that flow beneath the surface, the exhibition locates individual experience not at the centre of the world, but as an inherent part of its fabric.