Obsolete? 2017
The Cross Art Projects, Sydney, Aug 12 to Sept 9 2017
Western Plains Cultural Centre, Dubbo March 24 to June 17 2018
H R Gallop Gallery, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga Sept 10 to Oct 5 2018
For the exhibition, Obsolete? Artist, Object, Small Museum, Fiona MacDonald puts the proposition that the museum itself is an engineered machine for achieving certain objectives. She works with photomontage to transform registration photographs in the collection of yesterday’s bearers of imagined capital accumulation, here propelled into heroic action. (Medical photographer Mike Oakey took the photos.) We hear the wheels creaking as her tin apparatus of Otherness sets out on the rocky road from the inequality of a company town to equality. Other images dust off the rust and transform dross to gold, at least metaphorically, with an Olympian pillar of typewriters or a Herculean set of timepieces ticking together like worker bees in the hive.
Fiona MacDonald’s Obsolete? collages mirror the wildlands of community collections and veer from the anti-canonical and comic to the profound, etched with individual hopes, follies and tragedies: a strategy that sheds light on how in-groups assign value and claim History.
Download Catalogue as pdf: Obsolete? Artist, Object, Small Museum: Nicole Barakat, Aleshia Lonsdale & Fiona MacDonald
Download Conversations Invite as pdf: Obsolete? Artist, Object, Small Museum: Nicole Barakat, Aleshia Lonsdale & Fiona MacDonald
Obsolete? Artist, Object, Small Museum: https://www.crossart.com.au/exhibition-archive/111-2017-exhibitions-projects/324-obsolete-nicole-barakat-aleshia-lonsdale-fiona-macdonald
Obsolete? Artist, Object, Small Museum — Exhibition Tour, The Relational Museum & its Objects to H.R. Gallop Gallery, Wagga Wagga /Western Plains Cultural Centre: https://www.crossart.com.au/exhibition-archive/113-2018-exhibitions-projects/341-obsolete-artist-object-small-museum
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Obsolete no 1, 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey. |
Obsolete no 2, 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey. |
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Obsolete no 3, 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey. |
Obsolete no 4, 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey. |
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Obsolete no 5, 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey. |
Obsolete no 6, 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey. |
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Obsolete no 7, 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey. |
Obsolete no 8, 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey. |
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Obsolete no 9, 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey. |
Obsolete no 10, 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey. |
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Obsolete no 11, 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey. |
Obsolete no 12, 2018. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey. |
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Obsolete no 13, 2018. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey. |
Obsolete no 14, 2018. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey. |
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Nicole Barakat, Fiona MacDonald, Aleshia Lonsdale Photo. James T Farley |
Lyndall Ryan, Map of frontier massacres in Eastern Australia 1788-1872, ongoing, View publically available map online. Installed on three interactive screens at HR Gallop Gallery Photo. James T Farley |
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Nicole Barakat, Fiona MacDonald, Aleshia Lonsdale Photo. James T Farley |
Aleshia Lonsdale, Inconvenient Truths, 2017 Installation, stones, red carpet. HR Gallop Gallery Photo. James T Farley |
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Aleshia Lonsdale, Stone without Stories, 2017 stone tool assemblage. Cross Art Projects Photo. Silversalt |
Aleshia Lonsdale, Nicole Barakat, Mediation/De-colonisation, 2015 Hand stitched traced linen doilies, carbon and thread drawings on linen, ink on cotton rag Work made in-situ in Kandos Museum for Cementa15. HR Gallop Gallery Photo. James T Farley |
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Nicole Barakat, Mediation (Souvenir/Sovereign), 2012 – ongoing. Live performance: de-threading found Australian souvenir tea towels collected by the artist from regional op-shops |
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Nicole Barakat, Meditation (home), 2017 (Tasmania) Linen thread on found Australian souvenir linen tea towel and We transcend time and place, 2017 Hand cut found paper. Shapes cut from the shadows of objects from Lebanon, Syria & Palestine held in collections at the Louvre and British Museums and the Nicholson Museum at Sydney University |
Nicole Barakat, detail We transcend time and place, 2017 Hand cut found paper. Shapes cut from the shadows of objects from Lebanon, Syria & Palestine held in collections at the Louvre and British Museums and the Nicholson Museum at Sydney University |
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Fiona MacDonald, Nicole Barakat and Aleshia Lonsdale Obsolete? Installation view |
Fiona MacDonald, Obsolete? Installation view |
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Fiona MacDonald, Obsolete? No’s 1 to 14, 2017-18 Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Artist Proof. Edition of 3 Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey |