Balik Bayan

MARIKIT SANTIAGO The Father, the Son and the Panganay The Weaning Madonna Josefina Thank God It’s Friday Fast Manananggal/Steel Butterfly The Son of a Whore Itay Cross I shall return Inay Rat Pac Shrine Panganay (Firstborn) He Lechon Buhay The Albulary Owner Benz 2014-2017, mixed media Marikit Santiago’s paintings and ‘soft’ sculptures examine the military legacy, literature, mythology, superstition, religion, politics, socio-economic status and popular culture that remain present within the Filipino communities in the Philippines and the diaspora. Santiago’s practice

Caroline Garcia

interrogates her personal conflict between her Filipino ethnicity and Australian nationality. Incorporating found material, garish lights, banana leaves, brown wrapping tape and the painterly marks of her young daughter into her installations of paintings and sculptures, Santiago mixes up layers and slices of Manila and Sydney.

Leeroy New Melanie & Marnie Palomares with Timothy Constable Ala Paredes Bhenji Ra & Justin Shoulder Melissa Ramos Alwin Reamillo

JUSTIN SHOULDER & BHENJI RA

Marikit Santiago

X-Nilalang, Episodes 1-4, 2014-17, single channel videos with sound, 33 min 10 sec The collaborative artist team of Bhenji Ra and Justin Shoulder, collectively referred to as Club Ate, present the final part of their X-Nilalang series which draws on their shared Filipino heritage to re-imagine mythologies as celebratory legends. Collaborating with other artists and community collectives, the artists use their bodies to forge connections between queer, migrant, spiritual and intercultural experiences.

The Bayanihan Philippines Art Project is a partnership between six institutions, 38 artists and the Filipino-Australian community - exploring the art, culture and heritage of the Philippines. Blacktown Arts would like to acknowledge the following organisations for their support of Balik Bayan: Artspace, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Newington Armory, Parramatta Artists Studios, Peacock Gallery and Auburn Arts Studio, and Urban Theatre Projects.

Blacktown Arts Centre 78 Flushcombe Rd Blacktown Open Tuesday – Saturday I 10 am – 5 pm Free admission

#BalikBayan #Bayanihan #ThisIsHowWeMakeArt @BlacktownArts www.blacktownarts.com.au

Contemporary Filipino-Australian Art 7 SEPTEMBER – 4 NOVEMBER 2017

Balik Bayan celebrates and uncovers contemporary Philippine arts and culture. Literally translated from the Tagalog language, balik means return and bayan means town or country.

The two words refer to a return to country and allow the artists to explore themes of migration, place and cultural expression.

Joined together the words are also associated with the balikbayan box, care packages sent by the Philippine diaspora to their home cities or towns, connecting migrant communities to their loved ones back home.

CAROLINE GARCIA Golden Fabulouz, 2016, skin whitening soap, gold plated chain, wooden sculptures (origin unknown), foam netting, palm fan, Spam can, diamontes, mosaic tiles Mestiza The Healthy Skin, 2016, skin whitening soap, coconut shells, cleaver, Kudkuran (coconut grater), Coca Cola bottles, birds of paradise, ceramic elephant, orange net fruit bag, wooden sculpture (origin unknown), mosaic tiles Original Likas Papayas, 2016, skin whitening soap, gold plated ball and chain, bamboo folding fruit basket with net, cypraea tigris / tiger cowrie shells (Philippines, Hawaii), plastic colander, mosaic tiles Caroline Garcia explores the hybrid body and cultural fluidity. Her practice is shaped by alterity, echoing notions of cultural ambiguity and displacement by adopting the role of shape shifter – sliding into the gaps between cultures, experiences of otherness and timeless clichés of exotic femininity. Her new installation for Balik Bayan is built around the concept of a ‘Palengke’, a type of public marketplace that is common throughout the Philippines. A series of sculptural tableaux interrogate the hierarchies of taste, class and race.

LEEROY NEW Papista si Mayor, 2017, mixed media Leeroy New has transformed the Blacktown Arts Centre car park with a large-scale sculptural installation using diverse materials that was made in collaboration with local community volunteers. Papista si Mayor references

the tradition of fiesta in the Philippines and subverts religious and authoritarian symbolism. This recycling project utilises a strong partnership between Blacktown Arts Centre and other sections of Blacktown City Council, creating an outdoor installation that uses plastic and other waste from the area.

MELANIE AND MARNIE PALOMARES WITH TIMOTHY CONSTABLE HOME, HD video, 13 min 11 sec Marnie and Melanie Palomares’ new dance film for Balik Bayan delves into folklore and how it manifests as choreographic language. Sisters as well as dance collaborators, Melanie and Marnie Palomares are informed by an ancestry that harks back to the Spanish colonial era – full blooded Spaniards who identify as Filipino.

These eye-catching contemporary dancers, trained at Western Sydney University, integrate live action dance and film.

ALA PAREDES Power Pose (Vessel) Power Pose 2 (Portal) Power Pose (Source) Metabiosis 2017, articulated paper puppet, watercolour on cotton paper Ala Paredes’ works on paper reflect her pregnancy, symbolising her body as home. Working mainly in watercolour, Paredes examines her relationship with cultural tradition and inherited memory through portraiture. Her work explores themes of transplantation, utilising familiar elements from

religious iconography and her traditional Filipino up-bringing.

MELISSA RAMOS Distant Memories, 2017, 3 channel video transferred from Super8 film, 6 min 41 sec Born in the Philippines and raised in Blacktown, Melissa Ramos works with time-based media, in particular investigating the intrinsic nature of time and movement. Ramos explores stories that confound reality with fiction to convey a poetic experience.

Ramos’ film work uses abstract narrative to explore heritage and diaspora. In a new work for Balik Bayan, the artist gave silent Super8 film to her parents and asked them to shoot familiar scenes and locations on a recent trip home to the Philippines.

ALWIN REAMILLO Bayanihan Hopping Spirit House, 2015-17, mixed media Bayanihan Hopping Spirit House, originally commissioned by Urban Theatre Projects as part of Bankstown: Live for Sydney Festival 2015, has an inherent performative and participatory core. Bayanihan is the Filipino tradition of physically moving a bamboo house from one location to another, often as a response to natural calamities. The term has also grown to symbolise a sense of collectivism – often used as a romantic and arguably problematic representation of the Filipino community spirit. In the current iteration, the House was moved from Peacock Gallery Auburn to Blacktown Arts Centre, traversing the new border between the Cumberland and Blacktown Local Government Areas.