( ) a parenthesis of eight, now seven, spaces: hold everything dear more than ever

HOLD EVERYTHING DEAR MORE THAN EVER

16 June – 4 July, 2021 10am – 4pm, Wednesday to Sunday Incinerator Art Space

Opening drinks 1-4pm Saturday 19 June Finissage talk Lorraine Kypiotis 2.30pm Sunday 4 July A group exhibition of artworks reflecting on personal moments of living in these times.

In their exhibition in 2019 the group used as a starting point John Berger’s book of essays Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance, to examine values that the artists each consider important.

This new exhibition reflects on this time of change. Across a range of mediums, the artists address feelings from memories, grief, joy, play, connection, nurture, to the deprivation of touch.

ARTISTS: Michelle Belgiorno, Deborah Burdett, Mandy Burgess, Michelle Connolly, Renuka Fernando, Tilly Lees, Ro Murray, Jo Meisner Image: Connected/Disconnected, 2018, Jo Meisner (1954- 2019), digital print on duraclear.

Willoughby City Council is gratefully acknowledged for the provision of Incinerator Art Space.

( ) a parenthesis of eight, now seven, spaces HOLD EVERYTHING DEAR MORE THAN EVER Ro Murray, Michelle Belgiorno, Mandy Burgess, Deborah Burdett, Renuka Fernando, Jo Meisner, Michelle Connolly, Tilly Lees Two years ago, back when the world was different, eight artists grouped together to exhibit under a call to hold everything dear. A call that could be anything from an urgent cry out loud - strident and politic - to quieter, mutterings to self. Only it had to be a call for human qualities of survival and resistance against inequity and despair. Since that time however, the eight have sadly and unexpectedly lost one of their group, and now come together once more without her, to exhibit artworks made against that intervening, overwhelming, desperate event of a global pandemic. After grief and isolation, the call is all the more poignant, to hold everything dear, as they say, more than ever.

‘The world today is hard to look at, let alone think of.’

All of us can recognize ourselves in that cri de coeur – yet let’s think. i This tense, simple observation is one made familiar by the cascading crises of the past year. So let’s think. It’s been a year that has offered us more pause than usual for introspection; more time to look at and to dwell upon the world. This exhibition continues the original premise, arising from John Berger’s book of essays of the same name, to formulate visual responses to a world become hard to look at, let alone think of. Like the Berger essays, these artists are drawn to express the qualities of personal, intense moments of daily living and thinking, often using them as a source of broader social commentary. Through their diverse work, they address universal themes; of grief, memory, connections, joy, shelter, failure and play.

The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of artist Jo Meisner, who passed away unexpectedly in 2019 and whose works are included in this exhibition. Meisner worked in series, probing the individually felt effects of the mass movement of people. Whether migrating or fleeing, diasporas represent displacement and dislocation, provoking discourse on the treatment of others and the function of borders and homelands. These are pervasive events within populations, with effects that are very personally felt. Her works, crafted from an amalgamation of her own photographs, sumptuous textiles, and complex colonial narratives, take the form of small human figures or book-like tablets.

As beguiling and beautiful objects, they fuse the tactile with the conceptual – a human plight you can hold in your hand.

So, because the world is hard to look at just now, an artist observes as a way of thinking through it. She may draw, print or stitch. She collects, builds, arranges, makes. There are fragments of remembered songs. There are found objects with unexpected associations.

She engages with people, bringing them in to community, altering the gallery. Stories are told, confessions are made and imaginings are rendered into form. In the face of unprecedented world events, and one unique loss, this exhibition attempts to hold to a world of meaning. Hold everything dear, now more than ever. for Jo xx Lisa Pang May 2021 i

Berger, John, Hold Everything Dear - Dispatches on Survival and Resistance, 2007: Vintage Books (2008), New York, USA, 55-6.