This event is part of the UK/Australia Season.
The UK/Australia Season is a major new cultural exchange celebrating the diverse and innovative artist communities and cultural sectors of each nation. A collaboration between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, The Season is a vibrant programme spanning theatre, film, visual arts, dance, design, architecture, music, literature, higher education and a public engagement programme.
Designed to strengthen and build cultural connections, the Season theme is “Who Are We Now?” and will reflect on our history, explore our current relationship, and imagine our future together. The Season launched in both countries in September 2021.
Overview
Ikon Gallery brings together the work of three artists: Yhonnie Scarce, Salote Tawale and Osman Yousefzada.
Yhonnie Scarce returns to Ikon to continue her residency, begun in early 2020 and disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, before presenting a major new suspended glass installation. Born in Woomera, South Australia, Scarce belongs to the Kokatha and Nukunu peoples. Working with glass, she explores the political nature and aesthetic qualities of the material – in particular corresponding to the crystallisation of desert sand as a result of British nuclear tests on her homeland during 1956-63. Organised by Ikon Gallery and TarraWarra Museum of Art with consultant curator Hetti Perkins.
Made in Birmingham/Made in Sydney presents the work of Fijian-Australian artist Salote Tawale and British-Afghan artist Osman Yousefzada as part of the UK/Australia Season, a major new cultural exchange between Australia and the United Kingdom, celebrating each nation’s diverse and innovative artist communities and cultural sectors. Made in Birmingham/Made in Sydney is a ground-breaking collaboration between the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) in Sydney and Ikon, in which Tawale and Yousefzada explore questions of identity and belonging in contemporary Australia and Britain through two new video artworks.
This exhibition is part of Ikon’s Arrivals programme for Summer 2022, concerned with the international movement of people and ideas and organised to coincide with the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) is Australia’s leading contemporary art museum, dedicated to exhibiting, collecting and interpreting the work of today’s artists. Through connecting a broad and diverse public with the work of living artists, the MCA makes contemporary art and ideas widely accessible through a diverse program of Australian and international exhibitions, as well as public, access, and social impact programs. The MCA Collection contains over 4000 works by Australian artists with a strong commitment to works by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists.
Part of the Birmingham 2022 Festival
Artists
- Osman YousefzadaOsman Yousefzada is a London-based, Birmingham-born multidisciplinary artist, whose practice has expanded since launching his eponymous label in 2008 revolving around modes of storytelling, merging autobiography with fiction and ritual. His work is concerned with the representation and rupture of the migration experience and makes reference to socio-political issues of today. These themes are explored through moving image, installations, text works, sculpture, and garment making along with performance. More
- Salote Tawale From the perspective of her Indigenous Fijian and Anglo-Australian heritage, Tawale explores the identity of the individual drawing on her personal experiences of race, class, ethnicity and gender formed by growing up in suburban Australia. Having exhibited nationally and internationally, Tawale is also an Associate Lecturer of Screen Arts at the University of Sydney. More
