Don’t Look Away!
A prolific hyperproduction and sense of take-over lifted the Brio’s head out of the fray.
Lately, I’ve been reflecting on my writings about contemporary artworks that were perhaps overly steeped in the heaviness of historical and ongoing trauma without fully grappling with other deregulating energies — scrappiness, coolness, abundance, tall tales, and piss-takes. These entanglements not only provide moments of levity within traumatic storying, as well as sometimes profound relief and jibing political critique. They also can refuse demands for certain cultural and personal stories while offering an unflinching picturing of the whole tangled mess of settler-colonial Australia.
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Don’t Look Away! by Jessyca Hutchens is featured in full in Issue 2 of Memo magazine.
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Artistic resistance, from Ai Weiwei to Archie Moore’s kith and kin, punctures the facades of power as Australia’s art institutions wobble between defending creative freedom and capitulating to a rising culture of control.
I have begun to desire noise. Noise that prompts. Maybe wounds. I want to remember something that feels tangible, and if I have no memory of how this feels I want to create one.