Warwick Thornton – News

RICKY MAYNARD and WARWICK THORNTON in MAKING CHANGE: CELEBRATING 40 YEARS of AUSTRALIA-CHINA DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS

23 August – 5 October 2013
Galleries UNSW, COFA, NSW

Gough Whitlam was the first Australian Prime Minister to visit China in 1973, cementing the relationship between the two countries initiated during his first visit in 1971. Forty years on, Making Change: Celebrating 40 Years of Australia-China Diplomatic Relations tells the history of Whitlam’s ground-breaking visits, which established a trade agreement and new direction in Australian foreign policy that recognised the importance of Asia.

Making Change draws on the historical photographic archives of Whitlam’s visits as well as contemporary Chinese and Indigenous Australian photo-based art, including Ricky Maynard and Warwick Thornton. As such, this exhibition brings to the fore another important feature of Whitlam’s leadership – outstanding advocacy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs.

Making Change is the inaugural exhibition for the new Galleries UNSW at COFA presented in partnership with the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney and the National Museum of China, Beijing (2012-13).

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WARWICK THORNTON in ‘MY COUNTRY, I STILL CALL AUSTRALIA HOME: CONTEMPORARY ART FROM BLACK AUSTRALIA’

1 June – 7 October 2013
Gallery of Modern Art, QLD

Acclaimed indigenous artist and filmmaker Warwick Thornton will be included in ‘My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia’, set to become GOMA’s largest exhibition of contemporary art by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists to date. The exhibition explores three central themes — presenting Indigenous views of history, responding to contemporary politics and experiences, and illustrating connections to place.

From paintings and sculptures about ancestral epicentres to photographs and moving-image works that interrogate and challenge the established history of Australia, to installations responding to political and social situations affecting all Australians, the thread that binds these artists is their collective desire to share their experiences and tell their stories.

Warwick will also be included in ‘My Life As I Live It: First People’s and Black Cinema’, presented in conjunction with ‘My Country, I Still Call Australia Home’. This survey of first peoples and black cinema from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, United States and United Kingdom, aims to present a history of Indigenous Australian cinema shown alongside works that resonate internationally addressing themes of identity, culture and rights.

WARWICK THORNTON MOTHER COURAGE

5 February to 23 June 2013
Australian Centre for the Moving Image, VIC

Mother Courage is an immersive film and sculptural installation that offers a striking and poetic perspective of Indigenous life in Australia. Based upon Bertolt Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children, it explores cultural displacement and the tensions between contemporary urban and traditional Indigenous lifestyles. It debuted at the prestigious art festival dOCUMENTA(13) in June 2012 and was co-commissioned by ACMI and dOCUMENTA(13) as part of the ACMI Commissions Series.

Acclaimed filmmaker and artist Warwick Thornton is a previous winner of the Cannes Film Festival's Camera d'Or for his debut feature Samson and Delilah (2009). He has exhibited Stranded (2011) at the Samstag Museum of Art during the Adelaide Film Festival and at Stills Gallery in 2011.

RICKY MAYNARD and WARWICK THORNTON in MAKING CHANGE

8 November - 21 December, 2012
National Art Museum of China, Beijing

Featuring Warwick Thornton’s 3D video artwork Stranded and 3 of Ricky Maynard’s striking portraits of Wik Elders, Making Change brings together works by key contemporary artists whose work broadens our perspectives of modern day Australia.

To acknowledge the 40th anniversary of Australia's diplomatic relations with China the exhibition will first be shown at the National Museum of China, Beijing, before returning in late 2013 to the Australian Centre for Photography and the new UNSW galleries in Sydney.

WARWICK THORNTON IN DOCUMENTA (13)

9 June - 16 September 2012
Kassel, Germany

Since its establishment in 1955, dOCUMENTA has been regarded as the most important international exhibition of contemporary art. In June 2012 dOCUMENTA (13) will open in Kassel, Germany with more than 160 artists and partcipants showcasing new artworks in multiple venues across the city, demonstrating how contemporary art can contribute to our understanding of the world.

This year’s artistic director, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, who directed the 16th Biennale of Sydney in 2008, has invited and selected a record number of Australian artists to exhibit and participate, including Warwick Thornton. dOCUMENTA (13) includes an extensive public program made up of congresses, seminars, lectures, activated projects, a writers' residency, and a film program that will run for the entire duration of the exhibition.

WARWICK THORNTON FEATURED ON COVER OF ARTLINK MAGAZINE AND FORTHCOMING EXHIBITION AT STILLS

Stills Gallery is proud to premiere the 3D screening of Warwick Thornton’s Stranded in Sydney plus a series of stills inspired by the video. Stranded, Thornton’s first foray into creating a video artwork for a gallery space, was commissioned by the 2011 Bigpond Adelaide Film Festival through its investment fund. It premiered at the festival in Stop(the)Gap, a major international Indigenous moving image project curated by Brenda L Croft for the Samstag Museum of Art.