IN PERSON / FREE / EXHIBITION

Isaac Julien

Date 25.02.2022 - 08.05.2022
Location John Curtin Gallery, Building 200A, Curtin University, Kent Street, Bentley WA 6102
Date 04.03.2022 - 27.03.2022
Location Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia Hawke Building, City West campus, 55 North Terrace, Adelaide

Overview

In 2022, that essential space, the Samstag Museum of Art presents the work of the major British artist Isaac Julien, in an exciting collaboration between two galleries and two of Australia’s major arts festivals, for the 2022 Adelaide and Perth Festivals with Curtin University’s John Curtin Gallery.

Julien’s spectacular installations involve production on a big budget movie scale: long multi-location shoots, stellar casts, specially mounted performance sequences, sophisticated editing, sound design and scoring. Thrillingly presented across multiple screens, these kaleidoscopic contemporary pageants critically reflect on themes of identity, history and social representation.

One exhibition across two cities, Samstag and Curtin University’s John Curtin Gallery are linked by Julien’s much-lauded Ten Thousand Waves, a work that interweaves ancient Chinese myth with contemporary Fujian life as it meditates on the infamous 2004 drowning of 20 immigrant workers in northwest England.