Canvas: Unframing Art & Ideas – Details, episodes & analysis

Chun Yin Rainbow Chan is an interdisciplinary artist, vocalist and producer working across music, image, sculpture and performance, and is one of six finalists in the 2021 - 2022 NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship (Artspace, CreateNSW, NAS). Rainbow joins Ayeesha to share the history and rituals she has been learning in her research into her matrilineal links to the Weitou people. In doing so, she continues the transmission of Weitou culture, strengthening her connection with her mother and her heritage, while also exploring concepts of place and time.

Audio excerpt from “魚文,鳥文” (Fish Song, Bird Song) performed by 文鳳琼婆婆, Man Fung Kun, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0aMw7t4kW8&t=9s

Additional resources:
https://www.chunyinrainbowchan.com/
https://www.artspace.org.au/program/52-actions/project-1/rainbow-chan/

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Curator, producer and performer Beau James joins host Ayeesha Ash to reflect upon their time in the arts industry so far, share some advice they’d give to their younger self and consider the way things have or haven’t changed during their time in the arts industry. We also hear about two works they have curated as Head of First Nations Programming at the Sydney Opera House; Rodney Bell Ngāti Maniapoto’s ‘Meremere’ and photographic exhibition ‘Always Here - 50 Years of Black Theatre’ inspired by the National Black Theatre in Redfern and the activism and stories of those who were instrumental to its establishment.

Works mentioned and additional resources:
https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/express-yourself/article/2016/06/10/basically-black-legacy-national-black-theatre 
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/awaye/culture-comes-first/13468050 
https://www.samag.org/sydney-arts-event/heal-country-celebrating-first-nations-leadership-in-the-cultural-sector/

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This episode is Taps, the last of three episodes in our Freshwater cluster. A tap is a link. It represents access, or lack thereof. It appears benign, until the water stops running. For many, our relationship to water is mediated through taps. Urban planning and colonial intervention has made the tap a tool of control. ‘Managing’ water and monetizing it. Taps bring water to us. Our lives and routines rely on taps being ‘on’. But what happens when they’re not?

Taps features an in-depth discussion with Joseph Griffiths who speaks to his work Fountains for Moonee Ponds Creek (2017-18), in which he reimagined the creek’s heavily engineered form as a sculptural artefact. 

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Pools have many states. We flock to them for play and restoration when they’re full. When they’re empty or stagnant, they’re often neglected. We use pools to give birth, to cleanse ourselves and to relax. We dam to support agriculture and to redirect water to cities. When brimming and clean pools are sites of relief. The opposite when poisoned or depleted. Access to pools has instigated social movements, and changed the course of history. They are sites where we gather. ‘Pools’ is the grounding theme of this episode.

CANVAS speaks to artist Kieran Bryant, and collaborators Oonagh Slater & Megan Payne on their relationship to water and how they have represented it in their work. 

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Like our veins, rivers course through land nourishing life. Essential and yet, depleted, these passageways carry the histories of care and sovereignty; displacement and degradation; resistance and survival. Despite interruptions; damming and pollution; rivers are underestimated; stronger and more determined than shallow colonial engineering. We are born of the water rivers carry, we are sustained by it and it cleanses us. They are sites of devotion and exploitation, of new life and loss, of abundance and scarcity. ‘Rivers’ is the grounding theme of this episode. 

CANVAS speaks to visual artist Clare Britton and Gadigal Elder, artist and activist, Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor, Gamilaroi poet, folklorist and educator Luke Patterson and inter-disciplinary artist Kalanjay Dhir. These artists discuss recent works and their broader practices which have dealt physically and thematically with Rivers.

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Diving into discussions and artworks about rising tides, ecologies, power and climate justice in Tides. Tides is the third and final episode in a three part series Salt Water, exploring salty waters in all its forms.

In Tides we chat with Angela Tiatia as she unpack her video and performance work Holding On. We hear Anja Kanngieser’s interactive audio walk, Submersion, as it reflected on sea levels rising, islands submerging and oceans flowing. And we go to a conversation between Latai Taumoepeau and CANVAS Executive Producer Anna May Kirk as they chat about Latai’s recent performance work The Last Resort in the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, Nirin.

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Lapping at ideas of connection, time and ancestry, Waves is the second episode in a three part series Salt Water, exploring salty waters in all its forms.

In Waves we chat with Paula do Prado and Tomas Marinangeli, two visual artists and mother and son who have been working together to explore the ocean as a spiritual place and a space of crossing over. Though working together they’ve found themselves reflecting on the spiritual connection their ancestors had with the sea and how these intergenerational experiences and memories play out today. Tomas also sings us a song! We hear from artist and musician Alexandra Spence as she reimagines the relationships between the listener, the object and the surrounding environment with her audio piece The Sea, The Sea.

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Wading through ideas of home, distance, ancestry and interconnectedness, Shore is the first episode in a three part series Salt Water, exploring salty waters in all its forms.

In Shore we chat with Emily McDaniels, a storyteller, curator and educator from the Kalari Clan of the Wiradjuri Nation, about connecting to Country and navigating 60,000 years of storytelling along Warrane, the Sydney Harbour shoreline. Hoda Afshar speakers to us from London about her video work Remain, filmed in 2018 on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea in collaboration with Kurdish-Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani. And we talk about coastlines awash with histories with Australian-Balinese artist and researcher Leyla Stevens as we listen to audio excerpts from her video work 'Their Sea Is Always Hungry'.

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Salt is pervasive. It seasons our food, enhances our senses, it preserves and it tenderises, it coats our skin when we sweat and melts into our tongue as we eat. Salt disrupts agriculture, has spurred revolutions and treats aches and pains. Mined from ancient lakes, evaporated from oceans or bought at the corner store, salt is the grounding theme of this episode and a pivotal material for the artists we hear from.

Salt features a discussion between CANVAS Host Ayeesha Ash and artist Keg De Souza about her performative and salty dinner project The Only Rock We Eat. We hear from artist, educator and writer Emily Morandini and the audio from her sculptural work Crystal Speakers. Yasmin Smith joins us for a discussion about her work participatory ceramic work Drowned River Valley, delving into the history of salt in New South Wales, its production, utilisation and entwinement with colonial processes. Finally we hear a discussion between members of Karrabing Film Collective at Mabaluk in the Norther Terroritory as they exchange words about connection to Country.

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This episode is Sand, and is the second of three episodes, Stone, Sand and Salt which are bound together by the overarching theme of Ground. Sand is transformative. It is particles ground down by the passage of time, sifted over beaches and deserts and awash under rivers, lakes and oceans. These particles can be reformed, brought back together through heat and industrial processes to form glass, we peer through it as windows, cut ourselves on it as shards and often forget it’s sandy origins. Sand is the grounding theme of this episode.

Sand features a discussion between CANVAS Researcher, poet, filmmaker and educator of Wiradjuri heritage Jazz Money and Joel Spring, a Wiradjuri man raised between Redfern and Alice Springs who works across research, activism, architecture, installation and speculative projects. We hear from artist and writer Lynette Smith and the audio from her video work sand/fog. CANVAS Host Ayeesha Ash is joined by artist Koji Ryui for a chat about his installation TOT and the alchemy of the everyday. Finally we are transported as artist and writer Bianca Hester reads an excerpt from her text Sandstone.

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