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Closed: Opens 11am Monday

A wooden bench faces a large screen in a dark room. The screen displays a person in a red outfit with glowing orange dots scattered across the image, creating an artistic and cinematic effect.

Turbulent Water

When

This exhibition has now ended.

Location

Buxton Contemporary Corner Southbank Boulevard & Dodds Street, Southbank. The University of Melbourne, Melbourne

Turbulent Water was the first solo Australian exhibition of internationally acclaimed artist Rebecca Belmore. A member of the Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe), Belmore was born in 1960 in Upsala, Canada, and currently lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Turbulent Water brought together several key installations from the artist’s multi-disciplinary practice that address social and political issues faced by Indigenous communities, as well as connections between bodies, land and language. Works in Turbulent Water used the medium of video innovatively, questioning official narratives and highlighting the labouring, struggling or missing body. They drew us in with images that were visually seductive and allegorically resonant.

Water was a central motif in this exhibition, carrying both the symbolic power associated with the cycle of life and death that frames human experience and its material power as a precious natural resource required to care for the land.

In this exhibition, the viewer was positioned as a witness to the universal truths of empathy, hope and transformation.

The artist’s body is a constant presence, enabling her to explore boundaries between public and private; power relations in contemporary society; and the effects of colonisation on Indigenous people, especially women. These themes also parallel in many ways the historical and contemporary experiences of Australian Indigenous peoples.

Canada and Australia have many things in common, including a Westminster-based parliamentary system of government and membership of the Commonwealth. They also share a history of colonisation and the forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples.

Turbulent Water was co-curated by Wanda Nanibush, Curator of Indigenous Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and Angela Goddard, Griffith University Art Museum Director.

Turbulent Water was presented with Observance, an exhibition featuring six First Nations female artists with strong culturally led practices.

A modern gallery space with white walls, grey concrete floors, and track lighting. On the left wall is the word Observance vertically. A glass door on the right reads Rebecca Belmore Turbulent Water.
A screen with a person in white t-shirt kneeling in a white room with tape over their mouth in a dark gallery
A dimly lit room features a large curtained screen showing a person standing, with green and purple lights casting shadows and reflections on the floor. The atmosphere is mysterious and immersive.

Access

Download wall labelsPDF (106 KB)

Supporters

Griffith University Art Museum

Griffith University Art Museum
  1. Banner Image:

    Installation view Turbulent Water at Buxton Contemporary. Photography by Rebecca Belmore