CaLD and First Nations artists challenge the traditional Anglo-Saxon art sphere.
The 3rd Bankstown Biennale emerges as a powerful artistic and cultural statement, led by culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) and First Nations artists. With curatorial direction from Coby Edgar, Jason Wing, and Rachael Kiang, the exhibition foregrounds themes of common ground, multiculturalism and a challenge to the traditional Anglo-Saxon art sphere. This iteration of the Biennale is an intricate exploration of interconnectedness, engaging with colonial histories, ritualistic practices and spatial awareness, while celebrating the resilience of displaced communities.
At the heart of the curatorial vision lies an emphasis on harmony informed by First Nations’ worldviews of interconnectedness. Rather than presenting a singular, universalist perspective, the exhibition delicately balances a recognition of shared colonial struggles and their lasting remnants with an intention to resist blanket generalisations.
This philosophy is not only evident in the thematic choices, but also in the way space is engaged with deep intentionality, embedding the Bankstown Arts Centre’s location on Darug land into the exhibition’s conceptual framework.
Materiality plays a crucial role in this year’s Biennale, with a pronounced emphasis on locally sourced elements, positioning the very components of the works as integral to their meaning. This evocation of ritual and interconnectedness finds its most striking expressions in pieces like Jazz Money’s Riverbanks, a town poem constructed from soil sourced directly from the Bankstown Arts Centre.
Similarly, Karla Dickens’ Toad Destruction confronts the violent frontiers of colonial occupation through the visceral inclusion of cane toads that have been skinned and treated by the artist themselves.
The spatial and ideational context of the exhibition often shapes the audience’s interpretation of the pieces – this heightened thematic resonance strengthening the works’ engagement with place and history. However, it also risks overpowering individual pieces, causing their intrinsic meaning and craft to be subsumed within the broader conceptual framework. This tension between individual artistic integrity and overarching thematic cohesion adds complexity to the exhibition’s reception.
Multimedia works engage with temporal and geographic fluidity, referencing histories of displacement and dispossession, while simultaneously reclaiming lost culture and ritual. Many pieces challenge colonial notions of ownership, reasserting artistic agency over space and memory.
Morgan Hogg’s Don’t Cry My Moko creates a healing space, rooted in Pasifika diasporic materiality, offering visitors a contemplative environment for reflecting on ancestral connections. Meanwhile, Ruth Ju-shih Li’s Being celebrates the fragility and cyclical nature of existence through delicate yet enduring forms of glass and clay.
The Biennale also investigates how social relations shape our connection to space. Gillian Kayrooz’s The Palm juxtaposes the micro and macro aspects of community interaction, presenting contrasting short films that capture the intimate minutiae of food preparation alongside bird’s-eye perspectives of a round table gradually filling with diverse national dishes. In this piece, community regulars become collaborators, their presence and actions transforming the work into a living, evolving experience.
A distinct interplay of vibrancy and nuance weaves the exhibition into a temporary yet tangible community, where complex ideas take form through tactile, auditory and visual media. Underpinning these diverse mediums is a shared consciousness of colonial legacies and their enduring impact on contemporary cultural expressions. The 3rd Bankstown Biennale ultimately crafts a profound conversation, oscillating between mourning and celebration, interconnectedness and division.
Adding an extra layer of symbolic resonance, the motif of the Ouroboros – representing cycles of destruction and renewal – is threaded through the Biennale, coinciding with the Lunar New Year and the Year of the Snake. This cyclicality mirrors the exhibition’s broader themes of historical reckoning, cultural resilience and the perpetual act of artistic regeneration.
In its depth and dynamism, the 3rd Bankstown Biennale stands as an evocative testament to the power of art as both a site of resistance and a space of communal dialogue.
First published by ArtsHub on January 30, 2025. This article has been commissioned in partnership with Artshub for Diversity Arts Australia’s StoryCasters project, supported by Multicultural NSW, Creative Australia and Create NSW.
