The TarraWarra Biennial 2021 exhibition features 25 artists from across the country making new works that explore ideas of slowness, deceleration, drift and the elasticity of time.
The exhibition, Slow Moving Waters, comes from the accepted translation of the local Woiwurrung word ‘tarrawarra’, after which the Museum, and its surrounding Yarra Valley area are named.
Guest curator Nina Miall said the exhibition takes shape around two related cues: the idea of slowness, and the winding course of the Birrarung (Yarra River), which flows south of the museum grounds.
“In tune with the unhurried arc of the river, Slow Moving Waters proposes a stay to the ever more rapid flows of people, commerce and information that characterise the dynamic of globalisation,” Ms Miall said.
Against today’s cult of speed with the relentless hum of its 24/7 communications, the artworks in the Biennial mark a different sort of time – one which connects with the vastness and intricacy of geological and cosmological cycles, seasonal rhythms, interconnected ecologies, and ancient knowledge systems.
The participating artists engage slowness as a conceptual framework, aesthetic strategy or radical political gesture, invoking it as a mode of resistance and disruption that runs counter to the neoliberal turn in global politics.
“Between the hyper-acceleration of our current age and the impossibility of stopping altogether is a temporal space of possibility and resistance: slowing down,” Ms Miall said.
“The TarraWarra Biennial 2021 reflects on the socio-political conditions that have made slowness an increasingly urgent imperative, carving out a space to explore its potential as both a passive and active course for claiming different forms of agency. The meandering logic of the Birrarung is a vital reference point for the exhibition; in its circling eddies we find ways in which we might all disturb the prevailing current.”
Unfolding in different ways over its duration, Slow Moving Waters rewards close and extended viewing. A number of works explore time’s extremes of scale, involve time- or labour-intensive processes, or are intended to develop and change throughout the exhibition. Others draw on strategies such as walking, idleness or sleep, marking intervals of time that cannot be colonised or commodified.
TarraWarra Museum of Art Director, Victoria Lynn, says, “Slow Moving Waters has been in development for two years, and emerges as prescient at a time when the world has been forced to slow down and reflect in new ways.
“This exhibition is notable for the strong representation of First Nations artists, and also distinctive in its site-specificity. There will be eleven ambitious new works that reflect the unique context and sense of place particular to TarraWarra.
“Slow Moving Waters deserves repeat visitation, with a number of works evolving over the course of the exhibition, harnessing duration as a key element and offering new perspectives and possibilities,” Ms Lynn said.
Considering the broader arc of history against the pull of the accelerated now, Slow Moving Waters advances relations to time that are grounded in both place and community, attentive to an idea of the present as a site of multiple durations, pasts and possible futures.
As part of the Slow Moving Waters exhibition, TarraWarra Museum of Art will be holding a series of free public workshops led by celebrated Bundjalung, MurraWarri and Kamilaroi artist Brian Marton.
The workshop will take place on Saturday 29 May, coinciding with Reconciliation Week.
Mr Martin’s drawing workshops will be held in the museum at 11am, 1pm and 3pm.
TarraWarra Museum of Art education coordinator Shannon Lyons, said the intimate drawing workshops are suitable for people of all skills.
“Participants will explore the immediacy and sensation of mark making in these hands-on, artist-led workshops. Brian will guide you through observational drawing activities and encourage you to think laterally, as you create your very own drawing to take home.
“We will be using willow charcoal and kneadable erasers to create drawings of a segment of an image which Brian will provide.
“At the end of the hour session, we will bring our drawings together to form a single image. Participants will then be able to take their works home with them.
“This is an exciting opportunity to learn from one of the principal artists featured in the TarraWarra Biennial 2021 exhibition, Slow Moving Waters,” Ms Lyons said.
Places for each workshop are strictly limited, bookings are required, all materials are supplied, and participation in the free workshops includes exhibition entry. The workshops will be conducted in a Covid-safe manner.
