In its final week of exhibition, the collaborative works of leading contemporary Australian artists Su san Cohn and Eugenia Raskopoulos are ones not to miss.
The exhibition (SC)OOT(ER)ING around, curated by TarraWarra Museum of Art director Victoria Lynn, explores how the human body expresses social and cultural experiences.
Invited by Lynn to exhibition together, despite coming from different ends of the art spectrum in jewellery and installation, the cross-section of ideas, thinking and subject matter traversed artistic form.
“I thought of putting them together because they’re both senior women artists working in Australia today. Eugenia is in her mid 60s, and Su san Cohn is in her early 70s. It’s important we respect our senior practitioners,” Lynn said.
“The other thing they have in common is that they’re very interested in women’s rights and freedom of the body and freedom of women, really, and I felt that at this time, right across the world, that’s a message that I think is relevant to hear, particularly through the eyes of artists.”
The human body wears lived experience both on its skin and within. It expresses the cultural, sexual, racial and diverse geographic histories of individuals.
“For me, I have long watched their work from afar and been really impressed with how inventive they’ve both been to express the way that the human body and the female body wears its experience,” Lynn said.
“With Su san Cohn, we literally wear her works because they’re jewellery and then for some of Eugenia’s works, she’s looking at the inside of the body, like the heart or the skeleton, or she’s looking at what happens from within and there’s a psychological dimension to that as well.”
Two significant works in the exhibition explore exactly this concept of both the internal and external use of the body.
For the exhibition, Cohn has unveiled four new works including ‘I wish I was more like HER…’.
This piece is a tribute to five women who she admires and who have contributed to both women’s rights and human rights, namely American diplomat and political scientist Madeleine Albright being just one of those influential women.
“My work looks at women’s voices and listening. By drawing attention to strong women who have contributed to women’s rights and human rights in the work I wish I was more like HER …, I want to encourage other women to support each other,” Cohn said.
A major installation from Raskopoulos called ‘and the beat goes on’ is a sound and neon installation featuring the recorded heartbeats of 96 female artists over the age of 47, from all over Australia and of diverse backgrounds.
“The number is significant because my grandmother’s heartbeat stopped when she was 96 and I was 47,” Raskopoulos said.
“I envisage the heartbeats will be like a minimalist symphony – each heartbeat is unique, intimate and symbolic, and these portraits reflect on personal identity that includes time and body consciousness.”
Raskopoulos and Cohn also collaborated on works, including You’re Too Sharp and Word of Mouth, both exploring language, phrases and words used to describe women and how women embrace their unique relationship with language to subvert power structures and challenge social norms.
Lynn said while the intention of (SC)OOT(ER)ING around was about exploring “the role of women in society today” and expelling ageism, it has been done in an extraordinarily lovely way.
“What’s been surprising about the exhibition is that it’s quite playful. There’s a lot of wordplay in it, and there’s lots of reflections and shadows and colour,” she said.
“So it’s an exhibition with a serious message, but it’s also an exhibition that is aesthetically, just very, very beautiful.”
Su san Cohn and Eugenia Raskopoulos’ works can be seen until Sunday 10 November.
TarraWarra Museum of Art’s next exhibition will be unveiled on 30 November, called Intimate Imaginaries featuring 13 artists with intellectual disabilities from Art Project Australia (APA).
“This is the first time those artists have had a big museum show,” Lynn said.
“So this is a very quirky, curious, colourful, unexpected, bright exhibition using fabric, drawing, painting and video. There’s a lot of very humorous work in it and all of the artists have just really responded to their everyday environments.”
