The Image is not Nothing (Concrete Archives)

Past Exhibition
26 February - 24 April 2021
Black and white photographic image of collaged ruins with dramatic clouds with a white church looking over the ruins.
Black and white photographic image of collaged ruins with dramatic clouds with a white church looking over the ruins.

The Image is not Nothing (Concrete Archives) is a group exhibition that explores the ways in which acts of nuclear trauma, Indigenous genocide and cultural erasure have been memorialised by artists and others.

When

26 February to 24 April 2021

Access

It comes as the result of research by curators Lisa Radford and Yhonnie Scarce whose fieldwork has encompassed sites of significance including Auschwitz, Chernobyl, Fukushima, Hiroshima, Maralinga, New York, Wounded Knee and former Yugoslavia.

In the wake of the historic devastations that have occurred at these sites, architecture (brutalist buildings, monuments and memorials) and imagery (photographs, diarised accounts) remain an archive of human history and loss scattered across the globe. They are the physicality of immeasurable atrocities and attempts at representing the intangible. When acts of genocide that have occurred in Australia since colonisation are routinely overlooked or disregarded, The Image is not Nothing (Concrete Archives) ultimately looks here and elsewhere in order to grapple with traumas that Australia as a nation has not processed.

The exhibition presents new and existing work in a range of material forms by over 20 emerging and established artists from the lands that make up Australia and abroad. It will be accompanied by the launch of a special edition archive (complementing the pre-existing online archive published on Art + Australia) and exhibition catalogue (featuring essays by Yankunytjatjara Anangu woman Karina Lester and Azza Zein), designed and published by Person Books and available to purchase.

A series of public program events will accompany the show—we will release more information in due course.

The Image is not Nothing (Concrete Archives) premieres at ACE Open as part of the 2021 Adelaide Festival program before touring to Margaret Lawrence Gallery, The University of Melbourne.

This project has been made possible by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, The Centre of Visual Art (CoVA) at the University of Melbourne and the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria – Creators Fund.

Feature Image: Hayley Millar-Baker, Untitled (The best means, of caring for, and dealing with them in the future) (2018), inkjet on cotton, 120 x 150cm. Courtesy the artist and Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne.

  • Large sculpture consisting of a pile of stone heads and stone figures.
  • Two photographs framed side by side the right is a larger image with a stone monument and yellow sign in red dessert with blue skies. The smaller, framed image to the left is a close up of the stone monument.
  • Image of gallery with three tv screens in a circular pattern. There are paintings hung landscape 1m up the wall in the background.
  • Spotlight illuminates a table with two wooden mushroom bomb sculptures.
  • Dark gallery with three internally Illuminated lamp, shelters with gum leaves below. A large screen to the right displays a hand drawing squiggles in red sand.
Large sculpture consisting of a pile of stone heads and stone figures.
Previous
Next
The Image is not Nothing (Concrete Archives) (2021), exhibition view, ACE Open. Photography by Grant Hancock.

Guest Curator

Lisa Radford,
Yhonnie Scarce

Lead Artists

Mareike Bernien and Kerstin Schroedinger,
Kumanara Boogar (Yalata, AU),
Phil Collins,
Megan Cope,
Trent Crawford,
Pam Diment,
Niki Hastings-McFall,
Korpys Löffler,
Rosemary Laing,
Hayley Millar Baker,
Sanja Pahoki,
Warren (Ebay) Paul,
Ashley Perry,
Nina Sanadze,
Jelena Telecki,
Unbound Collective,
Judy Watson
Shop Exhibition Catalogue
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ACE tampinthi, ngadlu Kaurna yartangka panpapanpalyarninthi (inparrinthi). Kaurna miyurna yaitya mathanya Wama Tarntanyaku. Parnaku yailtya, parnaku tapa purruna, parnaku yarta ngadlu tampnthi. Yalaka Kaurna miyurna itu yailtya, tapa purruna, yarta kuma puru martinthi, puru warri-apinthi, puru tangka martulayinthi.

ACE respectfully acknowledges the traditional Country of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains and pays respect to Elders past and present. We recognise and respect their cultural heritage, beliefs and relationship with the land. We acknowledge that they are of continuing importance to the Kaurna people living today.

ACE tampinthi, ngadlu Kaurna yartangka panpapanpalyarninthi (inparrinthi). Kaurna miyurna yaitya mathanya Wama Tarntanyaku. Parnaku yailtya, parnaku tapa purruna, parnaku yarta ngadlu tampnthi. Yalaka Kaurna miyurna itu yailtya, tapa purruna, yarta kuma puru martinthi, puru warri-apinthi, puru tangka martulayinthi.

ACE respectfully acknowledges the traditional Country of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains and pays respect to Elders past and present. We recognise and respect their cultural heritage, beliefs and relationship with the land. We acknowledge that they are of continuing importance to the Kaurna people living today.