r e a Gamilaraay / Wailwan people of New South Wales, Australia
Auckland Art Gallery - NEW Gallery

maang began its conception during the Cultural Diversity Clusters Residency from 2004  2005 . The residency allowed each artist an opportunity to explore, investigate & develop a series of new creative ‘cultural’ processes. All the participating artists’ presented work specifically related to the themes of culture, language and death. I constructed a series of workshops, which explored the relationship between Indigenous languages and English. I subsequently invited Dr. Christine Nicholls who teaches Aboriginal History, Art History & Indigenous Languages at Flinders University, to assist me in my explorations of various Indigenous languages. Thus, in maang I am consciously invading a colonial construct and I am occupying it entirely within an Indigenous language_scape and within a number of land_masses.

I exhibited (part one) of maang as a single channel video at The Performance Space (May, 2006) Sydney. This allowed me to see my work in an exhibition context and it inspired me to continue to develop my maang project both creatively & technically. maang now has more creative & conceptual levels & layers and technically it has evolved into a three-channel video/DVD triptych.

maang (part two) was created during my participation in an artists’ residency program that celebrated 50 years of ABC television in Australia. I created maang (part 2) using one-minute of 16mm footage from an early William Grayden film (1965), which gives us all documentary evidence of the absolutely devastating physical impact that the British nuclear tests had on the Pitinjarra People  the traditional owners of the ‘bombed’ land.

maang (part three) images the struggle that I deal with personally, as an Indigenous, woman everyday as I try to understand, come to terms with and ultimately accept the impact that colonization has had upon me & every Indigenous Australian  mentally, emotionally & spiritually.

r e a 2007

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Background

r e a was born in 1962 in Coonabarabran, Australia, into the Gamilaraay / Wailwan people of New South Wales. She currently lives in Sydney. In 2006, her work gins_leap / dubb_speak, was toured by dLux media arts to New South Wales regional galleries. Recent group exhibitions include Australian Studio, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, 2003; Traverse, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, 2004; Contemporary Commonwealth, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, 2006; The Cleveland Street Project, The Performance Space, Sydney, 2006; and Nocturne, 24HR ART, Darwin, 2006. r e a was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for research and development into creative technologies in 2004, and currently holds the Australia Council for the Arts New Media Arts Fellowship. She has also been active as a curator and lecturer, teaching Australian Indigenous History at the University of New South Wales since 2003. Her work is discussed further by Christian Bumbarra Thompson in the Contemporary Commonwealth catalogue.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its funding and advisory body.

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