Australia’s premier art fair opens in Sydney

Australia's premier art fair is on right now – 'Sydney Contemporary' opened yesterday, and features works from nearly 100 galleries.

Transcript

00:00 It's Australia's largest art fair.

00:13 Sydney Contemporary is on right now and it features more than 500 artworks from around

00:19 Australia and the world.

00:21 This event runs until Sunday and as well as showing off the artworks, it's also holding

00:25 performances and a talk series.

00:28 And today we're checking out the installation section of this art fair and that features

00:33 13 large scale pieces by contemporary artists.

00:40 Jenna Lee is here with me.

00:41 She's an Indigenous artist from Melbourne and has one of the large scale installations

00:46 at this exhibition.

00:47 Jenna, tell me a little bit about your work and what it means.

00:51 Yeah, absolutely.

00:52 So this work, To Gather, To Nourish, To Sustain, is a work that features around 50 works on

00:58 paper which each depict a traditional food source for Larrakia people, which I researched

01:04 and translated from our dictionary.

01:07 And I designed all these symbols to represent food sources and material sources.

01:12 And how did your cultural heritage play into how you made this artwork?

01:16 And that's a really good question and a really important point because I have mixed Japanese,

01:21 Chinese and Filipino heritage on my father's side as well as being Aboriginal.

01:25 And so I really wanted to draw on that, the materiality and the, I guess, the visual language.

01:31 But I was also really interested in looking at how Larrakia people would have developed

01:36 our visual language had we continued uninterrupted trade with Southeast Asia.

01:41 My ancestors traded with Indonesia and China.

01:44 And so I wanted to create a body of work which kind of suited a visual language to the north

01:49 of this continent.

01:51 And that was really important to me.

01:52 So all of the materials I've sourced from Japan or Larrakia country.

01:57 And what do you hope people feel when they come to this art fair and see your artwork?

02:01 For me, this work is about a sense of abundance.

02:05 Traditionally we had and do have a really abundant country with lots of food sources,

02:11 material sources.

02:12 And we have seven seasons.

02:14 We also had a really rich language.

02:16 So for me it's about people standing in front of the work and getting that sense of being

02:21 surrounded by food and language and just having that abundance and sustenance.

02:27 The art fair also serves as a trade show.

02:30 So early works from Andy Warhol will be for sale as well as two $1 million paintings from

02:36 Indigenous 20th century artist Emily Kamei Kanwari and Japanese contemporary artist Hiroshi

02:42 Senju.

02:43 This event runs until Sunday and the full program is available on the Sydney Contemporary

02:47 website.

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