Newsletter #27 / July 27th
Tamika Grant-Iramu x OCCUPY x FORA/ squared
Please join us from 5.30pm / Thursday / July 28th / 75 Vulture St, for the official launch of the latest FORA window exercise, held in conjunction with the ASAC OCCUPY 2022 conference, and featuring the work of Tamika Grant-Iramu. A complementary sequence of projected animations from an undisclosed practitioner will further illuminate the alleyway as the sky darkens.
From 6pm, we will hear Grant-Iramu speak to her work Undulations; thereafter, we will continue the celebrations with the artist at The End.
Grant-Iramu’s Undulations is a serialised, multi-limbed study of the spatial permeability of mark making. A vinyl applique born from a handworked mural, born from a vinyl cut carving, the piece’s enlargement of flora to a digitised, alien scale becomes a sweeping exercise in multi-medium dialogue between the practitioner and herself [pronoun, practice, process, reflex, mirror].
The chutzpah, sheer backbone of print! Letting us see in multiples, concrete, naked television. For now, this work exists within the cadre of the window, and now, the work’s forebear exists at Artspace Mackay, and now, the woodcut print egalitises the Apocalypse [The Apocalypse with Pictures, Albrecht Durer, 1498], and now cuts in wood signal leaps of faith [Roar, China! Li Hua, 1935], while still now the ukiyo-e floating world lives forever [Two Lovers, Hishikawa Moronobu 菱川師宣, ca.1675-80] and Dorrit Black blocks out Wynyard Square [Nocturne, Wynyard Square, Dorrit Black, 1932]. The ink is dry, but forever seeping, beautiful print and mark making.
Undulations (Tamika Grant-Iramu, Artspace Mackay, 2022)
Tamika Grant-Iramu
Since graduating from Queensland College of Art (Griffith University) with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in Interdisciplinary Print Media, Grant-Iramu’s creative practice has continued to explore her identity, finding ways of connecting with the different threads of her Papua New Guinean, European and Torres Strait Islander heritage. The carving techniques and storytelling aesthetics of Torres Strait Islander and Papua New Guinean culture combined with the Western influences of Tamika’s upbringing converge in her emergent practice as she explores and grows her own story.
Inspired by the immediate environment of Brisbane, Tamika’s practice focuses on minute areas of native flora and from these observations she creates a diverse range of organic patterns and forms. The relationship she has with the process of carving corresponds to the strength and fluidity of her natural environment, the constant randomness that arises from the directions in which she carves allows newly discovered forms to grow. There is an importance in the connection between the artistic process and herself as the medium, as it allows a new dialogue to come into play. As a landscape artist, Tamika harnesses her inquisitiveness for the natural environment to delve deeper into other topographies that she encounters. Relief print carving is not simply used as a tool for visualising these environments but rather, as a way of capturing her visceral impressions of place. [words: Onespace Gallery]
Tamika Grant-Iramu is represented by Onespace Gallery; more on her practice can be read here
Undulations will reside in the window until late September.
OCCUPY 22
Led by the Australasian Student Architecture Congress, OCCUPY 2022 is a Brisbane-based conference taking place from 26-30 September. The conference will consist of a series of multi-disciplinary satellite events to pose questions and challenge complex issues concerning the built environment and the challenges Brisbane faces as a community. As part of this conversation, several exhibitions will be concurrently held across locations in the inner-city suburb of West End, marked by its diverse communities, rapidly changing architectural landscape, and history as a site of colonial resistance, industry and artistic creativity.
We are interested in themes associated with agonism (positive outcomes
through tough conversations) and harbouring an understanding for how we can
be doing...
More for the Community
More for Climate
More for Country
For more information on OCCUPY, press here
Mark making
St John Eating the Book (Albrecht Durer, 1498)
Roar, China! (Li Hua, 1935)
Two Lovers (Hishikawa Moronobu 菱川師宣, ca.1675-80)
Block and print of Nocturne, Wynyard Square (Dorrit Black, 1932)
Pattern (Vera Blackburn, 1936)
Fluid Terrain (Megan Cope, 2013)
What FORA wants
The FORA newsletter seeks to bring forward the intertextuality that we reside in, and the inextricable ways in which art and life are linked. That is an obvious point, but one that must be constantly remarked upon, as it is one we are constantly surprised by. To be reminded of these circles is to be drawn back into the fold, equipped with the tools of thinking critically and acting compassionately.
FORA website
FORA instagram
pps/FORA is developed on the land of the Jagera and Turrbal peoples