Dreams Nursed in Darkness
Curated by Elizabeth Day and Claire Taylor
7 September - 24 November 2024
Gallery 1; Gallery 2; Gallery 3; Mann-Tatlow Gallery
Dreams Nursed in Darkness presents an array of creative practice by people who know incarceration firsthand and artworks that respond to Australian carceral contexts, past and present.
The exhibition surveys voices speaking from the margins and creative acts of resistance that assert the humanity of incarcerated people in the face of dehumanising systems. They call us to account about structural failures of incarceration, systemic economic and racial injustices, and our complicity.
Collectively, the artworks describe an important culturally contested arena, where many deeply unanswered social questions remain.
Artists: Vernon Ah Kee, Zanny Begg, Behrouz Boochani & Arash Kamali Sarvestani, Dennis Carriage, Carla Cescon, Megan Cope, Debra Dawes, Elizabeth Day, Destiny Deacon, Karla Dickens, Mireille Eid (Astore), Anne Ferran, Trevor Fry, Arielle Gamble, Anna Gibbs, Sarah Goffman, Julie Gough, Helen Grace, Anne Graham, Alana Hunt, Karrabing Film Collective, Warwick Keen, Rosemary Laing, Noelene Lucas, Ricky Maynard, Ian Milliss, Anna Mould, Marziya Mohammedali, David Nolan, Sue Paull, Stanislava Pinchuk, Sha Sarwari, Julie Shiels, Cassie Sullivan, Abdullah M.I. Syed, Gordon Syron, Leanne Tobin, Kawita Vatanajyankur, Warlukurlangu Artists, with works from the NSW Department of Corrective Services art collection and the Boom Gate Gallery.
The exhibition examines incarceration as a key instrument in controlling and maintaining the settler colonial state, reflecting on the violence that stems from there. The works in the lobby frame the broader exhibition with references to deaths in custody, racial injustice, community connection/ fragmentation, and assert art as an important form of truth-telling.
Gallery 1 has a number of works that foreground Indigenous perspectives, including works that speak to intergenerational trauma, the overrepresentation of Indigenous people—and their disproportionate risk of harm—in the criminal justice system.
Among the works in Gallery 2 are several that relate to Australia’s recent border control policies, practices that in Richard Flanagan’s words, ‘strip lives of meaning’ and imprison people ‘without charge, without conviction, without sentence’.*
The Gallery 3 is set up as a dedicated screening room to present a range of video works.
The Mann-Tatlow Gallery predominantly features artworks by current and former inmates from the Boom Gate Gallery and NSW Corrections’ art collection. The works are testament to ingenuity and a flourishing of creativity inside, when supported. Some reveal the prevalence of sharing or reclaiming cultural knowledge. Others represent the deprivation and intense hardships of ‘inside’. These perspectives rarely have a public platform.
* Richard Flanagan, Foreword to Behrouz Boochani, No Friend But The Mountains: Writings from Manus Prison, 2018.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body, and is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.
Exhibition catalogue
Download the catalogue for this exhibition below.
Dreams Nursed in Darkness PDF, 2038.53 KB
Viewer advice
This exhibition contains sensitive material and themes that may cause distress.
Image: (detail) Kawita Vatanajyuankur, The Scale of Injustice, 2021, 4K digital video, 8:30 mins. Courtesy of the artist and Nova Contemporary.