Charles Darwin University Art Collection
 Lawrence Daws |
The Other Thing - a survey show
September 10 to 26, 2008
The Gallery, Building Orange 10, Casuarina campus
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An etching by Australian artist Lawrence Daws, entitled Head of Fairweather 1978, inspired the 2008 CDU Art Collection annual exhibition, The Other Thing: a survey show.
Drawn from the permanent collection and including many recent acquisitions by purchase and donation, The Other Thing is an exhibition conceived as a series of aesthetic journeys through the many worlds of art within the CDU Art Collection.
The exhibition features 63 works in a range of media by Indigenous, non-Indigenous and Southeast Asian artists whose work is inspired by or has connection with northern Australia and adjoining regions. Their creative journeys, like those of Fairweather, have been “something of a tightrope act”, where one is poised between “representation and the other thing – whatever that is”.
Download exhibition catalogue (pdf) All images of art work in this catalogue © the artists.
CDU Art Collection Curator Anita Angel said: "Like other exhibitions I’ve curated in the past, it was inspired by an art work – not an idea, theory or theme."
"The subject matter of Daws’ etching is particularly apt, as Fairweather had a connection to Darwin that dates back to the early 1950s," she said.
"During that time, Fairweather lived in an abandoned hulk at Dinah Beach in Frances Bay where he painted and wrote. His ill-fated raft journey off the North Australian coast is the stuff of legend – except that it really happened! It was never clear why he made this life-endangering trip but its metaphorical implications are enduring and meaningful for many artists today.
"An inveterate traveller, Fairweather was nevertheless first and foremost an artist. My feeling is that he believed that in the end, the only journey in life that really matters is not the actual one you make in the world, but the aesthetic one you make in the studio – the one that leads to an act of creation. This exhibition takes its cue from this thinking and shows traces of such journeys in painting, sculpture and printmaking by artists inspired by our region,” she said.
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Will Owen's blog - read exhibition review with images by Kara Burns
