Aboriginal Dreaming in the digital age
Big Eye: Aboriginal Animations presents Aboriginal Australian and Aboriginal Canadian new media artists who draw on digital techniques as a part of ongoing cultural maintenance.
From July 3 until July 18, Big Eye: Aboriginal Animations will be exhibited at Mofo Gallery on McLeod St, Cairns, giving traditional Aboriginal culture a fresh artistic future.
Featuring as part of Onedge Festival, Big Eye reveals the intersection of traditional Aboriginal culture with contemporary culture and highlights how old and new practices are fused in today’s society.
cyberTribe online gallery Curator and artist, Jenny Fraser describes the animations as building upon traditional morals and highlighting current issues important to Aboriginal culture in Australia and Canada.
“We strive to honour the past as our teacher, honour the present as our creation, and honour the future as our inspiration,” said Ms Fraser. “This is ˜dreaming’ in action,” she said.
Big Eye features ultramodern animation techniques such as Computer Generated Imagery, Second Life Machinima, in addition to traditional animation techniques like Claymation, where scenes are created from plasticine.
The array of animation used provides a strong visual element to communicate many dimensions of Aboriginal culture, and online projects introduce cyberspace as a neutral realm where ideas can be tested in an experimental and accepting atmosphere.
Big Eye artists view the online world as a form of escape to indigenous social politics and an environment to manipulate identity.
By bringing Aboriginal Australian and Aboriginal Canadian art together in one space, Big Eye foregrounds historical similarities between the two nations’ first people and the shared ambitions of modernising their culture.
Big Eye: Aboriginal Animatiations
3 to 15 July 2009
mofo Gallery
70 McLeod St, Cairns
Email dot_ayu@yahoo.com.au
opening night $7 including onedge festival performances,
otherwise free
Web:
http://www.cybertribe.culture2.org
http://www.onedgeart.com
http://www.geocities.com/dot_ayu/index.htm
