Art is a space that allows us to reflect on our place in the world and re-enchant, reimagine, or even revolutionise the way we exist in it. The exhibitions in the IMA’s 2023 program each offer us an opportunity to examine the systems we live in, assess what is not serving our community, and to contemplate the alternative structures that we might need to build to take with us into the future.
We open the year with a partnership presentation with the Biennale of Sydney, Maluw Adhil Urngu Padanu Mamuy Moesik (Legends from the deep sitting peacefully on the waters). Taking its title from our co-commission with the Torres Strait 8, this exhibition brings together exciting international and Australian artists whose works look at the powerful knowledges that live within our natural world. Shifting our perspective can shift our actions.
Into the middle of the year Raphaela Rosella will present her powerful collaborative exhibition that explores emotional contours of interactions with the Prison Industrial Complex. Created in dialogue with her family and community, You’ll Know It When You Feel It uses video and photography to document their experiences, and makes a powerful comment on the bureaucratic violence imbued through the carceral system.
Alongside this ‘the churchie’ will return for its fifth iteration at the IMA, presenting vibrant and varied works from emerging artists across the country. Always insightful and experimental this long-running exhibition offers an opportunity to see exciting new artistic voices and the best of emerging visual arts practice, curated by a leading emerging practitioner.
To close the year Daniel Boyd will present his ambitiously scaled Rainbow Serpent (version), an immersive exhibition extending across the IMA galleries. Boyd will stretch his distinctive motif across the IMA spaces and share an ambitious program of live activations from thinkers, makers, and performers that interrogate Eurocentric histories.
We will also embrace a new partnership with NOWNESS Asia commissioning five Australian artists to create new video works in a series curated by Kate ten Buuren. Now You’re Speakin’ My Language will reflect on the power of communication as a means to close distance and will present these works to online audiences across the region.
Accompanying each presentation will be a rich supporting program of events with Final Fridays and MONO returning in 2023. We look forward to sharing our program with you across the year. Join us for art that asks pertinent questions and demands urgent answers.
Image: Daniel Boyd, ‘Untitled (27°27’34.9″S 153°02’12.4″E)’, 2022. Installation view, ‘This language that is every stone’, 2022. Photo: Joe Ruckli.
