WORKING IN THE TROUBLE: PRISON WALL ON THE ROAD TO PARRAMATTA

Working in the Trouble: Prison Wall on the Road to Parramatta, solo exhibition at Articulate Project Space, Sydney, 4 – 20 Oct, 2019.

Working in the Trouble: Prison Wall on the Road to Parramatta is a solo exhibition based on Day’s 25 years working in marginal spaces. In 2011 she began developing work along the Parramatta River where there are the remains of colonial prisons and institutions, that continue into the 20th century (and 21st) to be a focus for mental health services. Much of her work has considered the image of ‘the prison on the landscape’ as a way to focus the damage on the Australian landscape wrought by colonisation.

The exhibition includes some of the work done since 2012 for sites in Tasmania where Australia’s violent past is in plain sight. This work was part of The Fragility of Goodness: Abstraction, Abjection and Activism, solo exhibition at Moonah Arts Centre, TAS. Invisible Words/Invisible Worlds incorporates imagery developed during a residency at the University of Newcastle’s Centre for Solar Voltaics, incorporating images of carbon nano tubes under an electron microscope, making a poetic association between quantum invisibility and the invisible worlds of the incarcerated since the beginning of Australia’s white history.

The Prison Wall on the Road to Parramatta incorporates unravelled text works that are quotes from literature, observations and experienced affects from within that abject margin, as are the nano texts. The prison is a pervasive image in Australian culture and large numbers of Aboriginal people are still incarcerated as was the case when this architectural form first landed on Australian soil at the inception of British history in this country.

Some of this work was originally shown at the Heritage Courtyard Pavilion, in Parramatta’s Justice Precinct, in 2017, with a community-based work, Myco Logic. Invisible Words/Invisible Worlds and Myco Logic were supported by grants from the Australia Council. With thanks to curator Claire Taylor from GREYSPACE who collaborated with the production and realisation of these projects.

WORKING IN THE TROUBLE is also the title of Elizabeth Day’s new Doctoral Project through Deakin University. This will develop a theoretical framework for 6-7 inter-related projects Day has realised since 2013. MORE…

Titles of the individual works in the show:
– IT WAS PASSED ON FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION
– WHATEVER YOU DO DON’T TALK ABOUT IT
– THERE IS A REASON BEYOND A REASON AND BEYOND THAT A REASON
– ABUSE TENDS TO REPEAT ITSELF
– IT WAS BETTER NOT TO DISCUSS IT
– THE LAW IS NOT ALWAYS JUST
– THE JUST ARE NOT ALWAYS JUST
– THEY FOUGHT THE BRITISH ARMY BRAVELY FOR 100 YEARS
– HE KNEW THAT ABUSE WAS GOING ON BUT WASN’T THAT INTERESTED
– DID ANYONE ASK WHY SHE WAS ANGRY?
– WHEN SHE RETURNED FROM FOSTER CARE HER BLOOD FAMILY TREATED HER LIKE A STRANGER
– THE MORE SHE COMPLAINED THE DEEPER THE HOLE SHE DUG FOR HERSELF
– WHISTLEBLOWERS ON SEX CRIMES CAN THEMSELVES BE VICTIMISED
– SHE WAS GAGGED. THEY DIDN’T WANT TO HEAR THE EXPLANATION
– HER FAMILY HAD MADE HER THINK THAT VIOLENCE WAS NORMAL
– WHEN YOU GO NEAR DAMAGE IT CAN RUB OFF
– SECRETS ARE THE MOST DAMAGING
– SHAME CAN BE VERY DEBILITATING
– TRANS-GENERATIONAL TRAUMA IS LITTLE UNDERSTOOD

Articulate Project Space, 497 Parramatta Road, Leichhardt, NSW 2040.

This exhibition was presented as part of The Big Anxiety! Festival