Join us for an afternoon of artist talks to celebrate the opening weekend of PICA’s two new exhibitions, Love in Bright Landscapes and I don’t see colour.
Love in Bright Landscapes, curated by Annika Kristensen (ACCA, Melbourne), considers Perth and Los Angeles as comparative case studies, bringing together a selection of artworks made in reference to the characters, qualities and topographies of the two west coast cities.
PICA Curator Sarah Wall will be leading a conversation with Perth-based exhibiting artists Jack Ball, Emma Buswell, Cass Lynch and Mei Swan Lim who will be speaking about their works in the exhibition. Hear insights directly from the artists about how artmaking contributes to a sense of place, and the myths, legends and stories that define a city.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Jack Ball works with photography and collage to create performative and intimate imagery.
They have been part of exhibitions such as the pleasurable, the illegible, the multiple, the mundane, Artspace, Sydney (2021); New Matter: Recent forms of Photography, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2016), Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2013) and Here&Now17: New Photography, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth (2017). Ball’s work is held in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of Western Australia, University of Western Australia and Artbank. They completed an MFA at RMIT in 2012 and a PhD at Curtin University in 2021.
Emma Buswell is an artist, curator and designer fascinated with systems of government, economies and culture, particularly in relation to constructs of place, identity and community. Her current work takes its inspiration from the matrilineal hand craft and knitting techniques passed down from her grandmother and mother, as well as a contemplative investigation into the nature of kitsch, ephemera and national identities.
Buswell has run a variety of artist-run spaces across Perth and Fremantle and exhibited and curated exhibitions across Australia. Currently the Fremantle Arts Centre Print Award Coordinator, Buswell was resident at Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como, Italy in 2011 and participated in the 2015 Australia Council for the Arts Venice Biennale professional development program. In 2020, Buswell’s work was the focus of a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Western Australia and in 2021 she was an exhibiting artist as part of Perth Festival.
Cass Lynch is a writer and researcher. She has recently completed a creative writing PhD that explores deep memory features of the Noongar oral storytelling tradition; in particular stories that reference the last ice age and the rise in sea level that followed it.
Lynch is a descendant of the Noongar people and belongs to the beaches on the south coast of Western Australia.
Mei Swan Lim’s artistic practice employs a diverse array of materials and methodologies – including weaving, paper cutting, sound installation, sensory theatre, video, performance and music composition – that are united by a search for wellbeing, agency and autonomy. While Lim’s weaving work lends itself to the documentation of an inner emotional landscape; her paper cuts explore her Chinese-Malaysian and Baha’i lineage; and sensory theatre and soundscape works centre on the emotional, environmental and spiritual importance of place, namely the swamps of Perth.
Lim also releases solo electronic music under the moniker Mei Saraswati. She has been performing, recording and composing independently since 2010. In 2021, Lim created sound work for the Witness Stand and exhibited in the exhibition Fair Isle, both presented as part of Perth Festival.
