On a crisp afternoon in early April, after a renovation and transformation, Blak Dot Gallery reopened its doors with its trademark warmth and welcome in celebration of community, art and food at the newly set up community precinct called Balam Balam Place, at the corner of Phoenix and Saxon streets in Brunswick.
It is evident from the buzz of activity already taking place at the precinct that the community is back and cooking up exciting projects at the new, cultural, creative, and accessible hub for artists, creatives, and the broader Merri-bek community and there has been a steady stream of familiar and new faces at the gallery, which reopened with its newest show EXCHANGE.
EXCHANGE presents eight powerful First Nations artists brought together through the approaches of relationality and reciprocity, grounded in ngunggilanha – a Wiradjuri philosophy of mutual giving and receiving. A fitting nod to the ethos of Blak Dot that started as an Artist Run Initiative (ARI) and has grown into an independent, not for profit contemporary art gallery rooted deeply within their community of artists and creatives who they support, nurture and help in evolving their artistic practices. Curator dr Kimba Thompson says, “From our roots as an ARI, we’ve grown into a fiercely independent, not-for-profit gallery committed to long-term relationships and shared growth – supporting artists, especially emerging First Nations voices and underrepresented communities, to navigate and reshape systems on their own terms, with us walking alongside them.”
“For Blak Dot, art is not just what’s made - it’s how we make space,” she adds.
Djirri Djirri dancers’ Welcome to Country at EXCHANGE’s opening event, Simon Fazio.
The long friendships and mutually respectful relationships are palpable in the exhibition as one reads the names of the exhibiting artists – Maree Clarke, Lisa Couzens, Vicki Couzens, Kirsten Garner Lyttle, Brian Martin, Yhonnie Scarce, Frances Tapueluelu, and wani toaishara – who have come together for the first time ever under the banner of Blak Dot Gallery to present their works. A testament to the long held and nurtured bonds that Blak Dot has with these artists.
The artists are both in dialogue and kinship with ancestral knowledges and their contemporary practices which brings to life works that display reimagined materiality, intergenerational wisdom, the impact of colonial impositions, structures and systems, displacement, and the deep interconnectedness of their familial ties with the act of making work about, for, with and on Country – an exchange symbolic of millennia that was and is yet to come.
The works in EXCHANGE use photography, drawing, installation, glass, multimedia, sculpture, and weaving in ways that defy Western art-imposed siloing of ‘practices’ and ‘artforms’. Not only are the artists in an exchange with each other through collaborations, but also with their materials, practices and processes – and this is the gift that keeps on giving because it reveals to the viewer layers upon layers of knowledge both inherited and experienced, combined with the generosity of relationality and reciprocity that illuminates each work in its own right.
Installation view, Simon Fazio
It is with this sentiment of reciprocity and welcome that the team at Blak Dot Gallery Wiradjuri filmmaker, curator dr. Kimba Thompson and independent curator and designer Catherine Hunt extend an invitation to First Nations interstate and international organisations, curators, collectives wanting to engage in collaborative curatorial projects or exhibitions for the future to get in touch and start yarning ideas through this email exhibit@blakdot.com.au.
EXCHANGE was proudly part of YIRRAMBOI festival and is open until Sunday 8 June.
Words by Jasmeet Kaur Sahi.