SPEAKEASY

24 September – 31 October 2009

Gallery 4A’s group exhibition Speakeasy profiles Asian-Australian history entangled with an Aboriginal history of Australia.

Recently returned from representing Australia at the Venice Biennale, Brisbane-based artist Vernon Ah Kee presented work and curated an exhibition with Gallery 4A’s Director, Aaron Seeto.

Speakeasy draws its title from the illegal and underground bars which operated during the prohibition period in 1920s America – out of sight, below the radar, yet part of a vital cultural dialogue. In this exhibition, the title refers to the longstanding contribution of Indigenous and Asian history, often overlooked in Australia’s colonial history. This exhibition delves into previously untold stories in Australia and marked a fundamental shift in thinking about intercultural relationships, politics and geography.

In 2008, Gallery 4A hosted a symposium in which the artist and co-curator of this exhibition, Vernon Ah Kee presented a paper where he saw his own Chinese-heritage belonging within a ‘Black History’ of Australia. Following this trajectory, Ah Kee reverses a history of Australia which assumes all cultural difference in relation to a European (or white) imperative, which makes this exhibition potentially confronting for viewers.

The exhibition charts a range of relationships between Indigenous artists and Asian people and culture, through the familial, the political, the pre-colonial and periods of trade. Included are several key indigenous artists: Fiona Foley, Gordon Hookey, Daniel Boyd, Gary Lee, Zhou Xiaoping, Jason Wing and Mark Brown, Ginger Riley Munduwalawala and Vernon Ah Kee.