Occupy ~ bearing witness to history
Syntagma Square, Athens, 2011.
Ten years ago in Athens, July 2011. The city was in chaos as riot police keep watch at every street corner. Tents erected in the main Syntagma Square were occupied by people protesting about the Greek financial crisis.
Two weeks previously the Greek parliament passed its second austerity bill with increased taxes on alcohol, cigarettes and a freeze on pensions and civil servants’ pay. People took to the streets on masse with days of violent protests when over 300 protesters and police were injured.
I was there to witness the aftermath of this uprising, the forerunner of the worldwide ‘Occupy’ movement which swept 900 cities of the world during 2011 from Wall Street in New York to London, Sydney, Toyko and all over the USA.
It felt so significant that this all happened outside the Greek parliamentary building, in Athens, the birthplace of democracy and I was there to witness this event.
I climbed up a lamppost to take down a protest poster and returned home to create an artist book titled Occupy with “tent’ assemblages inside which was selected for exhibition the following year at the Lessons in History Vol. II – Democracy artist book exhibition at Graeme Galleries in Brisbane.
Yesterday I put up posters in Murwillumbah to advertise my forthcoming joint exhibition Occupy and suddenly realised the significance of the exhibition title and the date. History circling around to the future.
Occupy: a desert narrative is a pop-up exhibition and workshops by myself and fellow artist Samantha Tannous at Small Works Gallery in Murwillumbah from the 13-19th August. We will be holding a series of artist book workshops using handmade papers made at Curtin Springs, Central Australia during our artist residency there in 2019.
Occupy is a powerful word with its implications of people power but also as a colonial construct to occupy this land under the pretence of Terra Nullius. To claim and occupy land which has always been inhabited by its Indigenous custodians, the First Nations people of Australia.
The paper based artworks on exhibition are our desert narrative of decades of human occupation on the land and the trace elements left behind. During the workshops we will show participants how to construct artist books which include a variety of found objects. These workshops will also be an opportunity to create new narratives about occupation and how we occupy space and place during our time on earth. Do join us for the opening night on the 13th August and book into the workshops. All the info and bookings can be found here.
