THE CITY OF VINCENT LIGHTBOX LANEWAY

The aim of the Lightbox Laneway Gallery is to provide a public exhibition space to showcase artists, and provide the community with an accessible gallery. Eight lightbox cabinets are located in the laneway between St Michael’s Restaurant and Orno Interiors, Beaufort Street, Highgate. The City provides the opportunity for artists to utilise the lightboxes to exhibit for 3 months, providing a new exhibition 4 times a year. My work was selected to be in place from June – August 2017.

The body of work I presented from Heresy to Heredity, focuses on cultural displacement and dislocation of my own immigrant experience. As I negotiate my own pluralistic cultural identity in context to contemporary issues of global displacement and migration as well as Diaspora in the 20th century, I use the history of my Spanish heritage to blend and embed in these contemporary works, echoing narratives and images from a bygone era which also resonate in present times.

This work strongly references both the the tradition of Spanish still-life painting from the end of 16th century to the highly political and dark themes of human tragedy and ugliness in the etchings Goya from Los Caprichos and Los Desastres de la Guerra (Disasters of War) from the early 19 Century.  Goya’s etchings contain endless scenes of violence, horror and tragedy and the destruction of war. They explore dark themes of human behaviour and the barbaric, inconceivable actions inflicted on civilisation.

This work is informed by a collection of materials including documented narratives, objects and photographs from the artists’ family archive particularly in context to a significant event of global consequence and would have particular significance to the residents of Vincent.