NGALIYA DIYAM: GRANVILLE CENTRE ART GALLERY

NECKLACE FOR A BOY

An installation documenting intergenerational knowledge transfer, created in collaboration and under the mentorship of
Maker Tom Barker (Murawarri), Knowledge Holder Ted Fields Jnr (Yuwaalaraay), Photographer Chris Chen, Luke Gordon (Yuwaalaraay / Ngemba) and the Australian Design Centre. - Lucy Simpson

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In a year of precarity and isolation, artists and organisations alike have demonstrated that cultural resilience is forged through locality and communal solidarity. Indeed, American academic Susan Healey has defined cultural resilience as the capacity of a distinct cultural system to absorb disturbance and reorganise while undergoing change so as to retain key elements of structure and identity.

In Western Sydney, Granville Centre Art Gallery’s inaugural exhibition ‘Ngaliya Diyam’ co-curated by Dennis Golding and Rebekah Raymond celebrates the cultural resilience of First Nations Australians. The title ‘we are here’ in the Darug language itself poses as a declarative defiance of the disturbances of violence and genocide brought by the settler-colonial state. The rejuvenation of language actively resists the monocultural, monolithic and monolingual institutions and policies of White Australia. It heralds the ongoing and indefatigable creativity and innovation of the works of Nadeena Dixon, Jannawi Dance Clan, Aunty Marilyn Russell, Lucy Simpson, Aunty Esme Timbery, Shay Tobin and Kirra Weingarth (on display until 24 January 2021).

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Image courtesy Document Photography.