Tasmania To Siberia: Connection Through Art 2005
Rising sea levels separated Tasmania from mainland Australia some 13,000 years ago. Until the European invasion in 1804 the Palawa aboriginal inhabitants lived out a peaceful and sustainable nomadic island existence. On the coastal edge and tidal mudflats their co-inhabitants included a wading bird, the Bar-tailed Godwit Limosa lapponica. Were they aware that this bird was a migrant within their midst?
The Bar-tailed Godwit is perhaps the world's greatest migrant. From its breeding grounds in the Palaearctic of Siberia, each year in September it flies an epic journey to Tasmania, where it spends its summer feeding on molluscs, crustaceans and other invertebrates. In May it returns on its flight to Siberia, to breed. In a metaphorical sense this exhibition of works by Tasmanian artists is equally a migratory flight. Just as the Bar-tailed Godwit flies to Siberia to breed, so does the flight of this exhibition seek to fertilise cultural connections through art, building upon the friendships made and cultural connections established in Tasmania's previous participation at the III Novosibirsk Biennial in 2003.
Whilst the Tasmanian artists represented are from a diversity of ethnic backgrounds, they share in common a passion for their art, identification with Tasmania as their home and academic connection with the School of Art at the University of Tasmania (UTAS).
When you leave the exhibition, look up. You may see a small speck in the evening sky; could it be the Bar-tailed Godwit returning on wing to a Tasmanian summer?
Yvonne Rees-Pagh, Curator
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