Walyalup | Fremantle Arts Centre launches summer exhibitions in collaboration with Perth Festival Trio of artists present their respective works connected by a sense of place.

Existing works will stand alongside groundbreaking new pieces as the galleries open with exhibitions by three prominent artists, connected by a deep relationship to place and community.

Two major new works will premiere as part of Perth Festival. Renowned artist Kate Mitchell presents Idea Induction – an immersive, interactive installation in the main gallery. Ballardong artist Dianne Jones will debut The Beach, inspired by, and created in Walyalup/Fremantle. This will be exhibited alongside Jones’s earlier photographic series Australian Photographs – in which the artist inserts herself, smiling and waving into analogue images that place contemporary indigenous identities into Australian narratives.

Mervyn Street’s powerful Stolen Wages is a significant solo exhibition featuring Kimberley history and resilience, while also celebrating his recent landmark victory against the State Government.

Fremantle Arts Centre Curator and Collections lead Abigail Moncrieff added, “The Perth Festival exhibition is an eagerly anticipated event at FAC and this year we are pleased to co-present three incredible artists who all bring something different.

Kate Mitchell’s Idea Induction will feature the artist in the exhibition, inviting viewers to sit at her ‘singing chair’ and experience the source of creativity. Dianne Jones’s joyous and powerful work The Beach features her family on the beach at Walyalup, while Mervyn Street presents a personal body of work. A notable figure in the Kimberley, Mervyn traces his experiences and memories working as a stockman, made all the more significant for his part in the recent $180 million class action against the government for Stolen Wages.

The three artists offer audiences a multiplicity of experiences, from Mitchell’s interactive work, Dianne’s powerful and joyous photography and Mervyn’s painting that documents his experiences in The Kimberley.”

‘Where do ideas come from?’ – Kate Mitchell poses this question in Idea Induction and asks for participation, inviting audience members to sit and ask a question, or solve a problem, aided by a monochord singing chair – allowing for a full-body experience of deep resonant sound, facilitating a relaxed, creative state.

Idea Induction features several other prompts throughout the exhibition, inductions from the artist to transport the viewer into their own creativity.

Dianne Jones made the photographic series Australian Photographs more than twenty years ago, using analogue processes to re-photograph and destabilise Australian beach narratives. Reworking iconic Australian beach photographs such as artist Max Dupain, she places herself in these images- queering these sites and inserting contemporary indigenous aboriginal identities into these scenes.

Alongside these works, Dianne will unveil a new large scale photographic work responsive to Manjaree (Bathers Beach) in Walyalup / Fremantle and its spiritual importance as a site of kinship and meeting in Noongar culture.

Stolen Wages from Meryvn Street features newly commissioned and existing works that continue Mervyn’s legacy of telling truth to power, following his historic court victory over the State Government for decades of wages stolen from the cattlemen of the Kimberley.

Stolen Wages is presented by Fremantle Arts Centre with Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency and commissioned by Perth Festival.

Idea Induction and The Beach are curated by Abigail Moncrieff, Fremantle Arts Centre. Stolen Wages is curated by Emilia Galatis.

Exhibition Dates: 7th February – 20th April 2025 | 10am – 5pm Daily.

Kate Mitchell: Idea Induction Presented with Perth Festival

Dianne Jones: The Beach Presented with Perth Festival

Mervyn Street: Stolen Wages Presented with Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency and Perth Festival

ENDS

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Kate Mitchell
b. 1982 Sydney, Australia. Lives and works on Gubbi Gubbi land / Sunshine Coast. Kate Mitchell’s practice spans video, objects, image-making, and public interventions. Mitchell’s video works often position her as the central protagonist in absurd, challenging, and amusing situations – teasing out themes related to productivity, labour, success, and failure.

The current focus of her practice draws on social uses of magical thinking and New Age practices and their collision and absorption by conventional structures and rational frameworks. Mitchell is interested in the multi-layered outcomes of these experiments that speak to who we are, what we value and how we exist.

Mitchell’s work is included in leading public and private collections across Australia including: Kadist Foundation, Paris and San Francisco; Michael Buxton Collection, Melbourne; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. In 2019, Mitchell was included in ‘Enter’ at the Lyon Housemuseum. In 2020, she was commissioned to create All Auras Touch, an expansive installation at Carriageworks. In 2022, she was selected as part of the Adelaide Biennial for her work Open Channels. The artist is represented by Chalk Horse Gallery, Sydney.

Dianne Jones
Dianne Jones is a Ballardong artist from Noongar Country in Western Australia. Jones utilises photo-media to reposition the representation of Aboriginal Peoples and enact creative resistance to historical and contemporary colonial ideologies. Storytelling, family histories and decolonising archives are an integral part of her visual practice. Jones’s art reveals what is missing from pervasive Australian narratives and art history, highlighting the multifaceted nature of contemporary Indigenous identities and the importance of truth telling. Jones has completed her Masters at Victorian College of the Arts and is currently completing her PhD.

Her work is part of a growing movement by Indigenous artists to explore generational traumas and expose the ongoing impacts of colonisation. Jones’s work is held in many important public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Parliament House Perth WA, Edith

Cowan University and the Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Mervyn Street
Mervyn Street is a Gooniyandi man. Gooniyandi is one of the two river groups from the country around Fitzroy Crossing. He was born at Louisa Downs Station. Mervyn speaks fluent Gooniyandi as well as English. Mervyn is an accomplished author, illustrator, carver and painter. He has authored a book entitled ‘Know Your Granny’ about his country and his language. He has also co-produced the book entitled ‘At The River’. Mervyn has used his artwork extensively in the Yiyili School where he teaches his traditional language. Mervyn is an important person for art and culture in Yiyili and Pull Out Springs communities and is a former Chairman of Mangkaja Arts.

 

For more information, please contact:

Ella Boekeman

Fremantle Arts Centre [email protected]