Australia's premier art fair is on right now – 'Sydney Contemporary' opened yesterday, and features works from nearly 100 galleries.
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00:00 It's Australia's largest art fair.
00:13 Sydney Contemporary is on right now and it features more than 500 artworks from around
00:19 Australia and the world.
00:21 This event runs until Sunday and as well as showing off the artworks, it's also holding
00:25 performances and a talk series.
00:28 And today we're checking out the installation section of this art fair and that features
00:33 13 large scale pieces by contemporary artists.
00:40 Jenna Lee is here with me.
00:41 She's an Indigenous artist from Melbourne and has one of the large scale installations
00:46 at this exhibition.
00:47 Jenna, tell me a little bit about your work and what it means.
00:51 Yeah, absolutely.
00:52 So this work, To Gather, To Nourish, To Sustain, is a work that features around 50 works on
00:58 paper which each depict a traditional food source for Larrakia people, which I researched
01:04 and translated from our dictionary.
01:07 And I designed all these symbols to represent food sources and material sources.
01:12 And how did your cultural heritage play into how you made this artwork?
01:16 And that's a really good question and a really important point because I have mixed Japanese,
01:21 Chinese and Filipino heritage on my father's side as well as being Aboriginal.
01:25 And so I really wanted to draw on that, the materiality and the, I guess, the visual language.
01:31 But I was also really interested in looking at how Larrakia people would have developed
01:36 our visual language had we continued uninterrupted trade with Southeast Asia.
01:41 My ancestors traded with Indonesia and China.
01:44 And so I wanted to create a body of work which kind of suited a visual language to the north
01:49 of this continent.
01:51 And that was really important to me.
01:52 So all of the materials I've sourced from Japan or Larrakia country.
01:57 And what do you hope people feel when they come to this art fair and see your artwork?
02:01 For me, this work is about a sense of abundance.
02:05 Traditionally we had and do have a really abundant country with lots of food sources,
02:11 material sources.
02:12 And we have seven seasons.
02:14 We also had a really rich language.
02:16 So for me it's about people standing in front of the work and getting that sense of being
02:21 surrounded by food and language and just having that abundance and sustenance.
02:27 The art fair also serves as a trade show.
02:30 So early works from Andy Warhol will be for sale as well as two $1 million paintings from
02:36 Indigenous 20th century artist Emily Kamei Kanwari and Japanese contemporary artist Hiroshi
02:42 Senju.
02:43 This event runs until Sunday and the full program is available on the Sydney Contemporary
02:47 website.
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