Knowing Place/Adnabod Lle
Acrylic on canvas, 136 x 97cm
Geremoot, Dart’yung, Yowen Burren and Ngarrak Walang are the four Gunnai/Kŭrnai names for the Nicolson River, situated in East Gippsland, Victoria, Australia. The Nicholson River was named in 1839 by Angus McMillan to honor Charles Nicholson, who had represented the Port Phillip District on the New South Wales Legislative Council and was later a Colonial Secretary. Nicholson never visited the river. The renaming of the river allowed the river’s original names and their connection to the country to be lost and obscured.
Mae Geremoot, Dart’yung, Yowen Burren a Ngarrak Walang yn bedwar enw yn iaith Gunnai/ Kŭrnai ar Afon Nicolson, yn East Gippsland, Victoria, Awstralia. Sef afon Nicholson, fel y cafodd ei henwi ym 1839 gan Angus McMillan, i anrhydeddu Charles Nicholson, a gynrychiolodd ardal Port Phillip ar Gyngor Deddfwriaethol De Cymru Newydd ac yn nes ymlaen a fu’n Ysgrifennydd y Trefedigaethau. Ni fu Nicholson i weld yr afon erioed. Trwy ailenwi’r afon cafodd enwau gwreiddiol yr afon a’u cysylltiadau â’r wlad eu colli a’u tywyllu.
26 June-31 July/26 Mehefin- 31 Gorffennaf, 2015
GAS GALLERY/ORIEL NWY, Park Avenue, Aberystwyth, SY23 1PB
Exhibition featuring the work of:
WALES: Iwan Bala and Lee Williams
AUSTRALIA: Veronica Calarco and Sue Kneebone
USA: Kim Waale and Mary Giehl
Knowing Place explored the notion of the geographical environment that lives within a person.
There is a physical geographical environment in which we live and interact with on a daily basis and the geographical environment which lives within us, which informs our identity, informs what and who we say we are. The geographical environment is composed of an area of land with which we identify, a language, a culture, a subconscious stating of who and what we are, whether we have remained within the area we were born or whether we have moved to another area or another country. Within ourselves we know that place even when we don’t consciously state it. We now live in a world in which we constantly move between places – most of us no longer living in the area in which we were born. But when we move elsewhere do we lose the connection with the place in which we came from? Do we identify as being part of the new place – its culture, language, and environment or is the area of our birth always within us? How is this expressed through the participating artists work?
