With galleries and museums around Australia forced to close their doors to ensure the health of staff, volunteers and visitors, opportunities to enjoy and support the arts seem to have been dramatically reduced, almost overnight. The appreciation of art might be the last thing on many minds right now but, as United Kingdom-based arts educator Louis Netter observed in a recent piece for The Conversation, our mutual confinement compels us to turn 'inward, to the vast inner space of our thoughts and imagination', a space in which artists have for centuries served as our most faithful navigators. A recognition of this need has prompted artists, curators and gallery owners across the country to explore new platforms for their insights into our shared human condition, demonstrating clearly that, although the doors of our homes and businesses may be closed, those of our imagination remain defiantly open.
A new series of photographic works by Lisa Reihana, another renowned New Zealand artist, are available to view and purchase on the website of the newly opened Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert in Sydney. Drawn from her immersive three-dimensional film Nomads of the Sea, Reihana's empowering images weave together history and fiction in a manner that followers of her work will recognise as an extension of ideas explored in her first major video in Pursuit of Venus [infected], available to watch on the artist's website. Nomads of the Sea is also featured in this year's Sydney Biennale, currently developing a range of 'digital activations and experiences'.
