Exploring ‘MEMORY/MYTH’ with FBi Radio’s Interview

14 Jun 2024

Ananya Mukhopadhyay, London-based Director and curator of Ames Yavuz’s film exhibition MEMORY/MYTH, shares insights to the the gallery’s inaugural exhibition in the second space with Nadia Odlum in an interview for Culture Guide on FBi Radio. Mukhopadhyay highlighted a few works from the presentation, including South African artist Mikhael Subotzky’s Epilogue: Disordered and Flatulent (2022). She explained that Subotzky’s practice involves “unpacking colonial guilt and navigating his own landscape after 1994,” following South Africa’s first-ever free elections were held that year.

Mukhopadhyay also delved into Brook Andrew’s seminal work, SMASH IT, that brings together imagery of the destruction and defacement of monuments, old films, and news stories. Throughout, there are excerpts from the artist’s interviews with Indigenous intellectuals and creatives Marcia Langton, Wesley Enoch, Lyndon Ormond-Parker and Maxine Briggs about cultural protocols and the artist’s earlier video work The Pledge, which is a reinterpretation of Jedda (1955) – the first colour feature film made in Australia and arguably the first starring Aboriginal peoples in lead roles. The title is a reference to the history of smashing and defacing monuments which has particular resonance today. 

MEMORY/MYTH centres on the “global legacies of colonialism,” weaving together parallel histories and shared experiences of communities, families, and individuals affected by displacement resulting from the imperial project, as Mukhopadhyay describes.

The interview segment begins at 01:42:00 minutes.

MEMORY/MYTH runs until 13 July 2024 at 114 Commonwealth Street, Surry Hills.

Image: installation view of Brook Andrew, SMASH IT, MEMORY/MYTH at Ames Yavuz Sydney, 2024. Photographed by Jessica Maurer.