"The Sweet Promise" @ RMIT

AUSTRALIA

"The Sweet Promise"- Visiting Chilean Artist, Claudia del Fierro

RMIT Project Space/Spare Room, Monday 2nd - Friday 20th July 2007

Highly regarded Chilean artist, Claudia del Fierro, is currently completing an artist residency at RMIT in partnership with the South Project. While in Melbourne, Claudia has considered migrant voices, cultural transliteration, language, and identity, drawing on one-on-one interviews and ongoing collaborations with a diverse group of people now resident in Australia.

Claudia’s residency will culminate in an exhibition entitled The Sweet Promise, opening on Monday 2^nd July at RMIT’s Project Space/Spare Room, and running through to Friday 20^th July.

The Sweet Promise presents an installation featuring multiple parallel projection and elements of audience interaction. Its content is at once local and global, relating to unique migrant experiences and broader preoccupations of the artist:

The Sweet Promise is an ongoing video installation that began by approaching people in Melbourne from various migrant backgrounds. The project developed through a series of conversations with a dozen local migrants who collaborated by sharing personal views about loss, longing and their sense of identity. The Sweet Promise has made it possible for me to engage with the local community from a privileged place: that of ‘the other’.

As an artist from Latin America, my intention was to develop a collaborative work in Melbourne as a way of approaching some of the issues surrounding recent migration. The Sweet Promise mirrors my own past experiences as a migrant and premises strategies for an art practice that considers ‘cross border’ concerns.

My initial wish to attempt to place my practice in a ‘situation of risk’ has led me to experience displacement through the experiences of others, who have in turn shared their insight, helping to reformulate my work in unsuspected ways.

Claudia Del Fierro, 2007

The Sweet Promise will be launched at RMIT Project Space/Spare Room on Monday 2^nd July. A catalogue essay by Tony Birch will be available on the night.

RMIT Project Space/Spare Room, Monday 2^nd – Friday 20^th July 2007

23-27 Cardigan Street, Carlton, RMIT University, Melbourne

(Gallery Hours: Monday-Friday 9:30am-5:00pm)