Onespace is proudly participating in the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF) 2022. We congratulate our five exhibiting artists and the three presenting venues showing their exciting new work. We recognise CIAF’s commitment to strengthening and celebrating our First Nations culture.
VENUE 1: Cairns Convention Centre (Booth 24), Sheridan St & Wharf St, Cairns CIty
Tamika Grant-Iramu and Teho Ropeyarn, 6-10 July 2022
CIAF’s audience will be able to view impressive recent work by Cairns-based artist Teho Ropeyarn and Brisbane-based artist Tamika Grant-Iramu. We will present a brand new series by Teho Ropeyarn, inspired by the Cape York Lily; these works will be displayed alongside two large prints from Ropeyarn’s Tarnanthi series, Ipi (water, rain) and Ani, Ipi, Achah (land, water, sky). Tamika Grant-Iramu’s Interior Landscape series will sit alongside a selection of framed recent works including the print that inspired Grant-Iramu’s impressive mural, Undulations, completed during a 2022 residency at Artspace Mackay. A striking collection of framed and unframed works will be on display with a selection of rugs from Grant-Iramu’s recent collaboration with Designer Rugs Australia. Two out of four rugs from her Interior Landscape collection will be suspended down the centre of our booth. It is a great pleasure to collaborate with Designer Rugs Australia to bring Grant-Iramu’s exclusive range to this year’s CIAF audience.
VENUE 2: Tanks Art Centre (Tank 4), 46 Collins Ave, Edge Hill
Sonja Carmichael and Elisa Jane Carmichael
Dabiyil Bajara (Water footprints), 25 June – 24 July 2022
At the Tanks Art Centre, you will be invited into an exhibition by Sonja Carmichael and Elisa Jane Carmichael titled Dabiyil Bajara (water footprints), spread across the entirety of Tank 4. The exhibition features the artists’ most ambitious installation to date, a series of six cyanotypes, each measuring 5.5 x 2.8m, recently commissioned by Glenn Iseger-Pilkington for the Fremantle Art Centre as part of Perth Festival 2021. The epic-scaled cyanotypes will be draped from the ceiling, delicately touching sand on the floor and enveloping audiences into a deep ocean of ancient Minjerribah stories, plants and animals. Accompanying this series of large-scale works will be a collection of woven pieces, and two significant video works, one showing the process of creating the cyanotype pieces and the other submerging the audience in the beautiful Quandamooka ocean.
VENUE 3: NorthSite (Bulmba-ja Arts Centre), 96 Abbott Street, Cairns City
Teho Ropeyarn
TRAVERSING THREE REALMS: The physical, natural and spiritual, 24 June – 13 August 2022
NorthSite presents Teho Ropeyarn’s colossal work Athumu Paypa Adthinhuunamu (my birth certificate), 2022, freshly transferred from the walls of The National Art School as apart of rīvus (the 23rd Biennale of Sydney). Alongside this supersized piece, Ropeyarn will present a brand new print series inspired by the Cape York Lily, and three large prints, originally presented as part of Tarnanthi 2021. Ropeyarn describes his practice as follows: “Injinoo (and all Aboriginal) people are at one with the land, sea and sky. We traverse the physical, the natural and the spiritual realms. My work for the Biennale is a visual depiction of this philosophy– explaining how the land becomes the human, the human becomes the animal, the animal becomes the land, the land becomes the spirit, and the spirit becomes a device linking these elements.”