Arif Satar and Audrey Fernandes-Satar are artists working in Walyalup, Fremantle WA. Across sculpture, drawing, text, printmaking, sound, and the moving image, they draw from ancestral stories, rituals, and crafting techniques, to create a rich dialogue between the past and the present.
Arif Satar was born in the Island of Mozambique Africa. Growing up under the Portuguese fascist and colonial rule his sense of identity was enmeshed with a feeling of otherness. Today an investigation of his Indian-African-Arabic background is intrinsically embedded in his art practice, which draws upon densities of heritage, memory, literature and history.
Audrey Fernandes-Satar was born in India. She grew up within a microcosm of stories of freedom and activism– collective memories shared or overhead, and then kept safe in an imaginary repository somewhere in her mind. Her artwork traverses’ poetic text, sculpture, drawing and altered photographs – grappling with history, and altering documentation from institutions.
Arif and Audrey are facilitating What The Eyes Cannot See a community collaborative storytelling project in partnership with the Cannery Arts Centre for the Indian Ocean Craft Triennial. Community members and high school students are invited to participate in art making workshops creating a series of Story Books and Memory Objects reflecting their sense of identity, culture and connection to place.
The Story Books will be fashioned as a Zine, short for Magazine, an innovative way of creating a small book by folding creasing and re-folding rice paper to create artistic books exploring the concept of ‘codified’ messages using a mixed media of collage drawing writing and painting. The creation of Memory Objects by using the medium of ceramics will involve the development of skills in hand building techniques to create 3D objects as ‘codified’ forms that capture the essence of individual stories exploring the concept of What The Eyes Cannot See, leading to an abstraction of sorts when individual works are compiled into collective assemblages.
The community works will be exhibited as an installation at the Cannery Arts Centre gallery alongside the artworks created by Audrey and Arif. This is a satellite exhibition for IOTA24.
This residency is funded by the Mt Burdett Foundation, IOTA (The Indian Ocean Triennial Australia) and the Cannery Arts Centre. The exhibition is part of the IOTA24 Festival: Indian Ocean Craft Triennial, supported by Lotterywest.
Photo: Arif and Audrey stand in the foyer entrance to the Main Gallery of the Cannery Arts Centre. Photo by Katie Witt