2019Cosmopolitan

Over seven days and four nights of live events, the Cosmopolitan exhibition program brought together artists, writers and collectives from Australia, Aotearoa, China, the USA and France, speaking to 'the social' in relationship to world-making, centres and peripheries. Taking place at The Drill Hall in Darling Point, Sydney a former site of Navy use and administration for much of the twentieth century, and overlooking Sydney's famous harbour, Cosmopolitan includes artists who, together, address our changing relationship to the divisions and interconnections between contentious notions of the local and the global. Subcultural aesthetics and expressions of community pushed up against the logic of globalisation.

Organised by Rafaela Pandolfini with Jana Hawkins-Andersen

Cosmopolitanism is a concept that has a number of usages/deployments. Etymologically it is derived from the Ancient Greek: kosmos, i.e. "world", "universe", or "cosmos", "politês", i.e. "citizen" or "[one] of a city".  At the centre of cosmopolitanism is the notion that all individuals, regardless of socio-political affiliation, are members of a universal and singular community. As such, we are challenged to detach from more localised, parochial, discrete and exclusive forms of socio-political organisation - nation state, ethnicity, religion etc - in exchange for wide, all-encompassing modes of global-being. We are to echoe with 4th century BCE cynic Diogenes, “I am a citizen of the world”
Lukiah Bodley, The Cosmopolitan, 2019

THE GREEN ROOM

hippies enter through the side door to the bazaar

a curated show with
Alethea Everard
Ander Rennick
George Egerton-Waburton
Hana Earles
Jessie Kiely
Joe Speier
Nik Lee
Samraing Chea
Sorawit Songstaya

George Egerton-Warburton appeared courtesy of Sutton Gallery Melbourne
Samraing Chea appeared courtesy of Arts Project Australia

Spencer Lai

Even though I have never been here before, the bay and this area reminds me of boring obscenities, fantasies you hear on television, in movies: I never experienced like handjobs under piers I never gave, pairs of underwear and greasy groceries I never stole.

That evening, I dream about being an adolescent teenage girl. More accurately: I dream about the embodiment of a young person during their formative years.

In the dream I make friends, listen to music. I rebel against my parents, who are conveniently represented in my dream as two shadowy, undefined figures. I lie in bed and kick and cry and scream into my pillow. No one understands me, and if only there were other people like me out there, we could be friends.

We could share similar interests in another city. We share each other's clothes and exchange information to one another. And if there is no one else left in this world: so be it. I smile to my friend in the dream and I am sure we will continue this friendship over many years. This scenario could take place in the 1950s through to contemporary times. The clothes, music and environment changes only slightly, incrementally different each year -- such is the passage of time.

The large doors swing outwards, as hippies are asked to use the side door to enter the bazaar.

Spencer Lai

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