About Borders and Transitions

Photographed by Cherina Hadley

Borders and Transitions was a group show curated by Claire Bushby and Aisyah Aaqil Sumito in the City of Perth’s light lockers in the Roe/James st car park arcade, Northbridge. The show features artists Sophie La Maitre, Marina Van Leeuwen and Sophie G Nixon who created site-specific work individually and collaboratively.

Artist statement for Smother:
Smother explores processes of kindness and cruelty, through Nixon’s treatment of the plant Belladonna (Deadly Nightshade, Atropa Belladonna). Nixon ‘rescued’ this resilient plant growing through cracked pavement in Nick’s lane, Northbridge. While Belladonna is notorious for it’s deadly potential it’s lesser known for its healing abilities in medical history. Smother hopes to change perceptions of an unwanted, poisonous and invasive weed by placing Belladonna in a safe and nurturing environment, as an attempt to value its healing ability. Nixon’s treatment of the plant through stitching, pressing, felting and dying borderlines between harming and healing.

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Installation view of Borders and Transitions at James St Light Lockers, Northbridge.

Photographed by Cherina Hadley

Catalogue essay by Alyce Wilson:

“Hip stores, museums, excellent restaurants and cafes mark the new Northbridge, but the old run-down and the down-and-out Northbridge of the drugged and dispossessed is still very much in evidence. A startling contrast, to say the least…”

-Panajody, review on TripAdvisor.com.

The Australian Government’s most recent multicultural policy, launched in June of this year, features personal stories from migrants who have achieved prosperity via the various advantageous circumstances that were offered to them upon arrival in Australia. Fundamentally, ‘Multicultural Australia- United, Strong, Successful’ looks forward—it is a continued promotion of a “multicultural Australia, in which racism and discrimination have no place.” However, the policy is devoid of any in-depth consideration into how we became such a culturally diverse nation. Northbridge, WA, is often depicted by travel guides as a microcosm of modern Australia—an exemplar of a tolerant place willing to embrace cultural, religious, and racial differences. A stroll through the streets of Northbridge today will reveal an abundance of eateries specialising in cuisine from all over the world, with Asian cuisine especially represented. A byproduct of widespread settlement and migration, gastronomic diversity is a commonly used signifier for precisely how multicultural this country is.

Yet it was only approximately a hundred years ago when Australia’s policies were very much concerned with assimilation, rather than tolerance and celebration of cultural difference. When the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 was passed, Chinese market gardeners in the Northbridge area faced many restrictions. Unable to own land, bring their families to Australia, or sell their produce to government agencies or at the Perth City Markets, the gardeners were eventually pushed out of Northbridge.

Let us look even back further to when Northbridge was a landscape of shallow swamps, creeks, and lakes. Although these wetlands were very much in use by the Noongar people who lived in this area, they were deemed unworthy of conservation by the early European settlers. In an essay entitled ‘I Still Call Australia Home: Indigenous Belonging and Place in a White Post Colonizing Society’, Aboriginal activist and scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson writes:

“In the Australian context, the sense of belonging, home and place enjoyed by the non-Indigenous subject—colonizer/migrant—is based on the dispossession of the original owners of the land and the denial of our rights under customary law.”

Mounted within four light lockers in the James Street parking arcade, Borders and Transitions encourages us to consider what is left behind after decades of psychogeographical, cultural, and environmental transitions. These hopeful, contemplative, and often sentimental works bring the historical implications of everyday Australian realities into focus. Artists Marina Van Leeuwin, Sophie La Maitre, and Sophie Nixon, have slowed their own steps to uncover the complex, ancient lives of Northbridge.

Sophie La Maitre’s contribution to Borders and Transitions leans heavily on what we may not see—whether by wilful choice, habitual avoidance, or because we are lucky enough to take our immediate environment for granted. Her re-presentation of found, discarded objects of present-day Northbridge life in ‘Milligan/James/Lake/Roe’ removes the viewer’s privilege of being able to pick and choose what to embrace as part of our shared history. Marina Van Leeuwin’s ‘Erased’ highlights the historical significance of the James Street parking lot, which was once a site of food, water, and ceremony for Noongar people of the region. Van Leeuwin’s inclusion of a steel wire leaf elicits a response of inexplicable loss from the viewer—the skeletal, shining structure mimics the form of something vulnerable and impermanent. ‘Erased’ is partly informed by the story of Fanny Balbuk, a Noongar woman who embarked on a righteous protest as sites such as Lakes Kingsford were drained, filled in, sold off, and built upon. Determined to maintain the land rights of her people, she would walk the track between her birth site and the railway station, ignoring the obstacles that were rising in her path. Fanny Bulbuk’s transitions across these new borders marked the beginning of a displacement narrative for Indigenous people in Northbridge.

Notions of displacement are further explored by Sophie Nixon. Nixon’s process involved the removal of Belladonna (Deadly Nightshade, Atropa Belladonna) in order to celebrate the lesser-known, beneficial properties of a notoriously resilient, unwanted plant. The resulting artwork, ‘Smother’, asks us to consider how undesirability is determined. By casting herself as a decision-maker—a ‘rescuer’ of the Belladonna—Nixon experienced how difficult it is to manage the dichotomy between kindness and cruelty when it comes to deciding what is best for another living thing. In a final, collaborative light-locker, native and introduced plants (Amaranth, Japanese Pepper Tree, and Carrot Weed) vie for dominance and settle on something akin to harmony.

Borders and Transitions identifies some of the more finely-drawn borders that continue to divide us as Australians. It is easy for many of us to walk onwards; to selectively absorb only what we want to as we move through Northbridge on our way to work, a new clothing boutique, or the latest rooftop small bar. The Australian Government has adopted multiculturalism policies since the 1970s, yet it is still an Anglo-Saxon culture that is dominant. How, then, do we achieve an authentic multiculturalism? Borders and Transitions posits that we ought to look behind and all around us in order to move forward together. Only then can we acknowledge how far we have come, and how much work we still need to do.

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Smother

Hand Jacob Sheep felted wool, belladonna (Deadly Nightshade, Atropa Belladonna), cotton thread, dimensions variable