Confronted by the political calamities of the past (some still ongoing), six Australian artists question what it means to remember and respond to these events in the context of modern sensibilities. They are part of a curated exhibition at Campbelltown Arts Centre: ‘in every room’.
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| Exhibition entrance |
Spread across six gallery spaces, each artist employs a unique medium to address an ‘elephant in the room’. In one room, Sancintya Mohini Simpson’s watercolour and gouache piece, JAHAJINS/SHIP-SISTERS (2023) is displayed across 15 large panels on handmade wasli paper. Each panel displays carefully articulated miniature depictions of indentured Indian women working and living on the sugar colonies.
We are invited to reflect on these vignettes of women’s lives lived under tragic circumstances. On one panel, a woman is giving birth with the aid of two other women. In another, women are seated casually in a circle, conversing. Other panels show women cutting away at imaginary sugar canes and carrying these heavy loads across a vast, empty space.
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| Sancintya Mohini Simpson’s watercolour and gouache piece, JAHAJINS/SHIP-SISTERS (2023) |
Absent from these pictures are the colonial overseers and sugar plantations, drawing attention to the women themselves. A descendent of indentured labourers, Simpson “asks the archive to account for her family’s history” and to “acknowledge interconnected histories” (Exhibition Booklet).
Other exhibiting artists are Lara Chamas, Jakath Dheerasekara, Kuba Dorabialski, Roberta Joy Rich and Curtis Taylor.
‘in every room’ is at the Campbelltown Arts Centre until 14 September 2025. Join the artists for a reflection talk on 13 September 2025. Details here.
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