Tethered explores the magnetism of connection, from the glow
of first love, to the growing pains of heartbreak. Our desires wander like
liquid, seeping into crevices and holes carved by absences or the places only
dreams can summon. All while familiar shadows wait in the rear view of desire,
worrying us of what we could lose, worrying us into stillness. A tether can be
the happiest place on earth, and be as fleeting as night. It can seem
inexplainable, or something you know all too well. Being tethered is to be with
someone or something, holding on, holding on.
I arrived at tethered at the end of summer. A season of conflict and romance recrystallising in sepia, saved for a winter swim in shores of memory. Sometimes memory escapes the body. Sometimes memory is the only way we understand it. Words felt fickle. I could see something through and through and be spat back out at the start all over again, in this body, with these words, arranging, rearranging, until things could get a little clearer.
I decided to open Framework this year with tethered, to work things out. As a call to stop, observe, and reinvent. What needs to change? What has worked so far? How can we look at all of this differently? I had tiringly re-emerged from an intense period of organising for the Sydney Festival Boycott in January – a campaign that fought against the festival’s seeking out of funding from the Israeli embassy, and extensively, the complicity of institutions in the arts. I felt betrayed and totally distrustful of the art institutions I had spent so much of my youth fighting to finally let me in (shocking news: it’s not all it’s made out to be). As artworkers, as artists, the work we cared about, that we believed could inspire change and resist systems of oppression, was being instrumentalised for art washing – a systemic strategy to enable the displacement of Indigenous people. As students we spend time in universities discussing the ongoing impacts of colonisation, opening lectures, tutorials, forums, and openings with land acknowledgements. Yet colonisation is easier to digest and intellectualise when examined from afar. In these institutions, we are tethered to patterns, canons, languages that historically uphold and enact violence. Who funds these institutions? With these financial ties, how much can we say before our place here is compromised? I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom, and I don’t think the work we do as students in these spaces doesn’t matter or doesn’t make a difference. In fact, I feel as Stephen Gilchrist states, that there is a staunch and radical power in refusing and insisting when we find ourselves in this position (Gilchrist, 2020). We can show up in these spaces, but the work needs to be done here as well as outside the institution or the gallery, through activism. How can we untether ourselves from these existing structures, to open new worlds, things we couldn’t have imagined were possible in our current circumstances?
Through this I start to think about tethered in more hopeful terms. We often imagine tethers in twos, in binaries. But maybe we are laying across a spider web of pathways and connections, jewels of morning dew breaking against our skin. Maybe we are suspended, rotating in the air, secured by multiple points of trust, reassured by a halo of forehead kisses. Maybe our wrists still wear the ropes from when we escaped the worst, plains of concrete fraying at tethers old but not forgotten. How can we remedy these ties, become brave enough to rely on community, create tethers that matter, that are drawn from believing in and fighting for a better future, rather than holding us back?
I’m incredibly proud of the contributors of this issue, and the sincerity and bravery that they took with them as they created these beautiful works. Each contributor reflected and reckoned with what tethers exist in their lives, and also carefully considered and challenged the language they would need to use to reach these perspectives. In turn, they also came to notice what language would potentially restrict or mute them. Em Best invites us into a compellingly honest break-up story. By critically recounting her personal ties to ~nationally adored~ artist, Ben Quilty, she exposes the white-capitalist art institution’s obsessive creation and preservation of a figure that reproduces the settler-colony. Owen Redmond gently plays with notions of readability in his cyclical, rippling poem. He reflects on tethers to the self through how time, place, the body and memory inform the ways we grow or stay the same. Sisters Monica and Lilian Trieu merge cultural aesthetics of Sydney’s South West into an arcade game. As we sink into the lull of a night drive, Monica and Lilian share their apprehensions around the threat of gentrification in their home. Angelique Ford opens her bedroom door where Frankie Cosmos lyrics float around, remedying growing pains. She draws parallels between fandom, the singing voice, and temporal moments of safety. Tessa Walker-Charles’ performance dances in the dark tether of beauty and colonialism. She simultaneously recognises the ongoing embeddedness of racialised erasure and the possibility for rebirth in the act of defiance. Joshua Di Mattina-Beven curiously searches for queer connections and potentialities in quantum theory and the rekindling of friendships. They grasp at the unknowable to learn about themselves, picking at the infinity of queerness with empathy and enamour. Astrid Bell intricately cherishes the bonds of friendship and poses a future that uplifts and mimics their forms. She hopes for systemic change where we can be critical out of kindness, and collaborative in sustainable and radical ways.
I hope this issue can exist as a space of reflection upon what tethers make our worlds and why they latch, loosen, or feel unstable. How can we make our relationships and social spaces places where we can trust, grow and love more deeply? What will you tether to next?
Huge thank you for Kieran Butler for the gorgeous contributor designs on the landing page and their care and support throughout the process of putting this issue together.
References
Stephen Gilchrist, “Indigenous Curatorial Interpellations: Insistence and Refusal,” in The Australian art field : practices, policies, institutions, 252-265, New York, NY, Routledge, 2020
I arrived at tethered at the end of summer. A season of conflict and romance recrystallising in sepia, saved for a winter swim in shores of memory. Sometimes memory escapes the body. Sometimes memory is the only way we understand it. Words felt fickle. I could see something through and through and be spat back out at the start all over again, in this body, with these words, arranging, rearranging, until things could get a little clearer.
I decided to open Framework this year with tethered, to work things out. As a call to stop, observe, and reinvent. What needs to change? What has worked so far? How can we look at all of this differently? I had tiringly re-emerged from an intense period of organising for the Sydney Festival Boycott in January – a campaign that fought against the festival’s seeking out of funding from the Israeli embassy, and extensively, the complicity of institutions in the arts. I felt betrayed and totally distrustful of the art institutions I had spent so much of my youth fighting to finally let me in (shocking news: it’s not all it’s made out to be). As artworkers, as artists, the work we cared about, that we believed could inspire change and resist systems of oppression, was being instrumentalised for art washing – a systemic strategy to enable the displacement of Indigenous people. As students we spend time in universities discussing the ongoing impacts of colonisation, opening lectures, tutorials, forums, and openings with land acknowledgements. Yet colonisation is easier to digest and intellectualise when examined from afar. In these institutions, we are tethered to patterns, canons, languages that historically uphold and enact violence. Who funds these institutions? With these financial ties, how much can we say before our place here is compromised? I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom, and I don’t think the work we do as students in these spaces doesn’t matter or doesn’t make a difference. In fact, I feel as Stephen Gilchrist states, that there is a staunch and radical power in refusing and insisting when we find ourselves in this position (Gilchrist, 2020). We can show up in these spaces, but the work needs to be done here as well as outside the institution or the gallery, through activism. How can we untether ourselves from these existing structures, to open new worlds, things we couldn’t have imagined were possible in our current circumstances?
Through this I start to think about tethered in more hopeful terms. We often imagine tethers in twos, in binaries. But maybe we are laying across a spider web of pathways and connections, jewels of morning dew breaking against our skin. Maybe we are suspended, rotating in the air, secured by multiple points of trust, reassured by a halo of forehead kisses. Maybe our wrists still wear the ropes from when we escaped the worst, plains of concrete fraying at tethers old but not forgotten. How can we remedy these ties, become brave enough to rely on community, create tethers that matter, that are drawn from believing in and fighting for a better future, rather than holding us back?
I’m incredibly proud of the contributors of this issue, and the sincerity and bravery that they took with them as they created these beautiful works. Each contributor reflected and reckoned with what tethers exist in their lives, and also carefully considered and challenged the language they would need to use to reach these perspectives. In turn, they also came to notice what language would potentially restrict or mute them. Em Best invites us into a compellingly honest break-up story. By critically recounting her personal ties to ~nationally adored~ artist, Ben Quilty, she exposes the white-capitalist art institution’s obsessive creation and preservation of a figure that reproduces the settler-colony. Owen Redmond gently plays with notions of readability in his cyclical, rippling poem. He reflects on tethers to the self through how time, place, the body and memory inform the ways we grow or stay the same. Sisters Monica and Lilian Trieu merge cultural aesthetics of Sydney’s South West into an arcade game. As we sink into the lull of a night drive, Monica and Lilian share their apprehensions around the threat of gentrification in their home. Angelique Ford opens her bedroom door where Frankie Cosmos lyrics float around, remedying growing pains. She draws parallels between fandom, the singing voice, and temporal moments of safety. Tessa Walker-Charles’ performance dances in the dark tether of beauty and colonialism. She simultaneously recognises the ongoing embeddedness of racialised erasure and the possibility for rebirth in the act of defiance. Joshua Di Mattina-Beven curiously searches for queer connections and potentialities in quantum theory and the rekindling of friendships. They grasp at the unknowable to learn about themselves, picking at the infinity of queerness with empathy and enamour. Astrid Bell intricately cherishes the bonds of friendship and poses a future that uplifts and mimics their forms. She hopes for systemic change where we can be critical out of kindness, and collaborative in sustainable and radical ways.
I hope this issue can exist as a space of reflection upon what tethers make our worlds and why they latch, loosen, or feel unstable. How can we make our relationships and social spaces places where we can trust, grow and love more deeply? What will you tether to next?
Huge thank you for Kieran Butler for the gorgeous contributor designs on the landing page and their care and support throughout the process of putting this issue together.
References
Stephen Gilchrist, “Indigenous Curatorial Interpellations: Insistence and Refusal,” in The Australian art field : practices, policies, institutions, 252-265, New York, NY, Routledge, 2020
