Anne Zahalka and Sue Saxon
Isle of Refuge, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, College of Fine Arts, UNSW, 12 June – 19 July, 2003
UR in EU, Sir Hermann Black Gallery & Sculpture Terrace, UNSW, 21 April – 22 May, 2004
16th Tamworth Fibre Textile Biennial: A matter of time, Tamworth City Gallery, November 2004 – 30 January 2005 and regional tour
Australian National Maritime Museum, 5 July – 5 November, 2006
“Into the fragile fabric of the everyday are woven universal stories of hope and fear,” Lindl Lawton, ANMM
Displaced Persons charts the journeys of two families’ flights from Europe to Australia through the layering of photographs and personal documents from their family archives. The images map the reasons they fled from their homeland and the emotional and physical landscapes they encountered in their search for a new life. Travel and immigration documents, emblematic anti-Semitic and Communist propaganda and nostalgic images of Hungary and Czechoslovakia have been transferred onto twenty handkerchiefs, creating the context of both the physical and psychological journeys undertaken. Images projected onto a large pregnant belly insinuate a sense of prejudice written on the skin, inscribing the notions of racism and suspicion of ‘the other’ both internally and externally, of being born into a certain history by which we are defined.
Guide to works | Article, ANMM Signals Magazine
