r e a – artist | curator | activist | academic | cultural educator

We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves. Our best destiny is to imagine, at least, completely, who and what, and that we are. The greatest tragedy that can befall us is to go unimagined. — N. Scott Momaday (1979 p. 167)

See below a selection of creative works by r e a (2009 – 2020)

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Listen_UP, r e a & Judy Atkinson, 2019, 7.2 Channel Audio Installation. 

Listen_UP, r e a & Judy Atkinson, 7.2 Ch Audio installation by Andrew Belletty with Missi Mel Pesa and Nardi Simpson. Exhibited at The Big Anxiety-Empathy Clinic, Galleries UNSW, Sydney 27 SEP 2019 — 16 NOV 2019.

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‘Vaguely Familiar’: haunted identities, contested histories, Indigenous futures

Doctor of Philosophy in Visual Anthropology, UNSW Art & Design, University of New South Wales 2019.

‘Vaguely Familiar’: haunted identities, contested histories, Indigenous futures is a practice-led PhD consisting of three creative works and a written thesis, which is intended as a contribution to Australian Indigenous new media theory and practice; a text written ‘by and for’ Aboriginal artists, not just ‘about’ us, following the eminent Aboriginal academic and activist Marcia Langton.  My practice-led research develops a methodology of decolonisation which un-stories dominant colonial frameworks and re-Indigenises a critical capacity for creative work. Through responding to personal memory and a politics of resistance, this PhD re-examines identity politics, gender, sexuality and the performance of Aboriginality. My thesis follows a journey across the development of three experimental art works [Native (2015) Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (2016), and Pause (2019)] from re-imaging the colonial archive, to the practice of Indigenous research protocols, to learning to listen to country…

PAUSE – single-channel video & sound work

Pause, is a experimental video work that explores the act of walking on country, a repetitive experience I participated in with my maternal grandfather and grandmother at different times in my early life.

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Native series (2015)

Still image from Native series (1 of 16 TEXT Panels created for the LED digital signage board), a site responsive installation work [located on two sites, originally created as part of The Native Institute Project at Blacktown Arts Centre NSW 2015

Still image from Native series (Neon, sensor driven pressure pads activated the sound), a site responsive installation work [located on two sites, originally created as part of The Native Institute Project at Blacktown Arts Centre NSW 2015

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PolesApart series (2009)

1 x single-channel video & 4 x large c-type photographic triptyches