Regarding Fear and Hope

Monash University Museum of Art

Part 1: Faculty Gallery, Caulfield campus 5 July – 28 July 2007

Part 2: Monash University Museum of Art, Clayton campus 4 July – 25 August 2007

Regarding Fear and Hope is an exhibition which examines two abiding emotions that are dominating the contemporary political and cultural landscape. Exploring the issues of immigration, diverse identities, racism, refugees and difference, as well as new cultural formations and identities, this exhibition featured the work of Australian and international artists as follows:

Yael Bartana (Israel); Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley (Australia); Willie Doherty (Ireland); David Griggs (Australia); Lucia Madriz (Costa Rica); Tom Nicholson (Australia); r e a (Australia); Lázaro A. Saavedra-González, (Cuba), Sriwhana Spong (New Zealand) and Lynette Wallworth (Australia).

Regarding Fear and Hope tackles the emotional tenor of our times. The exhibition aims to investigate and register the political and cultural dimensions of these emotional states.

There is an increasing and pervading sense of ‘fear’ in our midst, made manifest in some of the more extreme attitudes to immigrants and asylum seekers, but also in responses to the abstract notions of change, risk and difference. It is perhaps not so much that we are actually fearful, but that fear itself is more present today, as a concept, a justification, an irritant and a political concern.

A counterpoint to fear is hope — and one of the urgent questions of our time is whether we can have hope or not. Hope is an emotion that many of us have experienced at one time or another. But a sense of hope in the wake of fear is altogether different. Hope requires faith in human behaviour.