Taken
Blur Projects
This event has concluded
Dates:
Entry Fee:
Free
Exhibition Event:
Official Opening
08/05/2019 6:00 pm
Blur Projects has been collaborating with individuals and organisations, over the past 20 years, to create multi-media exhibitions which provide a focal point for conversations that support social change.
The power of this project lies within the stories shared by the twenty participants from across our nation, who are just some of our Forgotten Australians. These participants were vulnerable children when they were subjected to child abuse. This abuse was perpetrated by those who were supposed to care for and protect them from harm. Abuse which cannot be forgotten and continues to harm them to this day.
The artistic vision of this project uses black and white portrait photography combined with Bar code patterns to create sandwiched artworks of each participant which result in a 3D effect. The full features of the person are only revealed when the viewer stands a particular angle. The bar code pattern acknowledges how the participants feel they have been treated – as a faceless statistic known only by a registration number. The images attached are examples of the style of photography that the viewer will see, but are not the actual participants.
Belinda’s artworks are not 2D photographs on paper. Belinda uses photography to create photographic sculptural works that are ‘internal’ portraits. The works are accompanied by self-narrative interviews and documentary photography of the participants. There are text panels of transcribed first-person stories of each of the participants. There is an app for viewers with sensory, cognitive and learning impairments. Some exhibitions also have books and DVDs. Some of the interviews have been broadcast on television and most recently included in the 2018 Sydney Film Festival.
For each person in the project, there are many more whose stories and lives are invisible. For them, the project provides recognition that they are not isolated in their experiences. In telling these stories we must not forget those whose voices cannot be heard. Those for whom the abuse is too raw to speak up. Those who chose suicide to escape the pain. Those who are buried in unmarked graves.
Director of Blur Projects, Belinda Mason, has over 25 years of experience in both the arts and commercial photography sectors. She has conceptualised, produced and presented high-quality socio-cultural engaged art exhibitions, workshops and events for national and international audiences. Belinda has been invited to speak at professional conferences and events such as the United Nations Commission of the Status of Women in New York 2016 and 2018 at the United Nations Commission on the Rights of Persons with Disability in Geneva 2016 and World Conference on Indigenous Persons in New York in 2014, United Nations Human Council in Geneva 2013. In 2008 Belinda was the winner of the Moran, Kodak Salon and Human Rights Photography awards. She won
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