Windowless Worlds - Exhibition Catalogue

Windowless Worlds 31 July - 5 December 2021 Wagga Wagga Art Gallery 1

Foreword Windowless Worlds is a consolidation of a new direction for the National Art Glass Exhibition program, whereupon our collection is explored for its narrative potential, and glass used as a device to represent and express challenging ideas.

Academic and Islamic art specialist, Dr Sam Bowker accepted our invitation to curate Windowless Worlds in broad consideration of world conflict, justice and failures of government. It is centred on the devastating Port of Beirut chemical explosion on 4 August 2020, where many died, were injured or left homeless by shattered and falling window glass.

Dr Bowker bought great personal experience, empathy and art historical knowledge of the Middle East to this curatorship. We are greatly appreciative of his passion and commitment to telling this story.

Our appreciation and thanks go also to Friends of Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, who through their generosity made possible the purchase and exhibition of works from Turkish artist Felekşan Onar’s ‘Perched’ series, which reflects on the Syrian refugee crisis and displaced families.

Dr Lee-Anne Hall Director Wagga Wagga Art Gallery National Art Glass Collection August 2021

2

Felekşan Onar Perched 2017 Blown and cast glass New acquisition funded by the Friends of the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery and Private Donor 3

Brick from dismantled glass kiln, Damascus Syria c1979 (detail)

4

5

Curator’s Reflection After dark on a cold evening, from 6pm on the 4th August 2021, Wagga Wagga’s community gathered to recognise the anniversary of the disaster that shattered Beirut and reverberated around the world. A simple ceremony, words and song were offered before votives were lit and nestled below the lemon-scented eucalyptus tree that grows outside the National Art Glass Gallery.

My connection to Beirut consists of repeated visits to friends and their families. It is also a professional connection, as I research and teach the history of art throughout the Middle East, and the complexity of Lebanon’s geopolitical situation and cultural context is important for my students.

As the son of an Australian diplomat, I was raised in Amman, Damascus, Jerusalem, Cairo, and we were evacuated to Cyprus during the Gulf War of 1991. I admire the scholars of Beirut, the wonderful food and music, the convivial privileges and flânerie of a tourist’s experience. I also know that for those who live there, it is a very different and often difficult place. For me, it was never a city of shattered glass. But one year ago, it was. And for many of us, it still is.

Lebanon is a place defined by our own memories of it. Memories of family, friends, neighbours, memories of opportunities and frustrations. We remember the difficulties that the Lebanese people have survived and are still surviving. The frequent lack of electricity and fuel, shortages of food and medicine, rampant inflation rendering the cost of living unaffordable. All of this against systemic corruption and injustice – most notably for the 6

tens of thousands of victims of the devastating blast exactly one year ago. The people responsible for this avoidable disaster involving the storage of a dangerous chemical cargo in the Port of Beirut have not yet faced justice. They are unlikely to, given that they hold positions of power, ensured and protected by their own networks of influence.

Their corruption and incompetence offered no protection for the city of Beirut and our loved ones.

It took months of political activism to declare the 4 August as a National Day of Mourning. In the days afterward, I was appalled to learn that no Lebanese politician actually visited the site of the blast in the Port of Beirut. This is why we now stand with the glass of the windows of Beirut at our feet.

The National Art Glass collection was created to celebrate the best of Australian studio glass, its power and poetry. This exhibition was designed to do something the National Art Glass Gallery had not done before: To view broken glass as a lens for storytelling. For broken glass is loud, fast, and dangerous, it can also be re-built, salvaged, and used again in a new form. And here, glass is harnessed as a window, and we may see the world through it.

Within Windowless Worlds, the work of Australian artists is exhibited alongside international artworks and collected objects which might not be considered ‘art’ – nor even, for that matter, ‘glass’.

They are states of glass and the metaphors of glass, from the bricks of the kiln to the fragmented shards, to displaced air and frozen light.

7

Curator’s Reflection An exhibition is a collection re-arranged. Rather like dreams, a curated exhibition selects objects as statements and memories, reordered as familiar and unfamiliar stories. It is not everything all at once, but a few things in a very specific order - like stanzas in a poem, or verses in a song.

Here I turn to the words of African American poet, Maya Angelou, who wrote in the opening stanza of Still I Rise:

You may write me down in history, With your bitter, twisted lies.

You may trod me in the very dirt.

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

It is in that spirit that we view these broken windows from Beirut. People are stronger than glass. And glass can be recycled, reformed, and reused anew. There is poetry in this process, and indeed, more poetry in this exhibition. The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote in 1982, The Earth is Closing In on Us. At one point this poem asks two questions:

Where will we go after the last frontiers?

Where will the birds fly, after the last sky?

This question is evoked by the placement of three delicate birds from Perched by Feleksan Onar, finally home and safe in Australia after an incredibly long journey, which sit close to Jenny Bowker’s quilt, After the Last Sky, which recalls the ongoing struggle for democracy in Egypt.

Image (right): Jenny Bowker AO after Mosa’ab Elshamy After the Last Sky (detail) 2018 Quilt (cotton and thread with wool batting) 8

9

Curator’s Reflection As you move through the exhibition, as Mahmoud Darwish asked us, I ask you: What should we do with this broken glass, once this exhibition concludes? All ideas are welcome, for glass – like contemporary art – is in a state of constant, precarious change. A museum must serve its community, and we are here to listen, as well as share each other’s stories.

Dr Sam Bowker Charles Sturt University

With Thanks

With special thanks to Dr Maged Adib Khalil and Melinda Bowker for their a cappella performance of Li Beirut, 4 August 2021, National Art Glass Gallery, Wagga Wagga.

Li Beirut by the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, describes the city after the civil war. Reimagined in song, the poem was brought to popular acclaim by the singer Fayrouz in 1984. This song provides peace and pride when it is most needed. The lyrics speak to the memory of the old city, with a rock that resembles an old fisherman’s face, and how the smell of jasmine has been replaced by the taste of ashes.

Dr Sam Bowker Charles Sturt University

10

Tim Silver Crypt Figure A 2019 National Art Glass Collection

11

Glass salvaged from the shattered windows of Beirut Collected by Ibrahim Ammar, 2021 Annealed window glass, broken Donated to the National Art Glass Collection

Wagga Wagga Art Gallery

Civic Centre, cnr Baylis & Morrow Streets Wagga Wagga NSW 2650

W waggaartgallery.com.au P 02 6926 9660 E gallery@wagga.nsw.gov.au

Wagga Wagga Art Gallery is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.

Wagga Wagga Art Gallery is a cultural facility of Wagga Wagga City Council.