Dance for You welcomes viewers into a world of play and observation. The array of video and installation works create an immersive environment, one that explores the relationships between movement, visuals and sound that are often used as a shorthand in categorising ‘otherness’ in Australia.
Operating in accordance to their cultural backgrounds, Dance for You explores the artists’ experiences about the world in which they have grown up in as young culturally diverse women in Australia. The collective’s background (Tracy Quan being of Chinese and Solomon Islander decent, and Georgia and Paris Taia being of Cook Island, Samoan and European heritage) is considered when using cultural cues. This includes anything from remote tropical island locations, amateur dance moves, kinky-sweatpant-Baywatch costumes that subvert the familiar into subconsciousness. Drawing upon colonial-rooted notions of the exotic woman as a source of untamed desire and entertainment, the artists reenact Beyonce’s sensual choreography from the same titled 2014 music video, Dance for You, as they perform to a western gaze. Though the cinematography ensuing the use of a drone lends itself to a music-video aesthetic, an element of surveillance becomes apparent as the machine documents the dancers with invasive curiosity and fascination. Borrowing from pop-culture icons and re-imagining them under a fictitious lens, the exhibition ultimately explores the struggles of cultural stereotyping by hybridising contemporary influences with traditional ones. The result of this is a series of hyperbolised characters, saturated in cultural symbolism and appropriation that ultimately leaves their sense of cultural identity more ambitious and abstract than before.
Get To Work is a collaborative practice of Georgia Taia, Paris Taia and Tracy Quan. All members graduated from Sydney College of the Arts in 2015, with Paris and Tracy holding degrees in photomedia, and Georgia in sculpture, performance and installation. Coming from different studio practices, their collaboration focuses on the body, amateur dance and performance to playfully explore aspects of cultural identity shared by three females growing up in Australia with Pacific Islander heritage. The pursuit to find social belonging is often humorously explored through music and dance, reliving the potential pressures, particularly in Australia, to be culturally categorised.
Operating in accordance to their cultural backgrounds, Dance for You explores the artists’ experiences about the world in which they have grown up in as young culturally diverse women in Australia. The collective’s background (Tracy Quan being of Chinese and Solomon Islander decent, and Georgia and Paris Taia being of Cook Island, Samoan and European heritage) is considered when using cultural cues. This includes anything from remote tropical island locations, amateur dance moves, kinky-sweatpant-Baywatch costumes that subvert the familiar into subconsciousness. Drawing upon colonial-rooted notions of the exotic woman as a source of untamed desire and entertainment, the artists reenact Beyonce’s sensual choreography from the same titled 2014 music video, Dance for You, as they perform to a western gaze. Though the cinematography ensuing the use of a drone lends itself to a music-video aesthetic, an element of surveillance becomes apparent as the machine documents the dancers with invasive curiosity and fascination. Borrowing from pop-culture icons and re-imagining them under a fictitious lens, the exhibition ultimately explores the struggles of cultural stereotyping by hybridising contemporary influences with traditional ones. The result of this is a series of hyperbolised characters, saturated in cultural symbolism and appropriation that ultimately leaves their sense of cultural identity more ambitious and abstract than before.
Get To Work is a collaborative practice of Georgia Taia, Paris Taia and Tracy Quan. All members graduated from Sydney College of the Arts in 2015, with Paris and Tracy holding degrees in photomedia, and Georgia in sculpture, performance and installation. Coming from different studio practices, their collaboration focuses on the body, amateur dance and performance to playfully explore aspects of cultural identity shared by three females growing up in Australia with Pacific Islander heritage. The pursuit to find social belonging is often humorously explored through music and dance, reliving the potential pressures, particularly in Australia, to be culturally categorised.
