Description

Monumental as Anything (2023)
Nature prints, netting, bronze castings, offset publication
Collection of MAMA (Murray Art Museum Albury)

Monumental as Anything presents a new commission by artist Keg de Souza and Aruna Gandhi, a local Albury resident, shaped by Aruna’s stories of her garden. Curated by Evgenia Anagnostopoulou, the exhibition draws out the knowledge, experiences, and memories held by Aruna’s garden and its capacity to rethink how to forge migration narratives within Albury-Wodonga.

The exhibition features an assemblage of prints and cast objects that trace the textures of the garden, like the surti papdi pods and curry leaves that grow there, delicately encased by garden netting. Monumental as Anything, developed as a collaboration conversation between De Souza, Aruna and Anagnostopoulou, reveals how migration stories don’t need to be held by static structures carved in marble or forged in steel. Gardens, like memories, grow and wither with time and depend on care and maintenance. They are living systems. They listen and respond to the shifting communities and seasons of the region— and the histories they leave behind.

Moving away from the monument and the museum as privileged and colonial structures for memory-making, the exhibition considers how the garden can offer alternative physical and social forms to remember local migration histories while grappling with living on unceded lands as settlers.

Special thanks to jeweller, Danae Natsis for bronze work and master printer, Janet Parker Smith.

Monumental as Anything is commissioned as part of the curatorial program Parallel Structures (2023-2024), led by Verónica Tello (UNSW Art & Design) and Salote Tawale (Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney) in collaboration with the Murray Art Museum Albury. Parallel Structures is the exhibition outcome of the Australian Research Council project Parallel (2021-2024).

Photo credit: Monumental as Anything, Installation view, Murray Art Museum Albury, 2023. Jeremy Weihrauch