Prevailing Gales -Tasmania

Prevailing Gales is an exhibition that brings art, history, and the sea into dialogue. It responds to an extraordinary nineteenth-century encounter between convicts from Van Diemen Land (Lutruwita/Tasmania) aboard the brig Cyprus and samurai from Japan’s Awa Domain (Tokushima). The exhibition considers how this event has been shaped by differing cultural records and perspectives, and by the ways it was observed, recorded, and understood.

The colour blue is deeper for understanding it as a pigment heavy with history. Paper is more profoundly known when understood as plant fibres, its making perfected by people in place. Tar, copper, rope, sounds, and a weather app enter the story as well, thoughtfully incorporated into installations giving layers of meaning ranging from latent to overt. And the lines drawn, back and forth, from Recherche Bay to Teba Jima are waves, carrying within them a forceful coalescence of the personal, historical, and cultural.

Excerpt from Prevailing Gales catalogue essay by Lisa Pang, Page 14 & 17