TMAG exhibition A Journey to Freedom explores our physical and mental prisons

EXCITEMENT is building ahead of Tasmania’s popular midwinter festival, with some key exhibitions and shows kicking off Dark Mofo 2018.

EXCITEMENT is building ahead of Tasmania’s popular midwinter festival, with some key exhibitions and shows opening on Friday to kick off Dark Mofo 2018.

As mysterious upside down crosses are installed across the waterfront and workers begin to prepare Princes Wharf No. 1 for next week’s Winter Feast, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery will open its Dark Mofo centrepiece A Journey to Freedom on Friday night.

Artist Sam Wallman with one of his pieces in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery’s exhibition A Journey to Freedom. Picture: RICHARD JUPE

Across the river, Rosny Barn will launch Troy Emery’s Wildlife exhibit, featuring shaggy dog-like sculptures. The show is open on Friday between 11am-5pm.

Late rock ’n’ roll legend Lou Reed’s guitars and amps will create a roaring hum at Domain House from 2-8pm. The free act involves 24 strings activated by magnetic cones unleashing a surge of sound.

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Tanya Tagaq will also bring a musical act to the stage on day one, performing an explosive live score to a screening of Robert J. Flaherty’s silent chequered classic Nanook of the North, at the Odeon Theatre from 8pm. The film documents the life of an Inuit family in the Arctic.

On the city’s waterfront, the appearance of inverted red crosses have had many locals scratching their heads. Creators Christian Wagstaff and Keith Courtney, from CPS Productions, were scheduled to enlighten locals about their work involving three 20m crosses on Thursday.

But the public will have to wait a little longer for the reasons for the installation after the media event was postponed. CPS Productions were behind the mind-bending House of Mirrors set up at Dark Park in 2016.

The themes of incarceration and freedom are central to TMAG’s new exhibition.

A Journey to Freedom is guest curated by Swiss-born Barbara Polla and brings together thought-provoking works by 13 European and Australian contemporary artists, including a photographic series by Tasmanian Ricky Maynard.

From left, artist Rachel Labastie, from France, co-curator and senior curator of art at TMAG Dr Mary Knight, guest curator Barbara Polla and artist Sam Wallman at the entrance to the A Journey to Freedom exhibition. Picture: RICHARD JUPE

Sam Wallman has two works in the exhibition, including At Work Inside Our Detention Centres: A Guard’s Story.

The powerful work gives the audience an insight into the interaction between asylum seekers and guards at Australia’s immigration facilities.

His other piece, which has been painted on a gallery wall, explores the history of imprisonment in Tasmania, as well as issues relating to contemporary and future prisons. Part of the painting references a drug research trial in England, which involves chemicals that would psychologically disturb a prisoner into thinking they’ve been in jail for thousands of years, rather than a week or two.

From donning a virtual reality headset for a seven-minute journey into outer space by artist Shaun Gladwell, to video installations, sign-writing and navigating around a small concrete slab the size of a prison cell, the multimedia artworks ask viewers to think about what imprisonment means and how we can change it.

“By imprisonment, I mean the real ones of the walls of the jails but also the imprisonments we have inside our minds,” said curator Ms Polla.

“These works specifically talk about prisoners, but in some ways we are all imprisoned in our body and in our brain.”

Along with her international curating work, Ms Polla’s background includes training as a medical doctor in her hometown of Geneva before entering the Swiss National Parliament as an MP.

Co-curator Dr Mary Knight said having different institutions working together “creates some very exciting projects”.

A Journey to Freedom opens on Friday at 6pm and runs until July 29.