The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in partnership with Blacktown Arts and Blacktown City Council presents ‘Lifting the Tapu’, a contemporary art project in Mount Druitt.
One of the images in the ‘Lifting the Tapu’ exhibition, which presents works by Greg Semu, an internationally recognised artist working primarily in photography. © Greg Semu.
The project is an MCA C3West initiative bringing artists and communities together to create art that directly responds to local concerns in Western Sydney. It partners with local organisations and businesses to identify areas of need, developing artist-led projects that are genuinely collaborative and socially engaged. Semu’s richly detailed photographs adopt icons from western art history to represent participating Pasifika community members, including those from Australian Aboriginal, Cook Islands, Sāmoan, Tahitian, Tokelau, Tongan and Māori cultural backgrounds. The artworks also consider the ways that these community members overcome challenges through kinship and solidarity.
By referencing Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (c.1484–1486) in his work Lifting the Tapu, Semu reinterprets its themes of love and renewal to consider the importance of matriarchal familial connections to wellbeing. His recreation of Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830), which celebrates a revolutionary moment in France’s history, is used by Semu to examine the impact of colonisation in the Pacific region, coupled with an acknowledgement of Australia as a new home to generations of Pasifika peoples.
Lifting the Tapu brings children, young adults and elders together in a symbolic assertion of kinship and mutual resilience. This large-scale outdoor photographic, video and sound installation will be on display at Dawson Mall, Mount Druitt from the 8 – 30 June 2024. It will be officially opened on Saturday 8 June 2024, between 2:00 and 4:00 p.m.
