In-Habit

By Sharne Wolff

Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan are a husband and wife art team well-known for their major installation projects. The pair, who now have five children, migrated to Australia from the Philippines in 2006. Since that time their work has explored themes of migration, cultural and personal identity, domesticity and community. In the new work In-Habit: Project Another Country the duo considers the idea of ‘place’ in two separate but interrelated works. In-Habit transforms the interior of the Sherman Contemporary art space into a rambling shantytown constructed entirely from recycled cardboard boxes installed on scaffolding. Visitors to the gallery can reflect on themes of displacement and resilience experienced and endured by humans in different circumstances all over the world. This piece will also involve the audience by asking them to contribute to the building during the exhibition period.

Accompanying the installation is the Aquilizian’s first film venture focusing on the underprivileged people of the Badjao minority ethnic race in the Philippines. The Badjao have adapted to their difficult living circumstances with ingenuity and good humour and the film portrays young children performing on the streets to foreign rap music and makeshift instruments in exchange for food and money.

22 June to 25 August 2012.

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Paddington.

http://www.sherman-scaf.org.au

Pic: Courtesy of the artists and Sherman Foundation.