The Substation/​ Pierra Van Sparkes/​ Current/

My mother and I make tea in my nan’s old crockery, items passing between hands and in and out of frame as they move between us. Up and down the hills and valleys we go, grateful guests on beautiful Taungurung country we’ve called home for all these years. Unmoved and shaken up, you hold us all the same. The brush grows back, old paths are walked again.

Cast over two of The Substation’s arched windows, Current is a video projection piece by Pierra Van Sparkes. Informed by The Substation’s past of providing electricity and transportation, Current contemplates the history and architecture of the site, linking it with the artist’s experience of cycle and connection, past and place. We follow a line of light, looped around and between trees surrounding the artist’s family home: mimicking childhood circuits between Mum and Nan’s house, and marking renewed movements in the space.

Presented by The Substation and Melbourne Fringe Festival.

About Pierra Van Sparkes:

Pierra Van Sparkes is a Kulin country-based Pibbulman artist. Her work is inspired by the shared history, feelings and encounters that shape lived experiences of Aboriginality amidst a diverse range of Indigenous identities. Working with photography, video and digital media, she interrogates the mythscapes that inform notions of Indigenous authenticity, settler-colonial supremacy and the modes in which they manifest.

Her work has featured in shows including disrupt, Hamer Hall (2019); Taking it Blak, Center For Contemporary Photography (2019); Blak to the Future, Footscray Community Arts Centre (2018); BBQ: Blak, Beautiful and Queer, (In)Visible (2018); Hitched, Wyndham Art Gallery (2019); and The Koorie Art Show, Koorie Heritage Trust (2016/17), taking home the 2016 RMIT University Award and the 2017 Moogji Club People’s Choice Award.