BERLIN | 2016

An exhibition featuring the work of Leanora Olmi.

13th December – 6.30-9.30pm  – Exhibition Opening
13th – 14th December – 2-6pm – Exhibition Open
Opening Hours: 2-6pm
14th December 6pm – Artist’s talk

Meinblau Projektraum
Christinenstrasse 18-19, 10119 Berlin

‘Glory Box’ explored the notion of memory found in landscape and imaging, through a live research and sensory ethnographic approach.

The work was conceived in the towns of Rainbow and Cowwarr, Australia where Olmi has been visiting since 2014 with her camera and her curiosity. An assemblage of images have been gathered from conversations, numerous cups of tea and a generosity of spirit from a community in their sharing of histories and archive material.

The work is not so much a documentary snapshot of country town Australia, but rather a work that speaks to the viewer of the commonality of experience throughout  small communities, how we reflect on our own archives, and our reading of the photographic image. A photograph can simultaneously tell us everything and nothing, and its opaque tendencies are explored in this contemplative work. Memories are fragmented, fleeting and sometimes hard to decipher. They often seem shrouded in a darkness until brought into the light through the unconscious and the recurring nature of recollection.

‘Glory Box’  created a journey in which the viewer actively engages their imagination to create their own reading of the work.

Leanora Olmi is an artist-researcher and film curator based in Melbourne. She is currently doing her PhD at the Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne. Her research explores a community’s experience of their environment through personal archives and storytelling, touching on notions of memory, social imaginings and change. The project examines communities in regional areas and the stories of inhabitants through a series of community archive events and through Olmi’s own photographic practice.

Thank you to Dianne Dickson and The Rainbow Archive.

For more information download the text on the exhibition or listen to my talk with Leanora below.

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Related Events

During her time in Berlin, Leanora also reunited with her Edinburgh based collaborator Lydia Beilby, who together make up Screen Bandita. The duo create performative live-cinema works using archive, found 8mm and 16mm film, slides, photography and ephemera as source materials, to connect elemental links with the past and the presence, wherein they create their new participatory pieces. Screen Bandita hosted two additional events in Berlin: Future Ruins and Bring Your Own Archive.

Future Ruins
Film, Sound and Spoken Word Performance
10th December 8pm
Hosted by Ausland
Lychener Str. 60 10437 Berlin

Screen Bandita collaborated with electronic alchemist, Neil Simpson, on a new analogue found and handmade film, sound and spoken word performance that  travelled across the seas from Scotland to Australia and back again, to settle in Berlin. The performance depicted a work in progress from correspondences spanning the furthest reaches of the globe and thus featured an audience feedback session at its conclusion.

Bring Your Own Archive
Workshop
11th December
Hosted by LaborBerlin
Prinzenallee 58
13359

Screen Bandita invited everyday Berliners to a friendly, participatory community gathering. Together, we explored personal archival materials and the many ways to revitalise and reinvent them through creative projects. Participants were invited to bring an object, memory, song, text, 8mm or 16mm film, photograph or slide that meant something to them to share with the group. We discussed questions such as: where can I find myself in an archive? how can one connect emotionally with archival material? how can archival material be revitalised and engaged imaginatively and creatively?