Ways of seeing: The poetics and politics of exhibiting Italo-Australian cultures in Sydney

This article reflects on the theoretical nodes behind the organisation of the exhibition Italiani di Sydney, Museum of Sydney, 30 August- 7 December 2003. It argues that exhibitions are produced through situated knowledges and it analyses the particular situatedness of the curator. Notions of imagined communities, the poetics of the carnivalesque, the everyday, the importance of objects, cultural heritage in the making, heterogeneity and heteroglossia, gaps between official narratives and lived actualities, hybrid spaces, and hyperlinked narratives, are interwoven in the text with a review of the exhibition

The Ethnological Court at the Garden Palace

This beautifully designed publication is richly illustrated throughout, featuring over 100 large-scale historical and contemporary images and illustrations. Edited by Genevieve O'Callaghan, it includes original essays and interviews with leading Aboriginal writers including Bruce Pascoe – winner of two 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards – Jeanne Leane, Hetti Perkins and Uncle Stan Grant Sr AM, alongside Australian academics Ross Gibson, Peter Kohane, Illaria Vanni Accarigi and curator Emma Pike.

Cannibals and Orchids: Cannibalism and the Sensory Imagination of Papua New Guinea

This article examines Leona Miller's book Cannibal and Orchids (1941) as an example of how place, in this case Papua New Guinea (PNG), is imagined according to a particular sensorium. It follows the âsensory turn in anthropologyâ and the studies developed in the last two decades that take the senses as their object of enquiry. This body of theory is mobilised to analyse Millerâs biographical narrative recounting how PNG is imagined, represented and produced in terms of a disarray of the (Western) senses, coalescing in the trope of cannibalism. This article argues that the experience of PNG as the place of otherness is narrated both in terms of the authorâs sensory displacement and of the indigenous sensorium as abject

Oggetti Spaesati, Unhomely Belongings: Objects, Migrations and Cultural Apocalypses

This article analyses first person memories in relation to objects as documented in Belongings, an online exhibition curated through the NSW Migration Heritage Centre. It explores the role of objects in recreating domestic geographies in the process of migration, using the Italian anthropologist Ernesto De Martinos notion of `crisis of presence as the moment when familiar objects become unfamiliar or uncanny by losing their relation with the web of domestic uses, habits, sense of belonging, and cultural memories. In this crisis, objects acquire new layers of meaning entangled in the loss and re-creation of entire life-worlds, relational universes, senses of place, `homes. Taking Belongings as its case study, this article argues that objects enable the telling and performance of displacement from one place and regrounding in another one as a continuum of affective, embodied and political experiences that question the separation between being at home and being a migrant

Sound of Missing Objects

Background Sound of Missing Objects is a collaborative text, object and sound installation on the gaps in the history of Aboriginal material culture and the role of exhibitions in creating representations of aboriginality in 19th century. It was commissioned by the gallery Performance Space in 2003 and subsequently invited to tour at the Long Gallery, University of Wollongong in 2005. The work consists in five cabinets containing tissue paper stamped with designs, texts and a sound system and in texts inscriptions on the walls. The exhibition received good critical acclaim and specialised media attention (see portfolio). Contribution I researched and developed the concept of this installation and invited artists Jonathan Jones and digital composer Panos Couros to be my collaborators. I wrote all the textual elements in the installation; collaborated in the design and realization of the cabinets, stamped designs and sounds; I oversaw the production and installation of the exhibition. Significance Although Aboriginal art has an extraordinary critical success very little is known and written about early exhibitions of Aboriginal objects. Sound of Missing Objects is based on the research I carried out in my PhD on Aboriginal objects exhibited in International Exhibitions in Europe and US 19th century. It focuses on the narratives and representations woven in the exhibitions and their relations to contemporary politics. On another level it dwells on the absence of the objects, which were never returned to Australia, investigating the role of museums in producing knowledge and memory gaps

Remapping heritage and the garden suburb: Haberfield's civic ecologies

© 2019, © 2019 Geographical Society of New South Wales Inc. Gardens in Australia are considered an important site of heritage maintenance and negotiation for their capacity to materialise transformations in everyday life, design, lifestyles, demographics, environment, as well as social and cultural practices. In the case of conservation areas, gardens tend to be valued in terms of their closeness and potential to preserve specific historical elements. Plants in these gardens are cultivated to evoke period designs, such as Federation (c.1890–1915) and cottage gardens. In this article we turn to gardens and gardening to make sense of entanglements between cultural, historical and environmental elements, and we ask: what role do plants play in shaping our understanding of suburban heritage? To answer this question, we draw on oral histories, archival research and ethnography in Haberfield, the first model garden suburb in Australia. We show how plants channel and mediate multiple concerns that contest and extend ideas of heritage circulating in public discourse. Foregrounding the centrality of plants, this article contributes a dynamic definition of heritage that includes the entanglement of environmental stewardship and individual and collective heritage

Value the Edge: Permaculture as Counterculture in Australia

This paper reconsiders the story of permaculture, developed in Australia in the mid-1970s by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. This paper considers permaculture as an example of counterculture in Australia. In keeping with permaculture design ecological principles, we argue that today permaculture is best understood as part of an assemblage of design objects, bacteria, economies, humans, plants, technologies, actions, theories, mushrooms, policies, affects, desires, animals, business, material and immaterial labour and politics and that it can be read as contrapuntal rather than as oppositional practice. Contrapuntal insofar as it is not directly oppositional preferring to reframe and reorientate everyday practices. The paper is structured in three parts: in the first one we frame our argument by providing a background to our understanding of counterculture and assemblage; in the second we introduce the beginning of permaculture in its historical context, and in third we propose to consider permaculture as an assemblage

reply to the letter to the editor by C.Nicolazzo et al.: "circulating cell-free DNA and circulating tumor cells as prognostic and predictive biomarkers in advanced non-small cell lung cancer patients treated with first-line chemotherapy"

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Italiani di Sydney

Background I was commissioned to curate this exhibition by Museum of Sydney, a highly regarded institution among peers for its research-based exhibitions. The show was the second most successful in the history of the museum. Audience included Italians living in Sydney, museum audiences, academics interested in Italian Studies and Museum Studies, journalists, university and school students. It had a positive cultural and social benefit on several Italian community members (from the comments on the visitor books). It produced two publications: a catalogue (with my essay âItaliani di Sydneyâ) and an Italian language and culture education kit for L.O.T.E. Italian language students. The Museum of Sydney peer reviews exhibitions in different phases through its Exhibitions Advisory Committee and has specific KPIs, included in the final exhibition report: Attendance: 21.236 visitors; 4 different public programs; 1130 L.O.T.E. Italian Language Students; 137 Years 7-10 Food Technology Students; 25 media listings; 29 media reviews; 2 reviews in academic articles. Contribution I researched this exhibition over a period of three years, conducting ethnographies, archival research and over 100 interviews. I developed the overarching concept, narrative paths and microhistories. I sourced over 220 objects from private and public collection and collaborated in the design and installation of the exhibition. Significance This was the first and to date most comprehensive exhibition dedicated to Italian cultures in Sydney and it strengthened the knowledge and appreciation of this cultures. Conceived as a series of snapshots illustrating cultural diversity and richness drawn from historical, contemporary and everyday examples, it produced an innovative conceptualisation and installation design