The title of the exhibition, Empty Pockets, reflects on the painful history of migration, underpayment, and cheap labour experienced by many Asian migrant workers living in Australia. There are many reasons why people relocate. Some families and individuals migrate by choice, while others leave out of necessity. Geographically, Australia has become one of the most common destinations for Asian people searching for new fortunes. It casts Australia as a land of hope and dreams. Migration has become a significant contribution to Australia’s economy. In 1901, the establishment of the White Australia policy was designed to control non-British migration to Australia and supported the ideal of a ‘pure white nation’ (1). This policy was overtly racist and supported cheap labour of non-white workers. In 1973 the White Australia policy was renounced and transitioned towards mechanisms of multiculturalism (2). Multiculturalism has shaped many political campaigns, promoting unprecedented levels of personal liberty, diversity and social equality.
In the art industry, we often see statements by institutions, such as in job descriptions stating ‘.... we support and are committed to diversity, and inclusivity, and strongly encourage applications from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and people with disability’. However, there seem to be enormous gaps and barriers in cultural organisations and employment opportunities for those from migrant backgrounds. According to the research of Diversity Arts Australia, Shifting-the-Balance, there is a minority of CALD representation in cultural institution: only 9% of the 1,980 leaders’ positions (3). This is a significant indictment on the prevailing structures of art institutions. As migrant workers, are we still left with empty pockets?
Empty Pockets examines the idea of labour through the history of migration and the food and textile industries connected to many Asian workers. It brings together the work of James Nguyen (Vietnam-Australian), Kay Abude (Philippines-Australia), Linda Sok (Cambodia-Australia) and Kirtika Kain (India-Australia) - whose works develop from their personal experiences and family histories, as first and second-generation Asian migrants. Through their practices, the exhibition creates the opportunity to consider labour from an Asian migrant perspective. Empty Pockets presents existing works by each artist, which are revisited through a new dialogue, perspective and understanding of Asian migrant labour particularly within the art industry. The exhibition aims to engage with ‘Asia’ as a complex and shifting paradigm that generates voices in a bold diverse lived experience.
Migrant labour has contributed to our daily lives yet often remains invisible.James’ work On The Border Of Things (Part 3, gloves) (2018) centres on the invisible labour of migrant workers behind the vegetable and fruit shelves in supermarkets. The artist holds onto everyday objects from his family to record and document acts of labour. The many cotton gloves have been accumulated by his uncle Công Ái. Công’s small-scale market garden has such low profit margins that they have to reuse and regularly rewash the gloves as this saves substantial costs over time. Through this work, James also infers the unseen labour of the art world; in curatorial and install work, we use cotton gloves as art-handlers and James speculates on ‘how regularly these white cotton gloves are washed and reused in the gallery space’. Through his work, we experience some of the stories behind these invisible hands and the labour they perform.
The relationship between family stories is core to James’ practice. Flatbed Knit Polo Collars (2015) documents the experience of living in a textile factory. Hundreds of polo-shirt collars that his parents kept from their failed textile company in the 1990s were sewn together by the artist with his mother. ‘Their business could not compete with the deregulation of the footwear and textile industries in Australia, and cheap clothing imports from Asia. The leftovers of a failed business, when retained and reprocessed becomes an alternative narrative of existence beyond the processes of globalisation’, James comments (4).
The large-scale patchwork blanket connects and pieces together fragments of familial stories tied to the crisis in the Australian textile industry. The family laboured to earn a living during the crisis, similar to many migrant families who sought stability and opportunity in their adopted country. This sculpture is ultimately connected to the effort of Kim Dung, the artist’s mother. Kim is the seamstress attending to the labour and economic survival of the migrant family. We can connect to the effort of motherhood, healing, family economics, and the dual pull of devotion and responsibility.
Ideas of family labour and heritage as a repository of memories are an important part of Linda Sok’s installation, Salt Water Deluge (Tucoerah River) (2021). Stories from her grandmother, who fled the Khmer Rouge genocidal regime, have influenced her practice. Using traditional Cambodian silk fabrics, this work centres on the idea of healing and preservation of her culture post the brutal regime of the Khmer Rouge. This silk sculpture, made in collaboration with her sister Solina Sok, invokes the idea of her ancestors’ knowledge through the silks submerged in a saline solution. This process derives from observations of her parents making pickled vegetables. This work is created through using salt and water collected from Tucoerah River (Georges River) with permission from Darug Elders. Preservation is a crucial part of survival. Salt is an important ingredient to preserve and maintain food, countering starvation. Linda states that ‘the art of silk weaving, a matrilineally handed-down tradition, was one of many art forms targeted and came close to being erased by the Khmer Rouge perpetrators’ (5). This gentle and seemingly fleeting work brings to life and memorialises the narrative her family stories.
The relationship between materials and ancestral memory is continually present in Kirtika Kain’s work. The exploration of her experience of the Indian caste system, as a woman born in Delhi, now living in Australia, has become central to her artwork. Her materially rich practice focuses on screen-printing and explores power structures, language and labour through the Dalit experience. The works in this exhibition are inspired by When I Hid My Caste by Dalit writer Baburao Bagul. In these works, Kain imagines the material landscape of Bagul’s literary world. Religious materials including cotton wicks and sindoor pigment have been layered with tar and gold leaf upon recycled silkscreen frames. In her practice, Kain collects raw materials such as cow dung, sindoor, human hair, charcoal, gold and tar, that materially attempt to imagine an ancient Dalit culture, imbuing them with a sense of veneration. Kain explores the possibility of re-imagining a new personal and collective identity through migration and the role of the diaspora in actively challenging inherited and societal narratives of caste and patriarchy.
Kay Abude’s practice examines conceptions and conditions of work, labour and systems of production. Her work presents a pictorial timeline of her personal and family history. Like many migrant workers, her parents had to swap professional jobs in the Philippines, from white collar to blue collar jobs. In 1986, her family migrated to Australia from the Philippines, with her mother working in an electrical factory. When Kay chose her career path, she told her parents she wanted to go to art school, and while her parents initially refused, they capitulated on proviso that she take dressmaking class at night as this would give her a valuable trade as back-up plan. In (DON’T) BE AN ARTIST (2021), Kay reflects a sense of precarity experienced as a consequence of the pandemic. During this time, many artists and artistic workers lost their income, studio spaces and opportunity to continue their work.
The idea of a career as an artist is often thought of as fanciful — driven by passion, dreams and hope but not realistic. Simultaneously, artworks represent luxury items, indicating social status for those who collect art. However, working as an artist in Australia might not be an ideal way to survive. In 2014-2015, data showed that artists receive an annual income around $28,000; a level of relative poverty in this society (6).
‘Art is making something out of nothing and selling it. ~ Frank Zappa’ — Kay Abude, 2022
An iteration of screen-printing on textile by the artist, (DON’T) BE AN ARTIST (2022) highlights questions of value, labour, and the marketplace. Through turning the gallery space into a kind of shop, Kay directly confronts the issue of the value of art, positioning the work as imminently sellable and proposing an exchange in the gallery based on commercial terms. (DON’T) BE AN ARTIST brings textiles and the raw materials of production usually associated with the workforce, social status and economies, into the gallery sphere. Empty Pockets proposes a call to act in solidarity with Asian communities through artistic expression. The curator’s and the artists’ personal experiences drive a desire to achieve equality in today’s cultural and labour environment, including in the Australian art community.
Bibliography
‘End of the White Australia Policy’, National Museum of Australia. National Museum of Australia, September 20, 2022. https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/end-of-white-australia-policy.
‘Shifting the Balance’, Diversity Arts Australia, August 2019. https://diversityarts.org.au/app/uploads/Shifting-the-Balance-DARTS-small.pdf.
Goodman, Channon, Permanent Recession: A Handbook on Art, Labour and Circumstance. Eindhoven: published by Onomatopee, 2019.
Curator and writer: Sineenart Meena
Editor: Consuelo Cavaniglia
Advisors: James Nguyen, Kay Abude, Linda Sok, Kirtika Kain, Gertrude Artistic Director Mark Feary and Executive Director Tracy Burgess
Gertrude Curator in Residence: Tim Riley Walsh
Exhibition and Studios Coordinator: Ian Bunyi
Gallery and Education Manager: Sharon Flynn
Engagement Coordinator: Brigit Ryan
Technician: Joshua Heilbuth