With three curators and only six artists in this exhibition, one imagines that tight relationships sit core to the development of The Neighbour at the Gate. But is a curatorium necessary?
Recently opened at the National Art School (NAS) in Sydney, The Neighbour at the Gate explores the nexus of shared experiences by First Nations and Asian Australians. As the curators explain, ‘The Neighbour at the Gate charts the entangled legacies of exclusion and resilience, drawing vital parallels between the past and present, memory and nationhood.’
Not often do we see these narratives sutured together, but it makes sense, and this exhibition really opens up those histories and connections.
Overall, the exhibition feels a little sparse, relying on the impact of installation-based artworks to hold the gallery spaces. A great example is Malaysian-born artist Jacky Cheng’s paper gate, or paifang (牌坊), which hovers at the entrance with great pomp and monumentality.
It ushers people in, and yet is also suggestive of migration and border crossings, as a structure that regulates movement. It leave viewers with a great first impression, and eager to dive deep into these layered works.
This is picked up by Jenna Mayilema Lee (Gulumerridjin, Larrakia, Wardaman, and KarraJarri Saltwater ancestry alongside Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and Anglo-Australian lineages), in the upper galleries, where a new installation depicts a bangarr, or billabong, with lotus plants.
Similar to Lee’s work, it’s made from paper with an emphasis on text. Lee has repurposes pages of historical immigration policies to form Lotus plants. It is paired with a video that shows the preparation of the lotus root, with her father speaking the Larrakia word for the plant – again suturing traditions across cultures.
Those aural narrations are key also to a video installation by Iranian-Australian artist Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson, which pairs a traditional Persian rug with video and sound scape. She draws on traditional texts as a means to reframe inherited trauma, and an ‘ongoing journey of witnessing.’
Sadly, the video’s presentation feels a little leeched in the space with light bleeds from surrounding work diffusing its impact, but worth persisting with.
Neighbour at the Gate: connections
Considering the gallery spaces, the connections between the artworks are less tight in terms of sight lines and juxtapositions, and rather offer up threads of ideas that you carry with you as one walks around, allowing that narrative to build across the exhibition. This could add to a level of discombobulation, but the scale of the installations allow the artworks to stand alone.
These larger installations are countered with intimate works, such James Tylor’s series of daguerreotype photographs, and Vietnamese-Australian artist James Nguyen’s hand-formed incense burners which skirt the gallery’s grand staircase and lift well and could be easily overlooked.
Nguyen is such a smart maker, and his pieces in this exhibition are testament to that deep connection of material and memory. His incense burners have been made from leftover clay from the National Art School, while the incense speaks to the economic and environmental issues of the popular scent, Agarwood, used for thousands of years but now a threatened wood due to its export market. Timeless ritual vies with the western cosmetics market – indeed, another type of ritual.
A standout work is Nguyen’s woven bolt of textile, that is draped in the upper gallery space. It has been made from invasive weeds growing along the Parramatta River (Sydney), with Nguyen aiming to expose histories of use of the chemical Agent Orange along the river, and ‘toxic legacies that connect Australia and Vietnamese migrants,’ he explains.
Alongside are Tylor’s photographs of Indigenous Australian birds and their calls in a soundscape. The piece, again is subtle and one has to work to find its connections – but they are rich. Tylor uses language and histories of how we record things to preserve knowledge and culture.
Read: Yolŋu power review: the Art Gallery of NSW’s landmark look at Yirrkala innovation
In some ways, they echo Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay artist Dennis Golding’s installation of homemade bingo cards, that overlay notions of a tight Aboriginal community and simple joys and introduced colonial roleplay.
The expansive installation of card allows for the nuance of the individual to play out within the system. What I like about this is piece is the way it takes something introduced and makes it its own.
This kind of push and pull of personal memories of colonial impacts and resilient adaptations across the exhibition fits together conceptually with the push and pull of historical records. I think all these works show that truth can be found in the simple everyday actions and materials – we just have to be open to receive these stories.
And they are complex stories to be told. Perhaps by paring back the exhibition, it has allowed space for viewers to sit with the ideas without being overwhelmed.
Reflecting upon the exhibition, it does a solid job in expanding dialogues around First Nations and Asian Australian identity, and it feels right placed in a creative learning institution like NAS. However I can’t shake this question whether it needed a curatorium (as well as that NAS gallery team) at its scale.
I think I would have preferred to have see more artworks that further unpacked this important subject within Australia’s past, and its future.
The Neighbour at the Gate is at NAS Gallery, National Art School until 18 October 2025. Free entry.
Curators: Wardandi (Noongar) and Badimaya (Yamatji) woman and senior curator Clothilde Bullen OAM, Micheal Do, and Whadjuk Balladong and Wilman (Noongar) woman Zali Morgan. Artists: Jacky Cheng, Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson, Dennis Golding, Jenna Mayilema Lee, James Nguyen, and James Tylor.
The Neighbour at the Gate is a commissioned exhibition project for the National Art School, proudly supported by the NSW Government through the Blockbusters Funding initiative.
Discover more arts, screen & games news and reviews on ArtsHub and ScreenHub.
