“Refuge” at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney is an exhibition of works by British artist Isaac Julien, showcasing the artist’s new multi-screen installation “Stones Against Diamonds” 2015, juxtaposed with the single-screen version of the artist’s “WESTERN UNION: Small Boats” 2007.According to Roslyn Oxley9, the exhibition surveys Julien’s “complex and poetic film and photographic installations.” Spanning three continent and eight years, together the works explore cartographies of human displacement.Inspired by a passage from a letter in the Italian-born Brazilian modernist architect and designer Lina Bo Bardi’s anthology “Stones Against Diamonds,” Julien’s work of the same name explores themes from the text where Bo Bardi admires the beauty of natural elements over precious stones.Titled “THE LEOPARD,” the single-screen version of “WESTERN UNION: Small Boats” 2007 – the final instalment of a trilogy about journeying across continents – mediates on the movements of people across the Mediterranean from North Africa to escape wars and famines.Taking Visconti’s “Il Gattopardo” (The Leopard) as the point of departure, “The Leopard” traces the effects of the trauma of relocation in people, architecture, and life through the stories and journeys of the illegal immigrants who leave Libya.To find out more about “Refuge,” BLOUIN ARTINFO spoke to Isaac Julien and asked him a few questions. See what he had to say in the video above.
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