Description of project by CGAC
Nalgures (Someplace) situates us in an indeterminacy that is yet to be defined, within certain fragmentary geographies: places, vestiges, and modes of occupation. Narelle Jubelin (Sydney, 1960) examines the memories of certain spaces, of certain specific objectual and literary references within the Galician setting, which link up with other cartographies and with references to her own biography and artistic career. This happens, for example, in a calligraphic intervention in which Jubelin interprets "A desvertebra", a text by the poet, Ana Romani (Noia, Corunna, 1962). Moreover, for this project, for the first time, Jubelin incorporates other contemporary artistic creations into her semantics; such is the case of the photographs taken by Anna Turbau (Barcelona, 1949) in Galicia in the mid-nineteen-seventies and which hint at elements which the Australian artist resorts decades later.
Nalgures delves into the memory of the landscape and of human habitation constructions, but also into the modes of spatial occupation and the formal redefinition of different cultural productions. The new works, produced specifically for this exhibition, are joined by elements present in previous projects, such as Soft Shoulder (Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 1997), Shumakom (Artists’ House, Jerusalem, 2002), Afterimage (La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2012), Plants and Plants (Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 2013), Floor and Wall (ABM, Madrid, 2018), Primitive Road (Nordeste, Santiago de Compostela, 2018) or The Housing Question (Penrith Regional Gallery, Sydney, 2019).
As a starting point, the CGAC itself, located at one end of Bonaval Park where the presence of water articulates this site of a former convent, which in turn is linked to the intensity of the architecture of a defunct cemetery. The proximity of the main route of pilgrimage to Compostela, the French Way, links up with the location of water architectures that catch Jubelin’s attention. One of these is the laundry house in Pinisqueira (Aguiño, Ribeira, Corunna), located by the sea in a place near the A Orixe Way, the latest of the pilgrimage routes articulated around the translation of the Apostle's body from Jerusalem. It was precisely in this city, during the second Intifada in 2002, where Jubelin exhibited Shumakom, a project in which she examined conflict and occupation. Hence the reference in Nalgures to the Gaza Strip, and in particular to the spatial layout of one of the refugee camps, before and after the bombing on 25 July, in the context of the Israeli offensive in the summer of 2014.
In Shumakom we encountered the fusion of two voices of different origins—Hebrew and Arabic—an encounter that could be translated as ‘no place.’ From this indeterminacy, from this absence of place, we take a position in Nalgures: in some place. Thus, we remain in indeterminacy, now, practicable and passable. As Georges Didi-Huberman wrote, ‘To take a stance is to desire, it is to demand something, it is placing oneself in the present and aspiring to a future.’
Narelle Jubelin. Born in Sydney in 1960, between 1985 and 1987 Jubelin was co-founder (with Roger Crawford, Tess Horwitz and Paul Saint) of the Sydney-based Firstdraft Gallery, which remains today the longest-running artist-run initiative in Australia.
Jubelin has lived and worked in Madrid since 1996. This particular path has led her to establish a strong relationship with Spain while addressing issues related to Australian history and culture. She is famous for her petit-point renditions of heavily charged photographs that allow her to explore historical lines that interconnect location and history. She is interested in the way objects travel and translates. Thus, every detail of her work is important; the exhibition, the setting and the site, including the journeys made by the work itself, are one more layer to the reading of the works that acquire meaning with each new exhibition. Her technique slows the process of image assimilation through intricate stitching and unfolding that forces the viewer to engage with the intimacy of scale.
She works with different materials and has exhibited widely in the last twenty years, from Aperto in the 1990 Venice Biennale, the Hayward Gallery, London in 1992, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, the Renaissance Society, Chicago in 1994, and the 2009 Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates. She had solo shows at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2009; Heide Museum, Melbourne, 2009; Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2012 and Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, 2014.
For over two decades, Jubelin has stitched miniature petit points, combining them with objects and textual citations in architectural, photographic and painterly installations.
