Shivanjani Lal awarded the 2020 Georges Mora Fellowship The Georges Mora Fellowship Board is proud to announce that Shivanjani Lal has been awarded the 2020 Georges Mora Fellowship, including a $10,000 grant. A panel of judges including Annika Kristensen (Senior Curator, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art), Melissa Keys (Curator Buxton Contemporary) and Simon Maidement (Senior Curator, Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Victoria), were impressed by Lal’s proposed project, An Area of Darkness.
Over the next year, Lal will be building on her current research into Indentured Labour of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. This research considers 2020 as a date which marks the centenary of the end of indentured labour. This historical moment is the crux of Lal’s research and what she hopes to reflect upon in the United Kingdom and Bangladesh. She will be using this award to support her time in the UK visiting the Ameena Gafoor Institute, and the Goldsmiths Film Archives. During this time she will also be mentored by Mauritian British artist Shiraz Bayjoo. In conclusion she will do a residency at the Bengal Art Foundation, in Dhaka Bangladesh.
The Georges Mora fellowship provides security as I work towards ambitious and timely research. It will enable me to develop new networks in the United Kingdom as well as nurture and continue my relationships within the Bangladesh Arts Sector. It allows me to feel confident in my arts practice and its future. Shivanjani Lal, August 2020.
Chairman of the Georges Mora Fellowship Board, Clive Scott, said: In these strange times we are delighted that we can continue to support Shivanjani Lal as our 2020 Fellow. Her practice exemplifies Georges Mora’s desire to assist artists that push the boundaries in contemporary art – showing us new thinking.
Image courtesy of new fellow Shivanjani Lal. Photo by Anna Kučera.
Shivanjani Lal Biography
Shivanjani Lal is a twice-removed Fijian-Indian-Australian artist and curator. As an artist living in Australia, she is tied to a long history of familial movement; her work uses personal grief to account for ancestral loss and trauma. She is a member of the indentured labourer diaspora from the Indian and Pacific oceans. She employs intimate images of family, sourced from photo albums, along with video and images from contemporary travels to the Asia-Pacific to reconstruct temporary landscapes. These landscapes act as shifting sites for diasporic healing - from which she emerges. A fundamental concern in her work is how art develops and represents culture as it transitions between contexts, while also probing the experiences of women in these situations of flux.
About the Georges Mora Fellowship
Named in honour of renowned restaurateur, art dealer, mentor and cultural catalyst Georges Mora, the Georges Mora Fellowship aims to encourage the development of art in Australia by providing artists with the resources to explore fresh thinking and to research progressive ideas.In his lifetime, Georges Mora was an avid supporter of the arts and Australian artists, including Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd, Joy Hester, Sidney Nolan, John Olsen, John Perceval and Albert Tucker. The Georges Mora Fellowship was established by Mora’s wife, Caroline Williams Mora, and launched in 2006 by Baillieu Myer with Dame Elisabeth Murdoch as its founding patron. Previous Fellows include Inez de Vega, Brook Andrew and Trent Walter (collaboration), Linda Tegg and Ross Coulter.
For further information visit georgesmorafellowship.org.au.
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Image courtesy of new fellow Shivanjani Lal and UNSW Galleries. Photograph by Zan Wimberley.
Support the Georges Mora Fellowship! The Georges Mora Fellowship is made available through the generous financial support of art lovers. All donations, no matter how large or small, enable the significant development of an artist’s ideas. All donations are tax deductible. Further information available on the website. We would greatly appreciate your support at this time.
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For media enquiries, images and interviews please contact Clive Scott via georgesmorafoundation@gmail.com.
Available for interview: Shivanjani Lal, 2020 Georges Mora Fellow. Clive Scott, Chairman of the Georges Mora Fellowship Board.