SERWAH ATTAFUAH, MOSTAFA AZIMITABAR, BILLY BAIN, GOSHA HELDTZ, JACQUIE MENG & HEATH NOCK

’YOU’RE WELCOME’
24 JANUARY – 28 MARCH, 2025

LAUNCH: Thursday 23 January, 6-8pm

Open Sunday 26 January (Invasion Day), 10am-4pm

PUBLIC PROGRAMS
19 & 20 February - Performances: The Path by Fei Gao
6 March - Artist Floor Talk: Moz Azimitabar
27 March - Curatorial Floor Talk

ACCESSIBILITY
Audio descriptions for You’re Welcome? have been co-designed by Renae Belton and Sarah Empey, and aim to provide enhanced accessibility for all visitors, including those who are blind or have low vision. These can be accessed in the gallery via a series of QR codes located next to a number of the artworks in the exhibition. Verge encourages patrons to bring their own headphones.

Tactile floor markings are also provided in the gallery for visitors using white canes.

Click here to listen to/read the audio descriptions

Billy Bain, Stolen Land (detail), 2024. Ceramic sculpture with underglaze, glaze and metallic lustres, fabric and wood. 

CURATORIAL STATEMENT

What does it mean to be welcome in Australia?

I’ve found myself struggling with the contradictions of this idea recently. Being an Aboriginal person in a country where every formal event is preceded by an official welcoming on the behalf of our people, yet when it comes time to implement and amplify our voices, it is met with a resounding NO! When our minorities are treated with the privilege of having their self-determination and freedoms voted on in plebiscites and referendums by a vastly xenophobic and easily threatened public, who struggle to comprehend any lived experience that sits outside of their rusted-on belief systems. The irony of guarding our borders so steadfastly from “invaders” seeking refuge, yet cultivating a national identity that celebrates our “young” history commemorating a time when strange foreigners arrived on our shores in boats. 

You’re Welcome? explores the ways in which a group of young Sydney-based artists form, express, and interrogate ideas of what it means to be welcome. Through non-traditional, figurative portraiture, these artists navigate their own multicultural identities and create both physical and digital space for community, despite an often hostile and unwelcoming wider Australian consciousness.  

Running concurrently with The University of Sydney’s Welcome Week and Invasion Day, You’re Welcome? celebrates and platforms these artists’ unique stories and perspectives, from the political to the surreal and humorous. 

- Billy Bain