Louisa Bufarde­ci, Zon Ito
Louisa Bufarde­ci & Zon Ito

This exhi­bi­tion pre­sent­ed the work of Aus­tralian artist Louisa Bufarde­ci along­side Japan­ese artist Zon Ito. Span­ning sculp­ture and instal­la­tion, wall draw­ings, dig­i­tal prints and ani­ma­tion, the exhi­bi­tion was the fourth in a series of ​‘inter­na­tion­al pair­ing’ projects that posi­tion Aus­tralian con­tem­po­rary art with­in a wider, glob­al con­text. The exhi­bi­tion was a two-per­son pre­sen­ta­tion, rather than col­lab­o­ra­tion, and the inter­na­tion­al peer was select­ed on the basis of shared mate­r­i­al or con­cep­tu­al affinities.

Louisa Bufarde­ci draws upon sta­tis­ti­cal data, sourc­ing infor­ma­tion from the pub­lic domain includ­ing the CIA Fact Book, the nation­al cen­sus and opin­ion polls. She trans­lates this infor­ma­tion into colour charts, maps and archi­tec­tur­al dia­grams and in doing so, draws play­ful atten­tion to gaps, bias­es and inequal­i­ties. For the exhi­bi­tion, Bufarde­ci cre­at­ed an ambi­tious site-spe­cif­ic floor piece using infor­ma­tion about Syd­ney residents.

Zon Ito cre­ates intri­cate embroi­dered can­vas­es and flags, cut paper, clay and fab­ric assem­blages and play­ful hand-drawn ani­ma­tions. This was the artist’s first major solo pre­sen­ta­tion in Syd­ney and the exhi­bi­tion dis­played a selec­tion of works that pro­vid­ed depth and insight into his prac­tice across numer­ous media.

Par­al­lels may be found in the work of Bufarde­ci and Ito in their sym­bol­ic use of colour and ordered forms, along with their inter­pre­ta­tion and uncon­ven­tion­al use of space.

This exhi­bi­tion was sup­port­ed by Asialink and The Japan Foundation.

Fol­low­ing its peri­od at the MCA, the exhi­bi­tion was pre­sent­ed at the Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art, Tokyo, from 22 Octo­ber 2008 to 12 Jan­u­ary 2009.

Curat­ed by Rachel Kent