Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro are finalists in the 2024 Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW with their work Grey nomadic visions.
Grey nomadic visions directs us to an everyday view from a driver’s seat: the rear doors of trucks that move commodities across Australia. Winners of the 2022 Sulman Prize, Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro enliven the truck doors with gold paint, LED lights, a ‘Blackberry’ pattern attributed to 19th-century English designer William Morris, and a camel.
Synonymous with nomadic cultures in the northern hemisphere, the camel – like the blackberry – is an invasive species in Australia, introduced for the transport of goods between desert outposts. Beyond these references, the artists also nod to Dekotora (Japanese decorated trucks); Yokohama-e woodblock prints, depicting Western traders in 19th-century Yokohama; and Razorback, the 1980s Australian desert-horror film.
Inspired by a previous collaboration with Martu artists fromthe Pilbara region of Western Australia involving weaving and reclaimed car parts, Healy’s and Cordeiro’s darkly humorous work upends romantic notions of Australia’s sunburnt landscapes. Bringing the tangled connections between colonisation, consumption, leisure and environmental damage into our field of vision, its flashing red lights offer both decorative relief and instructive warning.
Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro
Grey nomadic visions, 2024
acrylic gouache and LED lights on two truck doors
237 x 244 cm
