other visions

Don’t miss Nicky Dickson’s (PhD, Painting) upcoming show at the ANU School of Art Foyer Gallery.

In her own words:

‘Other’ Visions

The term exotic carries with it connotations of foreignness, excitement and an attractive strangeness. The exotic is not an inherent quality found in particular people, objects or places rather it is a particular form of perception that originated in the European mind when confronted with the ‘other’ Pacific or Australasian person, plant, animal, or artefact. Identification of the strange or unusual exotic ‘other’ is made by comparison to things and people that are usual and familiar. It is the very strangeness and unfamiliarity of the ‘other’ that becomes attractive and desirable.
The cultural lure of the exotic was, and is, a strange, paradoxical blend of the empirical and the fantastic. Factual information was interpreted and inevitably perceived through European conventions and desires. This exhibition engages with how assumptions formed concerning the ‘other’ person or artefact from elsewhere were constructed and presented to 18th and 19th century European audiences as a fantastic jumble of ‘curiosities’. This predominately occurred in the context the natural history museum. In this period there was no distinction made between specimens of plants, animals, people or their material culture; all were considered revelatory of the characteristics of the exotic ‘other’ and the diversity found in nature.

Nicola Dickson 2008