Our Museum

Our Museum was a collaborative project investigating the power and responsibilities of art and educational institutions in Albury-Wodonga. Curated by Ruha Fifita, this exhibition drew from conversations with RAW23 artists Angelina Barker, Marlo Gaukroger and Tegan Gibbons and asked: How can educational and cultural institutions better support young artists beyond the limits of ‘professional development’ or artworld ‘success’?

For Our Museum, Fifita worked with long-term collaborator artist Sheida Vazir-Zadeh to document dialogues between the RAW23 alumni, local secondary school art teachers and MAMA staff. Presented as audio, visual, and textual fragments, the conversations revealed insight into how artists, teachers, and arts workers shape or want to shape art and education.

The exhibition included new artwork by RAW23 alumni made in response to the workshops and dialogues led by Fifita for Our Museum. Their artworks communicated the processes, rather than placing value on the outcome.

Collectively, all the exhibition’s components archive, for posterity and future learning, how museums could rethink their approach to working with youth communities.

Our Museum welcomed visitors to participate in the conversation on how our cultural and educational institutions can support young people today, offering space and time to reflect.

About the Curator:
Ruha Fifita was born and raised in the Island Kingdom of Tonga and continues to engage with the Pacific region through her interdisciplinary arts practice and work as curatorial assistant for Pacific Art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art and Curator-at-Large for the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. In her role at QAGOMA, Fifita has contributed to several major exhibitions including two iterations of the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art and sis: Pacific Art 1980 -2023. As a curator, Fifita has predominantly worked with artists and creative communities from Tonga, Fiji, Hawai’i, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia – with a strong interest in celebrating and strengthening the connection these arts practices have to local communities. As an artist, Fifita works closely with her siblings and extended family, developing a creative practice which focuses on fostering collaboration, community engagement and connection with indigenous methods and materials to achieve social change.

Our Museum is commissioned as part of the curatorial program Parallel Structures (2023-2024), led by Verónica Tello (UNSW Art & Design) and Salote Tawale (Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney) in collaboration with the Murray Art Museum Albury. The exhibition design for Parallel Structures is led by Ying-Lan Dann, RMIT Interior Design, in dialogue with Parallel and the Murray Art Museum Albury. Parallel Structures is the exhibition outcome of the Australian Research Council project Parallel. For more information, please visit https://parallelstructures.art. With thanks to the Parallel Advisory Network, Runway Journal, the Australian Research Council, Create NSW, Creative Australia, and the School of Art & Design, University of New South Wales, for their generous support.