TALKING THROUGH YOUR ARTS – PERU AMAZÒNICO

TALKING THROUGH YOUR ARTS – PERU AMAZÒNICO

Size matters. For one thing, an effective design for large things often works poorly for small things, and vice-versa.  How much size matters has long been recognised.  It cannot be pretended that our self-made environment is totally by our own doing. Chemical and physical forces are constantly at work on our product, corrupting its purity and by slow attrition reducing it to rust and corrosion. The human created scene is a fertile ground for the expressive shape.

One of earth’s breathing engines, the Amazon, has recently been indoctrinated as being one of The Seven Natural Wonders of the World and in a touring exhibition, Peru Amazònico, the Peruvian consulate invites viewers to learn more about Peru’s natural wonders.

An international touring photographic exhibition that commemorates 50 years of diplomatic relations between Peru and Australia seeks to reaffirm spiritual dimensions through harmonious interactions. 18 photographers’ work documents the Peruvians who predominate sixty per cent of their country. It is in this vast rooted region of the Amazon that the five per cent of the population of Indigenous peoples work harmoniously with their environment.

Art historian Luis Eduardo Wiffarden describes this relationship in his book The Green Eye, “Nature and artifice have never been opposite terms among traditional peoples in the Amazon.”

There are strong traits with original peoples of the world and their everyday walking world. The waking for many from their dreamtime into forces of colonisation is a flat-surfaced right-angle as Wiffardern writes further on Peruvians, “In contrast to the native cultures of the coast and the mountains, violently disrupted by the Spanish conquest, these communities constitute a living example of permanence, endogamy and continuity over time.”

This casual attitude toward nature’s automatic excellence shouldn’t be casually dismissed. The very shapes of things are dramatic and wonderous. (AS)

Peru Amazònico, Until Oct 27, Customs House, 31 Alfred Street, Circular Quay, Free, sydneycustomshouse.com.au

BY ANGELA STRETCH

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