MELBOURNE.- The Buxton Big Screen will be exhibiting ‘The Fall’ by Angela Tiatia, a contemporary filmic interpretation of memories of the Fall of Singapore commissioned by the Australian War Memorial in 2017. The Fall is presented at Buxton Contemporary as a part of TIME, a new site-specific video sector at Melbourne Art Fair.

In 2016 the Australian War Memorial (AWM) and the National Museum of Singapore (NMS) embarked upon a joint commissioning project and reciprocal residency program. This joint artist-in-residency program aimed to facilitate two-way cultural exchange, celebrating the rich, shared heritage and friendship between Australia and Singapore. Australian artist Angela Tiatia spent four weeks in Singapore and Singaporean artist Debbie Ding spent four weeks in Canberra exploring the AWM’s collection. The main outcome of the project was for the artists to create a significant new artwork, or body of work, that provides new insights into Singapore and Australia’s shared wartime experience during the Second World War and its complex legacies for both nations.

The film that Tiatia created for the Memorial, titled ‘The Fall’ was awarded the 2018 Redlands Art Prize. The work focuses on particular moments from 15 February 1942, the day of the fall of Singapore. It is inspired by written and oral accounts of survivors of World War Two: soldiers, civilians, military and medical support.

Angela Tiatia is a filmmaker, curator, and visual artist, exhibiting since 2010. Her work has featured in exhibitions around the world including Cologne, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Mexico City, Honolulu, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Auckland and Wellington.

Tiatia has lived in New Zealand, Australia and Samoa. Her personal experiences inform her art practice as she engages with the shift in identity encountered by the Pacific Diaspora. Tiatia’s work explores global contemporary cultures, drawing attention to their relationship to the construction of cultural and sexual identity, the commodification of the body and place, representation, gender and neo-colonialism. Her video work explores the significant themes of cultural displacement and disturbance due to the effects of economic and social globalisation.

Angela Tiatia’s work will be exhibited for the duration of Melbourne Art Week (30 July – 5 August), on the Buxton Big Screen at Buxton Contemporary art museum in Southbank, Victoria.