Famiglia: memory, migration, spirituality and cultural practice as a first
generation Australian
Submitted By
Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements of the degree of
Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours)
School of Visual Arts & Design
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
La Trobe University
Bundoora, Victoria, 3086
Australia
October 2013
2
Table of Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ 4
Statement of Authorship: .............................................................................................................. 4
List of Illustrations .......................................................................................................................... 8
Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 12
Famiglia: The family ties that bind ....................................................................................... 14
Chapter 1: Spirituality .................................................................................................................. 15
Palm Sunday: getting distracted by Kiefer ........................................................................... 16
La Croce, Gesú and religion: growing up Roman-Catholic ................................................... 19
Chapter 2: Migration .................................................................................................................... 23
The Italian immigrant experience ........................................................................................ 24
Disconnection/reconnection: Italian Australian artists and their practise ......................... 27
C'è posta per lei: letters from Italy ...................................................................................... 34
Chapter 3: Famiglia: a video installation and performance ........................................................ 35
Video One: Chi fai? The performative art making process and documentation. ................ 39
Video Two: Celebrations - old home videos incorporating major life events ..................... 42
Video Three: Hai mangiato? Food at the heart of the home and its importance in cultural
practice. ................................................................................................................................ 46
Chapter 4: Memory and “postmemory” ...................................................................................... 49
Abballati, abballati: story telling through music and song .................................................. 54
Calabrisella Mia: an enactment ........................................................................................... 55
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 59
References .................................................................................................................................... 64
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 66
Appendices ................................................................................................................................... 68
Famiglia: a video installation and performance statement ................................................ 70
Famiglia: a video installation and performance documentation photographs................... 72
4
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people for their assistance, guidance and support towards the
research and preparation of this exegesis:
Proof reading: Julian Bowron, Kristian Häggblom and Danielle Hobbs.
Support and advice: Jill Antonie, Geoffrey Brown, Anna Callipari, Filomena Coppola, Domenico
de Clario, Neil Fettling, Kristian Häggblom, Danielle Hobbs, Heather Lee, Anthony Marcuzzo,
Christian Marcuzzo, Robbie Rowlands, Lee Salomone and Elina Walmsley.
My fellow Honours students: Jennifer Britten, Aleisha Cresp, Daniel Downing, Keven Kozai,
Anissa McRae, Steve Mars, Biankah Miller, Rohan Morris and Lisa Schilling.
Statement of Authorship:
Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis contains no material
published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis or any other degree or
diploma.
No other person's work has been used without due acknowledgment in the main text of the
thesis. This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other
tertiary institution.
Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo: __________________________________ __/__/____ 20131022
8
List of Illustrations Figure 1 My first birthday, 30 October 1972. L-R: My sister Elina, my mother Anna, Me, My
brothers Bruno and Michael. Photo taken by my father Antonio (Tony) Callipari. 13
Figure 2 Dad, Mum and I on the night of my 18th birthday, 30 October 1989. Photo: Elina
Callipari-Walmsley 13
Figure 3 Anselm Kiefer, Palmsonntag, 2006, mixed media 16
Figure 4 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, collecting palm fruit, video still 17
Figure 5 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, The Easter Vigil mass, Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Mildura,
Saturday 30 March 2013 18
Figure 6 Christian Boltanski, Monument: The Children of Dijon, Paris, Salpetriere Chapel (1986) 19
Figure 7 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, St Joseph's Catholic Church, Red
Cliffs. 19
Figure 8 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Religious icons and prayer cards and Cross your Heart
installation, off-set print on paper and ink-jet print on Cross Your Heart bra, 2009. Credo: beyond
belief, Gallery 25 Mildura, 2-29 October 2009. 20
Figure 9 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Gesù, perdonami_2011 Mildura Palimpsest #8: Collaborators &
Saboteurs as part of The Kar-Rama Motel Project, Room 18. Photo: Shane Hill. 21
Figure 10 Culotta, N. & O'Grady, J., 1957, They're a Weird Mob book cover 24
Figure 11 They're a Weird Mob, 1966. Film still. Directed by Michael Powell 25
Figure 12 Il Contratto, 1953. Director Giorgio Mangiamele. Film still accessed from the Australian
Film website. 25
Figure 13 The Spag. 1962. Film still. Directed by Giorgio Mangiamele. Image accessed from
Giorgio Mangiamele: Visionary of the Australian Screen. Metro Magazine 170, pp. 75-79. ATOM.
26
Figure 14 Domenico de Clario, A Second Simplicity installation view, Australian Centre for
Contemporary Art, Melbourne. 5 August - 25 September 2005. Image accessed via ACCA
website:https://www.accaonline.org.au/shop/catalogue/acca-publications/domenico-de-clario-
second-simplicity 27
Figure 15 Domenico de Clario, Duet for One Voice performance (installation image), Mildura
Palimpsest #9, 6 October 2013 29
Figure 16 Lee Salomone, not on a waning moon #4, wood & metal shovel handle, wire, ochre, 81
(h) x 24 (w) x 4 (d) cm, 2006 – 2008. Photo by Michal Kluvanek 30
Figure 17 Lee Salomone, other voices/altre voci, 2012, Australian Experimental Art Foundation,
Adelaide. Photo: Grant Hancock 31
Figure 18 Filomena Coppola, Mother Tongue invitation, Mildura Palimpsest #9, ADFA Building, 4-
7 October 2013 32
9
Figure 19 Filomena Coppola, Chasing the disappeared, 2012, 20 April - 8 September 2013, Tweed
River Art Gallery invitation image 33
Figure 20 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Letter from Italy addressed to my grandmother Domenica from
her niece Maria. 34
Figure 21 Elina Callipari-Walmsley's 21st birthday party, 6 July 1985, video still. Videographer:
Francesco Pelle 36
Figure 22 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Famiglia: a video installation and performance. 5:30-6:30pm,
Saturday 24 August 2013, 310 Cowra Avenue, Mildura. 37
Figure 23 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Famiglia: a video installation and performance, (lounge room
installation view). 5:30-6:30pm, Saturday 24 August 2013, 310 Cowra Avenue, Mildura. 37
Figure 24 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Mum and I making eggplant patties, video still. 38
Figure 25 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Clearing out the hut, video still. 310 Cowra Avenue, Mildura. 39
Figure 26 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Cuppa for Dad. The hut, 310 Cowra Avenue, MIldura. 40
Figure 27 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, wine flagons, dip tins and findings. The Hut, 310 Cowra
Avenue, Mildura. 40
Figure 28 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, The Hut installation. 310 Cowra Avenue, Mildura. 41
Figure 29 Uncle Mick at Elina Callipari-Walmsley's 21st birthday party, 6 July 1985, video still.
Videographer: Francesco Pelle 42
Figure 30 “The Boys” proposing a toast on Michael and Christine Callipari's wedding day, 15
December 1990. 310 Cowra Avenue, Mildura. Video still. Videographer: O-Line Video 43
Figure 31 Mum, Nonna Domenica, Nanna Lena, Mimi Cufari and Nonno Francesco, Elina and
Bryan Walmsley's wedding day, 19 December 1992. 310 Cowra Avenue, Mildura. Video still.
Videographer: Frank Cufari 44
Figure 32 Nonna Domenica Cufari's 88th birthday celebration. Indi Avenue, Red Cliffs. Video still.
Videographer: Michael Callipari. 44
Figure 33 Dad, Mum and I. Luci and Anthony Marcuzzo's wedding day, 18 April 1998, 310 Cowra
Avenue, Mildura. Video still. Videographer: O-Line Video 45
Figure 34 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Making biscuits with Christian and Mum. Video still. 46
Figure 35 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, My brother Bruno checking the salami hanging from the garage
ceiling. 47
Figure 36 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Bread in the wood fired oven or forno at my mother's home. 47
Figure 37 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Modiano Napoletane Italian playing cards installation,
Presenza exhibition, November 2011, The Art Vault, Mildura. 50
Figure 38 Christian Boltanski, Prende la parole (installation view), 2005, Marian Goodman Gallery,
Paris, 3 September - 15 October 2005. Image accessed via Marian Goodman Gallery website:
http://www.mariangoodman.com/exhibitions/2005-09-03_christian-boltanski/ 51
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Figure 39 Christian Boltanski, Personnes installation view, Monumenta 2010 Grand Palais, Paris
13 January - 21 February 2010. Photo: didier plowy © Monumenta / MCC 52
Figure 40 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, In Memoriam: queste scarpe, 2012, shoes, artificial flowers and
beads, dimensions variable. whitecubemildura, Stefano's Cafe Bakery, 27 Deakin Avenue, Mildura.
53
Figure 41 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, My grandparents' record player was given to my mother after
my grandfather (Nonno Francesco) died in 2010. 54
Figure 42 Luci Callipari- Marcuzzo, Calabrisella Mia, 2013, video still. 55
Figure 43 The dresses belonging to my grandmother (Nonna Domenica) which are worn during
the Calabrisella Mia performance, now belong to my mother Anna. 56
Figure 44 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Calabrisella Mia, 2013, video still 57
Figure 45 Marina Abramovic, The Artist is Present, 14 March to 31 May 2010, The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. Photo: 16 Miles of String. Image accessed from the 16 Miles of String blog
http://www.16miles.com/2010/03/marina-abramovic-at-museum-of-modern.html 57
Figure 46 Martha McDonald, The Weeping Dress performance, Craft Victoria, Melbourne, March
10 - April 21, 2011. Photo: Christian Capurro. Image accessed via
http://marthalmcdonald.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/the-weeping-dress.html 58
Figure 47 Mum's video collection 60
Figure 48 Mum and Christian making sauce 61
Figure 49 Exterior of house lit up for event. Photos: Daniel Downing 72
Figure 50 Family photos on hall stand near entrance. Photo: Daniel Downing 73
Figure 51 Looking back from lounge room to entry. Photo: Daniel Downing 73
Figure 52 Guests gathering around the table. Photo: Daniel Downing 74
Figure 53 Bottles of Callipari wine (owned by my Uncle and his son) and dried fruit made by my
mother were offered to guests. Photo: Daniel Downing 74
Figure 54 Eating and serving drinks. Photo: Daniel Downing 75
Figure 55 Mum serving up the food while the video of her making and cooking the food plays on
the television in the kitchen. Photo: Daniel Downing 75
Figure 56 My mother, friend Alicia, brother-in-law Bryan and sister Elina all had a role to play
within the performative element of the event. Photo: Daniel Downing 76
Figure 57 Looking back into the dining room from the lounge room where the audience in the
lounge room where the videos were played. Photo: Daniel Downing 76
Figure 58 The three television screens playing the video installation. Photo: Daniel Downing. 77
Figure 59 Some of the audience sit and watch the videos in the lounge room. Photo: Daniel
Downing 77
Figure 60 Guests linger in the in-between space between the dining and lounge rooms. 78
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Figure 61 Among the guests were my two Uncles (my father's brothers) who attended the
evening and added to the family atmosphere. 78
13
Figure 1 My first birthday, 30 October 1972. L-R: My sister Elina, my mother Anna, Me, My brothers Bruno and Michael. Photo taken by my father Antonio (Tony) Callipari.
Figure 2 Dad, Mum and I on the night of my 18th birthday, 30 October 1989. Photo: Elina Callipari-Walmsley
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Famiglia1: The family ties that bind
Family is central to my arts practise, for me it is what makes my world go ‘round. While my family
is far from perfect, their influence is what has made me the person and artist I am today.
Both sets of grandparents migrated to Australia in the 1950s. My maternal grandfather Francesco
in 1951; and paternal grandfather Michele in 1950; as was the custom, the men came first to earn
enough money to send for their wives and children. In 1954 Nonno Francesco sent for his wife (my
Nonna Domenica), daughter Anna (my mother) and son Bruno (my Uncle who later died in a tractor
accident in 1960). My paternal grandmother Elena followed Nonno Michele in 1951, with her five
children (one of whom was my father Antonio); both families eventually found their way to Mildura
and worked hard pursuing varied service for assorted employers.
Their desire for a better life drove them to build a modest life for their family from the land. Like
other recently arrived migrants, they immersed themselves in the familiar and clung to the
traditions and customs of their homeland.
My father died eleven years ago, and since his passing my interest in the family bond, the ties that
bind, has strengthened. The loss of my father was a huge shock to the family; diagnosed with a
brain tumour after complaining of a persistent headache, he died almost six months to the day of
his diagnosis. I recall waking up the morning after his death at my mother’s house, hoping that the
whole ordeal was just a dream, but alas, it was a dark reality.
My father had always encouraged my artistic aspirations (both parents did) and even though they
did not understand why I chose to pursue a career that did not seem to hold much promise in a
financial sense, my father was confident of my eventual success. My father also loved to retell a
story and herein lies the essence of my arts practise: family, memory and storytelling.
Why installation? For my Honours year of study I have deliberately challenged myself. Previously
my arts practise has explored predominately two dimensional mediums; I saw this year as an ideal
time for experimentation, and with the support and guidance of staff at La Trobe University, have
pursued the methodologies of installation and performance.
1 Famiglia is the Italian word for family.
16
Palm Sunday: getting distracted by Kiefer
For visual drama that will haunt your dreams there’s no-one alive to beat Anselm Kiefer. This is
because, along with being a philosopher-poet, he also happens to be a craftsman of phenomenal
power and versatility. (Schama, 2007)
Figure 3 Anselm Kiefer, Palmsonntag, 2006, mixed media
Kiefer’s work Palmsonntag
(Kiefer, 2006), shown as part of
the exhibition Anselm Kiefer :
aperiatur terra, recent work, at
the Art Gallery of New South
Wales in 2007, is a deeply
stirring work inspired by the
Catholic liturgy for Lent2 and
Palm Sunday3. Inscribed with text from the Old Testament prophet, Isaiah;
Aperiatur terra et germinat Salvatorem… rorate caeli desuper, et pluant iustum. (Let the earth open
and bring forth a Saviour …. Let the clouds above rain down justice on the earth.) 4
Large portrait orientated multiple assemblages of palms and other plants were framed under glass,
installed abutted to each other they covered the entire gallery wall. Reminiscent of the pages of a
revelatory book. A living twelve-metre palm tree lay on the gallery floor, in British Historian Simon
Schama’s words, ‘like an outsize quill’ (Schama, 2007).
2 Lent is the Christian season of preparation before Easter. In Western Christianity, Ash Wednesday marks the first day, or the start of the season of Lent, which begins 40 days prior to Easter (Sundays are not included in the count). Lent is a time when many Christians prepare for Easter by observing a period of fasting, repentance, moderation and spiritual discipline. The purpose is to set aside time for reflection on Jesus Christ - his suffering and his sacrifice, his life, death, burial and resurrection. 3 Palm Sunday is a Christian moveable feast that falls on the Sunday before Easter. The feast commemorates Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. In many Christian churches, Palm Sunday includes a procession of the assembled worshipers carrying palms, representing the palm branches the crowd scattered in front of Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem. 4 From the catholic liturgy for Palm Sunday and also for Advent; Isaiah 45.8, which inspired the new body of work for this exhibition.
17
Kiefer’s work strikes a chord with me as growing up Roman Catholic, my family and I participated
in these religious rituals many times over the years and still do.
The palm5 was known to the ancient Egyptians as an immortal tree due to its eternal shedding and
regrowing process. Kiefer’s Palmsonntag suite plays out the Passion (death) and the Resurrection
(regeneration) of Christ. Kiefer accumulated materials and objects found on his travels – dried
plants, clay vessels, mud and a mass of tangled thorns from Morocco – not just to represent ideas,
but to re-enact the creation (Bond, 2007) story from within the bible.
Figure 4 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, collecting palm fruit, video still
Although I was
unable to make the
trip to Sydney to see
this work (I received
an invitation to the
exhibition opening in
the mail in 2008
which has been
pinned up near my
work desk at Mildura
Arts Centre ever since), I have found the work to be a great inspiration which saw me utilise
different elements of the palm tree. From my own garden I collected the small round reddish fruit
which fell from the palm trees, drilled holes into them and strung them together with thread to
create forms reminiscent of rosary beads6. I also invited some friends to my home and together
over cups of tea and cake, we made crosses from the palm’s fronds, duplicating those made for the
Catholic Palm Sunday mass.
5 Botanical name Palmae or Palmaceae. 6 The rosary beads provide a physical method of keeping count of the number of Hail Marys said as the forty four mysteries of the rosary are contemplated. The fingers are moved along the beads as the prayers are recited.
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Figure 5 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, The Easter Vigil mass, Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Mildura, Saturday 30 March 2013
During this period I also documented the Catholic Palm Sunday, Good Friday7 and The Way of the
Cross8 processions and the Easter Vigil9 mass through photographs and sound recordings. The
primary purpose of the documentation was to record these religious rites, with the possibility of
using them as an element within the installation.
7 Good Friday is a religious holiday observed primarily by Christians commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary. The holiday is observed during Holy Week as part of the Paschal Triduum on the Friday preceding Easter Sunday. 8 The Way of the Cross commemorates fourteen key events on the day of Christ's crucifixion. The majority concern his final walk through the streets of Jerusalem, carrying the Cross. 9 The Easter Vigil, is a service held in traditional Christian churches as the first official celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus. Historically, it is during this service that people are baptized and that adult catechumens are received into full communion with the Church. It is held in the hours of darkness between sunset on Holy Saturday and sunrise on Easter Day — most commonly in the evening of Holy Saturday or midnight — and is the first celebration of Easter, days traditionally being considered to begin at sunset.
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La Croce, Gesú10 and religion: growing up Roman-Catholic
It’s an old tradition. I’ve always been interested in old liturgical feasts, in Baroque churches, for
example where all senses are called upon. There’s music, sometimes smoke, a smell, the religious
area one is totally plunged into a universe of art and reflection. (Boltanski, 2010)
Figure 6 Christian Boltanski, Monument: The Children of Dijon, Paris, Salpetriere Chapel (1986)
Boltanski’s evocation of the romanticised vision of
the ritualistic aspect of these religious feasts is so
strong visually because I too have found interest in
these elements of the Roman-Catholic faith; I can
almost smell the incense burning while reading his
words.
As a child, my parents would take our family to
Italian mass every Sunday, where we would listen,
sing and pray in my parents’ native Italian tongue.
Once a year we would drive to Red Cliffs to attend
the annual Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary and participate in the procession through the local
streets. My family also visited other regional feast days; most memorable are the Feast of San Rocco
across the Murray River at Buronga, NSW, and the two and a half hour pilgrimage by car to Swan
Hill for the feast day of Madonna del Carmelo. My parents collected the prayer cards given out at
these events, some were also gifted by
relatives who had attended other feast
days both locally and overseas.
Figure 7 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, St Joseph's Catholic Church, Red Cliffs.
10 La Croce is the Italian word for the cross; Gesú is the Italian name for Jesus.
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Figure 8 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Religious icons and prayer cards and Cross your Heart installation, off-set print on paper and ink-jet print on Cross Your Heart bra, 2009. Credo: beyond belief, Gallery 25 Mildura, 2-29 October 2009.
In a previous solo exhibition, Credo: beyond belief held at Gallery 25 in Mildura, 2009, I placed my
parents’ collection of prayer cards in a glass vitrine, presenting them in a museum like context to
memorialise these objects, precious to people of the Roman Catholic faith. The inclusion of the
Cross Your Heart bra also provided a hint of humour to the installation, through the method of ink-
jet transfer, I incorporated an image of the Madonna or Mary on the front as a reminder that many
women of Italian Roman Catholic heritage literally and symbolically hold their faith very close to
their chest, and wear a cross or religious medallion on a chain around their neck.
21
Figure 9 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Gesù, perdonami_2011 Mildura Palimpsest #8: Collaborators & Saboteurs as part of The Kar-Rama Motel Project, Room 18. Photo: Shane Hill.
My 2011 mixed media installation, Gesù, perdonami, for Mildura Palimpsest #8: Collaborators &
Saboteurs as part of The Kar-Rama Motel Project, curated by Kristian Häggblom, at the iconic 1960’s
Karama Motel, further explored the idea of spirituality. The work included an all-seeing, hearing,
knowing Christ figure subliminally present through a video playing old episodes of Days of Our
Lives11 on the television in the humble motel room I was allocated; a site loaded with potential for
transgression, where someone may have committed a mortal sin. Was the Christ figure a saboteur
of sin? Engaging the mechanism of guilt in this universal location of anonymity? The ubiquitous
contradictory presence of a bible in a motel room was a clue to this troubling moral equation.12
11 Days of our Lives is a daytime soap opera broadcast on the NBC television network in America. It is one of the longest-running scripted television programs in the world, airing nearly every weekday in the United States since November 8, 1965. It has since been syndicated to many countries around the world including Australia, but has since been axed from free to air Australian television. 12 Charlotte King from ABC Mildura-Swan Hill recorded a story on Palimpsest #8 http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/09/09/3314538.htm
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The Italian immigrant experience
… In general, they use English words, but in a way that makes no sense to anyone else. And they
don’t use our European vowel sounds, so that even if they do construct a normal sentence, it doesn’t
sound like one. This made it necessary for me, until I become accustomed to it, to translate
everything that was said to me twice, first into English and then into Italian. So my replies were
always slow, and those long pauses prompted many belligerent remarks, such as ‘Well don’t stand
there like a dill; d’yer wanta beer or dontcha?’ (Culotta & O'Grady, 1957)
Figure 10 Culotta, N. & O'Grady, J., 1957, They're a Weird Mob book cover
I recently read the book version13 of They’re a Weird Mob
which is slightly different to the film14. Nino Culotta’s
struggle with the Australian language had many laugh out
loud moments and highlighted the difficulty migrants
must have coming to terms with our unique phrases and
the laconic manner of speaking or “Aussie drawl”. I was
also surprised to discover that the book was not written
by an Italian, but by Australian John O’Grady, under the
pseudonym Nino Culotta.
.
13 Giovanni 'Nino' Culotta is an Italian immigrant, who comes to Australia as a journalist, employed by an Italian publishing house, to write articles about Australians and their way of life for those Italians that might want to emigrate to Australia. In order to learn about real Australians, Nino takes a job as a brickie's labourer with a man named Joe Kennedy. The many laugh out loud moments in the book revolves around his attempts to understand English as it was spoken in Australia by the working classes in the 1950s and 1960s. Nino had previously only learned 'good' English from a textbook. 14 They're a Weird Mob. 1966. [Film] Directed by Michael Powell. Australia: Michael Powell.
25
Figure 11 They're a Weird Mob, 1966. Film still. Directed by Michael Powell
They’re a Weird Mob15, was also one of
my father’s favourite films. He
commented to me some years ago, after
watching the film, what he disliked most
about his early days in Australia was the
derogatory name calling the “new
Australians” were sometimes subjected
to. He detested the term “dago” and
“wog”16, even though the latter term is now commonly and proudly used among my generation of
migrants children. While I sometimes playfully refer myself as a “wog”, I do so knowing how far
we have come in our society, where the idea of multi-culturalism is much more accepted than
when it was when my father was a young man finding his way in this new country.
Figure 12 Il Contratto, 1953. Director Giorgio Mangiamele. Film still accessed from the Australian Film website.
The Italian-born filmmaker Giorgio
Mangiamele arrived in Australia as a
migrant in 1952 and the following year
began making his first full length
feature.17 His films commonly portrayed
the isolation, alienation and encounters
with racism that could be part of the experience of migration to Australia in the 1950s and ’60s.
15 Nino Culotta is an Italian immigrant, newly arrived in Australia. He expected to work for his cousin as a sports writer for an Italian magazine. However on arrival in Sydney Nino discovers that the cousin has abandoned the magazine, leaving a substantial debt to Kay Kelly. Nino declares that he will get a job and pay back the debt. Working as a labourer Nino becomes mates with his co-workers, despite some difficulties with Australian slang and culture of the 1960s. Nino endeavours to understand the aspirational values and social rituals of everyday urban Australians, and assimilate. A romantic attraction builds between Nino and Kay despite her frosty exterior and her conservative Irish father's dislike of Italians.[3] A tone of racism exists in the film between Anglo-Saxon/Anglo-Irish characters such as Kay Kelly's dad Harry (Chips Rafferty) and Nino. This is undermined when Nino, sitting in the Kelly house notices a picture of the pope on the wall. Nino says "If I'm a dago, then he's a dago". Realising the impossibility of referring to the pope by that derogatory term, Harry gives in. 16 The terms “dago” and “wog” are derogatory racial slurs. 17 Mangiamele’s films, Il Contratto (The Contract, 1953) Unwanted (1958), The Brothers (1958), two versions of The Spag (c.1960 and 1962), and Ninety Nine Per Cent (1963) were recently released as a collection on DVD.
26
Figure 13 The Spag. 1962. Film still. Directed by Giorgio Mangiamele. Image accessed from Giorgio Mangiamele: Visionary of the Australian Screen. Metro Magazine 170, pp. 75-79. ATOM.
In Mangiamele’s 1962 version of The Spag,
the death of the young boy Tony was a tragic
reminder of the death of my own uncle Bruno
in 1960. The scene in which Australian Actor
Terry Donovan’s character carries the lifeless
boy in his arms back to the house of his
mother after he was hit by a drunk driver is full of sadness and pathos, and made me think what it
must have been like for my own grandparents to lose their child.
27
Disconnection/reconnection: Italian Australian artists and their practise
Domenico de Clario is an interdisciplinary artist, academic, writer and musician. Like me, de Clario
has been deeply influenced by his family, his Italian/Australian upbringing and the migrant
experience. His experimental, performative art practise is meditative and almost automatic in
nature, whereby he completely immerses himself within the performance with its spiritual, other
worldly qualities through his use of sound, light and voice.
Figure 14 Domenico de Clario, A Second Simplicity installation view, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. 5 August - 25 September 2005. Image accessed via ACCA website:https://www.accaonline.org.au/shop/catalogue/acca-publications/domenico-de-clario-second-simplicity
In 1956 de Clario and his family emigrated to
Australia from Trieste, Italy, leaving behind the one
bedroom apartment where he had lived with his
parents, grandparents and younger sister. A Second
Simplicity, shown at the Australian Centre for
Contemporary Art in 2005, recreated de Clario's
home and home-life at via del Bosco 3, in Trieste. De Clario always believed that if he could manifest
an exact replica of the house he was born in, and then inhabit this space with his family, over a
period of time a circuitry would be reactivated that would encourage a first simplicity (which existed
in their former, simpler life in Italy) to resurface, perhaps allowing a former life lived to be, in some
way, usefully examined perhaps even encompassed. De Clario sees the sharing of the foods that
were prepared and eaten in the former life as an essential component in the attempt to reactivate
this life-circuitry, in the hope that a second simplicity would re-enter their lives again. (Marks, 2005)
When I interviewed de Clario earlier this year he commented that he is influenced by disparate,
even tangential elements in his own arts practise, he also mentioned that to look at art directly is
too overwhelming, as it is difficult to not take on the form of the artwork itself, and prefers to avoid
the “weight of the influence of the artist” (de Clario, 2013). This is an interesting idea, I can see how
the work of another artist can influence one’s own work as I have previously explained in my
analysis of Kiefer’s Palmsonntag (Kiefer, 2006). Although I do believe it is important to attend art
events and exhibitions to see new work in order to develop as an artist and to understand where
one’s own work may sit in current contemporary arts practice.
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De Clario has however found influence in the Arte Povera movement and co-curated an event at
the Australian Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide in August 2013, titled Arte Magra18.
In the interview, de Clario also revealed he is also interested in reading social histories which can
be linked to the work of Italian filmmakers Vittorio De Sica19, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Roberto
Rosselini. In particular he finds interest in the transformation of the Italian culture since his arrival
in Australia fifty-seven years ago, and has attempted to understand what was going on at the time
when many Italian migrants were leaving their homeland, while at the same time distancing himself
from those events. In order to get to the core of the matter, de Clario poses questions to himself
such ase; what changes took place? Why did people come here to Australia? What did they bring
with them? What did they remember? What were the conditions like in Italy to influence their
decision to leave?
I too have been asking these questions of my own family; before my maternal grandfather died, I
interviewed him and asked him about some of his experiences. I only wish I had of commenced my
research earlier so I would have had much more substantial documentation of his experiences,
instead of now having to rely on the memories of my mother and her surviving siblings.
De Clario’s performance at Kelly’s Steps in Salamanca Place, Tasmania used a projection of Pasolini’s
Oedipus Rex20, with an installation of a collection of his objects21, which he believes created an
interesting dimension in the work; “the whole relationship with the father, mother and son” (de
Clario, 2013) incorporated voice and sung “all sorts of things” (de Clario, 2013). De Clario creates a
connection between the movie projection, “the whole historical thing” (de Clario, 2013) and his
own personal objects.
18 Arte magra; from the opaque supports fourteen artists/partnerships to make and stage work in Adelaide: at the AEAF and various locations off-site. Its title arte magra (‘lean’ or ‘meagre’ art) references the art movement arte povera that unfolded in northern Italy in the late 60s and early 70s while its subtitle, from the opaque, quotes an autobiographical essay by Italo Calvino. 19 De Sica was a leading figure in the neorealist movement. 20 Oedipus Rex chronicles the story of Oedipus, a man who becomes the king of Thebes who was destined from birth to murder his father Laius and marry his mother Jocasta. The play is an example of a classic tragedy. 21 This is his personal collection of items that he has been using as components for various installations.
29
Figure 15 Domenico de Clario, Duet for One Voice performance (installation image), Mildura Palimpsest #9, 6 October 2013
De Clario’s work, duet for one voice (tomba
delle cose / tomb of things) at the Dark
Mofo festival in Tasmania, was an all-night,
improvised sound and voice performance,
which marked the beginning of a process
whereby the artist laid to rest the hundreds
of objects he had accumulated as part of his arts practise since 1971. Over this forty-year period,
de Clario has presented a single work, iterated in many forms and in different places; central to this
is a growing archive of everyday objects, which he continually re-examines in terms of its
relationship to himself. Following a final viewing at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney,
the archive travelled to Hobart, to its permanent home and proposed site of burial at the Glenorchy
Art and Sculpture Park on the banks of the Derwent River in June 2013.
He also performed a pared down version of Duet for One Voice at the Mildura Palimpsest #9 event22.
The performance at the Old Mildura Homestead began at dusk, inside the Woolshed building, de
Clario’s haunting vocals resonated within the space, accompanied only by an electronic keyboard;
the addition of seven coloured fluorescent light tubes represented the seven chakras of the body23.
Also of Italian-Australian heritage, Adelaide based Lee Salomone uses everyday findings (objects
made from natural fibres, metals, paint, and wood) to make his artwork from a philosophy of using
what is at hand. Salomone's earlier works from the 1990s addressed rural Italian knowledge and
practices as well as gardening and food self-sufficiency, these traditions have been a life-long
source of inspiration for him as they have also been within my own work.
22 Mildura Palimpsest is a biennial visual arts event that invites artists to engage with the cultural and natural environment of the Mildura and Murray Darling region. Mildura Palimpsest is dedicated to high quality, critically engaged contemporary art in all forms. We aim to provide opportunities for real dialogue between local, national and international artists, and across disciplines. Mildura Palimpsest #9 was held from October 4-7, 2013. 23 There are seven main energy centres (chakras) of the body. The colours are violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. Some believe that these chakras are like spirals of energy, each one relating to the others. Using the seven colours of the spectrum, Colour Therapy aims to balance and enhance our body's energy centres/chakras and also to help stimulate our body's own healing process. Colour Therapy uses colour to re-balance the Chakras that have become depleted of energy.
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Figure 16 Lee Salomone, not on a waning moon #4, wood & metal shovel handle, wire, ochre, 81 (h) x 24 (w) x 4 (d) cm, 2006 – 2008. Photo by Michal Kluvanek
Since 1991 Salomone has moved to
installation, photography, sculpture and
works on paper. His contemplative
installation at the Australian
Experimental Art Foundation in 2012,
titled other voices/altre voci explored
migration as a physical and symbolic
passage.
In the other voices exhibition catalogue,
Salomone explains that work played an
important role in the reconstruction of
immigrant identity; the artwork was
created from wooden and metal planks belonging to Mediterranean migrant workers who arrived
in Australia post World War II by sea. The planks, according to Salomone, are metaphoric for both
the sea voyage that took place and the spiritual passage that occurred from known to unknown.
(Salomone, 2012)
He saw the utilitarian nature of the planks used repeatedly over many years - for concreting,
terrazzo and painting - as historical artefacts. The custodians of the planks and their instruments of
labour helped reshape late twentieth century Australia. Salomone considered the planks to be a
sort of totem; layered in their textures are the dreams and aspirations of the men and their families.
Salomone believes that all objects are imbued with memory and that an object’s history is latent -
present, but not seen - until given an opportunity for its essence to re-emerge. An idea I also share
and explored in my 2009 exhibition, Credo: beyond belief.
31
Figure 17 Lee Salomone, other voices/altre voci, 2012, Australian Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide. Photo: Grant Hancock
The other voices installation
is an artwork of collected
memories, a space where
personal memory intersects
with official history. It is a
contemplative work that
does not provide analysis,
only a place within which
the complexities of migration can exist. (Salomone, 2012) In this regard, the work of Salomone has
relevance to my own work, which is also concerned with similar ideas.
The artist also ponders the Greek adage, “its a bitter-sweet thing, knowing two cultures”, and as a
second generation Italo-Australian, Salomone feels obliged to keep exploring the idea of knowing
his two cultures. He has written and rewritten the story for over twenty years, always trying to find
new words and forms for it.
Salomone also sees the other voices work as a collaborative one, oscillating between an historical
museum installation and contemporary art and attempts to transform inter-generational migrant
experiences into a form of both beauty and meaning.
Filomena Coppola is an Australian artist whose work is influenced by her parents’ migration to
Australia in the late 1950s. Based in Mildura, her work explores this duality through migration,
assimilation and cultural loss.
In 2011, Filomena Coppola’s uncle passed away, he was the first Coppola (of the three brothers
who migrated to Australia) to be buried in Australian soil. Since this time Coppola has thought a lot
about the loss of this first generation of migrants to Mildura and its cultural significance. And like
my own work and that of Salomone, Coppola’s work explores the generation of migrants who came
to Australia post Second World War. With minimal education they embarked on a journey, which
took them around the world to a new country, a new language and a new beginning.
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Figure 18 Filomena Coppola, Mother Tongue invitation, Mildura Palimpsest #9, ADFA Building, 4-7 October 2013
Coppola’s work Mother Tongue, consists of three integral components. The first is a sound piece in
which the recordings of individual voices become a cacophony of many from these three
generations - the original Italian migrants, their children and grandchildren. Individual voice
recordings reciting the alphabet24 in the native language and dialect of the migrants overlay each
other to create a symphony of sound and language. This audio can be heard whilst viewing
Coppola’s detailed drawings of the native orchid which uses petals to allude to the tongue form,
and includes her now signature William Morris wallpaper design as its background. The third
component in Coppola’s project is a documentary film involving the first generation of migrants;
participants were asked to share their story of migration and their experience of leaving Italy, the
journey to and arrival in Australia.
While watching the Mother Tongue documentary at the recent Mildura Palimpsest #9 event, I could
not help but be overwhelmed with emotion while listening to these people’s stories; some left
behind family members they would never see again. This again had resonance for me as my own
grandparents also left behind their brothers and sisters with the knowledge that they may never
see them again.
The Italian language that they brought with them was thick with the various dialects from the
regions that they had left behind. The work [Mother Tongue] responds to the generation of
immigrants as they carry within them the direct connection and disconnection from Italy. With their
24 The Italian alphabet consists of 2l letters, while the English alphabet has 26.
33
passing we, their children and grandchildren, are no longer immigrants. Through their burial in this
soil and their histories, which are now contained in this land - we are permanent residents (Coppola,
2012).
Figure 19 Filomena Coppola, Chasing the disappeared, 2012, 20 April - 8 September 2013, Tweed River Art Gallery invitation image
Coppola’s other work, which has relevance to my interest in memory and cultural practice, is
Chasing the Disappeared, using the markings of the Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacine) to further explore
the idea of cultural loss.
‘It is not until things are gone that we mourn their loss and wish for their return’. (Coppola, 2012)
Coppola interprets the markings in the work as symbolic of the loss of the first generation of Italians
who came to Australia in the 1950’s;
‘with their passing we lose stories, dialects, recipes and memories that marked the early crossings
to Australia.’ (Coppola, 2012)
Coppola reflects on the passing of the first wave of immigrants and the losses; the genealogical
dis/connection to Italy; the local dialects of the 1950s that migrated with them and the
dis/connection to the Catholic faith.
34
C'è posta per lei: 25 letters from Italy
While in Melbourne earlier this year, I visited the Bea Maddock exhibition at the National Gallery
of Victoria International26. One of the artworks on display incorporated a framed letter sent to the
artist from Italy. Standing before this work I had a “light bulb moment” to include the letters written
to my own grandparents from their relatives in Italy.
Upon my return home I discovered that my mother had only kept a handful of letters after my
grandfather died in 2010. The letters were also a one-way dialogue in that we had no record of the
letters sent from Australia back to Italy. My mother would read the letters to my grandparents; she
was also the family’s scribe as neither of her parents could read or write, except to sign their name.
Figure 20 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Letter from Italy addressed to my grandmother Domenica from her niece Maria.
I recorded my mother reading the three
letters (two from Italy, one from Argentina)
and also photographed her holding them.
The letters would be represented
photographically on a tablet device then
affixed to the wall, the viewer able to listen
to my mother’s voice through headphones
while the English subtitles are displayed at
the bottom of the screen.
The letter writing was the only way that my
grandparents were able to keep in regular
contact with family living overseas; the telephone was used for communication only occasionally
due to the cost associated with International telecommunication charges.
25 C'è posta per lei translates to “you've got mail”. 26 The Bea Maddock exhibition was on display at National Gallery of Victoria International from 14 February until 21 July 2013.
36
“Art is a state of encounter.” (Bourriaud, 2002)
For my Honours solo exhibition held on Saturday 24 August 2013, I began with two options; to
present the videos within the gallery context with the addition of some of the items that belonged
to my family or the unconventional idea to have the event at my mother’s house – my childhood
home - with all of the objects in situ, in effect taking the exhibition into the family home. This could
also be risky, what if the presentation felt forced or uncomfortable for the viewer or my family?
Herein lay the dilemma; which objects would I select to take to the gallery space to best compliment
the installation? Would these objects have the same meaning if they were taken out of the context
of the home and placed into the gallery environment? Would this affect the authenticity of the
installation?
Figure 21 Elina Callipari-Walmsley's 21st birthday party, 6 July 1985, video still. Videographer: Francesco Pelle
The idea behind the video
installation and performance
took inspiration from my sister’s
21st birthday video, in that it is a
way of re-enacting or reliving a
sense of the family togetherness
that was experienced while my
grandparents and father were
still alive. In a sense, it became an
act of nostalgia to reinvent or recreate an environment where family and the viewer become
temporarily part of the extended family.
The event within the context of the family home, worked much better than if I had of simply placing
the objects with the gallery space. The authenticity of the space plus the additional elements of
video, food and the repetitive performative tasks allocated to members of my family as part of its
presentation recall French art critic Nicolas Bourriaud’s theory of Relational Aesthetics27 (Bourriaud,
2002).
27 Relational Aesthetics is a mode or tendency in fine art practice originally observed and highlighted by French art critic Nicolas Bourriaud. Bourriaud defined the approach as "a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social
37
Figure 22 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Famiglia: a video installation and performance. 5:30-6:30pm, Saturday 24 August 2013, 310 Cowra Avenue, Mildura.
The idea of experiential
performance was explored
through the act of participation.
In effect, the participation
became a kind of neo-
performance or pseudo
performance; an event grounded in the everyday, yet transformed through the repetitive nature
of experiential performance. Visitors to the event became part of the family environment from the
moment they walked in the front (or in some cases back) door. This was not simply the usual gallery
opening where people could come and go anonymously, it was by invitation only, not to be elitist,
but to keep the numbers to a manageable level and to allow interaction within the family
environment; in a sense becoming part of the extended family, albeit only for one evening.
Figure 23 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Famiglia: a video installation and performance, (lounge room installation view). 5:30-6:30pm, Saturday 24 August 2013, 310 Cowra Avenue, Mildura.
The video installation consisted
of three flat screen televisions
set up on three small domestic
tables in the lounge room of my
mother’s home. Each screen
presented a different looped video. Screen one played the documentation of my performative art
making processes during the year; screen two, the family celebrations captured during the 1980s
and 1990s; screen three showed documentation of my mother, centred on food and Italian cultural
practices.
context, rather than an independent and private space." The artist can be more accurately viewed as the "catalyst" in relational art, rather than being at the centre.
38
The three videos created an interesting interplay between each other once they were installed side
by side on the televisions in the lounge room. A strange relationship occurred when they looped at
different times (the duration of each video was different to the other), causing random images and
sounds to come together. At one point, I drilled holes into the palm fruit balls in the performative
art making video while my mother was mixing biscuit batter with her electric mixer in the food
video.
Figure 24 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Mum and I making eggplant patties, video still.
There was also a fourth
screen; the television in
the kitchen played a
video of my mother and I
preparing and cooking
the eggplant patties and
cutuletti28 that were
eaten by guests at the
event. My mother and
aunties served up the
food in the kitchen, while the video played repeatedly reinforcing the idea of the making and
serving in real time while the celluloid version portrayed the cultural practice in past tense.
28 crumbed steak or schnitzel.
39
Video One: Chi fai?29 The performative art making process and documentation.
This series of self-documentary videos began by documenting myself in the process of collecting,
preparing and making the elements for my Kiefer inspired installation. The term chi fai or what are
you doing came to mind as I was documenting myself; I could not help but think what my
grandparents would say if they had witnessed me in the self –documentary process.
Figure 25 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Clearing out the hut, video still. 310 Cowra Avenue, Mildura.
In the videos I also documented the process of clearing out "the hut" on my parents’ property,
which I recently rediscovered and wrote about. The hut was once used as a granny flat or semi-
detachable dwelling which my father rescued from a family friend years ago. The friend purchased
a property that had a house and the aforementioned hut on it and did not have a use for it. My
father, forever the optimist, saw the potential in it and convinced my brother to arrange for its
relocation to our home property in Cowra Avenue. This proved to be quite an ordeal, but my father
argued that it could be a useful addition to the farm property and could be used as a place for the
seasonal workers to use for their morning break. He promised his friend, after the hut was
refurbished, they would meet for a cup of tea or a drink, unfortunately this did not ever eventuate
as my father passed away eleven years ago and the hut remained as it was, in need of some
attention.
29 Chi fai? Italian for “what are you doing?”
40
Figure 26 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Cuppa for Dad. The hut, 310 Cowra Avenue, MIldura.
The idea to use the hut as an installation space
came while I was considering my solo Honours
exhibition project. It had until recently been home
to hundreds of black plastic buckets, once used to
pick wine grapes. Hundreds of stacked buckets lay
horizontal, accumulating years of dirt and dust,
almost forgotten. My mother and I moved the
buckets, like neo-archaeologists reclaiming the
space for reuse. During the process of clearing out
the hut, we also found other materials which my
parents had used to farm snails30. The buckets
were moved and placed upside down into a nearby corrugated iron tank, which had been used to
house the snails after they had been picked off the vines and out of the garden. The snails (lumache
in Italian) were then sold to restaurants and Italian clubs in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide, who
would serve up the delicacies for those who could palate their unique taste and texture.
Figure 27 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, wine flagons, dip tins and findings. The Hut, 310 Cowra Avenue, Mildura.
During the process of clearing the
hut, I also found a pile of old glass
wine flagons abandoned beside
it, some half-buried, others in
clusters on the ground, most of
them still intact. Also unearthed
were old mangled, half rusted “dip tins”31, used in the process of drying sultanas.
30 My parents featured in an episode of the second series of the ABC TV cooking series, A Gondola on the Murray with local celebrity cook, Stefano de Pieri, titled, The 'Tour de Murray'. 31 The sultana grapes would be picked in the dip tins, dipped into a special drying solution then spread onto drying racks in the sun.
41
Figure 28 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, The Hut installation. 310 Cowra Avenue, Mildura.
Inside the hut, I
installed the palm
crosses created from
hours of laborious
making with the
addition the strings of
rosary bead palm balls;
lit ambiently with tea light candles, thus giving the space a reverential, dramatic-ness reminiscent
of the rituals of the Roman Catholic mass.
In rediscovering these objects and reclaiming the hut, I have felt a reconnection to my father. In my
previous exhibitions, at some stage of the making process, when I have started to feel
overwhelmed, I have felt my father’s presence, inspiring me to forge on and put aside my feelings
of self-doubt. During this process, I felt I honoured his memory and also connected with my family
home; the site for many family celebrations, milestones and memories, both good and bad.
42
Video Two: Celebrations - old home videos incorporating major life events
The first video in this series, my sister Elina's 21st birthday party was filmed by my Uncle Frank Pelle.
Uncle Frank was an amateur videographer and captured many family events on his camera.
Figure 29 Uncle Mick at Elina Callipari-Walmsley's 21st birthday party, 6 July 1985, video still. Videographer: Francesco Pelle
Watching the video
filmed in the 1980s for
the first time in many
years was like a ‘blast
from the past’; it
showcased the fashion,
hairstyles and music of
the era. The poor quality
of the videotape creates
a low buzzing noise and flickers the images across the screen. Central to the video is the opening
footage of my large extended family all sitting down to eat dinner outside under the veranda at my
parents’ house. Several tables had been butted together to form an extra-long dining table, fit for
an Italian feast. Uncle Frank filmed the length of the table, zooming in on individuals, focussing his
gaze at relatives while they were in the process of eating and interacting with each other. It
captures the noise created by a cacophony of voices, clinking glasses and cutlery and slamming
doors. The filming resumes inside the house around the dining room board table where my family
crowded in to sing “Happy Birthday” to my sister, everyone held a glass to wish a toast to my sister’s
good health. Later the cousins gather in the lounge room to watch a recorded videotape of
Countdown32 and dance and sing along to the music playing.
32 Countdown was a long-running popular weekly Australian music television show broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation from 8 November 1974 until 19 July 1987. It was created by Executive Producer Michael Shrimpton, producer/director Robbie Weekes and record producer and music journalist Ian "Molly" Meldrum
43
Figure 30 “The Boys” proposing a toast on Michael and Christine Callipari's wedding day, 15 December 1990. 310 Cowra Avenue, Mildura. Video still. Videographer: O-Line Video
My brother Michael and sister-in-law Christine's wedding was filmed by professional company O-
Line video. It is a twenty minute video of highlights from the day accompanied to some lively Greek
music, a reference to my sister-in-law’s heritage. It starts at my parents’ home where my brother
and his groomsmen gather for a celebratory shot of Galliano for “forza” or courage before the big
day begins.
44
Figure 31 Mum, Nonna Domenica, Nanna Lena, Mimi Cufari and Nonno Francesco, Elina and Bryan Walmsley's wedding day, 19 December 1992. 310 Cowra Avenue, Mildura. Video still. Videographer: Frank Cufari
My sister Elina and brother-in-
law Bryan's wedding day video
was filmed by my cousin Frank
Cufari. Frank was also a keen
amateur videographer and
offered his services for the day.
In it he managed to capture a
lively conversation between my paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather.
Figure 32 Nonna Domenica Cufari's 88th birthday celebration. Indi Avenue, Red Cliffs. Video still. Videographer: Michael Callipari.
My maternal grandmother or
Nonna's 88th birthday
celebration was filmed at the
home of my grandparents by my
brother Michael. The video
begins by zooming in to the
birthday cake, the words “Happy
88th Birthday Mum” have been
written in icing on top of the chocolate cake. My grandparents sit at the table surrounded by their
children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The sound created by the gathering of my
extended family is both noisy and joyous.
My sister Elina filmed my 25th birthday and engagement party celebrations at my parents’ house.
In it she captures a somewhat smaller and quieter occasion with just immediate family present.
45
Figure 33 Dad, Mum and I. Luci and Anthony Marcuzzo's wedding day, 18 April 1998, 310 Cowra Avenue, Mildura. Video still. Videographer: O-Line Video
Professional company O-Line
Video also filmed my own
wedding day. It started by
filming the site of our soon to
be new house, then moved on
to the home of my sister-in-
law and featured interviews
with my husband, his sister
and best man. Following this the video moved to my parents’ house, featuring some sentimental
moments with my mother and father, a funny conversation between the videographer and my
bridesmaids, then on to the church and the actual wedding ceremony. The video also captured a
humorous moment when the choir I was once a member of, sang with my husband’s uncle (Zio
Angelo) who travelled from Italy for the occasion.
46
Video Three: Hai mangiato? Food at the heart of the home and its importance in
cultural practice.
The idea behind the documentation videos was to do a number of things: to document cultural
practices as significant and in doing so demonstrate their historical importance by deliberately
preserving the documentation as archival material.
Figure 34 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Making biscuits with Christian and Mum. Video still.
The growing, collecting, cooking and preserving of food is an extremely important part of the Italian
psyche and within my own work. Through video and photography I recorded my mother picking
tomatoes and sauce making, baking a provincial biscuit recipe particular to her paese or hometown;
the hanging of salami33 and the entire traditional Italian bread making process. These traditions are
still practiced by my family today and entrenched in my memory.
33 This year was the first year my mother purchased her salami already made and prepared by a local butcher; in previous years we had always made our own or helped my Uncle or other relatives make theirs. The salami making ritual is usually a weekend long affair in winter time, with many processes to achieve a good quality sausage.
47
Figure 35 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, My brother Bruno checking the salami hanging from the garage ceiling.
Food is an important reference to the tradition of Italian migrants, as is growing and making their
own food, which has enabled them to be self-sufficient. The cultural practice (which is not just
restricted to Italian families) of utilising fresh produce and transforming it into something more
sustainable, which is able to be stored, then consumed at a later date, is derived from the absolute
necessity of living a hardscrabble existence off the
land rather than saving the planet. But in 21st century
Australia, these practices remain important because
they do resonate with contemporary concerns,
affirmed cultural identity and provide rituals that
reinforce family and community relationships.
Figure 36 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Bread in the wood fired oven or forno at my mother's home.
50
Can a person’s memory live on through the objects they leave behind? (Callipari-Marcuzzo, 2011)
The investigation of objects belonging to members of my family, serve as a reminder of the
mementos kept after loved ones leave us. This investigation also included the actual objects and
those remade or reinterpreted as a type of memorial. Objects I have referenced include those that
belonged to my grandparents: rosary beads, clothes, shoes, glasses, my father’s playing cards and
prayer cards.
Installation art therefore differs from traditional media (sculpture, painting, photography, video) in
that it addresses the viewer directly as a literal presence in the space. Rather than imagining the
viewer as a pair of disembodied eyes that survey the work from a distance, installation art
presupposes an embodied viewer whose senses of touch, smell and sound are as heightened as
their sense of vision. This insistence on the literal presence of the viewer is arguably the key
characteristic of installation art. (Bishop, 2005)
Figure 37 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Modiano Napoletane Italian playing cards installation, Presenza exhibition, November 2011, The Art Vault, Mildura.
51
Figure 38 Christian Boltanski, Prende la parole (installation view), 2005, Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris, 3 September - 15 October 2005. Image accessed via Marian Goodman Gallery website: http://www.mariangoodman.com/exhibitions/2005-09-03_christian-boltanski/
The resonant, emotional power of Christian Boltanski’s work is largely based on the association that
the viewer brings to his installations. Our propensity to keep traces – clothes, documents and
memorabilia – of the people who have affected our lives long after their death, forms the
investigative basis of Boltanski’s work. The poverty of Boltanski’s materials is linked to Arte Povera34:
notions of survival and social experience that stem from concepts explored by Joseph Beuys.
Autobiographical connotations, indictive of the artist’s Jewish-Catholic upbringing, often emerge.
(Hodge & Anson, 2004)
Boltanski is able to elevate what may seem ordinary objects through his use of installation, into
something to be revered or almost holy.
34 Arte Povera - "poor art" or "impoverished art" - was the most significant and influential avant-garde movement to emerge in Europe in the 1960s. It grouped the work of around a dozen Italian artists whose most distinctly recognizable trait was their use of commonplace materials that might evoke a pre-industrial age, such as earth, rocks, clothing, paper and rope. Their work marked a reaction against the modernist abstract painting that had dominated European art in the 1950s, hence much of the group's work is sculptural. But the group also rejected American Minimalism, in particular what they perceived as its enthusiasm for technology. In this respect Arte Povera echoes Post-Minimalist tendencies in American art of the 1960s. But in its opposition to modernism and technology, and its evocations of the past, locality and memory, the movement is distinctly Italian - http://www.theartstory.org/movement-arte-povera.htm
52
It is not about telling the truth, but making the truth felt. I try to tell short parables, not with words,
but with signs, images and sounds. The little stories enable the hearer or the viewer to ask a question
being an artist has saved me in a way, as it’s a sort of slow, wild psychoanalysis. Little by little, you
discover things about yourself. And you dare mention things you didn’t before. Each of us creates
our own sort of mythology, a sort of dream life, in a way, an emblematic life. (Boltanski, 2010)
The interaction and participatory possibilities of installation art and its transformation from a
spectatorial space is what interests and excites me about the possibilities within this medium of art
making.
My work has a definite Christian influence, particularly in the idea – already in the Jewish religion –
of uniqueness, the importance of each being, an of love. To refer again to objects, I’ve created works
that are piles of clothes, like at a flea market. You can buy them and put them in a bag. It’s a sort of
work. (Boltanski, 2010)
Figure 39 Christian Boltanski, Personnes installation view, Monumenta 2010 Grand Palais, Paris 13 January - 21 February 2010. Photo: didier plowy © Monumenta / MCC
In this respect, I find a
correlation to that of
Boltanski, through his use
of discarded objects, he has
created a sense of respect
and reverence for the
object.
Marianne Hirsch’s theory of ‘postmemory’, describes the relationship that the “generation after”
bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before - to experiences
they “remember” only by means of the stories, images, and behaviours among which they grew
up. But these experiences were transmitted to them so deeply and affectively as to seem to
constitute memories in their own right. This idea of ‘postmemory’ has also been associated with
the work of Boltanski. Hirch’s theory has resonance for me, which is evident through my past
exhibition explorations into the objects belonging to members of my family (as previously
discussed).
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Furthermore, Boltanski also commented;
The more you display someone’s objects, the more you display their absence. The more you try to
show someone’s memory, the more you pinpoint their absence. As soon as you preserve something,
you kill it. I think that’s why photos are always linked to the idea of death. You preserve a moment,
but as soon as the photo is taken, the moment is over. You can display all someone’s objects you like
– they won’t disappear – but they’ll only be images of objects. (Boltanski, 2010)
Figure 40 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, In Memoriam: queste scarpe, 2012, shoes, artificial flowers and beads, dimensions variable. whitecubemildura, Stefano's Cafe Bakery, 27 Deakin Avenue, Mildura.
This idea of an object belonging to a family member
who is now deceased and revered by those left behind
also interests me. It is as though the person’s presence
has remained within the object and through possession
of the object, the beholder has in a sense, a piece of the
person who has left that object behind.
My 2012 installation In Memoriam: queste scarpe35
(pictured) was created for whitecubemildura36, incorporated the “good” shoes my maternal
grandfather wore on his journey from Italy to Australia in 1951. The shoes symbolise a new
beginning; to cross over the threshold and embark on a new life in a foreign land with so much
promise. The shoes incorporated beads from a plant which grows in my mother’s garden, once
were used to make rosary beads; and in this context filled the shoes with hope, belief and courage.
35 Queste scarpe is Italian for “these shoes”. 36 whitecubemildura was established to provide an unusual, low stress, fun and creative approach to exhibiting art in public spaces. Three micro galleries each measuring approximately 30 x 30 x 30 cm have been placed in different locations throughout the Mildura CBD.
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Abballati, abballati37: story telling through music and song
While working on the Famiglia video installation and performance at my mother’s home, I
discovered the record collection, mostly Italian folk songs, which belonged to my maternal
grandparents. My mother inherited their record player and records after my grandfather died; I
was surprised by how many records they had in their collection. Mum and I listened to them on her
record player and she relived some of the memories she had shared with her parents centred
around music. This reminiscing with my mother also revealed stories about my mother’s family and
their love of music.
Figure 41 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, My grandparents' record player was given to my mother after my grandfather (Nonno Francesco) died in 2010.
37 “Abballati, abballati” is Calabrian Italian dialect and roughly translates to “let’s dance, let’s dance”, it is sometimes called out during the traditional dance of the tarantella to encourage those sitting to get up and dance.
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Calabrisella Mia: an enactment
Figure 42 Luci Callipari- Marcuzzo, Calabrisella Mia, 2013, video still.
Calabrisella Mia is an endurance performance and video
installation. It centres on the enactment of a traditional Calabrian
folk song favoured by all my grandparents. I recently discovered
that both sets of my grandparents enjoyed singing this song (and
other folk songs from their villages).
It is not about telling the truth, but making the truth felt
(Boltanski, 2010)
Re-enactment and enactment are two separate yet similar ideas;
a re-enactment is drawn from an original event in time and space,
whereas an enactment is an idea or interpretation of an event
without the need to be a factual, rather it is more akin to the idea
or feeling of the original event without having to be a slave to detail.
The performance attempted to reconnect with my grandparents. Through the transformation of
my appearance by clothing myself in my maternal grandmother’s (Nonna Domenica) clothes, and
with the addition of temporary plaited hairpieces, I recreated the hairstyle favoured by so many
1950s Italian migrant women.
Both sets of grandparents would sing while they worked on the land to entertain themselves and
to help pass time more quickly. At family celebrations, they would join in the singing and dance the
traditional tarantella38 of their homeland.
However in 1960, my maternal Uncle Bruno died tragically in a tractor accident at the age of sixteen.
His death came as a shock to the family, which plunged my grandparents into deep despair and
mourning. There would be no more singing or dancing after that tragic event for many, many years.
38 The term tarantella groups together a number of different folk dances characterized by a fast upbeat tempo, usually in 6/8 time (sometimes 18/8 or 4/4), accompanied by tambourines.
56
My grandmother did not ever fully recover from this event, and wore dark coloured garments as a
sign of mourning until her death in 1999.
The six hour endurance performance transitioned from happy to sad. The performance began with
me wearing the dress my maternal grandmother wore on her trip to Australia, of Italian made red
and black check, fashioned in the 1950s while sang happily along to the Calabrian folk song,
Calabrisella, which played on the record player nearby.
Figure 43 The dresses belonging to my grandmother (Nonna Domenica) which are worn during the Calabrisella Mia performance, now belong to my mother Anna.
During the performance I communicated only through song. Visitors and viewers to the event were
advised on entry that I would only converse through song, with the words to the song printed on a
room sheet for those wanting to join in.
The feeling of the performance slowly moved to a more sombre note when I finally revealed the
black dress (significant for mourning) that my grandmother wore to my parents’ wedding, the year
following my Uncle’s death. The performance represented the joy of moving to an exciting new life
in a new country to that of mourning the loss of a son, no more singing, celebration or happiness.
The performance ended in silence, exhausted from six hours of vocal and physical endurance.
57
Figure 44 Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Calabrisella Mia, 2013, video still
The idea of the dichotomy of two voices; mine
and that of my two grandmothers was also
expressed through a video installation in the
next room, where I filmed myself in another
dress which belonged to my maternal
grandmother. In the video I again sung
Calabrisella in a more lively way, in all sorts of
recreated imagined scenarios; cooking in the
kitchen, picking olives, picking tomatoes,
pottering in the room where my mother
makes her traditional wood fired Italian bread and tending my mother’s garden. The sound of the
video installation was loud enough to carry into the room I was performing live in, and where the
two voices - the video and my own - merged into a duet.
The Calabrisella performance takes inspiration from New York-based Serbian performance artist
Marina Abramovic who for over four decades, has explored the relationship between performer
and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind.
Abramovic’s use of time is a crucial element of this genre. By slowing down, lengthening, or
repeating actions normally unexamined, a long durational work encourages both its performers
and audience to step outside of traditional conceptions of time and examine what this experience
means to them.
Figure 45 Marina Abramovic, The Artist is Present, 14 March to 31 May 2010, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: 16 Miles of String. Image accessed from the 16 Miles of String blog http://www.16miles.com/2010/03/marina-abramovic-at-museum-of-modern.html
58
"I test the limits of myself in order to transform myself," she says, "but I also take the energy from
the audience and transform it. It goes back to them in a different way. This is why people in the
audience often cry or become angry or whatever. A powerful performance will transform everyone
in the room." (Abramovic, 2010)
In a similar way, American interdisciplinary artist Martha McDonald’s work features handcrafted
costumes and objects that are activated through gesture, singing and autobiographical narrative.
“The Weeping Dress was a performance and installation arising from research of Victorian mourning
rituals. During a woman's first year of mourning, nothing she wore could reflect the light. That
meant wearing wool bombazine or crepe, which didn't hold the plant-based dyes so color ran from
the fabric in the rain and heat, staining her body. I am fascinated by how this public performance
of grief was experienced in such a private and corporeal way. I constructed a period mourning dress
out of black crepe paper that I activated in performance to release the fugitive dye and leave a stain,
or trace behind.” (McDonald, 2012)
Figure 46 Martha McDonald, The Weeping Dress performance, Craft Victoria, Melbourne, March 10 - April 21, 2011. Photo: Christian Capurro. Image accessed via http://marthalmcdonald.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/the-weeping-dress.html
Watching the performance via the Craft Victoria
website, and seeing the water droplets slowly
transform McDonald’s appearance was a reminder
of how the enactment of an idea can activate such
powerful emotion in the viewer, something I aimed
to do within my own endurance performance.
The transformation of the dress and the stain it
leaves behind suggest presence, absence and our
own impermanence. (Craft Victoria, 2011)
60
In completing my Honours year of research and resulting artwork, I feel I have been successful in
my experimentation with installation, performance and relational art.
However, the surface has only just been scratched for possible future study and projects with my
family providing the impetus and inspiration for my arts practise for some years to come.
One possible new work references the videos in my parents’ collection acquired from their time as
video shop proprietors from 1984 until 1996. The video shop was my first job, at the age of sixteen,
I would walk to ‘the shop’ every day after school.
Figure 47 Mum's video collection
The project, tentatively titled, Rewind the VCR:
family video collection, would feature a television
and video player. The viewer would be able to
choose a video from the collection to watch, with
the interaction also documented on video.
The videos my parents favoured were mostly Italian
films or featured Italian actors. They enjoyed
watching the films both at home and at the shop.
Some of the favourites in my parents’ video
collection include; the San Remo Italian Song
Festival39, Romulus and Remus40, Mamma (starring
Italian opera singer Beniamino Gigli), the comedic
action and spaghetti western films of Bud Spencer and Terence Hill. These films were not only
popular with my parents but loved by the rest of the family also. The Great Caruso41, and Il Brigante
Musolino42 were also popular films with my parents.
39 Sanremo Italian Song Festival is still a popular Italian song contest, held annually in the city of Sanremo in Italy, which consists of a competition of previously unreleased songs. It was the inspiration for the Eurovision Song Contest. 40 Romulus and Remus were twins raised by a wolf; the brothers went on to establish what became known as Rome. 41 The Great Caruso was a biographical film starring Mario Lanza in the title role was a highly fictionalized biography of the life of tenor Enrico Caruso. 42 Il Brigante Musolino was inspired by the life of the Calabrian brigand and folk hero Giuseppe Musolino. It was said that Musolino was seen by his countrymen as a symbol of the injustice Calabria was facing at the time. As an elusive fugitive, always managing to escape traps, Musolino stirred the imagination of
61
Since signing up to Facebook43 in 2008, I discovered a whole host of relatives I did not know existed.
Given my interest in genealogy, it has enabled me to get in contact with as many potential
“relatives” across the world in the way only social media can, quickly and superficially.
This reconnection with relatives and in a sense reactivation of the Italian side of my family tree has
opened up possibilities for future travel, research and art projects.
Figure 48 Mum and Christian making sauce
My ambition to make
challenging new work has
only been strengthened
from this intensive year of
art making, in spite of the
sacrifices I have made for its
completion. While the body
of work I have created has
been both time consuming
and challenging. I have juggled my work, home and artistic life sometimes successfully and at other
times, less so. But I feel the exploration of my family and the documentation of Italian Australian
cultural practices is an important one, of which I have deliberately and consciously involved my son,
so that he may remember and pass on these important traditions to his own children.
My desire to pursue further study and research have been reignited. At present, I am considering
my application into the Masters Degree by Research program. At this point of my study, I have so
much stimulus which has been generated by my Honours year that I feel it necessary to continue
this research in a more considered and explorative way, which would again include performative
aspects within my arts practise.
many people in Italy and in short order he became a legend throughout Italy and abroad. He became the subject of many Calabrian folk tales and popular songs. 43 Facebook is an online social networking service. Its name stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by some American university administrations to help students get to know each other
62
During the final week of the completion of my exegesis, my cousin Domenic died suddenly and
unexpectedly at his home at the relatively young age of fifty. His death has caused great distress
within my mother’s family and we are still coming to terms with how incomprehensibly and
unfathomably cruel life can sometimes be. Domenic featured in the Celebrations video as was one
of the groomsmen in my brother’s bridal party, so I see it only fitting to mention him in my closing
remarks. For my mother and her siblings, the memories of losing their brother sixty-two years ago
in such sudden and tragic circumstances have resurfaced.
64
References Coppola, F., The Fabric of my Homeland [essay]
Galimberti, J., 2013. A Third-worldist Art? Germano Celant’s Invention of Arte Povera. Association of Art Historians.
Gibbons, J., 2007. Contemporary Art and Memory. I.B. Taurius & Co Ltd, London.
Giles, J., A Passion Restored: An Interview with Rosemary Mangiamele, Metro Magazine 170, pp. 83-85, ATOM.
Hirsch, M., 2008. The Generation of Postmemory. Poetics Today 29:1 (Spring 2008). Porter Institute of Poetics and Semiotics.
Holman, M., Arte Povera 1968, 2011. MAMbo Bologna 24 September to 26 December [review], | Art Monthly, London, Edition 351, pp. 22-23, November
Koolhaas, R., 2002. Junkspace. October, Vol. 100, Obsolescence. (Spring, 2002), pp. 175-190.
Kuspit, D., 2003. Reconsidering the Spiritual in Art: Part 1. [Online] Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts. Spring 2003 Vol. 2 No. 1. Available at: http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v2n1/gallery/kuspit_d/reconsidering.htm
Lampugnani, R., 2006. Comedy and Humour, Stereotypes and the Italian Migrant in
Mangiamele’s Ninety Nine Per Cent. Flinders University Languages Group Online Review.
Lumley, R., Arte Povera. Tate Publishing, London.
Mateer, J., 2001. 7 Pavilions, 7 Effigies & 13 Days: Meditation on a work by Domenico de Clario. Meanjin 1.2001 - Under Construction, pp. 208-217
Moliterno, G., Giorgio Mangiamele: Visionary of the Australian Screen. Metro Magazine 170, pp. 75-79. ATOM.
Potts, A., 2008. Disencumbered Objects. October 124, Spring 2008, pp. 169–189. October
Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Rando, G., n.d. From Catania to Carlton: Italian Australian Migration and the Cinema of Giorgio
Mangiamele. Metro Magazine 170. ATOM
Salomone, L., & Thwaites, V., 2013. Lee Salomone: Hirsute collection [exhibition catalogue]. April 2013
Semin, D. & Garb, T. & Kuspit, D., 1997. Christian Boltanski. Phaidon, London.
The Giorgio Mangiamele Collection. 2011. [videorecording] Directed by Giorgio Mangiamele; curated and remastered by the National Film and Sound Archive; extras filmed and edited by Ronin Films, Canberra.
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Bibliography Abramovic, M., 2010. Interview: Marina Abramovic [Interview] (3 October 2010).
Anon., 1966. "THE WEIRD MOB'-ON FILM. Australian Women's Weekly, p. 8.
Bishop, C., 2005. Introduction: Installation Art and Experience. In: Installation Art. London: Tate Publishing, p. 6.
Boltanski, C., 2010. Les Vies Impossibles [Interview] 2010.
Bond, T., 2007. Anselm Kiefer Aperiatur Terra: Recent Work Education kit. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Bourriaud, N., 2002. Relational Aesthetics. France: Les presses du reel.
Callipari-Marcuzzo, L., 2011. s.l.:s.n.
Coppola, F., 2012. Chasing the Disappeared [Interview] 2012.
Coppola, F., 2012. Mother Tongue (artwork statement) [Interview] 2012.
Craft Victoria, 2011. Martha McDonald: The Weeping Dress. [Online] Available at: http://www.craft.org.au/See/exhibitions/past_exhibitions/martha-mcdonald-the-weeping-dress/ [Accessed 21 September 2013].
Culotta, N. & O'Grady, J., 1957. They're a Weird Mob. 10th ed. Sydney: Halstead Press.
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They're a Weird Mob. 1966. [Film] Directed by Michael Powell. Australia: Michael Powell.
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Famiglia: a video installation and performance statement
Presence( noun)
an invisible spirit felt to be nearby
Can a person's presence live on through the objects they leave behind?
Sentiment, memory and spirituality are common themes within my arts practise. Through the
primary use of installation, I am investigating objects belonging to family members, as a sort of
reminder of the mementos we keep after loved ones leave us.
The body of work for my Honours year will make reference to my Italian-Australian Roman-Catholic
heritage to which I feel inextricably linked. While the influence of my family’s migration story, like
many post-WWII migrants her family built a new life with not much more than their faith in each
other and god. Both parents migrated to Australia from Italy in the 1950s as young adults with their
respective families. Their desire for a better life allowed them to build a modest life for their family
from the land. They immersed themselves in the familiar and clung to the traditions and customs
from their homeland.
Also of importance in my work is the aspect of food and the cultural practices surrounding it, the
ritualistic custom in Winter of ‘killing the pigs’ to make salami, etc., making tomato sauce, the
laborious process of making Italian bread and biscuits are all entrenched in my memory. These
traditions are still practiced by my family today.
Food is an important reference to the tradition of Italian migrants, as is growing and making their
own food, which enables them to be self-sufficient. The cultural practice (which is not just restricted
to Italian families) of utilising fresh produce and transforming it into something more sustainable,
which is able to be stored, then consumed at a later date is a tangible one.
As a child, my parents would take our family to Italian mass every Sunday, where we would listen,
sing and pray in her parents’ native Italian tongue. Once a year we would attend the annual Feast
of Our Lady of the Rosary at Red Cliffs and participate in the procession through the local streets.
We also visited other feast days, San Rocco at Buronga and the Madonna del Carmelo at Swan Hill.
My mother and father collected the prayer cards given out at these events; some were also gifted
by relatives who had attended other feast days.
71
The video installation:
Three screens focus on Family Celebrations, Food Cultural practices and my process on making
artwork for my Honours year or Performances.
The “performance”:
A gathering of family and friends perform repetitive gestures all associated with memories of my
childhood; my mother continuously serving and offering food, while my good friend clears the
plates away, my brother-in-law serving the wine continuously filling the glasses, my sister at the
record player making sure the Calabrian folk song, Calabrisella continues to play. In doing all of
these repetitive actions all are felt welcome as they would have been in the homes of my family.
72
Famiglia: a video installation and performance documentation photographs
Figure 49 Exterior of house lit up for event. Photos: Daniel Downing
73
Figure 50 Family photos on hall stand near entrance. Photo: Daniel Downing
Figure 51 Looking back from lounge room to entry. Photo: Daniel Downing
74
Figure 52 Guests gathering around the table. Photo: Daniel Downing
Figure 53 Bottles of Callipari wine (owned by my Uncle and his son) and dried fruit made by my mother were offered to guests. Photo: Daniel Downing
75
Figure 54 Eating and serving drinks. Photo: Daniel Downing
Figure 55 Mum serving up the food while the video of her making and cooking the food plays on the television in the kitchen. Photo: Daniel Downing
76
Figure 56 My mother, friend Alicia, brother-in-law Bryan and sister Elina all had a role to play within the performative element of the event. Photo: Daniel Downing
Figure 57 Looking back into the dining room from the lounge room where the audience in the lounge room where the videos were played. Photo: Daniel Downing
77
Figure 58 The three television screens playing the video installation. Photo: Daniel Downing.
Figure 59 Some of the audience sit and watch the videos in the lounge room. Photo: Daniel Downing
78
Figure 60 Guests linger in the in-between space between the dining and lounge rooms.
Figure 61 Among the guests were my two Uncles (my father's brothers) who attended the evening and added to the family atmosphere.
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