Award-winning digital artist Jazz Money is the recipient of the RE/Vision commission, receiving $25,000 to create an audiovisual piece interpreting the NFSA collection to offer an authentic and contemporary vision of Australia.

WINHANGANHA

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Wiradjuri filmmaker and poet, Jazz Money, will use the national audiovisual collection to create a new digital work, after being announced as the recipient of the NFSA’s RE/Vision commission.

Currently based on sovereign Gadigal land in Sydney, Jazz’s digital work appears online and in various galleries and museums nationally. Her poetry has been published widely across Australia, and reimagined as murals, visual art and video art. She will work closely with NFSA curatorial and technical experts, utilising the digital collection to answer the question ‘Who Are We Now?’

The title of Jazz’s work, WINHANGANHA, is a Wiradjuri word that loosely translates to ‘remember, know, think’ in English. She said the film will provide a ‘revisioning of Australian audiovisual history that centralises dance, performance, orality, gathering and protest, to celebrate a unique identity that is formed through creative expression, legacy and resilience’.

‘The NFSA presents a place that is loaded with gaze and coloniality, yet records a link to us and our stories,’ she said. ‘Working with archival footage has led me to consider the relationship between our recorded knowledges, and how we create new futures through that which we inherit.

‘My concept proposes an Indigenous perspective and lyrical journey through the NFSA collection, focusing on the human body as a location of expression and empowerment.’

Inspiring Artists

NFSA Chief Executive, Patrick McIntyre, said opening the collection to creatives provided an opportunity to reimagine our shared audiovisual heritage, and produce works with diverse perspectives.

‘We love the idea of opening up the collection to audiovisual artists and practitioners', he said. 'There is such a wealth of material in there that can be used to explore and express many different perspectives on Australian heritage and contemporary culture.

‘As an artist on an exciting trajectory, we are delighted that Jazz Money will undertake this project with the NFSA and we look forward to premiering WINHANGANHA.’

The RE/Vision project is supported by the Australian Government through the Office for the Arts. The complete piece will receive premiere screenings at the British Film Institute in the UK, and Arc Cinema in Canberra, and will be brought into the NFSA collection and made available to the public.

In 2020, Jazz was awarded the David Unaipon Award from the State Library of Queensland and a First Nations Emerging Career Award from the Australian Council for the Arts. Her debut book, how to make a basket, was released earlier this year.