Isaac Julien in Australia
Isaac Julien confessed to Laura Barnett in a Guardian article in 2013 that he was a frustrated painter. Therefore, it’s unsurprising that his film and video works are so painterly, that his installations inhabit gallery spaces, and his picture-making within each frame is so considered and visually poetic. Like Francisco de Goya and Gustave Courbet before him, he constructs powerful images that document the pivotal events of his time. Beautiful to look at and carefully crafted, they retain their political and cultural integrity, providing an alternative to mainstream reportage of social justice issues.
In his early sixties, Julien lives and works in London. He was born and raised in London’s East End to parents from the Caribbean island-nation of St. Lucia. Julien adopted video as a medium while still a student at Central Saint Martins in London in 1983. It is a germinal work that anticipates the form and content of later projects such as , 2019, and , 2010, to be shown at the John Curtin Gallery in Perth early in 2022. In these works, he balances the formal beauty of filming with a razor-sharp critical interrogation that resonates emotionally to generate an empathetic response that speaks to our shared humanity.
