Troy-Anthony Baylis: Nomenklatur Hahndorf
April 9 – May 31, 2022
Exhibition Opening event Saturday May 7 at 2pm
This exhibition is part of South Australia’s History Festival 2022
Nomenklatur Hahndorf is a large-scale installation of bold textile ‘landscape’ works called Nomenclatures. This new exhibition is titled from the German translation of ‘nomenclature’ and the name Hahndorf – a site of significant German heritage including the 1857 establishment of Hahndorf Academy as a school for English and German education.
Baylis has researched the Nomenclature Act, 1917 that anglicised German names of “towns and districts” in South Australia and the Nomenclature Act, 1935 that restored the former German names to the towns of Hahndorf and Lobethal, the Adelaide suburb of Klemzig and several others.
Utilising synthetic materials, the artist paints the German and non-German names for Australian places onto new and recycled Holland blinds, cuts them into strips and weaves them back together in ‘suspended tension’, holding them in place with embroidered names of Aboriginal nations whose Country, named or not, was never ceded.
The first eight Nomenclature works debuted at Art Gallery of South Australia as part of the artist’s major 2020 solo exhibition titled Nomenclatures. Nomenklatur Hahndorf is an immersive experience that celebrates the layering of more places, more names, more colours, more patterns, more ‘typographic decolonisation’.
Troy will also deliver a FREE family friendly drawing and weaving workshop for children! Limited places available so book your tickets now!
Troy-Anthony Baylis
Learn about Troy’s exhibition and artistic practice in his interview with SBS NITV Radio
The artist in the studio with Nomenclature (Cape Bauer) 2021
Work-in-progress [detail] Photo: Mark Fuller
Aspects of this exhibition were created as part of the Guildhouse Fellowship, presented in partnership with the Art Gallery of South Australia, generously supported by The James & Diana Ramsay Foundation.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Festivals Australia program.