KickArts Contemporary Arts Cairns 2011
The Black Pram Project is a collaborative exhibition by Robyn Baker, Anna Holan and Barbara Dover of installations, digital video and mixed media works, which considers and probes perspectives on and understandings of childhood and children’s lives and place in modern society. This exploration gives rise to particular complexities such as familial contexts and sensitivities but also to the darker, less rosy side of the world of children.
The realm of children and childhood has become contentious territory in the twenty-first century. With the use of internet and other technologies, the exploitation of innocent children has become a concern for society. So much so, that even artists’ use of the images of children in their work has been put under scrutiny. This exhibition gives rise to such questions as: How do children live in these times of rapid political, social, economic and environmental change? How do we understand childhood as an integral position or location in a particular community or society? Can we understand the everyday lives of children from their own perspective or can we only see their world through the filters of an adult viewpoint? Are children becoming ever more precious to us to the point of being fetishised and hence, in our consumer and market-driven world, commodified?
The culture and lives of children and childhood, its status, transitions and changes over the decades remain important areas of exploration for contemporary artists. The Black Pram Project deliberates upon these broad issues while questioning such ideas as childhood innocence and child endangerment as well as the commodification of children and childhood.
