ACE Open announces Allison Chhorn as the recipient of the 2022 Porter Street Commission, a $20,000 contemporary art award for South Australian artists.
Chhorn is a Cambodian-Australian filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist whose work explores themes of migrant displacement, trauma and post-memory. She often works between the cracks of information or resources, whether it is traces of knowledge passed down from and between Cambodian families or her grandmother’s poor eyesight. From this place of lack, Chhorn imagines new worlds pieced together by fragments of reality.
Most recently, Chhorn has written and directed a series of internationally acclaimed films that blend documentary and fiction in highly singular ways, including THE PLASTIC HOUSE (2019), BLIND BODY (2021) and MISSING (2021).
Allison Chhorn in her studio, 2021. Photograph: Anastasia Comelli
The Porter Street Commission will see Chhorn reengage her practice with the gallery space as she develops a site-specific filmic installation. The work will investigate the generational impacts of Cambodian diaspora, focusing on how cultural practices and kinship rituals by migrants living in Australia continue as a way of preserving heritage. For example, rituals such as cooking, gardening, collecting/hoarding and physical labour have been both beneficial and detrimental for older Cambodian generations such as Chhorn’s parents, especially those who endured the Khmer Rouge. These rituals are also acts of service that may not be seen as a love language to anyone else, even to their own children – they are hidden rituals.
Chhorn says, ‘I’m incredibly honoured and grateful to be the recipient of the Porter Street Commission. I had an ambitious idea that’s been developing through practice-led research and years of living with the material, which can now be realised with this generous commission. I’m also excited to work with family and friends who may not have shown in a gallery before, but whose skills and experiences will be invaluable to the project.’
This year’s selection panel composed of ACE Open’s Artistic Director Patrice Sharkey (South Australia); Dr Léuli Eshrāghi (Curator, TarraWarra Biennial 2023, and Affiliate Researcher, The Space Between Us, University of Winnipeg); and Louise O’Kelly (Founding Director & Curator, Block Universe, London) who ‘congratulate Allison on her outstanding proposal full of poetic truths.’
The new work will be presented as part of ACE Open’s 2022 artistic program as a solo exhibition at ACE Open in Adelaide, South Australia.
