This session of Reading Group will be led by artist and curator Jahkarli Romanis. She is a co-curator for Still Here, Now, which is running concurrently in Gallery One.

Inspired by conversations between artists in lockdown, the Reading group aims to connect and sustain relationships by unpacking material and contributing to the poly-narrative of the arts and culture. Prior to each monthly session, a new reading or stimulus will be assigned and members will have time to reflect beforehand. Bring along your questions and notes, or just listen to the discussion.

All are welcome - you do not have to be an artist! Spaces limited to 15 people.

Session reading: In Plato's Cave, by Susan Sontag in On Photography, published 1977.

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Jahkarli Romanis is a Naarm-based artist and researcher. Raised on Wadawurrung Country in Torquay, Jahkarli moved to Melbourne to continue her tertiary studies in 2018. After completing an Honours in Photography degree at RMIT in 2020, she commenced her PhD at Monash University in 2021. Her work is inextricably intertwined with her identity as a Pitta Pitta woman and explores the complexities of her lived experience and the continuing negative impacts of colonisation in Australia.

Jahkarli’s practice aims to subvert and disrupt colonial ways of thinking and image making, obtaining agency over her representation as a Pitta Pitta woman. She utilises her research and artwork as tools for investigating inherent biases encoded within the technologies we use in our everyday. Namely, biases within photographic practice and contemporary mapping technologies. Jahkarli hopes to contribute to discourses around the visual representation of land and cultural identity from an Indigenous standpoint.