Dr Ken Thaiday Snr, Grace Lillian Lee, Allan George Lee bring together Zenadth Kes weaving, ceremony and mentorship through kinetic contemporary form.
Suggoo Pennise is a major collaborative work by Dr Ken Thaiday Snr, Grace Lillian Lee and Allan George Lee, commissioned for the 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art. The kinetic sculpture draws on the dhari, ceremonial headdress traditions, and the movement of dance in the Zenadth Kes/Torres Strait, bringing together Lee’s experimental approach to weaving and adornment, Lee’s exploration of the ways identity is shaped by family history, lived experience and public perception, with Thaiday’s long-standing practice of kinetic sculpture. The work speaks to kinship, material culture, oral history and intergenerational exchange, extending cultural knowledge through contemporary sculptural language.
“Suggoo Pennise brings together story, teaching and cultural knowledge. It honours the forms of the dhari while allowing them to move, transform and speak within a contemporary space.”
Grace Lillian Lee
About the Artist
Grace Lillian Lee is a Meriam Mir artist and designer whose practice extends weaving, fashion and adornment into contemporary sculptural form. Allan George Lee, a Torres Strait Islander and Chinese artist, explores identity and cultural inheritance through art. His work reflects on assimilation and cultural complexities, often using the pseudonym Aloobin. Dr Ken Thaiday Snr is a senior Meriam Mir artist renowned for kinetic headdresses and sculptures that activate ceremony, movement, story and cultural knowledge.
Presented by CASSANDRA BIRD
About Installations
Installations presents ambitious contemporary art throughout Carriageworks, and for the first time, extends into the city. The program of 14 projects features sculpture, textiles, painting, photography, kinetic forms, and public interventions, with works that are generous and immediate but also ask us to look more closely at the social, ecological, and cultural systems shaping our world.
Artists use spectacle, material invention and public address to explore some of the defining questions of contemporary life: how histories inhabit place, how images circulate, how materials carry memory, and how audiences gather, move, participate and reflect. Installations is curated by José Da Silva, Director of UNSW Galleries.
