Sullivan+Strumpf are excited to present Jemima Wyman’s solo show Counterpowers. Based in LA, this is Wyman’s first show with the gallery, and coincides with her inclusion in The National, where she is exhibiting at Carriagework.

Counterpowers is an exhibition of new paintings, collages, and textiles by Jemima Wyman. The imagery for this new work is selected from Wyman’s ongoing MAS-archive cataloguing the clothing and costuming of masked protesters from around the world. For this show, she focuses on specific patterns (keffiyeh, dazzle camouflage, and paisley) in a designated palette (red, black, and white). Honing in on certain types of camouflage that protesters employ, Wyman’s selection forms a visual bridge that spans various eras, borders, and ideologies.

Counterpower refers to the ability to redirect, challenge or remove power from an oppositional force. The use of camouflage, make-shift uniforms, and masking by protesters creates counterpower. Their creative transformation and disguise achieved through what they wear allow them to multiply their presence, create solidarity, and challenge persistent surveillance.

A ‘social camouflage’ is empathically realized in these propositional and collective groupings. This ‘social camouflage’ is permissive, and facilitates collective visual resistance and the imagination of different futures beyond now. Wyman’s work itself, through mass ornamentation and tricks of the eye, echoes and supports these strategies of visual resistance.

Jemima Wyman’s practice encompasses performance, video, installation, photography and painting. Her most recent work focuses on patterns and masking used by marginalised groups to gain power (aka counterpower). Through this work she investigates visual resistance: specifically camouflage as a formal, social and political strategy for negotiating identity.

Wyman has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally since 1998. Her work was included in Conflict: Contemporary Responses to War, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane (2014); Direct Democracy, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2013); The Unexpected Guest, Liverpool Biennial, UK (2012); Panorama, Casula Powerhouse, Sydney (2012); Inner Voices, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (2011); The Open Day Book Exhibition, LACE, Los Angeles (2011); and The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, 17th Biennale of Sydney (2010).