Me, Also Me

The title of this exhibition, Me, Also Me is taken from the ‘Me: X Also me: Y’ meme widely circulated on social media. This meme is often used to humorously demonstrate the multiple realities people live in, the contradictory elements of life, and to perhaps release tension around the need to take unitary positions.

Through works that embrace a similar logic, Me, Also Me considers how artists employ tropes of mirroring and repetition, anecdotes and alter egos, imitation and transformation to map the contours of uncannily labile selves.

The videos Delivery Dancer’s Sphere, 2022, by Ayoung Kim and Invisible Touch, 2024, by Daisuke Kosugi delve into personal and political questions about the boundaries between reality and fiction. By focusing on moments and sensations of uncertainty and ambiguity they reveal how accounts and experiences of specific situations can either diverge or remain unclear.

These works are positioned in conversation with Brett Whiteley’s major painting installation The American Dream, 1968–69, a work that deals with the late Australian artist’s increasing state of frustration in relation to the disconnect between America’s rhetoric of freedom and opportunity, and the realities of the nation’s domestic and international politics at the time of the civil rights movement, 1954–68, and the Vietnam War, 1955–75.

Drawn from AGWA’s collection, including several new acquisitions, the exhibition features the work of Farah Al Qasimi, David Attwood, Pat Brassington, Ian Burn, Consuelo Cavaniglia, Mutlu Çerkez, Omer Fast, Anne Ferran, Hilarie Mais, Linda Marrinon, Yasumasa Morimura, Tracey Moffatt, Maria Taniguchi and a painting by Rick Vermey on loan from the Holmes a Court Collection.

Curated by

Rachel Ciesla
Lead Creative Simon Lee Foundation Institute of Contemporary Asian Art

Robert Cook
AGWA Curator

Yasumasa Morimura M’s self-portrait No.81 2023. Photograph – gelatin silver print, 35 x 28 cm. © Yasumasa Morimura; Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.

David Attwood Post New Hoover Intelligent Robots 2023. Hoover intelligent robot vacuum cleaners, flourescent lights, acrylic, 142 x 34 x 22 cm. The State Art Collection, The Art Gallery of Western Australia. Purchased, 2023. © David Attwood, 2023. Photo: Dan McCabe.

Ayoung Kim Delivery Dancer’s Sphere 2022. Single channel video, duration: 24 minutes. The State Art Collection, The Art Gallery of Western Australia. Purchased through the Art Gallery of Western Australia Foundation: TomorrowFund, 2022. © Ayoung Kim, 2022.

Hilarie Mais Isis No. 3 1988. Oil on wood, 211 x 209.5 x 2.5 cm. The State Art Collection, The Art Gallery of Western Australia. Purchased 1989.

Mutlu Cerkez New album cover designs for bootleg recordings of Led Zeppelin 1996. Ink and photocopy on paper, 31 x 31 cm (each sheet). The State Art Collection, The Art Gallery of Western Australia. Purchased 1997.

Tracy Moffatt Scarred for life (suite of nine) 1994. off set prints on paper, 80.0 x 60.0 cm (unframed each). The State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia. Purchased 1996. © Tracey Moffatt, 2014.

Pat Brassington Voicing 2001. pigment print, 76 x 56 cm. The State Art Collection, The Art Gallery of Western Australia. Purchased 2013.

Anne Ferran Scene V [from Scene on the death of nature] 1986. gelatin silver print, 114 x 173 cm. The State Art Collection, The Art Gallery of Western Australia. Purchased through The Art Gallery of Western Australia Foundation: TomorrowFund, 2014. © Anne Ferran, Courtesy Stills Gallery.