Boxing.
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Just the word evokes emotion.
To many outsiders, it's brutal - almost inhuman.
But to insiders, or those exposed to the sport first-hand, it means something much deeper.
Boxing fan or not, Shadow Boxer, a new exhibition opening at Maitland Regional Art Gallery on June 8, is likely to stimulate your thinking.
The exhibition will have an official opening on June 18-19, which will include several workshops and discussions. Related events will be ongoing through the exhibition's run, which ends August 8.
The comprehensive exhibit includes paintings, photographs, sculptures, videos and more, including a huge mural on the outside of the gallery, all related to boxing and where it fits in Australian culture.
For Gerry Bobsien, director of Maitland Regional Art Gallery, the conversation that brought the exhibition to life began right before her eyes.
"The exhibit began with our team here; with our collection and legacy of Les Darcy, and our capacity to tell a story about tent boxing, and artists who are fascinated by the idea of the prize fight, and [we] put it together," Bobsien says.
Her thinking at the time was: "Let's light a fire under our collection and bring out a whole lot of stories."
In the gallery's own words: Between 1910 and 1917, Maitland born boxer Les Darcy became an Australian idol. With an impressive record against boxers from around the world, he became known as the 'Maitland Wonder' and was hailed by many as the 'Middleweight Boxing Champion of the World'.
The gallery's extensive memorabilia and ephemera relating to Les Darcy includes newspapers, photographs, boxing event cards, cigarette and chewing gum cards from the day, as well as more contemporary items including books and commemorative stamps. Other items include a tin plate portrait of Darcy, a horseshoe made by Darcy while he worked as a blacksmith, and the wonderful boxing tent wall from Blum's Boxing Troupe who toured Western Australian mining towns in the 1950s.
Let's light a fire under our collection and bring out a whole lot of stories.
- Gerry Bobsien, Maitland Regional Art Gallery director
Much of the Darcy material will be on display in Shadow Boxer, in new cabinets which have been provided for by a government grant.
FROM ALL DIRECTIONS
There will also be five new works from Nigel Milsom, Newcastle's Archibald Prize-winning artist. All five pieces celebrate boxing, including a boxing portrait of Les Darcy. Milsom undertook his boxing series during the pandemic, when he started boxing training himself.
"I started training, just preparing myself mentally for the subject matter I'm working on," he told me last year.
The gallery was able to commission a mural on one of its outside walls as a tribute to indigenous boxer, Dave Sands, an Australian champion and legend who spent his formative years as a boxer in Newcastle and the Hunter.
The mural will be done by Blak Douglas, a leading indigenous artist who has taken an interest in rejuvenating the memorial to Sands on Chichester Road, in Dungog, where he died in a vehicle accident.
A year ago, just after starting the job as director at the Maitland gallery, Bobsien attended the Sydney Biennale, and noted a boxing installation by Karla Dickens, which the Maitland gallery subsequently acquired.
The installation - which speaks directly to the history of indigenous boxing - will be included in Shadow Boxer, and Dickens will also be involved.
Melbourne artist and boxing trainer Richard Lewer, and his work, will also contribute to the exhibition.
"He works in his studio all morning and then in the afternoon heads to the Northside Boxing gym in Northcott, Melbourne where he trains," Bobsien says.
Photographer Michael Willson will show a series of photographs of Tayla Harris, the awarding winning AFLW player, in the boxing ring.
And Newcastle poet Keri Glastonbury has a boxing poem to share.
Bobsien herself went to a boxing gym at Paterson and filmed a series of questions she asked boxers. She sent the film to David Matthews, a friend of hers and a writer in the UK, who penned a book, Looking For a Fight, on his own preparation for boxing. Matthews was a journalist, who took it upon himself to train his way into condition to fight one professional boxing match.
The local questions and answers from Matthews, a journalist across the world, will be stitched together in a video that will be shown during the exhibition period - one of several events designed to engage the audience in the Shadow Boxer story.
The Shadow Boxer catalogue includes a passage from Matthews about his own boxing experience: "Whether inside or outside the prize ring, boxing exploited people like me - working class blacks, white-trash, the rednecks, the browned off."
EXPRESSIONS
Boxer Bianca "Bam Bam" Elmir will also take part, leading boxing workshops at the Maitland PCYC near the gallery and also taking part in discussions, along with Richard Lewer, boxer-and-artist Abdul Abdullah, Blak Douglas and others, during the June18-19 opening weekend.
"She's a passionate advocate for social justice," Bobsien says of Elmir.
In an interview in the exhibition catalogue, Elmir says, "I find it extremely liberating as a woman to express my own masculinity in this sport and I don't shy away from the fact that boxing gives me permission to tap into a part of myself that doesn't get called on in normal life."
The exhibition catalogue features an essay by Wesley Enoch, an Aboriginal man and playwright, and a former director of the Sydney Festival.
In the essay, he says, "Shadow boxing refers to a training regime where you practise your moves and reactions against an imagined opponent that takes the shape of your own shadow, in a way to fight with the darker reflection of yourself."
He goes on to say, "In many ways, White Australia is constantly shadow boxing with its history and First Peoples, refusing to accept the knowledges and practices that could lead to a better ongoing relationship with the Land."
THE GALLERY'S STRATEGY
The Shadow Boxer exhibition is a prime example of a strategic change of direction by Maitland gallery.
"We will run exhibitions longer and there will be more engagement around the programs," Bobsien says.
"So people come back. So they come and see it, but will want to come back and hear a writer talk about boxing, an artist talking about why they make work to do with the boxing ring."
For Bobsien, this show is a "very natural part of what we do: giving artists a voice to tell stories that are not only part of everyday life, but part of our life. Tell new stories, but also amplify stories in everyday life."