Joanne Saad

Fairfield City Museum and Gallery
Histories, Memories, Other Territories| 7 July - 19 August 2007

Remember My Name explores the Karaoke scene which exists within Western Sydney on and off the stage, from public spaces to the private and intimate spaces of homes which reveal a little more about people’s lives, their aesthetic sense and location of the self in the new Australian land. This work is a comment on the bravado that Karaoke invests in its participants, and the ability of this game to become such an international phenomenon crossing cultural, political & language boundaries and to document contemporary hybrid Australian life.

What’s so exciting about Karaoke is that it attracts and brings together a diverse range of people from all races, class, cultural backgrounds and the songs they choose to sing as they engage very passionately in the act.

Karaoke is something that ‘anonymous’ people do. Yet like talent quests, talk-back radio, vox-pop and ‘reality-tv’ shows, we are drawn to ‘ordinary people’ and their lives, experiences, opinions and secret aspirations. We have always wanted to know what other people are thinking, doing and dreaming. Maybe that’s what art is? Essentially art assumes an audience, a spectator. What is interesting these days is that we are becoming more intrigued by the imagination and fantasies of ‘everyday people’, people like ourselves.

Remember My Name was produced in collaboration with Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre.