SÔNG SỐNG SONG, FAIRFIELD CITY MUSEUM & GALLERY (2026)

a solo exhibition dealing with the lingering impact of Agent Orange and Dioxins in Burramatta (Parramatta River). Contaminated by the same chemical weapons that were manufactured, stockpiled and exported to the War in Vietnam, the repercussion of this industrial legacy runs parallel in the bodies and waterways of people in Vietnam as it does in the western suburbs of Sydney Australia as a historic source of Agent Orange production.

The implication of rehabilitation and collective death across the various elements of the exhibition seeks to find hope in times danger; recovery though toxic exposure; solidarity through loss; purification through contamination; and unity through diasporic fragmentation.

Half remembered songs are sung by the artists’ mother, neighbours and aunties as they wash shirts by the water, as a gesture of respite for a contaminated river. Discarded and donated shirts are buttoned up into one collective garment. Ancient Vietnamese ceramics – a Thạp Gôm Hoa Nâu & Dĩa Sành Thanh Hóa – holding toxic water and recently recovered from Japan and Indonesia; where once they fulfilled ceremonial cleansing roles in tea and ablution rituals.

Singers: Hoàng Thị Ngọc, Huỳnh Thị Nga, Lê Thị Thanh, Nguyễn Thị Mẫn, Nguyễn Thị Kim Dung, Nguyễn Thị Kim Nhung & Trịnh Thị Son.  Photography by Jessica Maurer, 2026.

Sister Wendy Beckett: The video below uses an AI avatar of the late art critic Sister Wendy Beckett to give an overview of the exhibition.

Project funding from Fairfield City Council and assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body as part of the major Visual Arts and Crafts Strategy (VACS).