It’s with great pleasure that the micro-trustees of AF Sydney can announce our April Recipient! After a very long and intense discussion, we’ve decided to award this months grant to ‘Communion’ – a project by Julia Burns. You can see some of Julia’s work in her video showreel below.

From Julia’s submission:

The work will be titled ‘Communion’ and is being made for submission to the 2011 Blake Religious Prize. It will feature a short video of two male Aboriginal dancers performing an intimate ballet sequence at the altar of a Catholic church.

Filmed at the site of the first Catholic Church in Wollombi and one of the earliest sites of Christian worship in Eastern Australia, this work presents an unconventional scene featuring Aboriginal spirituality and male intimacy within a traditional Christian context. It refers to the adaptability of believers to find spirituality in religions that may not have originally been their own and asks the viewer to question their own ability to adapt to a scene foreign to their expectations.

There are obviously some very subjective and sensitive issues around the work that Julia is going to create – in fact, the submission stimulated quite the discussion around our board table over dinner last night! We thought that the work and the intent to create such an intense discussion is what made her submission awesome.  We’re looking forwards to seeing the work created and can’t wait to see it unveiled at the Blake Spiritual Prize.