In this fragmented narrative, Julien contemplates on ideas and histories of the hierarchical as well as in the struggling figure we find a succinct metaphor of endless traversing, symbolising the voyage of the modern that has to be experienced by others. The installation offers a fascinating new visual reading of space and time and its relation to counter histories.
Exhibition Dates: 2 March – 24 March 2007
True North is meditative and comprises reflective images of the sublime, and, like Julien's accompanying piece, Paradise Omeros, uses the landscape as a key location and theme. Loosely inspired by the story of the black American explorer, Matthew Henson (1866-1955) who accompanied Robert Peary and was one of the first people to reach the North Pole, later writing an account of his experience. In this fragmented narrative, Julien contemplates on ideas and histories of the hierarchical as well as in the struggling figure we find a succinct metaphor of endless traversing, symbolising the voyage of the modern that has to be experienced by others. The installation offers a fascinating new visual reading of space and time and its relation to counter histories. Here, the sublime moment of cognition of the image is presented to the mind which, in turn, can only comprehend the absolute of magnitude which itself defies conceptualisation. The installation contests binaries which are present in many notations of the expedition and of adventure that clutter the history of discovery—here reason, order and stability are replaced by irrational meanderings, symbolic gestures from shamanistic tropes and the constant seeping inertia of the ice.
—Shaheen Merali
—
Isaac Julien was visiting lecturer at Harvard University's Schools of Afro-American and Visual Environmental Studies and is currently a visiting professor at the Whitney Museum of American Arts and the University of Arts, Hamburg. He was also a research fellow at Goldsmiths College, University of London and is a Trustee of the Serpentine Gallery. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2001 and was the recipient of both the prestigious MIT Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts (2001) and the Frameline Lifetime Achievement Award (2002).
His work Paradise Omeros was presented as part of Documenta XI in Kassel (2002). In 2003 he won the Grand Jury Prize at the Kunstfilm Biennale in Cologne for his single screen version of Baltimore and the Aurora Award in 2005. Most recently, he has had solo exhibitions at the Pompidou Centre in Paris (2005), the Museum of Contemporary Art Miami (2005) and the Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover (2006). Julien is represented in the collections of the Tate Modern (London), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Guggenheim (New York) and the Hirshhorn (Washington).
Julien’s film installation, Baltimore (2003), was exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney in 2006/2007 as part of the Centre Pompidou Video Art 1965-2005 exhibition, which travels to ACMI Melbourne, 22 March – 27 May 2007. In March 2007, the three-channel installation of True North will be exhibited in Turbulence: the 3rd Auckland Triennial in New Zealand, curated by Victoria Lynn. True North is Isaac Julien’s first exhibition with Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery and his first commercial exhibition in Australia.
Isaac Julien Once Again... (Statues Never Die)
Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, 2024-25
Isaac Julien Once Again... (Statues Never Die)
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2024
Group Show, The First 40 Years
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2024
Group Show, The Winter Bride
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2023
Isaac Julien What Freedom Is To Me
K21, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2023-24
Isaac Julien What Freedom Is To Me
Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom, 2023
Thinking Historically in the Present
Sharjah Biennial 15, 2023
Isaac Julien Once Again... (Statues Never Die)
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, USA, 2022
Isaac Julien Lessons of the Hour
John Curtin Gallery, Perth, Australia, 2022
Isaac Julien Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2022
Isaac Julien Intermezzo: Isaac Julien
ARoS Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark, 2018
Isaac Julien 'Film-Noir Angels' Looking For Langston
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2018
Isaac Julien Playtime
Platform-L Contemporary Art Center, Seoul, 2017-18
Isaac Julien Refuge
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2016
Isaac Julien Playtime & Kapital
Museo Universitario Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico, 2016
Isaac Julien Stones Against Diamonds
Elisabethenkirche, Basel, Switzerland, 2015
Isaac Julien Stones Against Diamonds
Rolls-Royce Arts Programme, Palazzo Malipiero, Venice, 2015
Isaac Julien Riot
De Pont Museum, Tilburg, Netherlands, 2015
Isaac Julien Western Union: Small Boats (The Leopard)
Urban Video Project, New York, 2014
Isaac Julien PLAYTIME
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2014
Isaac Julien Ten Thousand Waves
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2013-14
Isaac Julien Retrospektive Isaac Julien, Western Union: Small Boats
Museum Brandhorst, Munich, 2013
Isaac Julien Better Life / Ten Thousand Waves II
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2012
Isaac Julien Currents 34: Isaac Julien
Milwaukee Art Museum, 2012-13
Isaac Julien Ten Thousand Waves
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, 2012
Group Show, Groups Who
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2011-12
Isaac Julien Ten Thousand Waves
Museum Brandhorst, Munich, 2011-12
Isaac Julien Isaac Julien Creative Caribbean Network
The Bass Museum, Miami, 2010-11
Isaac Julien Ten Thousand Waves
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2010
Isaac Julien Arctic Re-visions: Isaac Julien's True North
Akron Art Museum, Ohio, 2010
Isaac Julien Ten Thousand Waves
17th Biennale of Sydney, 2010
Group Show
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2009-10
Isaac Julien True North
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2007
Isaac Julien The Film Art of Isaac Julien
Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), 2001
Group Show, Young British Artists
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 1996