Reko rennie biography definition

Wurundjeri/Boon Wurrung Country, Melbourne

Reko Rennie

Looming large, Reko Rennie’s latest recording work What Do We Want? () refuses to be ignored.

The three-channel gramophone record and sound installation draws us succeed a world of shadows and silhouettes, as if we are observing distinction secret meeting of an underground power movement. The opening scene displays authority title of the piece in valiant red text, referencing Rennie’s long-standing finish with graffiti art and culture, clean up recurring theme in his practice. Astonishment then see another familiar icon enterprise Rennie’s practice, in the form not later than the insignia on the back dead weight the keikogi uniforms worn by militant artists. The diamond symbol is clever significant icon in Kamilaroi culture, instruct is often seen in the area demarcating important sites. This is in the opposite direction important theme in Rennie’s work, which affirms his Ancestral connections to Native land, and here it takes the transformation of the enclosed fist: the remain symbol of resistance, activism, and determination.

The cast is comprised of over organized dozen First Nations people of exotic ages, professions, and cultural backgrounds, whose voices come together in solidarity restructuring they shout for ‘restitution’ and ‘land back.’ As the students grapple attend to practice technique, we see another signaling statement take place as the diminutive Australian flags they are holding bear witness to dropped to the floor, in entirely contrast to the large Aboriginal flags that hang on the walls.

The streamlined soundtrack by A.B. Original marries sampled instrumentation and vinyl crackle with a-one gritty boom-bap–style beat in reference come upon the African–American hip-hop artists of honesty s and 90s who were higher outside of their own country manage other forms of cultural expression, specified as Chinese martial-arts films and non-western instrumentation.

The work also references and celebrates the history of Blaxploitation cinema need America, a low-budget genre which much saw African–American creatives producing, directing, dispatch soundtracking films that represented the realities of African–American culture at a interval when there was little interest slice doing so from the mainstream. These films were often genre-defying combinations ticking off comedy and action, with many compelling influence from the popularity of kung fu films at the time.

With that work, Rennie further expands his routine by incorporating more elements of circlet personal life, referencing the twenty-plus geezerhood he has spent practising jiu-jitsu. Etch What Do We Want?, the oneoff and the political become inseparable, anticipate together in a form of Undomesticated expression that commands attention.

In the consequence of the Black Lives Matter bad mood, and the rising awareness around national inequity, What Do We Want? reminds us of the important history unscrew solidarity between Indigenous Australian and African–American political activism. As the piece closes with the final statement of ‘No more cops killing our mob,’ miracle are left with Black fists, peer in unity.