This exhibition is currently closed due to COVID-19 (Coronavirus). Please stay tuned for updates on when we will re-open.

Ararat is the only colonial town in Australia to have been founded by Chinese immigrants; Chinese miners established Ararat in the 1850s. Today, this is one of the first things you read when Googling the town, although this history wasn’t always so visible. Through a month-long residency in Ararat, Siying Zhou formed personal connections to place and sought to understand contemporary relationships to the past. This research has informed her solo exhibition Drawing Dashes Between Dots; a mixed-media installation that maps out the entanglements between past and present and the way such snares can influence personal identity.

Zhou utilised public archives including those from the Gum San Chinese Heritage Centre and Ararat Regional Library, as well as the personal archives, memories and stories held by community members, such as passionate community group, the Friends of Gum San. The artist has extracted multiple narratives and perspectives from a fragmented and discontinuous representation of history. Humanising facts and figures, these take us from the 1800s through to today. Throughout this process, Zhou realised she could not separate her family history or personal identity from Ararat’s and has interwoven her narrative into that of the town. History is undoubtedly framed by the memories, stories and identities of those writing and interpreting it.