EXHIBITIONS: MOOD RING 360
By Sereima Adimate, Chiara Garrett-Saladrau, and Garden Reflexxx.
9 March – 21 April 2024
Exhibition Launch: Saturday 16 March 2024, 2 – 4pm
In an immersive screen experience Sereima Adimate and Garden Reflexxx present a full-bodied iteration of Mood Ring (2024): a portal into memory, family encounters, bridges to past selves, conflicts and resolutions shot entirely in Fiji. Adimate’s directorial debut is a long-form visual poem made with collaborators Chiara Garrett-Saladrau, Apimeleki Rainima, Lakatoi, and members of family around Fiji. An unlikely family portrait, Mood Ring’s use of ‘emotional journalism’ (term coined by the filmmaker) foregrounds impressions and visions of female friendship as it pertains to growth.
Mood Ring is re-contextualised as a lateral experience: footage shot between 2022/23 boomerangs as a way of abstracting feelings that run throughout - what goes around comes around. This provides new entries into musings on cycles and the patterns of life, because everything happens for a reason, and then it happens again. In this way the film embodies the meaning of ‘going home’ as a part of growing up and away.
The film itself was shaped from 22+ hours of footage that included journal writing, iPhone recorded poetry, and handycam videography. Like the 360 Zoom mic recording the sounds of Sereima’s dad playing piano, this exhibition positions the audience in the middle of a spiritual emergency; its resolution, its hope, and responsibilities.
“Be True.” - Alifereti Welekoto
ARTIST BIOS
SEREIMA ADIMATE/ STELLY G
Sereima Adimate/ Stelly G is a Gadigal-based Fijian performance artist with an anti-colonial practice that foregrounds the Pacific-diaspora experience by interrogating colonial structures that have invited shame and forced us to neglect self-love, communal care, and understanding.
“I love my people, I love myself and I am committed to the evolution of returning to a past that meets the future.”
Stelly has performed as a solo/collaborative artist across many established institutions and galleries including Cement Fondu, Sydney Biennale, MCA, Sydney Opera House, Firstdraft, and Campbelltown Arts Centre, and performed in w
KIKI ONER
Kiki Oner is an Eora/Sydney based actor. She has starred in three previous works with Garden Reflexxx and is a well-known party host for MVP Nightclub and House of Mince. In March 2021 she won Australia's first ever Sneaker category at the 2021 West Ball.
GARDEN REFLEXXX
Garden Reflexxx is the creative partnership of film-obsessives Jen Atherton and André Shannon working predominantly with trans/queer artists. Operating as an intermedia group their productions are informed by community art practice and industry-critical theory in a search for natural bridges between independence, interdepedence and arthouse production.
Screening locations include The Lincoln Centre, pornfilmfestival Berlin, Shanghai Queer Film Festival, Slamdance Film Festival, Montreal World Film Festival, Dead End Film Festival, Performance Space, apex art, New York City and our work has been published by Sissy Screens Junkee, Runaway magazine, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Melbourne International Film Festival and our commentary broadcast on ABC and FBi Radio on our bi-monthly film show Movies Movies Movies. They have shown video work at Pari Gallery, Seventh Gallery, Tekminimal, and created a large-scale installation for Vivid Sydney.
They have run four editions of Garden Reflexxx presents at Pink Flamingo Cinema; a film festival showcasing the best of queer, resourceful filmmaking.
In 2022 they premiered 'Grape Steak: A Gay Bashing Told In Three Cameras'. In 2024 they premiered ‘Mood Ring’ at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre.
Made possible with support from Cement Fondu, Film Fiji, and special thanks to Fiji Film, Australian Cultural Fund, the Ministry of iTaukei Affairs, Fiji Airways, and the community of Eora/Sydney.