Ilona Jetmar

Through her art practice, Ilona Jetmar continues to investigate how a contemporary art practice might facilitate a sense of home and belonging for an Eastern European born immigrant growing up in Melbourne’s Hungarian diaspora. The identity of a child of diaspora is shaped by transferred memory through family archival materials such as family stories, objects, photographs and re-staged cultural practices. These works, as a part of a growing body, addresses these issues in the re-imagining, re-contextualising and re-presenting of these family archival materials through the medium of painting.

In her personal experience, growing up in Australia after emigrating from Europe led Jetmar to observe the reification of cultural practices by those in the Hungarian diaspora. This acts as a key prompt in her recovery and representation of objects and memories taken from family archival materials, as Jetmar's practice looks to test the validity of memory and its interaction with a new place. Through the artist's contemporary art practice, Jetmar attempts to reconcile and connect with a lost heritage whilst revealing the dislocated cultural practices of this diaspora. This not only works to test her own foundations in this but to interrogate Jetmar's belongingness in her adopted country.

Click here for artwork by Ilona Jetmar

Exhibitions at Tacit include:

2018 Making Sacred

  

 

Recent exhibitions include
solo
2018 Making Sacred, Tacit Art, Melbourne
Punctum, Deakin Art Gallery, Melbourne 
2014 Refraction Select, Drum Theatre, Dandenong
Refraction, Walker St Gallery, Dandenong 
2008 Light Chasing, McCulloch Gallery, Flinders 

group
2023 TACIT Still Life [Redux], Tacit Art, Melbourne
Bound Pigment: Celebrating Paint, Tacit Art
2022 TACIT Still Life Prize, Tacit Art
SUBSTRATE 22, Tacit Art 
2021 TACIT Still Life Prize, Tacit Art 
Costume, Tacit Art 
2020 20[2020], Tacit Art
2019 9 x 5, Woollahra Art School, Sydney
2018 Missing, The Project Space, Geelong
2016 Still in Progress, Deakin Art Gallery, Melbourne
2014 Challenge, Boxhill ArtSpace, Melbourne
Local, Bunjil Place, Melbourne
2013 She, Walker St Gallery, Dandenong
2011 Discovery, Deakin Art Gallery 2
010 Emerging Artist Award, Walker St Gallery 
Inspired, Heritage Hill Museum, Dandenong
2008 Summer Show, McCulloch Gallery, Flinders
Inspired, Heritage Hill Museum