Exhibition New Worlds

BACKGROUND Kozka's work 'Pre-dinner drinks' formed part of the New Worlds group exhibition curated by the Director of the Australian Centre for Photography, Alasdair Foster. The exhibition built on the shared sensibility of the contributing artists for melding the new and old in an innovative and creative way, building on a tradition of looking back as a means of defining contemporary identity. CONTRIBUTION While each artist of New Worlds has a distinctive style and approach and independently examined and referenced the past in their work - whether using historical pastiche, design, memory or landscape - the rewinding of time encouraged viewers to dissect the present and contemplate the future. Kozka's work for New Worlds, 'Pre-dinner drinks', draws on Kozka's sense of the "ambiguity of memory" providing a "narrative of suburbia and the people who inhabit this space" according to Sydney art writer, Naomi Gall. "The figures stare out through sad, expressionless eyes while acting out scenarios not dissimilar from distant childhood memories" (Gall, 2011). SIGNIFICANCE New Worlds, exhibited at the Museum of Photography, Seoul, Korea in August and September 2011 was a major cultural activity of the 2011 Australia-Korea Year of Friendship. A joint initiative by the Commonwelath of Australia and Republic of Korea governments, the Year of Friendship marked 50 years of bilateral relations between the nations. The exhibition was itself developed as a reciprocal bilateral activity, with the Museum of Photography presenting an exhibition of Korean photography at Australian Centre for Photography in August 2011.