Kenzee Patterson is a settler-colonial descendant whose art practice combines material experimentation with historical research, autobiography and language, motivated by the imperative to confront the ecological and socio-cultural repercussions of resource extraction and material displacement.

Amy Jane Parker is an artist, artist facilitator and disability support worker based in Naarm/Melbourne.

Dear J, I’ve been meaning to follow up on my previous letter for a while now, thinking I knew what I wanted to write but also nervous about the inevitable failures of assigning words; of failing to articulate their incomparability.[^1] In this letter I’d like to think about clinker, a residual geology of metalworking, as […]

What do we do about the extractive industries and their persistent and pervasive presence within the arts industry as sponsors, facilitators and (un)welcome benefactors? There is no easy answer to this question — the arts seem to be reliant upon the financial support of extractive industries, either through direct corporate sponsorship or indirectly, via funds […]

Kenzee Patterson is a settler-colonial descendant whose art practice combines material experimentation with historical research, autobiography and language, motivated by the imperative to confront the ecological and socio-cultural repercussions of resource extraction and material displacement.

As the COVID-19 pandemic caused Australian theatres, music venues, galleries and museums to close, the Federal Government’s response to the ensuing crisis raised the question of whether they view the arts as surplus to the economy. Government stimulus for the sector, both meagre and delayed, is unlikely to hinder the ongoing destruction of careers, infrastructure […]

Talia Smith is an artist and curator from Aotearoa New Zealand and now based in Sydney. She is of Sāmoan, Cook Island and NZ European heritage. Both her visual arts and curatorial practices explores notions of time, memory and familial histories, with a focus on the centring of diverse voices within the wider canon of […]

it’s all a new mythology … for our time … some sort of heroic … and it has created new mythologies and you better take them seriously. Yes they are out there and don’t ignore them — Werner Herzog Disney’s Star Wars spin-off series The Mandalorian is a model twenty-first century enterprise—an elaborate extraction machine […]

Amy Jane Parker is an artist, artist facilitator and disability support worker based in Naarm/Melbourne.

༼ つ ✿◕‿◕✿༽つ (‿ˠ‿) the BWS is now a BWyaasssssS as in yass queen as in yasssss gay pride as in yass we co-opted this lingo from black queer communities on the other side of the world as in BeerWineSpirits is now a place to drink down some black queer liberation on land stolen that […]

Kenzee Patterson is a settler-colonial descendant whose art practice combines material experimentation with historical research, autobiography and language, motivated by the imperative to confront the ecological and socio-cultural repercussions of resource extraction and material displacement.

Contemporary art is kind of a pyramid scheme: the few artists who make a living making art in this speculative market obscure the vast majority who must do all kinds of other work to pay for food, rent and the art practice itself. I say this not to create an us-versus-them situation between more and […]

With the implementation of lockdowns and social distancing measures last year we witnessed an almost overnight closure of a large part of the Australian arts sector, prompting a widespread call for financial support. These calls for assistance often took a well-trodden road, emphasising the significant contribution that the sector makes to the national economy, as […]

Lucreccia Quintanilla is an artist, writer, DJ and researcher gratefully living and working on the unceded lands of the Boon Wurrung and Woiwurrung (Wurundjeri) peoples of the Kulin Nation. Her practice is both an individual and collaborative one which manifests into outcomes within galleries and also as events and performances outside of that context. Her […]

Jungku Ngambala Ngarrur Ngarrumba Yarkijina Yurrngumba(We sit peacefully in our lands forever) — Garrwa Yanyuwa Elder Nancy McDinny In 2020 pandemic conditions created an extreme sense of isolation and containment. The city slowed down to lockdown pace here on unceded Gadigal lands as the terror of COVID-19 began to unravel through all sorts of media […]

If attention was an experiment in living, rather than a deal or a calculation. —Adam Phillips I looked up from the breakfast table to the highest window in the apartment. There, silently, a plane made its way from the left jamb to the right and was gone. It was the first I’d seen flying in […]

Much of our work as a critical art collective turns on two senses of the word ‘surplus’: surplus populations, that is, people who are forced to the margins of or outside the wage relation and whose ambivalent status as labour-in-waiting and revolutionary potential translates into often violent disciplinary regimes of the state; and surplus value, […]

Artists: Beau Emmett, Jordan Halsall, Reiko Miyazawa, John-Elio Reitman, and Victoria Stolz Curator: Kathryne Genevieve Honey Artist’s Artists was the last show at CAVES to run its course without a live audience to parse the work of its contributors in real time. Like much visual art programming in Naarm/Melbourne over the past eight months, the […]

Maya Hodge is a proud Lardil woman raised in Mildura, Victoria. Based on Kulin Country, Maya is an emerging poet, artist, curator and musician whose work explores healing through the arts. Maya is a co-winner of the PEN Mildura Indigenous Writers Award. This conversation took place during the COVID-19 lockdown, prompted by Maya’s participation in […]

Artists: Amrita Hepi and Sam Lieblich Curators: Max Delany, Annika Kristensen and Miriam Kelly It’s another day in COVID-19 lockdown, one of those formless days filled with internet tabs. I arrive on the ACCA Open website looking for something to feel. I visit Neighbour. The chatbot greets me, asking if I might consider helping it […]

Artists: Amrita Hepi, Miko Revereza, Talia Smith and Leyla Stevens Curator: Josephine Mead The existence and placement of the punctuation in the title the place one lives., is subtly suggestive of the screening’s handling of its central theme of home. By its nature, the full stop indicates a cessation or state of completion. However, the […]

Artist: Archie Barry Curators: Max Delany, Annika Kristensen and Miriam Kelly I try to participate in Archie Barry’s new art on the internet. I open the browser to Multiply and press play, bow the laptop with its residual slime, symposiums, ‘catch-ups’ and wash my hands. I’ve racked them up, reams of micro-films and they touch, […]

We began this issue with questions. What does it mean to sit against something? What does it mean to create against something? What are we against? How do we make art against the world? Does anti necessarily inscribe a binary logic? Does ante necessarily inscribe a chronological one? We still have all these questions, but […]

ANTI/ANTE DANCER : (noun) A dancer who is preoccupied not with the expressive notion of dance, but with the possibilities, communities, kinships and images that emerge from the pursuit of pleasure and rigour through dancing. ‘AUTHENTICITY’ : (noun) A dilemma to be inspected, in dance as much as in handbags. The anti-dancer moves towards the […]