My Mum Elvie would draw lines. Lines that represented the coastline, curved lines for the palm trees with smaller lines for the bushy branches and leaves. A big sun in the sky and waves in the sea. Mum would draw a turtle and ask me, ‘Ella, what is this?’ My earliest memory of creating art […]
My left hand hangs down, weighted by a gold wedding band. My palm cups a circular space. Intruding into this space, a child’s fingers poke at my fingertips. My right hand grasps firmly at a fat baby’s waist. The baby reaches towards a man, but I lean away from him, offering my feet on a […]
Parallel Park was borne out of a desire to explore the shared experience of being in a serious queer relationship for the first time. It is the collaborative practice of Holly Bates and Tayla Jay Haggarty, two Brisbane-based artists who met while studying visual art at the Queensland University of Technology. Since 2015 the duo […]
of old trees: stills from an unmade film, 2018.
to know yourself andto know each other is the revolution The very existence of our collective this mob is simultaneously intriguing and threatening to outsiders. Collectivising when bla(c)k* is instantly politicised by others; we can be blak** but not too blak, and we still need to exist within the systems that silence and oppress us. […]
1: I speak from a position of solidarity with victim/survivors (I think about the temporality implied in this language and think ‘endurer’ may be more apt) past, present, and future. Those who have shared their stories, those who have not come forward and those who never will. 2: This letter was in response to news […]
This transcript began as a conversation between Alex Griffin, Rosie Funder, and Sally Olds, and was edited into its final form by Rosie Funder and Sally Olds. Sally Olds : To me the thing that became painfully apparent was that I didn’t believe in poly as a political form. And all my energy and, uh, […]
The Victorian Pride Centre was a hard-won project that would secure a future built legacy for the state’s LGBTIQA+ community. It proposed a single building for health service providers, youth advocates, and festival and entertainment networks, underpinned by a performance venue and exhibition space, and an archive. Located on Fitzroy Street in the seaside suburb […]
Apparently a dog saved Robert Nixon’s political career, transforming him from swindling politician to sympathetic family man with a single strategically-timed intervention. This was in September 1952 and Nixon had just been accused of receiving illegal campaign contributions by his running mate, the Republican nominee Dwight Eisenhower.[^1] In a nationally broadcast television appearance Nixon pleaded […]
Prior to the most recent performance (or performative exchange) of Illusions of Self Motion at the National Gallery of Victoria in June 2018, Brook Andrew asked trawulwuy art historian Dr Greg Lehman, myself and current performance collaborator Ben Opie to discuss the connections between Illusions on Self Motion with Brook’s own work 52 Portraits and […]
Talking over e-mail / making work alone but together, 2018.
Diana Baker-Smith : When I think about collaboration, I think about friendship. I think about our first collaborations at art school well over a decade ago, when we used to do performances in clubs and at warehouse parties. I think about conversations over kitchen tables, sharing beds in regional towns and handmade birthday cards. Making […]
Overlooking Botany Bay, 2018.
In May 2018, New South Wales-based duo Make or Break (Rebecca Gallo and Connie Anthes) presented their site-specific performance work Unveilings at Kyneton Contemporary Art Triennial. This conversation began then, and continued over email. Hey Anna, : When I think of public monuments I picture a white male figure cast in bronze atop a granite […]
Diagram of Apocalyptic Thinking, 2017, typewriter on paper; Mother Superior, 2018, bag (2018) and neckpiece (2017) by Francis as gifts to Spaghetti. Photo: Alex Moulis; (When We Were) Working, 2017; Still Life with De-Positivism as Framework, 2018, jewellery (2017/18) by Francis for Spaghetti. Photo: Alex Moulis; Cultural Capital (2/2), 2017, typewriter on paper, photocopier; Cultural […]
Let’s get it on : My ‘straight’ (what even is ‘straight’? Who even is ‘straight’?) housemate made a bewildering comment on the way courting seems to work in my (queer art) world. ‘It’s very European. Very intellectual.’ I suppose you could see it as pretentious, or romantic, or pretentiously romantic, or romantically pretentious — exchanging […]
A new brain, a new way of thinking, a silicone mind fresh for moulding. Neural networks only know what they have been taught, a blank slate, a clean canvas. But they are so much more than just a surface or a new medium to explore; Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the future of art and offers […]
Marisa’s round table Annerley, Brisbane Amanda Hayman : This is the first time we’ve all been in the same room together, so I thought it would be good to start off with a little intro to the overarching project, Co-MMotion. Jenna Green : We established people+artist+place in 2017 because we wanted to see more live […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about how survival is often linked to collectivity, specifically for people of colour, specifically for myself as a trans person of colour who owes so much of my survival to the collectives I’ve belonged to and the communities that have held me. I often think about what it means to […]
Watch video here » Isadora Vaughan is a Melbourne based artist working in sculpture. Her practice unpacks and experiments with material as geological, temporal, associative and emotional. Her works manifest out of a chaotic exploratory process into basic states of matter and a desire to personalise, dislocate, and disrupt traditional material hierarchies. In ‘Rift and […]
Curator: Kimberley Moulton Artists: Joi Arcand (Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, Canada), Megan Cope (Quandamooka), Kirsten Lyttle ( Waikato, Tainui A Whiro, Ngaati Tahinga, NZ (Melbourne based)), Vicki Couzens (Kirrae Wurrong), Lisa Hilli (Makurategete Vunatarai (clan) Tolai / Gunantuna people of Papua New Guinea) and Nakia Cadd. If you have ever had the experience of sitting […]
In April 2017, accompanied by a small convoy of artists and arts workers, Pintupi man Pepai Jangala Carroll embarked on a unique and momentous return to country. He travelled over 800 kilometres from his home in Pukatja (Ernabella, South Australia) to the birthplace of his father, Henry Paripata Tjampitjinpa. The journey’s two major destinations of […]
On my way to Cool Change Contemporary I stopped into Uniqlo, which had three days prior opened a two-storey shopfront in Perth’s Murray Street Mall. On Thursday there had been a queue, and there was still a dense bustle of people fondling linens and poly-cotton, apologising or not for the accidental sharp contact of elbows. […]
**An ellipsis is a figure of return that isn’t symmetrical*** ‘“To live elliptically” is to ask a question rather than formulate an answer; a “shrug” is a rhetorical response to a non-rhetorical question of the body – an embodied letting go of future promises in favor of life in the durative present’.[^1] — Darren Byler […]