A contemplation on the alphabet of a not-so-distant future: The found debris revealed that the written word was once considered to be a form of digital code. (data). It existed inside and outside of the computer as a made-up system of discrete differentiable units. When assembled in certain ways, the meaning of alphabetic sequences could […]
To continue, to pick up where something was left off. The prefix ‘re-’ descends from a root meaning ‘turn’ — the return is a doubling, a sitting within the previously inhabited material presence that was left and come back to. Ekphrasis enacts a close reading of an artwork through text, the formation of a double […]
Within the hallowed halls of galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM), Indigenous voices echo with stories that transcend time and space. As an Indigenous person, working within these spaces is a profound exploration into unravelling the remnants of colonial legacies, rediscovering Indigenous perspectives and championing a way to understand our now shared histories. As an […]
Remember how we were a liberation army of two? How this two was framed by a third who ensured our brattishness didn’t _______ even ourselves? How ____ framed that burning year as a performance that could have so easily been another Burning Man fiasco, and that _____ our overinvested will to immolation. That beauty belongs […]
In the nineteenth century, French philosopher Victor Cousins seeded the idea of l’art pour l’art (art for art’s sake)[1], a phrase that has echoed into contemporary neo-liberal discourse to negate the need to consider politics in art encounters. However, for bodies that exist within any intersection of marginalisation and oppression, there is an understanding that […]
Walking along refinery drive down the harbourside I find three balls of steel corroded with rust, sweat and sugar. Monumental minor time dial turn anti-ode as antidote to a century and a half ago. Fiona pulls into the harbour carrying her precious cargo hand cultivated raw cane sugar precarious bodies, their coloured labour. Machines refine […]
the following is an excerpt of a poem responding to BIOGRAPHICALITY (2023) curated by Dominic Eichler at Efremidis, Berlin featuring Tony Just, Tamar Magradze, Anne Jud, Marita Liiten, Alex Müller, Xavier Robles de Medina and Stephanie Stein. This text responds to One Night Locked in S036 (1979) a portrait series and performance where Anne Jud […]
30 short, tentative steps. I came back by accident, took a peculiar shortcut, and found myself in a familiar hospital courtyard of bleached concrete. Infinite rows of windows peer down from a sandy brick façade; a stern assembly of quiet observers. Pungent bile rises in my stomach. Waves of nausea descend and my vision becomes […]
Ruby, you are sitting in front of me. I see you. I see you physically. But how do you actually want me to see you? How do you describe yourself to the world today? Within the artistic world, I often found that being my mother’s daughter came with a lot of expectations. It took many […]
INT. EVANGELINE’S BEDROOM. NIGHT. EVANGELINE (mid-20s), dressed from the neck down in her fursona — a Pink Husky Dog Fursuit in Shibari bondage — paces around her room. She sits at her desk and stares into the glowing ring light affixed to her phone, which stands ready to record. In the background, the documentary All […]
As we walk into the gallery, Kai tells me it’s Car Wash’s fifth birthday this year — a fact I find difficult to believe. Located in West Melbourne, the abandoned-car-wash-turned-gallery has been the site of countless self-organised exhibitions, gigs and parties, while somehow always evading the scrutiny of local council and building owners (if they […]
Galleries: Cathedral Cabinet, Gertrude Glasshouse Exhibitions: Victoria Stolz, no external; Francis Carmody, A Relic Remains There is a pull across the mismatched grids of the urban metropolis. From the purpose-built contemporary art space of Gertrude Glasshouse to the appropriated commercial window of Cathedral Cabinet, the allure of myth and meaning is the preoccupation of two […]
Gallery: FUTURES Gallery Exhibition: Sarah Drinan, Flesh Boundaries When I arrive at FUTURES the gallery-sitter is eating a bowl of soup alone at the front desk. It is quiet and I feel awkward about interrupting lunch so I walk straight into the show. In Spring, the first of Sarah Drinan’s paintings I see on entry, […]
Hyacinth, MelbourneCarmen-Sibha Keiso and Emily HansonOctober 13 – 31, 2023 At Hyacinth, I am eyeing the cracked and conspicuously unlatched floor-to-ceiling windows that one could plausibly lean on and fall through, down six floors of the Nicholas Building to certain death – an unfortunately fitting image given the rental precarity of the gallery, as evinced […]
Gallery: Rubicon ARI Exhibition: Sophie Cox, Protest and Survive The gallery-goer accustomed to skipping over exhibition labels and texts might just be compelled to stop and read by Protest and Survive, Sophie Cox’s ode to craftivism exhibited at Rubicon ARI. Thirteen textile works hang neatly and cleanly on the walls of the gallery space, but […]
Bus Projects, MelbourneJames Ashley, Alex Bienstock, Bradford Kessler, Adam Lehrer, Emily Ličen, Charlie Robert, Samm Sutton, Chelsea YoungAugust 31 – September 23 My ancestors come from a country called Bohemia. Montmartre was its capital. Courbet, Lautrec, Krebber, Bacher were its heads of state. Nihilism, its imperious national anthem. One day in 2010 the clock tower […]
Sydney Contemporary 2023, Carriageworks 07-10 September, 2023 Buyers in Sydney only want one thing – paintings. This is about as much as I knew about the commercial art world before walking into Sydney Contemporary 2023. Admittedly, it is artist-run projects that I naturally gravitate towards. In our current wits-end moment where market deregulation and mass […]
Fiona and Sidney Myer Gallery, Melbourne Gabriella D’Costa, Christina May Carey, Julien Comer-Kleine, Kate Wallace, and Skye Malu Baker Curated by David Sequeira and Hee Joon Youn 1 – 30 September, 2023 The bureaucrat has flown the cubicle, headed oceanside. Artist Gabriella D’Costa is in motion, departing Melbourne’s city grid on a pilgrimage for sediments […]
Gertrude Studio Program Vanity Project Charles and Laura sit down with Gertrude Studio Artist and man who wears many hats, Francis Carmody, in a new commission for un Extended. They dive deep into Francis’ practice, and reveal the man behind the alibi. Francis’ compulsion to curiosity suits Vanity Project just fine, after all we have podcasted from far […]
On the Jump In – Pepsi® Moments, 2017. Prologue to Soda Jerk’s Hello Dankness, 2022. In a Q&A after Soda Jerk’s screening of Hello Dankness (2022) at the Capitol Cinema for the Melbourne International Film Festival, filmmakers Dan and Dom Angeloro posed the rhetorical question: ‘Can there be satire after Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi®ad?’ Ultimately, Hello […]
FUTURES, Melbourne. never together Lara Chamas, Matilda Davis, Christopher Duncan, Evangeline Riddiford-Graham, Fiona Williams. Curated by Victoria Wynne-Jones. Looking at the appeal or influence of magic and mysticism in aesthetics today, one wonders why? Especially given that — as Mitch Therieau writes in Vibe, Mood, Energy — the language of mysticism emerged in reaction to […]
Gertrude Studio Program The Gertrude Studio Program is one of Australia’s most highly regarded contemporary art residencies. This year, 182 artists applied, eight were selected, and ONE sat down with Clam & Jackie Bam to eat hot chips and shoot the sh*t. Narrm’s resident PC shock jocks were delighted to chat with Georgia Morgan aka @scorpiopork about […]
Gertrude Projection Festival X Composite Space Hit List: Greatest HitsTim Hardy, Carmen-Sibha Keiso, Gabrielle Skye Nehrybecki, Harry Hughes, Moss Lasica Wood 3rd August, 2023 It seems as though we are living in an aesthetic climate where the old is not old for very long; before style is reappropriated, refashioned and recycled into something resembling “newness”. […]