A speculation on speculation, this nonlinear conversation addresses processes of working. It allows for a thematic meander that we hope you can join us on, one perhaps for all the tangential thinkers … Previously, we have moved through moments in sound guided by Assia Djebar’s words on ‘Aphasia,’ ‘Murmur,’ ‘Voice,’ ‘Clamour’ and ‘Whisper’ in Fantasia: […]
Late last year I went up to Bendigo for the launch of Chunxiao Qu’s poetry book at the La Trobe Art Institute. My partner and I decided to stay overnight because we had heard about a huge population of bats that live in a park there and we also wanted to check out a few […]
January 20, 2023Whadjuk Noongar Boodja As an artist, I have a deep and profound respect and reverence for art. The drive to communicate the joys, tragedies and bewilderment of the human experience by creating beautiful things is core to who we are as a species. It must be protected at all costs.It’s what makes life […]
Prompted by un Magazine’s General Manager, I attended a screening of Interview With The Vampire at ACMI with an introduction by critic and historian Dr. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. In her introduction, Heller-Nicholas contextualised this queer coded film with the zeitgeist of the 90s and the oeuvre of Anne Rice. She also touched on the apocalyptically bad sequel Queen of […]
In October 2022, I found myself in India working alongside Gumbaynggirr artist and friend, Aretha Brown. Aretha was commissioned by the Australian High Commission in New Delhi, to create a 122 metre mural, running along the chancery’s perimeter. Hailing from the Gumbaynggirr peoples and language group, the mural’s title, Girrwaawa, translates to ‘come together.’ A […]
In the whenua (land), the art collective Kauae Raro see the potentiality for its use as art material and as cultural and spiritual mediums. Through a broad expanse of experiments more can be uncovered about the state of Te Taiao (the natural world) and how Māori engage with the world around us. Founded in 2019 […]
While most people in the world can understand speech in more than one language, the bilingual speaker is considered exceptional in so-called Australia. I am, to my own dismay, a statistically-average-by-Australian-standards monolingual anglophone despite having two multilingual parents. I write this article in the nascency of my Cantonese learning. Although it is my mother’s lineage, […]
We started HEAVY DUTY in the second half of 2020. The world was in a constant state of clash, but fortunately for us in Boorloo our geographic isolation allowed for a relative sense of ease. People previously living abroad were returning to the safety of the Boorloo dome, bringing with them stories of Covid-19 from […]
Thinking back to my first visit to However Vast the Darkness atJohn Curtin Gallery in March, I now remember that moment as being unusually bookended by the subject of death. In the months prior to seeing the exhibition, death seemed to be a recurring theme in my life; a sequence that I can only describe […]
So far the 2020s have been the decade of the ‘water’ and‘decolonial’ biennial. Everyone’s doing it — bringing togetherIndigenous and non-white artists against the loose themes of‘flows of resistance’ or the like, attempting to make sense in amoment of intersecting and layered crises. Questions aroundinstitutional transformation, curatorial activism, representation,the environment, climate change, equality, and how […]
How can a culture move forward if it does not have access to its past? For Jasmine Togo-Brisby, a fourth-generation Australian South Sea Islander (ASSI) with ancestral lineage to the Vanuatu islands of Ambae and Santo, artistic constructions of the past create routes and roots to imagine ASSI futurities. Togo-Brisby’s practice recuperates cultural memory to […]
Before we had even met, I had a peripheral appreciation for Mossy 333’s work. I knew Mossy to be an artist working resourcefully within her means to produce boundary-pushing work across tattoo, painting and performance. Her relocation back to Boorloo from Naarm in 2020 was the latent beginning to a friendship grounded in a mutual […]
1. He ate the scone aggressively while his girlfriend viewed theother installations in the gallery. He was unsure how long shewould take to assemble an appropriate amount of material forthe review she was commissioned to write. As he continuedeating, he barely noticed that there was someone watching himin the corner; their white slip dress blended […]
It is our intent that the themes for un Magazine 17.1 and 17.2,RESIST/RETURN, ultimately be understood together asinextricable gestures of negotiation with culture and artisticpractice. We see them as directional movements — to pushagainst, to pull or be pulled towards — each with a differentcentre of gravity, often in action simultaneously. In choosing to anchor […]
This title, “Editorial Feelings”, rips off the recently published Curatorial Feelings, a collection of texts by Eloise Sweetman and co-edited by Jo-ey Tang in 2021. Tang’s editorial introduction proposes that Sweetman calls ‘out her “curatorial feelings” juxtaposes and unites the two modes of engagement: as a curator and as a sentient being.’[^1] This sentiment produces […]
Kaiela Arts Shepparton Indigenous Futurisms YIRRAMBOI, 4-14 May 2023 The rustling soundscape of trees and birds, accompanied by the rich vibration of the yidaki and the flute, transported viewers into the worlds of the Kaiela Arts young creatives in a new community-led project, Indigenous Futurisms. Led by Dixon Patten, Tammy-Lee Atkinson, and Cienan Muir with […]
In the days before you were born, RISING was called Melbourne Festival. A sedate affair, Melbourne Festival was where the dowagers and their corporate captains of industry husbands would celebrate themselves, at exclusive invitation only opening night soirees to the ballet and the theatre. There, the high-net-worth individuals might partake in the schmooze and compare […]
Sutton Projects Caesar Florence-Howard 27 May – 17 June Earnest pastiche. It seems like a paradox. And yet the paintings in Caesar Florence-Howard’s self-titled exhibition opening at Sutton Projects last week seem to have drawn these terms into a new formal economy. The exhibition consists of three accumulative, large-scale paintings on canvas. The three paintings, […]
Gallery: Asbestos Exhibition: very beautiful chemicals that produce very stylish results in people’s mental functions Artists: Edward Dean & Brayden van Meurs the following document is a letter from poet daniel ward written to Edward Dean and Brayden Van Meurs in response to their current exhibition very beautiful chemicals that produce very stylish results in […]
Gallery: Arts House Exhibition: Okkoota ಒಕ್ಕೂಟ What I am struck by when I enter Okkoota ಒಕ್ಕೂಟ at Arts House is the darkness.[^1] I mistake black curtains for exits and entry points, stumble into dark corners that lead nowhere. Darkness blankets vision, so that colour is renewed, broken, so that sound becomes sight. This is no […]
Gallery: ACMI Exhibition: Thor: Love and Thunder Costumes When Runway emailed me on a cold weekday afternoon in May, I was eating a croissant — not literally of course but spiritually.[^1] I was mid-bite, and being really elegant about it too. As if I’d be anything else? Come on, this is me we’re talking about […]
Gallery: Fiona and Sidney Myer Gallery Exhibition: Arthur Jafa, Unrest 7 April – 13 May I am a Wiradjuri guest on the unceded sovereign lands of the Wurundjeri peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nations. This is where I live, work, and am writing from today. I am paying my respects to Elders both past and […]
Gallery: Connors Connors Exhibition: Then Sharply Turns 13 April – 13 May Then Sharply Turns is one syllable short of the final line of a haiku; the prose subtly suggestive of something that has come before. The title of the third iteration of Conners Conners’ showcase of emerging Melbourne-based artists completes a dubious stanza — […]
On the 11th of April 2023, an online conversation hosted by The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art (ANZJA) and un Projects lead a discussion on what it means to write, edit, publish, and read arts writing. Each speaker discussed their respective editorial background and approaches, converging on building shared principles around editorial support, […]