un Projects is based on the unceded sovereign land and waters of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation; we pay our respects to their Elders past and present.
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Archives: Articles

Jeremy George

Good Painting

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, […]

daniel ward

very beautiful chemicals that produce very stylish results in people’s mental functions

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 […]

Wen-Juenn Lee

Sometimes holiness is a room; sometimes, a door

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 […]

Vidya Rajan

Thor: Love and Thunder Costumes

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 […]

Elijah Money

Movement of Unrest

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 […]

Emily Kostos

Then Sharply Turns

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 — […]

ANZJA x un Talks

Writing for arts publications 

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, […]

jemi gale

There is No Fire

Exhibition: There is No Fire Artist: Sab D’Souza Verge Gallery 12 – 27 January 2023. cold crying on the internetbroadcastdramatic behaviour emptyfullabsence i can’t see u in the reflection2 i don’t want to leavei want to run away there’s nothing here but my own reflection?? as a mirror missing mirror story — abandoned let down with […]

Francis Russell

Review: Mitchel Cumming at Disneyland Paris

Exhibition: Wardrobing Artist: Mitchel Cumming Gallery: Disneyland Paris In a recent piece for Artlink art historian and critic Tara Heffernan raises suspicions around the ubiquity of care discourse as a subgenre of contemporary art discourse. Heffernan observes that ‘talk of care in the arts—like earlier theories buttressing relational aesthetics—echo the benevolent language that similarly glosses […]

Jessyca Hutchens

Up close, to the edge

Exhibition: Ruu – Examination Artist: Curtis Taylor Gallery: Sweet Pea ‘Ruu is the Martu word for examination, mainly coming from the old Manyjilyjarra language’, explains Curtis Taylor. It means ‘to have a look, reveal something, or to sort of look at miscellaneous things’. It’s the day before the opening and Taylor has just unwrapped a […]

Liv Moriarty

Nosedive

Throughout In Free Fall, Hito Steyerl proposes an ontology of falling, characterising our contemporary condition as one of groundlessness. It is an infinite free fall caused by looking down at oneself from satellites up above. Expanding upon the text, my diagrams merge dimension, perspective and orientation; producing a cartographic tangle that is at once open-ended […]

Rasheeda Wilson

In Pursuit of New Australian Muslim Stories: An annotated Bibliography

My annotated bibliography contains carefully selected textsand images that, over time, have become crucial to my practice as a writer and researcher. As someone who identifies as an Australian Muslim, many of the works that have resonated with me are those that discuss issues and topics that are close to my heart and my own […]

Emily Mulvihill

Annotated Bibliography

Walking around the gallery space with an art conservator’s eyesight, I see paintings in a very specific way. I always start with colour. I see warmth or coolness. The vibrations or the movements. The dust, dirt and grime settled atop the canvas’ surface. I see the artists’ choices in the brushstrokes – what is original […]

Lewis Gittus

Soft Heaps of Leaves, a Hymn

For three days I wandered the labyrinth of Jean Ray’s 1943 novel, Malpertuis1, fumbling my way along its gloomy passages. These notes are my only recollections; vague sensory impressions from a story told by an idiot, a tale of sound and fury that unravels in darkness, its cloistered spaces repulsively damp, brought to life via […]

Yuki Kihara, Natalie King, Iona Gordon and Allan Haeweng

Paradise Camp Reading Group

During severe lockdown in 2020, a group of us formed a Pacific Reading Group comprising Yuki Kihara (interdisciplinary artist who is representing Aotearoa New Zealand at 59th Venice Biennale 2022), Natalie King (curator of Yuki Kihara: Paradise Camp), Ioana Gordon-Smith (Wellington-based assistant curator for the Venice Biennale) and Allan Haeweng (Kanak curator in New Caledonia). […]

Thomas Solomon-Kuiper

Seed Catalogue

Seed CatalogueWelcome to the un Magazine catalogue of flower seeds. Made available within are nineteen beings, each having persisted from the earliest of mail order catalogues through to their last. Each entry tells a plant story in language made possible through their growth and together they could even make a garden. I hope you will […]

KINK

Texts for a queer art history

Kink is a cross-disciplinary working group researching and formalising a history of queer Australian art. Our work is defined by an interest in publishing, scholarship, advocacy, and public access. We are deeply passionate about generating new and open resources for and about the Australian LGBTQIA+ visual arts community. Below, each of our group’s current members […]

Celine Saoud

Becoming

Artist: Warsan Mohammed Curator: Anna Emina El Samad Exhibition details: SchoolHouse Gallery, 12 – 25 November The walls of SchoolHouse Gallery are painted green and brown. I catch a glimpse of this through the window of the gallery, which looks out onto the SchoolHouse parking lot from where I stand. It is the first time […]

Karl Halliday

“A body with many parts”: An interview with Channon Goodwin of Composite

Be it the embodied performances of Jill Orr and Mike Parr, VNS Matrix’s seminal cyberfeminist interventions, or Lou Hubbard’s ongoing exercises in formal deconstruction, it often goes understated just how crucial an ingredient the moving image has been in the constitution of Australian art history in the past fifty years. Looking towards the future, and […]

Sarah Poulgrain

Hat Making

Instructions Cut 2 brim from fabric Cut crown band on the fold of the fabric Cut top oval Sew C shapes of brim together making two O shapes Sew crown band together Sew two O shapes together with the external side of fabric facing inwards Sew one ring around the perimeter Flip inside out Sew […]

Lou Garcia-Dolnik

citations for a dream

citations for a dream1 And sothe whole thing collapse at the dawn of history2 when tiger look askance on His earthisland possessions riding shotgun the crocodile3 little bunso and kapatid kayak kuyaswing generous-genealogied into the mouth of a dream where wound are apertureand not deep pit to lose oneself down4 deep lore come present itself […]

Caitlin Franzmann and Amaara Raheem

Fortunes of the Forest: Plant Readings

by Caitlin Franzmann and Amaara Raheem Caitlin and Amaara sit on the quartz sandstone ridges of Karawatha Forest surrounded by Eucalypts. Sinking into geological time, the folding rocks and plant fossils enfold their skin, their senses. The rocks tell of ancient floods and volcanic eruptions. Stories of connection to Country exist both in the landscape […]

Trent Crawford and Stanton Cornish-Ward

In A World Full Of Angels [if you can’t find one, be one]

The following texts and filmic references were instrumental in the creation of In a World Full of Angels (2022), a short film commissioned by Gertrude Contemporary that is currently available to view online as part of their Digital Commissions program. Channelled by the film’s main character, a pilgrim skydiver, these texts and filmic references have […]

Gabrielle Bergman

When I Joined a Reading Group

by Gabrielle Bergman Earlier this year I joined an art theory reading group. In between work commitments, navigating a pregnancy, completing a second university degree and managing an interstate relocation, I was determined to find time to meet with a group of students to learn and engage in art discourse for the pure purpose of […]