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, present and emerging.
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un Extended: Online news, reviews, interviews and discussions

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 […]

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 […]

Lévi McLean and Chandler Abrahams

Indexed Without Order (first in display… then in  practice… then in theory): The art of the con — conceit, confidence and trickery in co(n?)panionship construction

Exhibition: To companion a companion Artist: Fernando do Campo Gallery: Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts Somewhat negentropically, it takes a moment for the meticulous repetition of motifs and formal logic to register. A tight palette sourced from archive item number 12, ‘Colour Studies’ attributed to James Fredrick Archen, is elaborated throughout the exhibition: from the […]

Anna McDermott

Lord, increase my bewilderment

Exhibition: methods for collapse (m4c)Artist: Gabriella ImrichovaPerformers: Roslyn Orlando, Sophie Gargan, Mara Galagher and Anika de RuyterExhibition details: BLINDSIDE, 29 June – 16 July Gabriella Imrichova’s methods for collapse (m4c) ends with no capital E. Closure is a myth after all. After three, maybe four loops of the live performance score 0, I exit BLINDSIDE […]

Julia Rose Bak

Angna Mein: An Inherited Language of Love

Artists: Quishile Charan and Zaiba Khan Gallery: West Space During my time indoors I’ve taken to using mycelium as metaphor. Mycelium, a root-like structure comprised of hyphae —fine white filaments — is the part of a fungus that gathers nutrients from which the fruit — the mushroom — can grow.[^1] A complex network, mycelia are […]

Annika Moses

Illicit Transmission Ambiguous Encounter

Artists: Bridget Chappell and Debris Facility Pty Ltd Gallery: Cool Change Contemporary halalbutch · 2 Many DJs [B2B Hextape 4.eva.FM] If you were there spinning the dial like an Ouroboros on Tuesday and hesitated somewhere between Triple M and Nova maybe you heard it. A shaky broadcast, the Amen break, mistransitions and meandering, unconcerned art […]

Charlotte Kerr

Starting in the Middle

Artists: Liv Moriarty and Emma BerryExhibition: Starting in the MiddleGallery: Woven Projects, Naarm/Melbourne16 – 25 May 2022 Four years ago, artists Emma Berry and Liv Moriarty began emailing poems, lists and observations to each other. In this pre-pandemic era, where for the two artists, communication in the digital sphere was more playful than necessary, an […]

La Swan

Sirens are sung by gentle Sissy/ Engcanto

Justin ShoulderAEON †: TITAN ARUM26 March – 5 September 2021The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Sydney I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land where I’m writing from – the sovereign land of the Bunurong and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nations. I pay my respects to their elders past and present and stand behind […]

Aaqila

A Passage Between Sequences of Silence

Exhibition: Frances Barrett: Meatus Artists: Frances Barrett with Nina Buchanan, Debris Facility Pty Ltd., Hayley Forward, Brian Fuata, Del Lumanta and Sione Teumohenga. Commissioning Curator: Annika Kristensen Gallery: Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) The external acoustic meatus is the passageway that leads from the outside of the head to the eardrum membrane of each […]

Nancy Mauro-Flude

Diaphanous Materiality in ‘the moon’s new fury’

Artists: Anna May Kirk, Naomi Blacklock, Sundari Carmody, Manisha Anjali, Orson Heidrich, Anna Pogossova, Meng-Yu Yan 颜梦钰 Curator: Johanna Bear Gallery: KINGS Artist Run I’m writing on the eve of a waning crescent Moon. As my fingers summon the symbols on the keyboard in a proprioceptive séance of transmission, I’m struck with an overwhelming sense […]

Matt Siddall

Salt + Loving; Halophile

Artists: Grace Ferguson, Emma Phillips, Trevor Santos and Annika Koops Curator: Josephine Mead Coming to Naarm/Melbourne from Western Australia, a trip to the ocean does not feel like an item to tick off a list of things to savour; instead, it became a marginally experienced activity during the warmer months. Victorians have their park picnics, […]

Deirdre Cannon

Artist’s Artists

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 […]

Jenna Rain Warwick

A Conversation with Maya Hodge

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 […]

Angela Glindemann

Neighbour

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 […]