The heavy smell of earth greets us as we enter Abbotsford Convent’s recently opened Magdalen Laundries for Jill Orr’s performance of Dark Night for Dance Massive 2019. Carrying a heavy history of their own — once used as an asylum to ‘rehabilitate’ young girls and women — the walls of the laundries are caked with […]
An orchid edges its leaves up through the layers of peat moss, bark, nutrient rich soil, to take its first breaths in the fragrant air of the farm. Or, an orchid raises its first leaves up through the display screen, pushing through streams of data into pungent technicolour downloads. At AIRspace Projects, an orchid breathes […]
Under the canopy of a suspended length of silk, blankets, pillows and bundles are laid out, ready to cushion bodies that might be in need of rest. Pieces of cloth dyed shades of brown, bronze and orange, are stitched, knotted and folded to become bedclothes and soft furnishings — some carry imprints of leaves from […]
Artists: Hans Baldung Grien, Monika Behrens and Rochelle Haley, Naomi Blacklock, Eric Bridgeman, Giovanni Bendetto Castiglione, Albrecht Dürer, Mikala Dwyer, Emily Hunt, Clare Milledge, Judith Wright Witchcraft is in. From Lorde to YouTube sage-burning tutorials, Wicca and ritual have found a new home in contemporary culture, especially within online communities. Five decades ago, second-wave feminist […]
Between Schadenfreude and Saudade On 29 September 2000, the late Aníbal López, also known by his Guatemalan ID number A-1 53167, undertook a ‘mugging action’ for which he robbed a person of middle-class appearance at gunpoint. He used the stolen 874.35 quetzales (equivalent at the time to US$115) to fund an exhibition at Contexto, a […]
This essay was written as part of a residency at Art Works’ Minor Works Building in Adelaide from April-August 2018. ART WORKS is an initiative delivered by Guildhouse in partnership with the City of Adelaide at the Minor Works Building. To participate in an understanding of collaboration that has appeared within this site, and of […]
Co-curated by Nancy Mauro-Flude & Tom Penney, VVitchVVavve was a Post-Digital Exhibition and Symposium hosted by RMIT University Digital Media at Siteworks, Brunswick, on 8 December 2018. Artists: Kate Geck, Patrick Hase, Mohamed Chamas, Kim D’Amazing, Tom Penney, J. Rosenbaum, Tim Dwyer, Ben Byrne and Denby Smith Guests: Theo Trian (LA), Florian Cramer (DE/NL), Angie […]
There’s a thing we, us humans, do. An authority we parade. An intricate and multi-layered authority that is assembled (just as a book may be compiled in a factory, or a village). The process is mostly unrecognisable but we really believe in it, take it as hadith. We mine history, nature, and space for knowledge. […]
There was a moment in the rush of my job interview at Otago, where I looked down from the top floor of the Richardson building and texted my sister a photo: ‘it looks like toy town’. A careless observation from someone who thought they’d put away toys once they’d picked up something else (a job; […]
Two poles protrude from the first-floor windows of Sarah Scout Presents. A long thin pennant flag hangs from each: HOUSE and WORK, their appliquéd letters read. The words are turned inwards to face each other like a double-page spread. Or two bodies in conversation. From outside these flags blend into the signage of Collins Street: […]
I heard a story on the radio the other day about a man who had had a medical device, a pump, implanted under his skin. After some time the pump broke and began beeping to indicate its malfunction. The device was not removed and the man lived with the beep beep beep for years. I […]
In a context of extreme political turns, climate catastrophe and renewed militouristic exploitation of lands and waters first known in kinship by First Nations across the Great Ocean, a number of works presented in the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT9) at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) provide […]
Over the course of their art practices, Brent Harris and John Meade have each worked to develop an idiosyncratic visual language that resists the linguistic framing of much artistic practice. The artists’ work is not embedded in rote learnt cultural theory – rather, it speaks with a knowing, reflexive quality expressed through graphic forms, historical […]
Artists: John Akomfrah (Ghana/UK), Fernando Arias (Colombia), Regina José Galindo (Guatemala), Kiluanji Kia Henda (Angola), Runo Lagomarsino (Sweden/Brazil), Sarah Munro (Aotearoa, NZ), Otobong Nkanga (Nigeria/Belgium), Siliga David Setoga (Aotearoa, NZ), Jasmine Togo-Brisby (Australia/Aotearoa, NZ), Jian Jun Xi (China) Curator: Gabriela Salgado Under what conditions does the Global South become relevant? Originally conceived to replace and […]
Homesickness, but there’s no home to go to. On this overcast Sunday evening I recall curator Jeff Khan’s phrase from an artist’s panel the previous day. His throwaway line lingers, as if he said it directly to me. Do I still have a home? If so, where is it? It’s the final night of Khan’s […]
Recently I went to see Carly Fischer’s I feel the earth move under my feet (2018) in the group show Groundwork at Maribyrnong’s Living Museum of the West Visitor Centre. The Museum of the West is a small social history museum, run by dedicated amateurs devoted to Maribyrnong’s past, first as a place where armaments […]
The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA) is an annual exhibition held at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) since 1984. Comprised of emerging and established artists, the exhibition is developed from an open call-out, this year selected by a panel of three curators: Clothilde Bullen, Hetti Perkins […]
Curator Tirdad Zolghadr once remarked that if you are working class in the arts you feel inadequate, and if you are middle class you feel embarrassed.[^1] Provocateur that he is, Zolghadr’s passing comment hits a nerve. Why is class so hard to talk about? Why is it that with such a sophisticated vocabulary on racial […]
SORRY FOR BEING GRUMPY Standing alone in Te Puno O Waiwhetū (Christchurch Art Gallery), I snapped this detail from Marie Shannon’s work and sent it somebody (text accompaniment: ‘NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL: art’). It was meant to be a kind of witty apology – stealing someone else’s words to make light of the kind […]
Artists: Natalie Ball (Modoc, Klamath, Black), Hannah Brontë (Yaegel), Bracken Hanuse Corlett (Wuikinuxv, Klahoose), Chantal Fraser (Sāmoa), Lisa Hilli (Gunantuna), Carol McGregor (Wathaurung, Scottish), Ahilapalapa Rands (Kanaka Maoli, iTaukei Viti, Pākehā), and T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss (Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh, Stó:lō, Irish, Métis, Kanaka Maoli, Swiss) Curators: Freja Carmichael (Quandamooka), Sarah Biscarra Dilley (yak tityu tityu yak tiłhini Northern […]
Artists: DUDSAPCE with Lou Hubbard, Katie West, Kim Donaldson, Makiko Yamamoto, Sean Dockray & Benjamin Forster, Simone Slee and Yuval Rosinger (Pee Pee and Poo Poo Gallery) In the exhibition Dissident Assemblies KINGS Artist-Run have taken a self-reflexive approach to celebrate the fifteenth year of the organisation, inviting artists to ‘work within and respond to […]
Artists: Laresa Kosloff, Foster and Berean, Stuart Ringholt and David Rosetzky Curator: Chelsea Hopper In recent years, the residency has taken on new and greater proportions as a rite of passage for artists. Next to the biennale, it encapsulates the ripest combination of travel and art, the height of cultural tourism. Of the various residencies […]
Artist: Gertrude Abercrombie Curator: Karma Gallery with Dan Nadel There was a particular passage in Roald Dahl’s The Witches that haunted me as a child. A young girl was placed under a spell by a malevolent witch and became trapped in an oil painting hanging in her home. Each day she’d appear in a different […]
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 Rupture’ Isadora discusses the […]