Artists: Atong Atem, Cigdem Aydemir, Anindita Banerjee, Liam Benson, Vonda Keji, Nikki Lam, Nicole Monks, Raquel Ormella and Christian Thompson Curators: Claire Field and Tian Zhang When my family immigrated to Australia in 2003, we went on a guided tour around Sydney’s Circular Quay. As a six-year-old, this was my first sighting of Customs House: […]

Artist: Jay Hutchinson ‘… and they actually still eat meat pies here! Yes – the women too … yes meat pies …’ Meat pies. That’s a little #flashbackfriday from me calling … My sister? My mother? Anyway, calling somebody after I first moved to Ōtepoti Dunedin. They still eat meat pies. Away from the spaces […]

Hope seems absent when an exhibition featuring around 400 works by more than sixty artists situates decolonisation in the past. Memories of Underdevelopment: Art and the Decolonial Turn in Latin America, 1960–1985 (22 March – 09 September 2018) at Museo Jumex in Mexico City examines a shift in Latin American visual arts towards decolonial thought […]

Watch video here » Kalinda Vary’s practice explores ideas of emotionality, vulnerability and power, humour and humiliation, constraints of language and the problems with representations of identity. Her recent work concentrates on queer concerns of the body, performance within social structures and imposed cultural identities. In ‘Paralleling Emotions’ Kalinda discusses using humour as a tool, her […]

Artists: Richard Bell (with As Long As It Takes), Marcel van den Berg, Blade, Alice Creischer, Bonita Ely, Ho Rui An, Gordon Hookey, Patricia Kaersenhout, Karrabing Film Collective, Tshibumba Kanda Matulu, Tom Nicholson, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Rachel O’Reilly (with PALACE, Valle Medina & Benjamin Reynolds), Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Ryan Presley, Rammellzee, Farida Sedoc, The Otolith […]

Artist: Selina Thompson The thing about grief is that it is hard to place and yet there are constant reminders of it everywhere. The other thing about grief is that we are conditioned to believe that it is a transient state. What happens when the grief is carried for generations and embedded in one’s history […]

To be vandal is to damage what you are supposed to revere, to bring to an end what you are supposed to reproduce. If talking about sexism and racism damages institutions, we need to damage institutions. – Sara Ahmed[^1] Dismantling forms of oppression, for instance, involves a certain way of destroying what has been built […]

Artists: Damiano Bertoli, Erik Bünger, Catherine or Kate, Michael Cook, Fayen d’Evie and Bryan Phillips, Léuli Eshraghi, Alicia Frankovich, Susan Hiller, Alex Martinis Roe, Angelica Mesiti, Clinton Nain, Rose Nolan, Erik Bünger, Sean Dockray, Hannah Donnelly, Rosie Isaacs, Wrong Solo. Curators: Hannah Mathews, Helen Hughes and Frances E Parker. Cultural geography, language, power Anyone familiar […]

Are you worried about the weather? Feel like the seasons are out of sync? Fretting about longer summers, strange storms, or rising sea levels? Fear not; the Bureau of Meteoranxiety (or BoMa) may have the appropriate therapy to calm your climate concerns. Perth-based multimedia artists Olivia Tartaglia and Alex Tate will be running their ‘public […]

Curated by Alison Bennett, Xanthe Dobbie and Travis Cox A silvery multi-plane ice film ripples across its 3D-rendered digital sea alongside a monotone, computerised discussion of a pet fish, toilet water sounds, some algorithmic casio samba bop and a repetitive phrase of American rapper Eve’s 2001 hit, ‘Let Me Blow Ya Mind (ft. Gwen Stefani)’. […]

Artists: Joan Jonas, Jason Moran, Sylvia Palacios Whitman, Mark Leckey, patten. Curators: Catherine Wood, Isabella Maidment, Andrea Lissoni There is a particular gravitas, a level of respect, that an artist can earn by sheer tenacity and longevity. And judging by the scope and breadth of her career survey at Tate Modern in London, Joan Jonas […]

Artists: Mihyun Kang, Gwan Tung Dorothy Lau, Pixy Liao, Janelle Low, Andy Mullens, Ma Quisha, Sancintya Mohini Simpson, Sad Asian Girls, Zoe Wong. Curator: Sophia Cai I have an almost Pavlovian response to the idea of obedience. I was brought up to be filial, to understand that disobedience would be swiftly and severely punished. I […]

Watch video here » In 2016 we spoke with Debris Facility while they were undertaking a Gertrude Contemporary Studio Residency at 200 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. The Debris Facility is a conglomerate entity which generally inhabits the one human body, but whose boundaries and operations are leaky and evaporative. Since a corporate take over of a singular […]

Jason Phu studied at COFA, garduating with honours in 2011. He has been in residencies at CAFA (Beijing), NSCAD (Nova Scotia), DAC Studios (Chongqing), CAP Studio (Chiang May) and Organhaus (Chongqing). He has had solo exhibitions across Australia including at Nicholas Projects, CCAS Gorman Arts Centre, Alaska Projects and Ray Hughes Gallery. In 2015 he […]

HE’S HERE Where? The daily paper in the town where I live proclaims that HE has arrived. Who? Ed Sheeran. It feels so banal writing that. The visit of a British popstar is frontpage news. But still … HE’S HERE. Here he is. And here we are. HIS arrival makes the town. It announces where […]

Artist: Ryan Presley Curator: Madeleine King Money passes through our hands every day, but do you look at what your fingers grasp and give? The representation of Australian people on our note currency is undeniably white despite having gone through various series of artworks since the Australian bank notes were first issued. In this time […]

Artist: Marikit Santiago The exhibition Coca-Colanised at Verge Gallery is Marikit Santiago’s most recent, and perhaps most political, solo exhibition yet. The show takes its title from the concept of ‘Coca-Colanisation’, a term describing the globalisation of American culture.[^1] Showcasing Santiago’s broad range – from paintings to installation – the show carefully examines an ongoing […]

Artist: Mutlu Çerkez Curators: Charlotte Day, Hannah Mathews and Helen Hughes Mutlu Çerkez 1988 – 2065 is a considered survey of the late artist’s oeuvre that presents works dating from 1988 to 2005. For those unfamiliar with Çerkez’s work, the artist’s practice was defined by an overarching system of including a future date in his […]

Artists: eleven Collective – Abdul Abdullah, Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Hoda Afshar, Safdar Ahmed, Khadim Ali, Eugenia Flynn, Zeina Iaali, Khaled Sabsabi, Abdullah M.I. Syed, Shireen Taweel Curators: Abdul-Rahman Abdullah and Nur Shkembi Opening a conversation across complex and sometimes divergent temporalities, Waqt al-tagheer is a political, personal and often poetic exhibition. With new work from eleven, […]

_Artist: Mikala Dwyer and Justine Williams, Amala Groom, Deborah Kelly, Kate Blackmore and Jacinta Tobin, Joan Ross, SodaJerk, Angelica Mesiti and Caroline Garcia Curators: Diana Baker-Smith and Kelly Doley As you walk into a dark room, the only source of light is from the screen. You look around. Can I sit? Do I stand? You […]

Artist: Sarah Poulgrain Conversation in Two Parts is Sarah Poulgrain’s most personal work to date; or at least that’s what the pop critic inside me wants to exalt. In truth, the work left me feeling isolated from the artist. To be clear, I am not preparing you for a hatchet job review on the exhibition; […]

Watch video here » Shelley Lasica’s practice is characterized by cross-disciplinary collaborations and an interest in the presentation of dance in various spatial contexts. Lasica’s practice spans 30 years and investigates the methodology around dance and movement and the various contexts in which they occur. She is interested in what dance means to people, how it […]

Artist: Caitlin Franzmann Should trees have standing? is a forty-six year old essay written by Trustee Chair in Law at USC Gould, Christopher D. Stone. Published in the early days of the environmental movement, Stone asks what it might mean if things we identify in nature were holders of legal rights. Essentially based on a […]

Watch video here » Helen Maudsley’s personal visual language examines ideas of analogy, association and ambiguity, based on her reflections on the world around us. Maudsley discusses colour and composition as well as her experience of making art and how she feels her practice has changed over time. A senior Melbourne artist, Helen Maudsley has had […]