In an otherwise straightforward ­discussion of her curatorial practice, what stood out in Ute Meta Bauer’s presentation at the State Library of Victoria in March, was an improvised series of comments on the state of contemporary art.[^1] These comments followed a line of thought evident in a series of articles in e-flux journal published in […]

David Egan and Reece York Seria Ludo Galleria, Perth 2–24 December 2011 With an almost suffocating sense of winking irony, recently established East Perth ARI Galleria shares its name with one of the city’s most obnoxiously oversized megamalls. One can only hope that the long, tedious hours of gallery invigilation are periodically enlivened by Google […]

dogadobisangdo (design is design is not design) Gwangju Design Biennale 2011 2 September – 23 October 2011 Gwangju, South Korea Artistic Directors: Seung H‐Sang and Ai Weiwei With an almost suffocating sense of winking irony, recently established East Perth ARI Galleria shares its name with one of the city’s most obnoxiously oversized megamalls. One can […]

I’ve learnt that it’s dangerous to mention I spent the first twenty-something years of my life living in ‘The Emerald City’, for it invariably leads to the question that seems to fascinate Melburnians of all ages, races, genders and creeds: ‘how do the cities compare?’ An innocent enough question, perhaps, but it is typically asked with […]

Brad, If you recall, when Jennifer Allen wrote the article ‘Divine Disorder’, she reminded us of Kant’s distinction between the beautiful and the agreeable, between beautiful decoration and agreeable use and thus between art and design.[^1] As such, for a long time, perhaps there has been an uneasy divide between the two between what we […]

— Alex Vivian Men’s Apparel, distressed Craft Victoria, Melbourne 8 March – 21 April 2012 In the myth of Pygmalion, a Cypriot sculptor falls in love with the realism of his own statue of a female figure after previously being unable to find attraction in women. His abstracted object of desire is manifested in the […]

Once upon a time, Perth’s most ambitious graduates went travelling and then moved east, returning home once a year to see family and friends. In 2012, relocating to Melbourne is still their preferred ‘next step’, but in recent times their visits home have become more frequent.[^1] The vitality of the artist‐run scene in Perth, together […]

— James Eisen SAYLE (Internal Painting ~ Valuable Gift) 253 Swanston St, Melbourne 10–15 February 2012 Whilst sitting his solo exhibition Deus Ex Machina at TCB art inc. in 2011, James Eisen was robbed. It seemed that the exhibition’s neon text, reading ‘Your going to cop a burg’, had cursed its creator. The situation was mitigated, […]

Design has become something of a lingua franca for the present. Design artifacts — both custom-made and mass-produced — are widely acknowledged as prime agents of ideology, identity, social distinction and meaning. Designers are highly adept at leveraging aesthetics to create heightened desire and depth of experience, but only a few outlying areas of design […]

As I ponder how Scott Mitchell’s way of being in the world might be positioned or discussed in relation to broader frameworks of art and design, it becomes increasingly apparent that this distinction is an afterthought.[^1] He privileges neither art nor design, as such inhabiting a space where both modes of practice might in some […]

— Sarah crowEST The Inexplicable Magnetism of an Alien Object VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne 10 February – 3 March 2012 Collections of handmade, amorphous non-shapes and mounds inhabit the gallery space. Varying in size and colour, the objects’ surfaces offer a changing spectrum of shades, from rusty browns to shiny white glazes mottled with […]

In the contemporary era, the ability to perform consolidates the biopolitical affects of a designed subject.[^1] Such notions are intrinsically involved in the ‘tacit but increasing inscription of individual lives’ into a society that now prioritises the ‘primacy of the private over the public’.[^2] According to Boris Groys, this is also accompanied by the contemporary […]

Barkly Arts Centre, Footscray, Melbourne 3 June – 1 July 2011 Curated by Jessica Scott, artist-in-residence Footscrayism was one of three exhibitions produced as part of New Skin, a key outcome of the artist-in-residence program at Footscray’s Barkly Arts Centre, which required each artist-in-residence to utilise community involvement in their individual projects. Untangling Footscrayism from […]

A dwelling is extracted from the fine print of planning and building codes. A modest architectural prosthesis, connected physically and psychically to four apartments. Here the architect rests, calibrates acts in which to reconfigure the city’s code. In another location, across an ocean, a handful of portable structures stand, blue tarpaulins taut. A small village […]

In March of this year at Rear View Gallery, Melbourne, and Artbank, Vancouver, Kate Moss and Marilyne Blais simultaneously constructed transient and temporal structures through the use of found materials, Skype, projectors and volunteers. We Build Up became a communal structure that was both a mirror of itself and a quixotic attempt to join architectural […]

Ant Hampton and Tim Etchells, 2010–2011 Various libraries: Buenos Aires, Berlin, London, Warsaw, Stockholm, Copenhagen. No-one comes to a library to stay there.[^1] — Ant Hampton English artists Ant Hampton and Tim Etchells collaborated for the first time on The Quiet Volume, in which they explore the social and imaginative space created within a library. […]

Following 5.1’s boundary-eliding focus on artist-writers, fictional art writing and art as writing, un Magazine 5.2 turns to the relationship between art and architecture as both built form and metaphor. ephemeral, provisional, temporal, relational spaces: In ‘Walking is not a medium, its an attitude’, Liang Luscombe brings together three local artists who use the simple […]

Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne 10 June – 16 July 2011 Curated by Amita Kirpalani At the end of the exhibition Catching Trucks, a brief film clip played on a small screen located next to the reception desk. The scene was from Agnès Varda’s 2000 film The Gleaners and I which investigates contemporary gleaners; the people who […]

La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre, Bendigo June 16 – July 24, 2011 Curated by Caroline Phillips Interior Architecture brought together eight very different artists who employed a range of processes and materials in their exploration of the body in space. What was refreshing about this exhibition was the fact that architecture was examined in […]