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.
un Projects

Destiny Deacon and Virginia Fraser

Colour blinded, 2007, installation view (including Shane Pickett and Destiny Deacon), Culture Warriors at the National Gallery of Australia. Courtesy of the artists and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery; Walkover, 2004, wool carpet, 161 x 240 cms. Courtesy the artists and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery; Installation, 2011, carpet, mixed media figures, chairs and video (Destiny Deacon and Michael […]

Anna Dunnill and Danni McGrath

Weight of History: A Response to Unveilings by Make or Break

In May 2018, New South Wales-based duo Make or Break (Rebecca Gallo and Connie Anthes) presented their site-specific performance work Unveilings at Kyneton Contemporary Art Triennial. This conversation began then, and continued over email. Hey Anna, : When I think of public monuments I picture a white male figure cast in bronze atop a granite […]

Logan MacDonald

Without Me, You’re Nothing

Spring several years ago, fellow Canadian artist Lisa Visser and I embarked on a two-week road trip, driving 5,300 kms from Toronto across the United States to Los Angeles, during which time a collaborative project emerged. The purpose of this road trip was to move Lisa to California, so that she could carry out graduate […]

Francis & Spaghetti

Diagram of Apocalyptic Thinking, 2017, typewriter on paper; Mother Superior, 2018, bag (2018) and neckpiece (2017) by Francis as gifts to Spaghetti. Photo: Alex Moulis; (When We Were) Working, 2017; Still Life with De-Positivism as Framework, 2018, jewellery (2017/18) by Francis for Spaghetti. Photo: Alex Moulis; Cultural Capital (2/2), 2017, typewriter on paper, photocopier; Cultural […]

Yasbelle Kerkow

Art + Healing, Curating our Families

Curating a Pasifik space is unlike other art spaces. My mother taught me that if you pick a plant, treat it, dry it out and weave it into a mat it is still a living, breathing thing and it needs to be cared for. Mats need to be used, to be swept, sunned out if […]

Em Size

A libido for no one in particular (a mixtape made just for you)

Let’s get it on : My ‘straight’ (what even is ‘straight’? Who even is ‘straight’?) housemate made a bewildering comment on the way courting seems to work in my (queer art) world. ‘It’s very European. Very intellectual.’ I suppose you could see it as pretentious, or romantic, or pretentiously romantic, or romantically pretentious — exchanging […]

Ella Benore Rowe

Back Home

My Mum Elvie would draw lines. Lines that represented the coastline, curved lines for the palm trees with smaller lines for the bushy branches and leaves. A big sun in the sky and waves in the sea. Mum would draw a turtle and ask me, ‘Ella, what is this?’ My earliest memory of creating art […]

J. Rosenbaum

The Future of Art: Collaborating with Computers

A new brain, a new way of thinking, a silicone mind fresh for moulding. Neural networks only know what they have been taught, a blank slate, a clean canvas. But they are so much more than just a surface or a new medium to explore; Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the future of art and offers […]

Therese Keogh and Jacqui Shelton

A Rhythmic Pattern of Touching Hands, a Linking of Bodies and Actions.

My left hand hangs down, weighted by a gold wedding band. My palm cups a circular space. Intruding into this space, a child’s fingers poke at my fingertips. My right hand grasps firmly at a fat baby’s waist. The baby reaches towards a man, but I lean away from him, offering my feet on a […]

Blaklash Projects, people+artist+place

Public Art and the Politics of Surveillance

Marisa’s round table Annerley, Brisbane Amanda Hayman : This is the first time we’ve all been in the same room together, so I thought it would be good to start off with a little intro to the overarching project, Co-MMotion. Jenna Green : We established people+artist+place in 2017 because we wanted to see more live […]

Sarah L. Thomson

Batting for the same team: Collaboration, negotiation and support in the works of Parallel Park

Parallel Park was borne out of a desire to explore the shared experience of being in a serious queer relationship for the first time. It is the collaborative practice of Holly Bates and Tayla Jay Haggarty, two Brisbane-based artists who met while studying visual art at the Queensland University of Technology. Since 2015 the duo […]

Bhenji Ra

On Collaboration

I’ve been thinking a lot about how survival is often linked to collectivity, specifically for people of colour, specifically for myself as a trans person of colour who owes so much of my survival to the collectives I’ve belonged to and the communities that have held me. I often think about what it means to […]

Olivia Tian Chai Koh and Rosie Isaac

of old trees: stills from an unmade film, 2018.

Kate ten Buuren

making heaps of friends and making heaps of enemies

to know yourself andto know each other is the revolution The very existence of our collective this mob is simultaneously intriguing and threatening to outsiders. Collectivising when bla(c)k* is instantly politicised by others; we can be blak** but not too blak, and we still need to exist within the systems that silence and oppress us. […]

Amber Wright

Investments in Silence: Collaboration, Collusion and Complicity

1: I speak from a position of solidarity with victim/survivors (I think about the temporality implied in this language and think ‘endurer’ may be more apt) past, present, and future. Those who have shared their stories, those who have not come forward and those who never will. 2: This letter was in response to news […]

Sally Olds and Rosie Funder

Seeking Arrangement

This transcript began as a conversation between Alex Griffin, Rosie Funder, and Sally Olds, and was edited into its final form by Rosie Funder and Sally Olds. Sally Olds : To me the thing that became painfully apparent was that I didn’t believe in poly as a political form. And all my energy and, uh, […]

Michael Spooner and Darius Le

On Affection

The Victorian Pride Centre was a hard-won project that would secure a future built legacy for the state’s LGBTIQA+ community. It proposed a single building for health service providers, youth advocates, and festival and entertainment networks, underpinned by a performance venue and exhibition space, and an archive. Located on Fitzroy Street in the seaside suburb […]

Genevieve Trail

The Animal Collaborator

Apparently a dog saved Robert Nixon’s political career, transforming him from swindling politician to sympathetic family man with a single strategically-timed intervention. This was in September 1952 and Nixon had just been accused of receiving illegal campaign contributions by his running mate, the Republican nominee Dwight Eisenhower.[^1] In a nationally broadcast television appearance Nixon pleaded […]

Neika Lehman and Maddee Clark

Strategic Liaisons

NeikaAn immediate issue that came up in this edition of un Magazine (although now I can’t remember if this is directly communicated in the articles or a sentiment picked up in contributor conversations) is that the doing of a collaboration is far more exciting than writing out the why. This is probably obvious — the […]

Stéphanie Kabanyana Kanyandekwe

Illusions on Self Motion: Moving Together

Prior to the most recent performance (or performative exchange) of Illusions of Self Motion at the National Gallery of Victoria in June 2018, Brook Andrew asked trawulwuy art historian Dr Greg Lehman, myself and current performance collaborator Ben Opie to discuss the connections between Illusions on Self Motion with Brook’s own work 52 Portraits and […]

Madeleine Stack

The amateur-amante as a future tool: An interview with Critical Días (Rebecca Close & Anyely Marin Cisneros)

Critical Dias : How do we start? Maybe we can talk about the last two years, in all of our lives! In the book Reinscriptions (2017) that we’ve just published, there are two main texts that we’ve been writing over the past two years, when concerns about machine learning and algorithmic tech and data have […]

Single Brown Female

Talking over e-mail / making work alone but together

Talking over e-mail / making work alone but together, 2018.

Mick Klepner Roe

Twisting Together in Estrogenesis

Embittered Swish is a performance art vehicle founded in 2016 whose first project was a trans adaptation and reformulation of Jean Genet’s 1943 novel Our Lady of the Flowers. Embittered Swish works across a fine art, theatre and club context and has shown work at Performance Space (PACT), Transgenre, La Mama Courthouse, firstdraft gallery, Australian […]

Diana Baker Smith and Kelly Doley

Call and Response: A Dialogue on Collaboration with/for Pat Larter

Diana Baker-Smith : When I think about collaboration, I think about friendship. I think about our first collaborations at art school well over a decade ago, when we used to do performances in clubs and at warehouse parties. I think about conversations over kitchen tables, sharing beds in regional towns and handmade birthday cards. Making […]

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