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 and present.
un Projects

Issue Number: 11.2

David Capra and Amelia Winata

11.2

David Capra and Amelia Winata

Editorial: Laugh now, cry later

David Capra : Amelia, what do you find funny? Amelia Winata : I appreciate humour that reacts against the current politically correct climate we live in. I recently saw this old Asian woman in the spa of the council pool who was wearing yellow plastic glasses frames (no lenses) and a yellow vinyl golfing cap. […]

Kate Mitchell

Throwing The Artist Out 2016 digital print Selection from a series of 50 Courtesy the artist & Anna Schwartz Gallery and Chalk Horse

Zara Sigglekow

Bad jibes: camp, humour, and taste in the art of Matthew Harris

Motifs in Matthew Harris’s lurid works include flowers, copulating pigs, and a gravestone inscribed with a gold sad face. Born in 1991 and raised in Wangaratta, Matthew’s artistic output to date has included video, tapestry, sculpture and painting. He works within a gay camp parlance. Artifice, riffs, cuteness, violence and comic eroticism come together in […]

Chiara Scafidi

It’s not humour it’s satire

We were sitting in a dark lecture theatre when it happened. I can’t believe it happened. My hand was raised. The moderator looked at me in acknowledgement. And then it happened. I asked Marcia Langton a question. I said, ‘Can you speak to the humour in Brook Andrew’s work?’ She replied with a deafening silence, […]

Alistair Baldwin

Australian art is already funny — we just need to add a laugh track

But that’s work that I’m doing. And if taking art out of an art gallery is a necessary step for me to enjoy myself, then surely that speaks more to a problem with galleries than anything else? What can art spaces actively do to meet us halfway? Certainly, the proper curation of comedy is a […]

Archie Moore

Archie’s Puzzling Pages, 2017 digital images Courtesy the artist & The Commercial Gallery

Joel Stern

The joke that isn’t funny anymore

Experimental music desperately needs a turn to humour, satire, parody and, most of all, reflexivity, if it is to remain listenable. I can almost see this turn taking shape in the form of a long and unfolding joke. But, like any joke, the punchline can only work if you’re alive to the setup. I propose […]

Spencer Lai

on 2000 (clothing); untitled (Hana and looks), digital collage; untitled (professional poker players, mother of pearl violin brooch), digital collage; untitled (mother’s handmade hair clip, flowers, pink, green), digital photograph; untitled (mustard torture, magazine), synthetic felt and magazine pages; all 2017

Karrabing Film Collective

Growing up Karrabing: a conversation with Gavin Bianamu, Sheree Bianamu, Natasha Lewis Bigfoot, Ethan Jorrock and Elizabeth Povinelli

The Karrabing Film Collective (KAC) is a grassroots arts and film cooperative consisting of friends and family members whose lives interconnect along the coastal waters west of Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia. Begun in 2008 when members of the extended family found themselves homeless in the wake of deteriorating conditions on their natal […]

Daniel McKewen

Rise and Fall (I, II, III) 2017 Courtesy the artist & Milani Gallery

Sarah Werkmeister

What is this? I don’t know: pushing rocks up hills

SW : Can you give us more of a moving description of the video work’s narrative? MC : One of the things to note is that there’s a lot of Nepali text in the film as it was intended to be a Nepali film. Yet there’s only one scene of dialogue; one robot says ‘What […]

Kalinda Vary

Has anyone seen the Manic Mothers?

un Magazine got in touch with me to see if I’d write a piece on humour for this humorous issue. They asked me because I’m a woman, and I make performance-based work which always seems to have a humorous twist to it, somewhere. For instance, with my West Space show last year, I had people […]

Kieren Seymour

Puffing Billy 2016; Hospitality 2017; Sale Chocolate 2017; Cat 2016; Iphone 7 ad 2017; Nail gun and Dad 2017; Lauren 2016; Volcano 2016; all digital images

Sarah Rodigari and Ella Sutherland

Actual Hell: Pedagogical Gags and Shaggy Dogs 2014–2017

Malcolm Whittaker, in collaboration with Lucy Parakhina

Dirty Pieces XXXX–YYYY

Aurora Scott

post

Sydney-based performance collective post is Zoë Coombs Marr, Mish Grigor and Natalie Rose. They have been making work together for over ten years. The word that is missing from this podcast — a word mentioned by all interviewees that never made it into the final cut — is ‘daggy’. Through sampling pieces from their archives […]

Tina Havelock Stevens

(Not just a) One Trick Pony 2013

(Not just a) One Trick Pony from Tina Havelock Stevens on Vimeo. Tina Havelock Stevens is a multi-disciplinary Sydney-based artist whose work is defined by a meditation on the relationships we have with each other, the places we inhabit, and ourselves.Often depicting landscapes, she dwells on sites that are abandoned, decaying, deserted and vacant, to […]

Vanessa Berry

Funny Land 2017

Funny Land is a 1930s fun house, the only one of its kind left in the world. Part of Sydney’s Luna Park, it resembles a fairytale castle on the outside, a bizarre gymnasium on the inside. The towers and onion-shaped dome on the exterior disguise what is really nothing more than a giant shed, like […]

David Attwood

Two Harpic Lemon Toilet Rim Blocks 2017

Two Harpic Lemon Toilet Rim Blocks is an ongoing series of interventions involving the installation of toilet rim blocks within the toilets of various art galleries and museums across Victoria. As a wry service provision and play on the colloquial use of the term lemon, the series suggests an institutional irreverence that extends to include […]

Karrabing Film Collective

The Karrabing Film Collective 2017

These videos accompany Growing up Karrabing, a conversation with Gavin Bianamu, Sheree Bianamu, Natasha Lewis Bigfoot, Ethan Jorrock and Elizabeth Povinelli published in un Magazine 11.2. The Karrabing Film Collective is a film cooperative consisting of friends and family members whose lives interconnect along Indigenous coastal homelands northwest of Darwin, NT.

Joel Stern

The joke that isn’t funny anymore

Experimental music desperately needs a turn to humour, satire, parody and, most of all, reflexivity, if it is to remain listenable. I can almost see this turn taking shape in the form of a long and unfolding joke. But, like any joke, the punchline can only work if you’re alive to the setup. I propose […]

Simon Zoric

Order Your Pair Of Secret Reveal Decoder Glasses To Discover The True Meaning Of Art Today!2017Courtesy the artist

Fresh and Fruity

Did you know that the world is ending?

i wish the earth would j swallow me. Keep on dancing till the world ends. Dreams of the volcanoes in Tāmaki Makaurau violently convulsing. Clasping hands together under the table. Our breath moving in sync. Stripping back the flesh to reveal the whiteness of our bones. Grinding bones into dust. Bone marrow and blood absorbed […]