This transcript is taken from two interviews conducted in June 2025 at Yusi Zang’s Gertrude Contemporary studio in Preston South. Born in Beijing, Zang moved to Naarm / Melbourne in 2014 to study Fine Arts at Monash University, and has since solidified a practice across painting and sculpture, exhibiting at an impressive schedule in artist-run, […]

We would like to acknowledge the sovereign Traditional Custodians of the land on which we live as uninvited guests, in the suburb now known as Coburg – the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Eastern Kulin Nation in Naarm. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung people of the Kulin Nation, who are the Custodians of […]

Translation is like trying to hold the wind. You can feel it, but you can’t keep it. In a captivating conversation with Celine Skaf, a translator and interpreter, we delve into the emotional landscapes that emerge when art is transmitted across languages. Skaf shares her journey through film, poetry, and visual art, revealing how these forms shape her translation practice.

When we founded the Melbourne Sculpture Biennale, I was inspired by the DIY culture in our artistic community and the rich history of artist-led projects, as well as a new wave of young art graduates who are starting various project spaces. There is this fertile ground in Melbourne right now. People seem to be taking on different kinds of projects and running with them. That, for me, was the catalyst as well as my personal interest in sculpture.

As Country was cut, divided, commodified and consumed through colonial surveying, so too were the systems that governed the care of land and kin by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities for over 65,000 years. This disruption to systems of sustaining care was marked by a shift towards individualism and the accumulation of wealth and […]

For Magnetic Topographies, a social practice becomes a place-based practice becomes a compost made up of new friendships and knowledge. A practice that is playfully unassuming yet deeply anti-institutional: meet your friends, go for a walk, see what happens. 

Before we had even met, I had a peripheral appreciation for Mossy 333’s work. I knew Mossy to be an artist working resourcefully within her means to produce boundary-pushing work across tattoo, painting and performance. Her relocation back to Boorloo from Naarm in 2020 was the latent beginning to a friendship grounded in a mutual […]

un Magazine: Could you tell us a bit about your country? Fiona Foley: I was born on my Country, which is Maryborough. We have two tracks of land. We have six islands and one of those islands is Fraser Island, also known as K’gari — it’s the largest sand island in the world. On the […]

Under a white London sky in October 2019, I entered the deep red interior of Alexa Karolinski and Ingo Niermann’s exhibition Army of Love at Auto Italia South East. Two wall- wide films were playing in conjoined spaces. The first, Army of Love (2016), is a kind of documentary-campaign for the larger Army of Love, […]

Nanette Orly and Sebastian Henry-Jones are two Sydney based curators who are doing things differently. Their curatorial practices are collaborative and artist-led, and for them inclusion and diversity are not simply boxes ticked but entrenched ways of working. Theirs is a subtle and destabilising activism that models a better, more dialogical way of curating across […]

This is the second of a two-part conversation series between Sophie Rose and Utility, an ongoing collaboration between sound artists Austin Buckett and Thomas Smith. You can read the first part here. Describing the project as a shared fascination with the ‘existing constellation of fake and real sounds’, Smith and Buckett draw from the seemingly-infinite […]

In the first of a two-part series, Sophie Rose chats with Utility, an ongoing collaboration between sound artists Austin Buckett and Thomas Smith. Describing the project as a shared fascination with the ‘existing constellation of fake and real sounds’, Smith and Buckett draw from the seemingly-infinite library of presets in electronic music production. Situated somewhere […]

APOCRYPHILIA was at The Northern Centre For Contemporary Art, Darwin, until 30 March 2019. This interview took place on Larrakia Country. We acknowledge the Larrakia People as the Traditional Owners of the Darwin region and pay our respects to Larrakia Elders past, present and becoming. Beth Caird: Could you tell me about your upbringing in […]

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 […]

Watch video here » 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 […]

Watch video here » Rosie Isaac is an artist and a writer. She makes performances, texts and sculptures and is particularly interested in authority, morality, language and myth. Recently her works have been made in and about a church, a library, a courtroom and a hotel. In ‘Slurry Mass’ Rosie discusses ideas around public and […]

Watch video here » Taree Mackenzie’s practice investigates the perceptual effects of colour, light and space. Taree constructs DIY interactive kinetic sets that use basic visual devices to create live feeds. These live feeds are projected and act like paintings, challenging our habitual modes of looking. In ‘Pepper’s Ghost’ Taree discusses colour mixing with light, scale […]

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 […]

Lowlee: Can we just talk like now and you can record or…?  Beth: Yeah yeah yeah OK I’m recording now  Lowlee: Ye, kele.  Beth: Ye, ka…  Lowlee: Werte!  Beth (laughs): Werte! Ayenge Arrernte akweke ware akaltye-irre….ke, no – how do I say it in the past tense?  Lowlee: Ke  Beth: ke, akaltye-irreke, akweke ware, ke […]

In southeast Australia the Aboriginal population is young; more than fifty percent are under twenty-five-years old. Yet, Aboriginal young people in Victoria remain a minority within the broader community. Many have limited opportunities to engage in programs reflecting their everyday experiences or to identify with others from similar backgrounds. The following is a conversation between […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Amina McConvell is an artist, curator, and community arts worker who lives in Darwin and often enables cross-cultural exchanges between artists in the Northern Territory and South East Asia in her role as the creative producer of Asia in Darwin. Amina also works at Darwin Community Arts as the creative producer of Arts Access Darwin […]