Housed within Buxton Contemporary, The same crowd never gathers twice is an exhibition with a curious title. It initially provoked me to think of moments when I found myself situated within crowds, organised or not, such as the dinner table, the food court or a tram stop. And how fleeting the configurations of crowds are, […]

Travelling north on the 86 for the group exhibition Five rooms and house rules at Bundoora Homestead Arts Centre, I find myself playing a kind of phrase association to see how frequently I can think of different idiomatic uses of ‘house’ and ‘home’. For the most part, the ‘home’ sayings encircle the same kind of […]

Last month, GPU manufacturer NVIDIA’s share prices tumbled by nine-point-five per cent, representing the greatest loss in market value in one day for any company ever at a loss of 279 billion dollars 1. The GPU is the primary technology that powers AI, and harnessed en masse allows for inference to be conducted at industrial […]

Torsion, Curated by Kyle Weise 9 Dec 2023–27 Jan 2024 Metro Arts, Meanjin/Brisbane In 1993 I was ten years old and wanted for few things except for a pair of Nike Airs. When my classmate, Stephen, intentionally stabbed the point of his compass through the clear window of his red and white Air Max, I […]

In his book The Culture of Narcissism (1979), Christopher Lasch uncannily predicted the perilous state of the contemporary subject. He anticipated a cultural landscape surplus with images of desire rendering the subject beholden to an amalgamation of preexisting material confronting them through the pervasive mediums of photography and the ever-present wallpaper of screen culture.1 In […]

Somewhere there is a Siren. Beginning with the utterance of a single note,  she listens for the return of her own voice.  She responds with the same note again,  and again, echoing into an endless chorus,  a swarm, a sea, a body. Her voices  fill the room with an ethereal presence,  escaping into the world, […]

In reflecting on the varied approaches to furniture engaged by artists, designers and architects, the cultural and social contribution of furniture is evident. However, architecture’s urge to respond and engage with the modern socio-political conditions has become more present.

Dane MitchellAn Unbroken Surface17 May – 8 June 2024Gertrude Glasshouse When experiencing art or participating in spectacle some say everything has the right to exist. It’s ‘subjective’ one might add. Petrochemicals and synthetic olfactories, stinging nostrils, itchy throats and blinking red eyes. More than a few thousand scientifically scented little paper pine trees. A deeply perverted […]

As we walk into the gallery, Kai tells me it’s Car Wash’s fifth birthday this year — a fact I find difficult to believe. Located in West Melbourne, the abandoned-car-wash-turned-gallery has been the site of countless self-organised exhibitions, gigs and parties, while somehow always evading the scrutiny of local council and building owners (if they […]

On the Jump In – Pepsi® Moments, 2017. Prologue to Soda Jerk’s Hello Dankness, 2022. In a Q&A after Soda Jerk’s screening of Hello Dankness (2022) at the Capitol Cinema for the Melbourne International Film Festival, filmmakers Dan and Dom Angeloro posed the rhetorical question: ‘Can there be satire after Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi®ad?’ Ultimately, Hello […]

FUTURES, Melbourne. never together Lara Chamas, Matilda Davis, Christopher Duncan, Evangeline Riddiford-Graham, Fiona Williams. Curated by Victoria Wynne-Jones. Looking at the appeal or influence of magic and mysticism in aesthetics today, one wonders why? Especially given that — as Mitch Therieau writes in Vibe, Mood, Energy — the language of mysticism emerged in reaction to […]

Paint pours through a system. Run of the mill white emulsion runs through pipes into canvas, fills canvas, pours out, through a series of neatly cut holes, runs down, is caught, fed into pump, fed into pipes, into canvas, through and round. Natasha Kidd’s Flow and Return (2006) is a cyclical loop of white paint […]

A speculation on speculation, this nonlinear conversation addresses processes of working. It allows for a thematic meander that we hope you can join us on, one perhaps for all the tangential thinkers … Previously, we have moved through moments in sound guided by Assia Djebar’s words on ‘Aphasia,’ ‘Murmur,’ ‘Voice,’ ‘Clamour’ and ‘Whisper’ in Fantasia: […]

Prompted by un Magazine’s General Manager, I attended a screening of Interview With The Vampire at ACMI with an introduction by critic and historian Dr. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. In her introduction, Heller-Nicholas contextualised this queer coded film with the zeitgeist of the 90s and the oeuvre of Anne Rice. She also touched on the apocalyptically bad sequel Queen of […]

Thinking back to my first visit to However Vast the Darkness atJohn Curtin Gallery in March, I now remember that moment as being unusually bookended by the subject of death. In the months prior to seeing the exhibition, death seemed to be a recurring theme in my life; a sequence that I can only describe […]

So far the 2020s have been the decade of the ‘water’ and‘decolonial’ biennial. Everyone’s doing it — bringing togetherIndigenous and non-white artists against the loose themes of‘flows of resistance’ or the like, attempting to make sense in amoment of intersecting and layered crises. Questions aroundinstitutional transformation, curatorial activism, representation,the environment, climate change, equality, and how […]

How can a culture move forward if it does not have access to its past? For Jasmine Togo-Brisby, a fourth-generation Australian South Sea Islander (ASSI) with ancestral lineage to the Vanuatu islands of Ambae and Santo, artistic constructions of the past create routes and roots to imagine ASSI futurities. Togo-Brisby’s practice recuperates cultural memory to […]

Kaiela Arts Shepparton Indigenous Futurisms YIRRAMBOI, 4-14 May 2023 The rustling soundscape of trees and birds, accompanied by the rich vibration of the yidaki and the flute, transported viewers into the worlds of the Kaiela Arts young creatives in a new community-led project, Indigenous Futurisms. Led by Dixon Patten, Tammy-Lee Atkinson, and Cienan Muir with […]

Gallery: Fiona and Sidney Myer Gallery Exhibition: Arthur Jafa, Unrest 7 April – 13 May I am a Wiradjuri guest on the unceded sovereign lands of the Wurundjeri peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nations. This is where I live, work, and am writing from today. I am paying my respects to Elders both past and […]

Exhibition: Wardrobing Artist: Mitchel Cumming Gallery: Disneyland Paris In a recent piece for Artlink art historian and critic Tara Heffernan raises suspicions around the ubiquity of care discourse as a subgenre of contemporary art discourse. Heffernan observes that ‘talk of care in the arts—like earlier theories buttressing relational aesthetics—echo the benevolent language that similarly glosses […]

Exhibition: Ruu – Examination Artist: Curtis Taylor Gallery: Sweet Pea ‘Ruu is the Martu word for examination, mainly coming from the old Manyjilyjarra language’, explains Curtis Taylor. It means ‘to have a look, reveal something, or to sort of look at miscellaneous things’. It’s the day before the opening and Taylor has just unwrapped a […]

Artist: Warsan Mohammed Curator: Anna Emina El Samad Exhibition details: SchoolHouse Gallery, 12 – 25 November The walls of SchoolHouse Gallery are painted green and brown. I catch a glimpse of this through the window of the gallery, which looks out onto the SchoolHouse parking lot from where I stand. It is the first time […]

The following texts and filmic references were instrumental in the creation of In a World Full of Angels (2022), a short film commissioned by Gertrude Contemporary that is currently available to view online as part of their Digital Commissions program. Channelled by the film’s main character, a pilgrim skydiver, these texts and filmic references have […]

by Gabrielle Bergman Earlier this year I joined an art theory reading group. In between work commitments, navigating a pregnancy, completing a second university degree and managing an interstate relocation, I was determined to find time to meet with a group of students to learn and engage in art discourse for the pure purpose of […]