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 itspast? For Jasmine Togo-Brisby, a fourth-generation AustralianSouth Sea Islander (ASSI) with ancestral lineage to the Vanuatuislands 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 unveil the complex […]

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 […]

Exhibition: To companion a companion Artist: Fernando do Campo Gallery: Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts Somewhat negentropically, it takes a moment for the meticulous repetition of motifs and formal logic to register. A tight palette sourced from archive item number 12, ‘Colour Studies’ attributed to James Fredrick Archen, is elaborated throughout the exhibition: from the […]

Exhibition: methods for collapse (m4c)Artist: Gabriella ImrichovaPerformers: Roslyn Orlando, Sophie Gargan, Mara Galagher and Anika de RuyterExhibition details: BLINDSIDE, 29 June – 16 July Gabriella Imrichova’s methods for collapse (m4c) ends with no capital E. Closure is a myth after all. After three, maybe four loops of the live performance score 0, I exit BLINDSIDE […]

Artists: Quishile Charan and Zaiba Khan Gallery: West Space During my time indoors I’ve taken to using mycelium as metaphor. Mycelium, a root-like structure comprised of hyphae —fine white filaments — is the part of a fungus that gathers nutrients from which the fruit — the mushroom — can grow.[^1] A complex network, mycelia are […]

Précis – In December 2021 ad agency Clemenger BBDO announced a collaboration with art collective Glue Society and the University of Tasmania for Earth’s Black Box, a large steel vault recording ongoing climate data much like a plane’s flight recorder. Drawing on this project, I reconceptualise the ‘black box’ – as container of knowledge but […]

I am a descendant of south-eastern Europe, a prisoner of war refugee and a post-war migrant: a second-generation Australian. I am conscious that while I am Australian, I live on the landsof Aboriginal Australians. Over two decades, I have sustaineda curatorial practice that honours this awareness. Travelling Australia from the lands of the Gimuy-walubarra yidi […]

Artists: Bridget Chappell and Debris Facility Pty Ltd Gallery: Cool Change Contemporary halalbutch · 2 Many DJs [B2B Hextape 4.eva.FM] If you were there spinning the dial like an Ouroboros on Tuesday and hesitated somewhere between Triple M and Nova maybe you heard it. A shaky broadcast, the Amen break, mistransitions and meandering, unconcerned art […]

Artists: Liv Moriarty and Emma BerryExhibition: Starting in the MiddleGallery: Woven Projects, Naarm/Melbourne16 – 25 May 2022 Four years ago, artists Emma Berry and Liv Moriarty began emailing poems, lists and observations to each other. In this pre-pandemic era, where for the two artists, communication in the digital sphere was more playful than necessary, an […]

Justin ShoulderAEON †: TITAN ARUM26 March – 5 September 2021The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Sydney I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land where I’m writing from – the sovereign land of the Bunurong and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nations. I pay my respects to their elders past and present and stand behind […]