Expect the (un)expected!

 

The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art never exhibits artists who shield their politics, sexuality, emotions, preferences or world view. The current exhibition is no (un)exception and is titled ‘mOTHERTONGUE’ 

In this exhibition of her work, Mithu Sen, international renowned artist from India, is ‘tangling with the politics of language, discipline of bodies, conventions of society and the polite impositions of the art world’. The exhibition is subversive, provocative, confronting and (un)confusing. It provides a mind map into her world where difference replaces (un)diversity and where imagery replaces the (un)written. 

https://acca.melbourne/exhibition/mithu-sen-mothertongue/

Search…just for laughs!

 

British comedian Mark Watson knows Melbourne…and us. He has performed at more than 10 Melbourne International Comedy Festivals. 

In this performance called ‘’Search’’ he traverses his inner / outer most self in ‘Search’ for meaning ‘with or without Google’. 

It’s an hilarious brain snapping journey punctuated by life incidents that include his 12-year-old son’s new phone and his 70-year-old dad who has been through a life/death experience.

The latest Art and Activism in Public Space issue of The Journal of Public Space is on line. Co-editors: Luisa Bravo, Maggie McCormick and Fiona Hillary. Melbourne launch at RMIT details to be announced very soon. Image artist: Emma Anna. 

Art Treatment 111

The Spotswood Pumping Station (Scienceworks) was the venue for the launch of Treatment 111, an exhibition of temporary public artwork celebrating ‘the unique features, communities, technologies and ecologies of Melbourne’s waste water’. The artworks will be featured across Scienceworks, Brooklyn and Werribee. 

The Pumping Station built in the 1890s and the heart of the Melbourne Sewerage Scheme, is an example of 19th century ingenuity, ambition and reflects the grand tradition of the nineteenth century industrial buildings that celebrated the use of new technologies.

As a venue for public artworks it challenges both curator and artist with its backdrop of pumping houses, boilers, coal bunkers and towers. Artist, Robert Andrew’s ‘A perpetrual reveal’, Linda Tegg’s, ‘Tending a line in the year of the rabbit’ (a work in a vacant block of land across the road), and Zany Begg’s, ‘Prisoners’ (a looped video installation) were presented with a challenging task against the Late French Empire styled buildings!

Craig Foster: The Republic Question @ the Fifth Estate



Last night at the Wheeler Centre, Craig Foster and Sally Warhaft weaved a conversation through the history and learning of the Australian Republican Movement, the indigenous Voice to Parliament, multi-culturalism  and Australia’s sovereignty.  

Foster, a former Socceroos player and coach, and sports broadcaster, human rights activist, and co-chair with Nova Peris of the Australian Republic Movement and Sally Warhaft, writer, broadcaster and anthropologist displayed their knowledge, intelligence and wit in an hour long discussion. 

It was a stimulating, informative and enjoyable journey highlighted by a general agreement that the slogan for the vote to become a Republic in the next term of the Albanese Labor Government should be ‘Thanks, we can take it from here.’

It ended with Warhaft suggesting that maybe Foster’s optimism and her concerns could be best shared.

Melbourne What Next?

 

‘Melbourne Now’ but what next? It’s an exhaustive, rambling and exhausting exhibition of art by 200 ‘artisits’ at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV covering fashion, jewellery, sculpture, architecture, design, video, printmaking and publishing. Artists have responded to the current character of Melbourne including the impact of the COVID lockdown, but few have ventured into ‘Melbourne Next’. 

Missing are references to climate change, indigenous rights, the environment, AI and the digitalisation and monopolisation of our lives……yes life not as we know it but what the human race can expect and needing to change over the coming decades. 

A highlight but tucked away with limited viewing was Laresa Kosloff’s video works - Radical Acts, New Future and La Perruque. They provide a futuristic and caustic view of a corporate, climate washing and fake news agendas. Is that what’s next? A very powerful, spell binding, decisive and incisive portrayal of the current pathway. March 27. 2023