PROJECT ROOMS 2024

PROJECT ROOMS

Amala Groom

ReadingRoom

ReadingRoom was inaugurated in January 2018, as an independent contemporary art gallery. They engage directly with the multifaceted diversity of the art community. The gallery supports and invests in artists directly through the representation of their work, and the development of an ongoing program of solo exhibitions and artist-led projects. They support these exhibitions and projects by commissioning independent writing and publishing, hosting artist’ talks, film screenings and supporting various other associated events.

Online Viewing Rooms To Open June 2020

Australasia’s most progressive forum for contemporary art and ideas, Melbourne Art Fair has announced a free Virtual Art Fair taking place from 1-7 June 2020.

While the physical fair slated for this year is rescheduled to February 2021, Melbourne Art Foundation is partnering with Ocula.com for a digital platform titled ‘Melbourne Art Fair Viewing Rooms’, to show the new and iconic work online that was originally intended for the fair’s 2020 edition.

Viewing Rooms will give visitors the opportunity to explore the virtual spaces of the region’s most esteemed galleries and discover exceptional art from home.

Melbourne Art Foundation CEO and Fair Director Maree Di Pasquale says they are supporting the arts community and giving the public an opportunity to peruse art through a digital fair experience.

“Melbourne Art Fair has always been a progressive forum and is adapting to the changing art landscape and situation we currently face. Although it’s disappointing the fair cannot take place as initially scheduled this year, we are bringing the experience to the public in a new and exciting way as we wait for the event in 2021,” she says.

“Our goal with the Viewing Rooms is to keep the art community connected and provide a channel for art to continue to be a part of our lives until we can view and absorb it again via traditional methods at galleries and fairs. “The platform we have created also puts the region’s best artists and galleries on the world stage as it’s now easier than ever for people from across the globe to enjoy what we have on offer.

“We remain committed to supporting the industry during these difficult circumstances and are using this as an opportunity to unite contemporary galleries and living artists via our digital edition of the fair.”

Throughout the week, Melbourne Art Fair and its participating galleries will also host a series of digital experiences including artist studio visits, collector interviews and exhibition viewings on the platform.

Galleries taking part include, Anna Miles Gallery (Auckland), Anna Schwartz Gallery (Melbourne), Arthouse Gallery (Sydney), Arts Project Australia (Melbourne), Bartley + Company Art (Wellington), Bowerbank Ninow (Auckland), Chalk Horse (Sydney), Daine Singer (Melbourne), Despard Gallery (Hobart), Finkelstein Gallery (Melbourne), Flinders Lane Gallery (Melbourne), GAGPROJECTS | Greenaway Art Gallery (Adelaide), Hugo Michell Gallery (Adelaide), Jacob Hoerner Galleries (Melbourne), James Makin Gallery (Melbourne), Jan Murphy Gallery (Brisbane), Justin Miller Art (Sydney), kleinerfelt (Melbourne), Martin Browne Contemporary (Sydney), Michael Bugelli Gallery (Hobart), Michael Reid (Sydney/Berlin), Mizuma & Kips (New York/Tokyo), Murray White Room (Melbourne), Nanda\Hobbs (Sydney), Neon Parc (Melbourne), Niagara Galleries (Melbourne), Nicholas Thompson Gallery (Melbourne), Olsen Gallery (Sydney/New York), Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery (Sydney), Saint Cloche (Sydney), Sophie Gannon Gallery (Melbourne), STATION (Melbourne/Sydney), Sullivan + Strumpf (Sydney/Singapore), Sutton Gallery (Melbourne), The Commercial (Sydney), The Drawing Room (Manila), The Egg & Dart (Thirroul), Vivien Anderson Gallery (Melbourne) and Yavuz Gallery (Singapore/Sydney).

Melbourne Art Fair Viewing Rooms will be available to the public from 3-7 June 2020, with a VIP Preview from 1-2 June 2020.

Melbourne Art Fair is a biennial event with the postponed physical fair now set to take place at Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre from 4-7 February 2021.

Image: Kate Tucker, Combiner, 2020. Courtesy the artist and Daine Singer

2020 Viewing Rooms

WATCH | Alpha60: Where Fashion and the Arts Coalesce

Presenter of PROJECT ROOMS and official partner of Melbourne Art Fair, Alpha60‘s founders Alex and Georgie Cleary have always been patrons of the arts. Melbourne Art Fair seized the opportunity to speak with the sibling pair about the roots of their independent fashion label, and their unique collaborative projects with contemporary Australian artists.

For the Fair’s LATE NIGHTS Program presented by Broadsheet, Alpha60 Chapter House will host a performance by the Lux Australis Ensemble; and NEWRETRO REDUX, a thrilling, site-responsive performance by Lucy Guerin Inc, reinvented for the Fair. Additionally, Alpha60 will present their own booth at Melbourne Art Fair, commissioning artists Mikala Dwyer, Kate Rohde, and Lottie Consalvo to craft unique bags, bridging fashion and art.

 

Explore the Full Program here and secure tickets to Melbourne Art Fair, taking place 22 – 25 February at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre here.

Proximity by Gertrude

Alex and Georgie Cleary: 5 Stories on Creative Collaboration

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH OCULA MAGAZINE

The siblings behind Australian fashion label Alpha60 reflect on working with Patricia Piccinini and Brendan Huntley, and introduce their latest project for Melbourne Art Fair.

 

Siblings Alex and Georgie Cleary are ‘hustlers since way back’.

The duo’s working relationship began on their parent’s rose farm, where they sold flowers together on the side of the road—an enterprise which expanded to selling tea towels, potpourri, muffins, and later champagne, skateboards, and t-shirts at the local market.

With past careers in graphic design (Georgie) and aeronautical engineering (Alex), their fashion label Alpha60 emerged organically over time, beginning when Georgie made Alex a printed t-shirt to go out in one night when he had nothing to wear. The shirt was soon requested by growing numbers of friends, and from there the brand grew. ‘We just made stuff that we liked, and that’s still what we do,’ Georgie said.

For Melbourne Art Fair 2024, they are presenting two PROJECT ROOMS with Firstdraft, a non-profit contemporary art space in Gadigal Country/Sydney, and Gertrude, an artist studio programme in Naarm/Melbourne, as well as their own booth where they will launch three new bag designs—the product of their latest collaborations with Australian artists Mikala Dwyer, Lottie Consalvo, and Kate Rohde.

Alex and Georgie recently spoke with the team at Ocula about collecting, previous collaborations, and their current project for Melbourne Art Fair 2024.

“GC: Funnily enough, we’ve collected a lot of things that are exactly the same—from the same artist, same gallery, same exhibition. It’s funny because our houses are so different, but we’ve got a lot of the same art.”

Click to read the full interview on Ocula Magazine.

Exhibition view: Alpha60 X Brendan Huntley: Sense of Direction, Heide Modern, Melbourne (11 March–10 April 2023). Courtesy the artists and Heide Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Clytie Meredith.

Melbourne Art Fair 2022 Galleries Announced

MELBOURNE ART FAIR ANNOUNCES GALLERY LIST AND PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS FOR THE SUMMER 2022 EDITION

Australasia’s progressive forum for contemporary art and ideas, Melbourne Art Fair has announced its list of esteemed galleries taking part in the summer 2022 art fair, presenting solo shows and works of scale and significance from new and iconic artists.

From 17 to 20 February 2022, Australasia’s most prestigious art fair will bring together over 50 of the region’s leading galleries, spanning 7,000sqm at the DCM designed Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, alongside a program of conversations, special projects, commissions, and performance, supporting the exhibition and sale of contemporary art.

A dedicated edition of MAF Virtual will run in parallel with the fair, from 17 February – 3 March 2022, embracing a hybrid model with an expanded online program connecting galleries and audiences across the globe.

“Set to be the first Australian art fair since the start of the pandemic, and the first major event of the cultural calendar for 2022, Melbourne Art Fair is excited to once again connect galleries and their artists with collectors and the art loving public, and to resume its important role as a meeting place for the artworld,” says Melbourne Art Foundation CEO and Fair director Maree Di Pasquale.

“We are proud of the Fair’s resilience and digital innovation that was accelerated by the global pandemic, but there is no real substitute for seeing art and people physically. The return of Melbourne Art Fair brings a renewed sense of celebration and optimism in the artworld. Our gallery list encompasses the well-known and the emerging, as well as invited Indigenous-owned art centres, representing the most comprehensive overview of the Australian art market at any art fair,” Maree adds.

Returning galleries include: Anna Schwartz Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne), Art Collective WA (Boorloo/Perth), Blackartprojects (Naarm/Melbourne), Chalk Horse (Warrang/Sydney), Daine Singer (Naarm/Melbourne), Darren Knight Gallery (Warrang/Sydney), Despard Gallery (nipaluna/Hobart), Flinders Lane Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne), Fox Jensen (Warrang/Sydney, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland), GAGPROJECTS (Tarnanya/Adelaide), GALLERY 9 (Warrang/Sydney), Jacob Hoerner Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne), James Makin Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne), Jan Murphy Gallery (Meanjin/Brisbane), Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art (Naarm/Melbourne), MARS Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne), Martin Browne Contemporary (Warrang/Sydney), Murray White Room (Naarm/Melbourne), Nanda\Hobbs (Warrang/Sydney), Neon Parc (Naarm/Melbourne), Niagara Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne), Nicholas Thompson Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne), Olsen Gallery (Warrang/Sydney, New York), Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery (Warrang/Sydney), Sophie Gannon Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne), STATION (Naarm/Melbourne, Warrang/Sydney), Sullivan+Strumpf (Warrang/Sydney), Sutton Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne), The Commercial (Warrang/Sydney), Tolarno Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne), Vivien Anderson Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne), and William Mora Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne).

New galleries partaking in the fair for the first time are 1301SW (Naarm/Melbourne), Chapman & Bailey (Naarm/Melbourne), Justin Miller Art (Warrang/Sydney), MOORE CONTEMPORARY (Boorloo/Perth), The Egg & Dart (Dharawal Country/Thirroul), and Yavuz Gallery (Warrang/Sydney, Singapore).

Also making their debut in 2022 are 10 young galleries established after 2016, demonstrating the Fair’s commitment to creating a platform that supports the next generation of artistic practice. Galleries include: Antidote Projects (Warrang/Sydney), COMA (Warrang/Sydney), DISCORDIA (Naarm/Melbourne), Finkelstein Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne), Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert (Warrang/Sydney), LON Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne), Michael Bugelli Gallery (nipaluna/Hobart), N.Smith Gallery (Warrang/Sydney), ReadingRoom (Naarm/Melbourne), and The Renshaws’ (Meanjin/Brisbane).

Additionally, the Fair welcomes five Indigenous-owned Art Centres, supported through the Melbourne Art Fair Indigenous Art Centre program (IACP) – an initiative that supports the participation of Art Centres at a fair of regional significance. IACP is funded by the Australian Government through the Indigenous Visual Arts Industry Support (IVAIS) and Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) programs. Melbourne Art Fair has partnered with Agency Projects to deliver the program, and welcomes to the fair Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre (Yirrkala), Jilamara Arts & Crafts Association (Milikapiti), Warlayirti Artists (Balgo), Waringarri Aboriginal Art (Kununurra) and Milingimbi Art (Milingimbi).

Melbourne Art Fair returns with compelling presentations across an Artistic Program defined in 2022 by the theme of Djeembana/Place. Djeembana, a word of the Boon Wurrung, is a place for community; a meeting point for the exchange of stories, rituals and knowledge.

PROJECT ROOMS
PROJECT ROOMS is a non-commercial platform for experimentation, welcoming Gertrude Contemporary (Naarm/Melbourne) and LAST Collective (Naarm/Melbourne) with the presentation of artists that push the boundaries of artistic practice with performance and multi-media works.

BEYOND
Making its debut in 2022, BEYOND harnesses the monumental exhibition spaces within MCEC to present six large-scale installations and spatial interventions that respond to the theme djeembana/place. BEYOND is curated by independent curator and writer, Emily Cormack.

LIVE
Presented by Glenfiddich, LIVE is an onsite/offsite performance and sound art program captivating the imagination of the artworld and art loving public. Aligned with Glenfiddich’s maverick DNA, the inaugural program celebrates trailblazers, featuring Australia’s most boundary-pushing artists with critically significant performances both at the Fair and across the city.

VIDEO
Dedicated to the presentation of moving-image art from new and iconic international contemporary artists, VIDEO is curated by Nina Miall, Curator International Art, QAGOMA. The Fair welcomes for the first time participation from international galleries unable to physically exhibit within the main show sector, enabling dealers from across the globe to maintain a connection with Australasia’s active and growing collector-base during the ongoing pandemic.

CONVERSATIONS
Conversations is a platform for critical discourse and the sharing of ideas, bringing together cultural communities and thinkers from across the creative spectrum. The aim: to address the future of art and its relationship to interdisciplinary practices and the contemporary world through a series of talks and panels featuring artists, gallerists, curators, collectors, architects, critics, and cultural luminaries. Conversations will be developed by a Curatorium led by Melissa Bianca Amore, art critic, curator, contemporary philosopher, and Co-Founding Director of Re-Sited based in New York and Melbourne.

MELBOURNE ART FOUNDATION COMMISSION
The Melbourne Art Foundation 2022 Commission in partnership with ACMI (Naarm/Melbourne), and supported by Artwork Transport and Panasonic, has been awarded to Kaylene Whiskey, an important Australian contemporary artist on the rise represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery (Warrang/Sydney). Whiskey’s strong connection to Indulkana, her hometown, and her Yankunytjatjara heritage will be the foundation of the new single channel video work, responding to the Fair’s 2022 thematic of ‘djeembana/place’. The video work will be unveiled at the Fair, before moving to its permanent home in the ACMI collection.

Melbourne Art Fair Full Artistic Program with exhibiting artists will be announced January 2022.

Tickets go on sale Tuesday 5 October at 9:00am, with First Release ticket prices available until 2 November.

Melbourne Art Fair is owned and produced by the Melbourne Art Foundation, a systemically significant non-profit Australian arts organisation that leads the way in building audiences and markets for the work of Australia’s living artists. The Fair is supported by government partners Creative Victoria and the Australia Council for the Arts under the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy.

In 2022, Melbourne Art Fair partners with BetaCarbon to break new ground in carbon emission reduction for the artworld. Motivated by the global climate emergency, Melbourne Art Fair has committed to the offset of at least 300 tonnes of carbon, equivalent to the carbon captured by 18,000 trees in 10 years. Coupled with the Fair’s move to MCEC, a leading sustainable event destination, and an investment in reusable exhibition walling and LED lights, Melbourne Art Fair is now proudly Australasia’s most sustainable art fair.

For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit www.melbourneartfair.com.au/tickets

Melbourne Art Fair event details

Thursday 17 February
VIP Preview 2pm-5pm
Vernissage 5pm-9:30pm

Friday 18 February
VIP access 10am – 12pm
General admission 12pm-9pm

Saturday 19 February
General admission 10am-6pm

Sunday 20 February
General admission 10am-5pm

 

Visit the 2022 Gallery List

 

Image: Jacobus Capone, Echo & Abyss, 2018. Courtesy the artist and MOORE CONTEMPORARY, Boorloo/Perth.

Melbourne Art Fair names inaugural artistic director for 2020

Melbourne Art Foundation today announces the appointment of Emily Cormack as the Melbourne Art Fair 2020 Artistic Director, a new position that will oversee the artistic direction for the 16^th edition of the fair. 

Cormack is an independent curator and writer, most recently appointed curator at TarraWarra Biennial (2018), and has curated exhibitions across Australia, the Asia Pacific and Europe.

Melbourne Art Foundation CEO and fair director, Maree Di Pasquale says, “We are thrilled that Emily Cormack will be working with us to define the 2020 edition, to develop a bold artistic program that both challenges and engages a diverse audience.”

“She is a curator that is drawn to the experimentation and dynamism of emerging arts practices and we look forward to materialising this in the development and programming of the fair.”

This new, high profile position signifies a key moment in the evolution of Melbourne Art Fair as a forum for contemporary art and ideas. Changing on a biennial basis, the artistic director will establish a unique fair identity for each edition, providing galleries, collectors and the art-loving public even more reason to attend and engage every two years.

“While artistic directors are more prominent in biennales and festivals, the creation of this position demonstrates Melbourne Art Foundation’s commitment to producing a fair of the highest curatorial standard, and reflects the public’s demand for original thematic experiences,” Di Pasquale adds.

Emily Cormack says, “As a curator I am increasingly focused on the moment of encounter, how we can be held captive by this affective and activating experience. As Artistic Director of Melbourne Art Fair I look forward to exploring how these encounters play out within the expanded platform of the newly reconfigured art fair. In this new role, I will focus on the activity generated by these moments of connection, where the art fair’s diverse audiences are enlivened by a honed collection of innovative, sometimes challenging and always captivating contemporary art.”

Melbourne Art Fair, Australasia’s most progressive forum for contemporary art, will take place 18 – 21 June 2020 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, presenting iconic and new work by artists from over 50 of the region’s most respected galleries.

Melbourne Art Fair continues to be a seminal fixture on the Australasian cultural calendar, stimulating critical and commercial attention for galleries and their artists for over 30 years.

As the Artistic Director, Cormack will work with the fair’s curatorial committees to select galleries and artists for the following programs:

Galleries, the main exhibition sector, presents the region’s most significant galleries with new and iconic works from leading artists in solo shows and curated projects.

Accent is a thought-provoking platform for emerging artists with specially conceived projects from ten of the region’s most progressive young galleries. Discover artists with a new perspective that are shifting the global conversation around contemporary art.

Making its debut in 2020, Beyond harnesses the monumental exhibition spaces within the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Carefully curated installations and spatial interventions will fill the epic spaces contributing to greater conversations and presenting opportunities for artists far beyond the art fair stand. Melbourne Art Foundation provides a monetary grant for each participating gallery.

Partnering with independent art spaces and non-collecting institutions from across Australia and New Zealand, Project Rooms offer a platform for experimentation featuring artists that push the boundaries of performative and multidisciplinary works.

A major drawcard of the fair is the returning Melbourne Art Foundation Commission. The AU$70,000 commission, now in its 8th year, provides a living artist with the opportunity to realise a large-scale work for unveiling at Melbourne Art Fair, which is later gifted to a prominent Australian institution. The 2020 Commission partner will be announced in September.

Melbourne Art Fair is supported by government partners Creative Victoria and the Australia Council for the Arts under the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy.   

Gallery applications are now open, closing 18 October 2019 – apply now.

Ali Tahayori On Mobilising Light, Āine-Kāri And His New Works For Melbourne Art Fair

Ali Tahayori’s interdisciplinary practice ranges from conceptual photography to the moving image, and installation. He uses archival materials, narrative fragments and performative modalities to explore themes of identity, home, and belonging. Combining fractured mirrors with text and imagery, his works draw on ancient Iranian philosophies about light and mirrors to create kaleidoscopic experiences; moments of both revelation and concealment hint at the conflicted nature of his identity. Born in Shiraz, Iran, Ali currently lives and works in Gadigal Country/Sydney.

Ali Tahayori is represented by THIS IS NO FANTASY, a Naarm/Melbourne based gallery, recognised for discovering and managing the careers of a small, select and diverse group of artists shaping Australia’s art discourse, both locally and internationally. Find THIS IS NO FANTASY and Ali Tahayori’s work at Melbourne Art Fair, Booth C4.

Committed to showcasing new and iconic artists with a focus on solo shows and works of scale and significance, Melbourne Art Fair spoke with Ali about his unique artistic practice.

 

An integral part of your work is your ability to translate the traditional Iranian craft of Āine-Kāri (mirror-works) into a contemporary visual vocabulary of your own. Can you expand on your fascination with this traditional craft and how you both embrace and subvert the notion of ‘tradition’ within your works?

My fascination with Āine-Kāri started when I was five years old, when, for the first time, I entered the shrine of Shah-Cheragh in my hometown, Shiraz, a mosque where the interior is covered with tiny mirror fragments. Being in that place was transcendental.

What I do in my practice is not translation as such, but mobilisation. I am interested in the notion of “hybridity”. I like moving ideas, materials, and processes across places and temporalities. If you look at the history of Āine-Kāri, you realize that the craft was developed to reuse and recycle broken mirrors imported from Europe. So, the mirrors were brought to Persia from another place, then turned into something uniquely Iranian, and now I am presenting my own version of it outside of Iran. By moving ideas and materials from one place to another, I question the notion of borders.

Detail image courtesy of the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY.

Your works form to create a unique sensory experience through its kaleidoscopic effect. Can you elaborate on your consideration of light as a guiding principle in your work? Do you wish to exert a particular level of control over the light your work reflects or do you wish to relinquish a sense of control to the environment within which your works are shown and to who it is shown to?

Whether I work in Photography, moving image or installation, light is integral to my practice. I first became interested in light and studied it in my photography studio’s dark room, where everything dissolves in darkness. Then you introduce light, and something magical happens. That’s why I am more interested in video projections than showing the same video on a TV monitor; video projections reveal the luminous quality of images. In my video installations, I start with pure darkness and gradually introduce light. My approach to working with light is playful and experimental but also considered. Each project demands a particular aesthetic and sensory effect; based on that, the intensity, colour, contrast, and other qualities of light vary.

 

Expanding on the above, your work is deeply influenced by your personal experiences of being ‘othered’; from growing up in the homophobic environment of 1980s Iran to embodying the migrant experience through your move to Australia. How do your works reflect the complexities of identity and your experience of queerness, of being seen and unseen?

I work at the intersection of queer diasporic subjectivities and aim to amplify untold stories of violence and historical oppression, but also of resilience, community, belonging and celebration. The mirror, especially the way I use it, broken and fragmented, is a unique material to reflect on topics such as identity, queerness, and otherness while questioning the nature of representation.

Detail image courtesy of the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY.

How does your process evolve when creating each work? How do you go from ideation to final artwork when working in a multi-disciplinary capacity ranging from photography, moving image and installation?

My approach to artmaking is intuitive and informed by research and my daily experience. A concept or an idea emerges, and it usually comes while I’m working on a different project. The concept then goes on a journey. I start researching the field in which I’m working, and the idea begins to find a material form. Material is a big part of my practice. There is often a dialogue between concept, material, and form. I try to be a good listener, but sometimes I’m not, and I only find out when the work is exhibited.

 

Can you provide any insights on the work you are developing for Melbourne Art Fair and how it relates to your broader body of work?

I am very excited to show a few works from my new project, Archive of Longing, at the Melbourne Art Fair, works I have not exhibited elsewhere yet. The project is, in a way, a return to the archive, and it embodies so many aspects of my practice: my interest in the materiality of images, questions of representation and photography’s in(ability) to represent reality, and my love and obsession with the medium’s history. Later in the year, I’ll exhibit part of this project in Milan and London.

Detail image courtesy of the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY.

Explore and collect Ali Tahayori’s work at Melbourne Art Fair 2024. The Fair takes place 22 – 25 February at Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Secure tickets now.

 

2024

VIDEO Presented by SUBTYPE

Curated by Nina Miall, Curator of International Art at QAGOMA, VIDEO presented by SUBTYPE offers an astounding view of contemporary works in the field of moving image. The Fair welcomes for the first time participation from international galleries unable to physically exhibit within the main show sector, enabling Australian audiences access to the world’s most exciting video artists working today.

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By Nina Miall, Curator VIDEO 2022
Curator of International Art at QAGOMA

Inaugurated for the 2022 Melbourne Art Fair, VIDEO features new directions in contemporary moving image practice as they are being explored by emerging and established artists from around the world. The single-channel works selected for this year’s fair represent some of the boldest, most imaginative expressions of media art, conveying a sense of the remarkable breadth and depth for current experiments with the medium. In recognition of the fact that durational and time-based media are often ill-served by art fairs, whose bright lights and visual and auditory noise take on a particular intensity, VIDEO is presented as a dedicated showcase to encourage a different, more sustained form of engagement among the Fair’s audience.

Invited to respond to the notion of ‘place’, the thematic premise of the Fair’s 2022 edition, Australian and international artists have made works which reflect on the cumulative and lasting impressions left on us by our situated experiences in the world. These works traverse a rich heterogeneity of terrain, navigating environments that are natural, constructed and imaginary, from everyday domestic settings to the uncanny labyrinths of the subconscious. They make visible the unique topographies of these internal and external landscapes through a range of techniques and technologies, including stop motion cinematography, claymation, and computer simulation. Drawing on the languages of documentary photography, experimental film, advertising, video gaming and instructional video-making, they offer excavations of place, both actual and virtual, sublime, and surreal.

Many contemporary artists working today feel compelled to respond to the urgencies of climate change and our unfolding environmental crisis. Among the lines of enquiry in the video works on display are reflections on the increasingly fraught symbiosis between humanity and nature and the need for relations of synergy, intimacy, and co-existence over ones of expenditure, extraction, and atomisation. A reverence for the abiding materiality and cultural significance of the land is an enduring thread in a number of these works, expressed with particular eloquence in First Nations’ perspectives on place which derive from a deep-seated sense of custodianship. Through an ongoing project to decolonise Country, these artists are working to recover stories of place, and to re-centre absent and forgotten narratives.

Absorbing and affecting, the moving image works selected for VIDEO transport the viewer from the hyperreal environ­ments of late capitalist society to remote natural landscapes that few people have ever visited. They examine the singular history, geology and culture of place in ways which take account its past uses, present traces, and future incarnations. In so doing, they offer myriad perspectives on different ways of being in the world, and how we might imagine, and then enact, sustainable futures.

JACOBUS CAPONE l MOORE CONTEMPORARY
NATHALIE DJURBERG & HANS BERG l LISSON GALLERY
LARESA KOSLOFF l SUTTON GALLERY
JENNA LEE l MARS GALLERY
GABRIELLA MANGANO & SILVANA MANGANO l ANNA SCHWARTZ GALLERY
DOMINIC MANGILA l THE DRAWING ROOM
TUAN ANDREW NGUYEN l JAMES COHAN
MICHAEL RAKOWITZ l JANE LOMBARD GALLERY
HIRAKI SAWA l JAMES COHAN
GRANT STEVENS l SULLIVAN + STRUMPF
JAMES TYLOR l VIVIEN ANDERSON GALLERY

 

Image (top): Laresa Kosloff, Radical Acts, 2020, 4K video, 7:29 duration. Courtesy the artist and Sutton Gallery

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SUBTYPE’s vision is to create a minimalist boutique that acts as a gallery and destination for premium sneakers and apparel, where their collection is curated based on exclusivity, creativity, and innovation. Their range looks to blur the lines between fashion and street.

They match these assortments with progressive store designs and immersive retail experiences and are a destination for exclusive products and releases from desirable brands.

With stores in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Auckland and Wellington, their curated gallery also acts as a hub for emerging talent, with an immersive environment titled ‘SUB:SPACE’ in their Melbourne store that will host both local and international artists through 2022 and beyond.

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