Following Amie: the artist at work is a collaboration with ARI artist Amie Anderson, and will open at SEVENTH Gallery, next Wednesday, 19 April.  (20 April – 5 May, 2017)

The work is a video following Amie as she goes about her working life. Armed with only an iPhone 6 and a Selfie Stick, I followed Amie over the course of a week as she worked at three different part-time jobs, as well as acting as co-director of The Food Court ARI, in Melbourne docklands. This state of affairs is a common situation for contemporary artists and as Diego Ramirez describes with poetic efficiency “being an artist is about embracing an excess of labour.”

The work plays at the precarious edge between work as practice and work as economic survival – following the work the artist/s do to make the work, and the work the artists do making the work.

@sawtoothers is an experiment launched by Sawtooth ARI. It is a contemporary art experiment where guest artists and curators are invited to create a visual dialogue about contemporary art, on Instagram. I have been invited to be a guest @sawtoothers from 11 – 25 November, 2016.

David Cross, Will Foster, Timothy Moore, Nuraini Juliastuti, Amy Spiers

On Wednesday 16 November, Bus Projects presented a discussion on the urgency of socially-engaged practice, as part of their ongoing ‘Systems of Solidarity’ series.

Co-chaired by Professor David Cross and Melbourne based artist Amy Spiers and featuring Will Foster (A Centre for Everything), Nuraini Juliastuti (KUNCI), Vanessa Kwan (Grunt Gallery), Timothy Moore (Sibling), and Tien Wei Woon (Post Museum).

“The conscious convergence of art, publics and politics in artists’ practices and organisational structures, represents the most potent argument for arts relevance in a globalised society. In a time of increasing international recognition of the importance of socially engaged and community focused art practices, Bus Projects brings together a discussion on the many manifestations of such practice in response to the closure of the Centre for Cultural Partnerships at the Victorian College of the Arts.

It is timely to gather together organisations, researchers, and practitioners who are doing exemplary work in this space to knowledge-share with our local audience and to reflect on the crucial importance of community/socially engaged art practice in the current globalised arts ecology.” from Bus Projects website.

Note: On September, 28, Professor Barry Conynghim, Dean of the Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts and MCM announced that The Centre for Cultural Partnerships at VCA  will cease offerings in all programs and discontinue operations managed at the Centre for Cultural Partnerships (CCP) by the end of the year – December 31, 2016.

Vale CCP!

Brisbane Artist-Run Initiative Festival or BARI is a biennial event taking place across Brisbane. This year it ran from 6–23 October, 2016.  I was only able to visit during the last 4 days of the Festival and lucky enough to catch dHANAMENTA 2, a one day event and part of The Walls Art Space, offsite program and Sunday Sesh (more later).  BARI is a unique event reflecting the unique and special  ARI scene in Brisbane. It was intense!

Here’s a quote from the opening words of the co-directors Jaclyn Bates and David Don from the BARI program:
“Brisbane has an incredibly unique ARI scene. Unlike other cities, the majority of artist run groups turn to ephemeral sites of display. The space under a Queenslander, a suburban garage, a garden shed, the back of a rental truck are all reimagined for one night shows. The act of going to an exhibition becomes an integral part of the experience, the apprehension of entering an intimate space made public, the social interaction, the ebb and flow of the work itself. Stepping outside of ideas of where and what contemporary art should be.”

This year BARI featured 20 events, featuring over 50 artists. It was a real buzz. You can follow my BARI experience on Instagram @ari.experience

Announcing the publication of the E-book Re-structure conference proceedings (edited by J.H. Brüggemeier & H. Davies) published by Unlikely Journal for Creative Arts

Featuring participants from performance, fashion, creative arts, gaming, media and community intervention, the Re-structure conference explored both broader sustainable strategies as well as “clever partial solutions” to cultural and knowledge production in a post-public sector environment.

Authors included Stephen Healy, Maria Miranda, Grace McQuilten and Anthony White, Jon Hawkes, Katharine McKinnon, Vic McEwan and Joan Staples.

The Re-structure conference in 2014 looked at the current state of the arts, and considered alternative modes of culture and knowledge production within times of shrinking public expenditures. Featuring participants from performance, fashion, creative arts, gaming, media and community intervention, the event explores both broader sustainable strategies as well as “clever partial solutions” to cultural and knowledge production in a “post-public” sector environment.

In seeking alternatives, the Re-structure conference looked to the proliferation of smaller scale community economies worldwide, in both on and offline environments, and to the modes of cultural production and knowledge exchange with other sectors such as environmental NGOs. We explain this brief history to establish an important context – to inform the reader that the essays collected together here were written under the shadow of the extraordinary changes proposed by Brandis and Abbott.