Melbourne Art Week 2018
Melbourne Art Foundation unveiled details of the Melbourne Art Week 2018 program which cumulates in the return of Melbourne Art Fair, 2-5 August 2018 (Vernissage 1 August 2018) and the Visual Arts Awards on 4 August 2018. Over 50 Victorian cultural organisations, institutions, art spaces, satellite fairs and galleries will come together in the staging of Melbourne Art Week; a dynamic program of exhibitions, events, talks, performances and workshops that take place during the first week of August. Other highlights include programming from MoMA at NGV: 130 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art; From Will to Form: Tarrawarra Biennial 2018; ACCA: A Lightness of Spirit is the Measure of Happiness, Buxton Contemporary: No One is Watching You: Ronnie van Hout and VCA Open Studios.
Minister for Creative Industries, Martin Foley said, “Melbourne Art Week is set to take over our arts precinct with a celebration like no other. Through exhibitions, fairs, workshops, talks and performances, it will be an opportunity to deep dive into the best in contemporary art. Our government is proud to support Melbourne Art Week. Events like this bring together some of our most exciting artists and organisations and showcase why Victoria is the creative state.”
Melbourne Art Foundation continues to support contemporary art and living artists through its initiative Melbourne Art Week, and in 2018 has joined with Associate Partner, MLC Life Insurance to commission a new performative work from Japanese-born, Australian-based artist Hiromi Tango (represented by Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney). Performed on the streets of the Southbank Arts Precinct and incorporating Melbourne’s iconic cultural landmarks including ACCA, the 2018 home of Melbourne Art Fair, the work titled Lizard Tail (Dawn) has been embraced as the visual identity for the celebrated Melbourne Art Week.
Susan Karson, Chief People, Marketing & Corporate Affairs Officer, MLC Life Insurance said, “We are delighted to partner with Melbourne Art Week in 2018 to support the commissioning of a new body of work by celebrated Japanese/Australian performance artist Hiromi Tango. Premised on the notion of interactivity, forging individual, social and cultural connections, Hiromi’s new work encapsulates the ethos of Melbourne Art Week in the bringing together of more than 50 cultural organisations to celebrate and support contemporary art and living artists.”
MELBOURNE ART FAIR
Melbourne Art Fair returns from 2-5 August 2018 (Vernissage 1 August 2018) as the anchor event of Melbourne Art Week, housed for the first time within the Southbank Arts Precinct and across two venues alongside the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) and the University of Melbourne Southbank Campus.
Melbourne Art Fair exhibition sectors Galleries and Accent present 40 new and established galleries from Australia, New Zealand and the region exhibiting a diverse range of artists and curatorial themes through both solo presentations and group shows of closely related works.
In 2018, the Fair will debut TIME, a site-specific video sector curated by Hannah Mathews (Senior Curator, Monash University Museum of Art) and Rachel Ciesla (Curator and Administrator Galleries and Programs, Melbourne Art Foundation). Unveiling a selection of new and recent works by Michaela Gleave (represented by Anna Pappas Gallery, Melbourne), Jess Johnson (represented by Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney), Sriwhana Spong (represented by Michael Lett, Auckland) and Angela Tiatia (represented by Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney), TIME joins with a growing number of organisations focusing their resources on the activities of female practitioners. TIME speaks to the power of the now and is presented across four sites including Melbourne Art Fair, Buxton Contemporary, Fed Square and QT Melbourne.
Michaela Gleave’s A Galaxy of Suns (2018) transposes what is perhaps the most epic measure of time for humanity: the distance between earth and the universe, questioning the relationship to time, matter and space. The work takes the form of a highly ambient field of colour and sound presented for an intimate audience via QT Melbourne’s in-house entertainment system.
New Zealand artist Jess Johnson’s new video Webwurld (2017) offers a glimpse into a hallucinatory netherworld. Presented at scale on Federation Square’s iconic Big Screen, the work materialises a dark portal into a dimensional world whose activities may be taking place simultaneously to our own.
London-based, New Zealand artist Sriwhana Spong’s 2016 video This Creature provides a sensorial travel through time and place. Presented in Melbourne Art Fair and within the Riding Hall and historic surrounds of the former Mounted Police Stables, the work channels female medieval mystic Margery Kempe (known for writing the first recorded western autobiography) through a walk undertaken by the artist through London’s Hyde Park.
New Zealand-born multimedia artist, Angela Tiatia, explores contemporary culture by drawing attention to its relationship to representation, gender, neo-colonialism and the commodification of the body and place. Screened at the street entrance to the newly opened Buxton Contemporary, Tiatia’s The Fall collapses conventional structures of time in a deceivingly lush portrait of human consumption and greed.
Projects Rooms, presented by Four Pillars and supported by the Melbourne Art Foundation, returns as a non-profit platform for cutting edge art spaces presenting experimental work within the context of a major visual arts event. The 2018 Project Rooms take place within Melbourne Art Fair and will feature presentations from the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), Gertrude Contemporary (Melbourne), Blak Dot Gallery (Melbourne) and The Physics Room (Christchurch).
Gertrude Contemporary’s Anxious Bodies for Unstable Environments is a project that reflects upon the current state of global instability. Curated by Mark Feary, the project will present new, recent and context specific works of sculpture, performance, video and robotics, by artists Deanne Butterworth, Mathieu Briand, Kate Daw, Kuba Dorabialski, Jason Maling and Mark Shorter.
Ryan Presley brings performance and exchange in his exhibition Prosperity produced by the Institute of Modern Art, which centres on his ongoing project, Blood Money (2010 – present), in which he reimagines Australian banknotes’ figureheads as the heroes and warriors of Aboriginal history.
Blak Dot Gallery will present new work by four Melbourne-based artists; Kirsten Lyttle who is of Māori descent, Lisa Hilli who was born in Raboul – PNG, New Zealand-born Tongan woman Frances Tapueluelu, and local Aboriginal artist Vicki Couzens. All four women explore their own traditional cultural and often matriarchal influences or issues to create discourse and examine identity. The Blak Dot Project Room will create an empowered and empowering space for both the artists and the viewer.
The Physics Room, (Un)conditional Part 3 is a two-person exhibition of specifically-commissioned work by New Zealand artists Ayesha Green and Cushla Donaldson, which examine the conditions—unspoken and assumed—under which things are given and received, and how, in the shadows, agency can be leveraged or subverted.
TALKS
Melbourne Art Week will commence with the keynote address by Philip Tinari, Director of Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) at Deakin Edge, Fed Square on 31 July 2018 at 6.30pm, co-presented by the Melbourne Art Foundation, University of Melbourne and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, and supported by Fed Square. The keynote headlines the talks program, which is presented in association with the University of Melbourne, Learning Partner of Melbourne Art Week.
Designed to promote discussion, education and interest in contemporary art practice in Australia and the Asia Pacific region, the free for the public Talks 2018: Space of Friendship takes place from Thursday 2 to Sunday 5 August at Federation Hall at the University of Melbourne Southbank Campus.
PERFORMANCES & WORKSHOPS
The city will come alive during Melbourne Art Week with live performances and creative workshops taking place at a range of venues and spaces across the Southbank Arts Precinct.
The program includes Phillip Adams BalletLab’s Metamorphosen, a performance installation created in a response to composer Richard Strauss Metamorphosen (1945). Adams situates a continues rolling of body bags arriving one after the other onto a giant 18-metre inflatable designed by artist David Cross. Described as a Mondrian pop art grave yard of dripping paints, the body bags roll continuously in long drawn out adagio representation of grief and trauma but of great upheaval in response to romantic musical climaxes in the score.
Weaving Workshops: Bush Toys and Baskets, presented by ACCA and the Melbourne Art Foundation, is a hands-on workshop with senior weavers from the Victorian Aboriginal Weaving Collective to be held on Sunday 5 August. Art lovers of all ages are encouraged to join Gunditjmara weaver Bronwyn Razem and Yorta Yorta weaver Donna Blackall to explore traditional and contemporary weaving practices. Spaces are limited and registration is essential.
Other workshop highlights include NEW YORK! NEW YORK! Coinciding with 2018’s Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition MoMA at NGV: 130 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art, NGV Kids presents a large–scale participatory installation that will showcase New York City. Featuring interactive displays, multimedia projections and hands-on activities, this free exhibition will introduce children to the vibrancy of New York.
Melbourne’s leading contemporary dance company Chunky Move will offer public contemporary dance classes for participants ages 18+ on Wednesday 1 August and Saturday 3 August, with a special Dance Party on Friday 2 August. Sessions take place in Chunky Move’s purpose built, state-of-the-art dance studios, located in the heart of Melbourne’s Southbank Arts Precinct and a short stroll from Melbourne Art Fair.
Melbourne Art Week is supported by major partners the Victorian State Government through Creative Victoria and the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
Owned and presented by Melbourne Art Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation established in 2003, Melbourne Art Week will run from 30 July – 5 August 2018 and Melbourne Art Fair from 2 – 5 August 2018.
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