Victorian College of the Arts - Research Publications

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Short Films by Mischa Baka and Siobhan Jackson

Luscri, C ; Mousoulis, B ; Jackson, S ; Baka, M (https://www.pureshitauscinema.com/unknown_pleasures_2022.html#19, 2022-07-26)

A retrospective screening/exhibition of short films written, directed and edited by creative screen collaborators, Siobhan Jackson and Mischa Baka
Debut XVIII - Livin' on a Prayer

Pahoki, S ; Pantazopoulos, N (Blindside / https://blindside.org.au/program/debut-xviii-livin-on-a-prayer, 2022-02-02)

It has been a long 2 years. 'Debut XVIII: Livin’ On A Prayer' comprises of new artworks from Bec Martin, Brigid Meredith, Caitlin Aloisio Shearer, Christopher Theofanous, Johanna van der Linden, Matthew Ware, Panayiotis Kasseris and Serena Hart. Curated by Nikos Pantazopoulos from RMIT and Sanja Pahoki from the VCA, we selected recent graduates’ artworks that cut through the malaise and made us feel something. Works that were not necessary the loudest but were made by recent graduates whom we imagined sitting in the back of the classroom observing and finding space to be heard from the loud daily politics. The artworks chosen are loosely organised around themes to do with spirituality, religion, family and death. ‘This invisible material’ Whenever things feel like they are at the heights of difficulty I find myself saying ‘please god, no!’ ... I can feel my stomach in my mouth. When I’m in this state why can’t I shake off this idea, word, this invisible material called god? Is this all a repercussion from my childhood? Is this a framework I can’t let go of or a framework that makes it all bearable when things get difficult? When I was growing up I had two male role models, one was my neighbor Theo George, he was a Gregorian chanter at the local Orthodox church, the other was my biological father, a card dealer in the local Greek cafe. God was actually never present, but we went to church and spent time together being a community we were filling in the gap of God's absence. When I was in Form 2, I went from sitting in the front seat to sitting in the back of the classroom. Everything changed in that momentous year for me - I could feel things external to myself. I had cravings I didn't understand. I was always embarrassed and sitting in the back seat where I could hide my shame. Then, I remembered that I wanted to be a nun, and thought God was going to save me. I spent my school days trying to convert my peers. A priest at World Youth Day told us that masturbation was a mortal sin, so I instantly stopped and tearily went to confess my shame. When I finally orgasmed 5 years later, I stopped believing in God. Who built a wall around pleasure and made it shameful? I wonder if nuns do masturbate? We all know the shit some priests have gotten up to, now THAT is shameful. It’s all a web of lies and fucked up ideals, you might as well masturbate the guilt away. I wonder how different things would be for people without the presence of toxic shame. A dark, pressurised void, it feels like an invisible force field inside the body. Release, let go, expel. It just takes so much time. Some kind of jubilant optimism. Some kind of looking up into the sky and looking back down again through the eyes of someone else. It's a shame the earth is round. I have astigmatism and my eyes are shaped conically. Can they take it all in? “All This Sky, That's All Mine” she wrote with some spirit, sixty years ago ... An optimism that never stopped expecting the next miracle. It's a shame I can't fit the world into my mouth all at once. Could true joy be a true sight? I rushed into the garden once, expecting new blooms; although I found some, there was also decay. I had not expected to find beauty in the latter, but I did. Miracles can be everywhere as they are 'miraculous.' I'm near sure Christ appeared to me in the form of a local duck. I've been more attentive towards these creatures since. I fantasise that I consume a model of the cosmos when I eat a mandarin. I've never thought of taking in all of anything; it feels far too burdensome of a task for me. I’m pretending to be a bad boy, but I’m not really! I saw the priest and he called me a sinner. My mother has a little cross on her bedside table, just in case. I never thought we were particularly religious being brought up in a socialist country and all. When I was younger I used to think the cross was more about a fear of death rather than a belief in god. Now I am not so sure. My grandmother used to have a picture of Tito in her house. After he died and the civil war, the picture of Tito was replaced by a picture of Pope John Paul II. My mother cooks fettuccine carbonara with cream, bacon, garlic and dijon mustard. That's about as close to Italy and religious taboo as it gets for my family. She gets the recipe from the first Australian Masterchef winner Julie Goodwin's cookbook 'The Heart of the Home.' A true culinary awakening for suburban mums the country over. In a world that entices us to browse through the lives of others to help us better determine how we feel about ourselves, and to in turn feel the need to be constantly visible, for visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success — do not be afraid to disappear. From it. From us. For a while. And see what comes to you in the silence. The artists, 2022.
Significs

Desmond, N (https://www.connersconnersgallery.com/significs-february, 2023)

This exhibition explores the intricate interplay between language, signs, and meaning through a collection of artworks by eight contemporary Australian artists who employ text-based modes of production to convey ideas and concepts. By delving into the concepts of signs, semiotics, and perception, the exhibition sheds light on the relationship between signs and their referents and its impact on the interpretation of text. Using a semiotic approach, this study investigates the significance of the relationship between language and meaning, as well as the complex intertextual relationships between the text-based artworks selected. Through an analysis of the works by Darcey Bella Arnold, Emily Floyd, Fiona Foley, Rose Nolan, Liv Moriarty, Mike Parr, Reko Rennie, and Peter Tyndall, this project aims to deepen our understanding of the intricacies of textual interpretation and the role of semiotics in the construction of meaning in contemporary art.
Megacosm

Lowry, S ; Donaldson, K (https://project8.gallery/exhibition/11-11-24-12-22/, 2022)

In a world where technology, spectacle and excess can sometimes eclipse quieter contemplation of the interconnectedness of nature and culture, how do we reconcile our position as a virus in clothes that makes cities and internets of ineffable complexity? Has nature been assimilated into the artifice of culture? Or is culture simply of form of nature that humans produce? What role can art play in negotiating and mediating understandings and anxieties related to our place in the world? For this exhibition, art is implicated within the natures of phenomena and as an extension from that which we think of as nature itself. Welcome to the megacosm. As a recurring sensibility in contemporary art, the inseparability of nature and culture might be considered across a broad range of very different materials and modalities. From beholding celestial infinitudes in the sky at night to serendipitous encounters with tiny creatures in urban environments, the aesthetics and poetics of this mutually entangled interconnectedness has long offered rich subject matter for artists. Notwithstanding the urgencies of our present moment, this exhibition seeks to resist didactic instrumentalisation and instead consider art and nature together as part of the labyrinthian continuum of reality. Nature has returned with force as an artistic subject in recent years—largely in response to growing anxieties and precarities related to a changing world. Consequently, many artists are reassessing one of the oldest themes in art through new conceptual lenses and material means. In the twenty-first century, some forms of aesthetic speculation largely rejected by past generations have returned through new modes of material and poetic innovation. Although definitions and understandings of nature remain highly contested, the artists in this exhibition all variously explore what might be possible through mutually informing layers of material and imaginary complexity. Echoing interconnectivities that intrinsically underscore the organic microcosm of human experience, some forms of art seem to implicitly resonate with patterns of difference and similarity across the universe. Presented through range of uncanny otherworldly verisimilitudes, this exhibition draws from a continuum that exists not only in cosmic nature, but also through registrations of human responses to the megacosm.
The image is not nothing (Concrete Archives)

Radford, L ; Scarce, Y (https://finearts-music.unimelb.edu.au/events/fsmg/the-image-is-not-nothing, 2021)

The image is not nothing (Concrete Archives) is an evolving project documenting the shared experiences of 2 women: one Aboriginal, the other non-Aboriginal. Involving fieldwork to local and international sites of nuclear colonisation, genocide and memorialisation, an editorial project with Art + Australia online and a major curatorial project debuting at ACE Open (ADL) and travelling to MLG (MEL). The project addresses the cultural amnesia which renders invisible the Genocide of Aboriginal people in Australia since colonisation. Our digital, oral and exhibition "archive" includes historical and contemporary works making materially present the loss. A collaboration between Kokatha and Nukunu artist Yhonnie Scarce and Melbourne based artist and writer Lisa Radford, The image is not nothing (Concrete Archive) examines the on-going effects of colonisation on Aboriginal people. Between 1956 and 1963, the British conducted Nuclear Tests at Maralinga, South Australia. For several years Yhonnie Scarce has returned to Woomera and Maralinga in order to conceptualise and produce works that act as a memorial to the unspoken displacement and genocide of Aboriginal people as a result of these tests. In this context, Maralinga is a site for beginning to consider the role of memorialisation and how it might be conceptualised and actualised. Lead by artists, The image is not nothing (Concrete Archive) asks how we can address the cultural amnesia that obfuscates, if not renders invisible the Genocide of Aboriginal people in Australia since colonisation. This question addresses the impact cultural amnesia has had on our shared experiences, conflicts and representations of citizenship.
The image is not nothing (Concrete Archives) - Dialogues in two parts (COVA Talks)

Radford, L ; Scarce, Y (University of Melbourne, 2021)

he Image is not Nothing (Concrete Archives) was a group exhibition that explored the ways in which acts of nuclear trauma, Indigenous genocide and cultural erasure have been memorialised by artists and others. The exhibitions occurred across three venues and two states in the first half of 2021 and were the result of research by curators Lisa Radford and Yhonnie Scarce whose fieldwork encompassed sites of significance including Auschwitz, Chernobyl, Fukushima, Hiroshima, Maralinga, New York, Wounded Knee and former Yugoslavia. To coincide with the exhibitions, Lisa Radford & Yhonnie Scarce, the curators of The image is not nothing (Concrete Archives) collaborated with fine print magazine (Rayleen Forester and Joanna Kitto) and Melbourne’s Living Museum of the West on two conversation events held during May and June 2021.
The image is not nothing (Concrete Archives) Symposium

Radford, L ; Scarce, Y (Adelaide Contemporary Experimental, 2021)

Coinciding with ACE Open’s current exhibition The Image is not Nothing (Concrete Archives), curators Lisa Radford and Yhonnie Scarce have organised Concrete Archives: Symposium
Baroquetopus: Humanimal Entanglements and Tentacular Spectaculars

Laird, T (Gertrude Contemporary, 2022)

Initiated in 2001, the Octopus series of exhibitions supports ambitious curatorial practice, through engaging an invited curator annually to develop a project that draws upon their research interests and provides a platform for new forms of exhibition making. Gertrude is pleased to announce the twenty-second exhibition in our annual Octopus series. Octopus 22 is curated by Tessa Laird, artist, writer and Lecturer in Critical and Theoretical Studies at the School of Art, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Laird's exhibition is playfully titled Octopus 22: Baroquetopus (Humanimal entanglements and tentacular spectaculars). Baroquetopus is a neologism uniting human aesthetic languages with the natural world, affirming the continuum of culture in nature, and nature in culture. Just as the Baroque period was one of sensory overload, this exhibition features artworks that activate the senses, as well as immersive visual elements that transform the gallery and foyer spaces of Gertrude Contemporary into a vibrant ecology, fostering sensory, aesthetic, and ethical entanglements. The exhibition features: Peter Waples-Crowe, Gina Bundle, Baluk Arts, Ani O'Neill, Ivor Cantrill, Sebastian Wiedemann, Lichen Kelp, Debris Facility, Kate Rohde
Jacqueline Felstead: Loss in a simulated environment

Felstead, J (https://finearts-music.unimelb.edu.au/events/mlg/Jacqueline-Felstead_Loss-in-a-simulated-environment, 2021)

Jacqueline Felstead's three-dimensional photographic works reintroduce absent subjects that once were – that can’t be seen and are no longer – back into the collective consciousness. Challenging the perceptual distinctions of traditional photography, here mappable territories are defined through positive and negative space, thinness and thickness, forms and edges. The works connect three-dimensional photographic technologies with propositions for future personas, future politics and loss.
How to build a universe

Coyle, E (https://issuu.com/howtobuildauniverse/docs/purple_blue_art_showcase_raffle_contemporary_galle, 2021)

In the past museums built universes that were miniature representations of the world but these microcosms were limited and limiting constructions. This exhibition takes the theatrical methodologies of dominant museums as a jumping-off point to launch a creative intervention. Four installation artists respond to the idea of universe building, commenting on the impossibilities of constructing a complete or neutral representation of the world we inhabit. These artists critique and pose alternatives. Through their works and experimentation we access multiple perspectives as if looking in at the world through a microcosm of speculative lenses.

Victorian College of the Arts - Research Publications

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