CARE Network
The Care Network is a research community forming around the Care Project. It aims to produce a symposium, exhibition and scholarly publication which integrates knowledge produced through non-traditional research outputs. With this goal in mind, the Care Project Network facilitates discussion and engages with a range of communities. We are building a network of artists, researchers and practitioners who have come together in several informal Round Tables and events in 2019, including the intedisciplinary Symposium CARE : Transforming values through art, ethics and feminism, held at George Paton Gallery, University of Melbourne, 30 October - 2 November. Future outcomes include an exhibition series across 2020/2021, and publication. The Care Network draws together the range of current research and art making that utilises care as a strategy and/or platform for art practice.
Please scroll down for recent news and projects by members of the Care Network
Hutton Lane - light boxes, Brisbane
Artwork created by Rachael Haynes and Natalya Hughes will be on display from 10 August to 22 November 2020, as part of Brisbane City Council's Outdoor Gallery exhibition RAZZLE DAZZLE curated by Amy-Clare McCarthy and Kieran Swann.
Rachael Haynes, Let's Take Back Our Space, 2020. Haynes wants us to think about the ways in which bodies take up social space, and how we can change this. The text is based on a 1979 project by the same name by feminist artist Marianne Wex.
Caroline Phillips has work on show in BooBoo, Assembly Point, Creative Spaces Guild, 152 Sturt St. Southbank, Melbourne. BooBoo is a group exhibition of sculptural works by Karryn Argus, Stephania Leigh and Caroline Phillips. Following their first collaborative exhibition BOOB: Bias Objects Objective Bodies (Kings ARI, 2016), BooBoo continues to pursue collective ideas of the embodied object and its agency within feminised spaces. Outdoor vitrines, on view 24 hours, until September 27.
Image: BOOBOO, Installation view, Assembly point, Melbourne. Caroline Phillips, Blobbing (x3), and Stephania Leigh, Acquiescence 1 (yellow work). Photo by Clare Rae.
Congratulations to Sera Waters, who has won the Art Gallery of South Australia/James & Diana Ramsay Foundation 2020 Guildhouse Fellowship.
Sera Waters, Falling: Line by Line, 2018, vinyl wallpaper, woollen long-stitches, 2x7m. Photograph by Rob - Acorn Photo.
This is the second Guildhouse Fellowship, valued at over $50,000, which is awarded to South Australian artists. The selection panel for 2020 included Art Gallery of South Australia Director Rhana Devenport ONZM, Guildhouse Chief Executive Officer Emma Fey and Sebastian Goldspink, curator of the 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art.
"The panel were unanimous in their decision, and said they were ‘impressed by the calibre and diversity of applicants. This year’s award is an important and worthy recognition of Waters’ work.’ Sera Waters’ practice is driven by an investigation of truth-telling, informed by her own settler colonial inheritances, made manifest in home-craft, hand-based folk ingenuity, décor, pattern and textiles. Arcing from the historical evidence to contemporary manifestations, Waters casts light on these seemingly innocuous and unofficial objects as potent reminders of normalised traditions and hierarchies of gender and colonisation. As Waters explains, ‘Led by a feminist ethics of care and literally taking matter into my hands, I transform matter to present alternative pathways into a more survivable future.’ Guildhouse reports.
Home 2020, Mildura Arts Centre
Two artists in the Care Network, Filomena Coppola and Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo have exhibited new work in the exhibition home2020, curated by Arts Mildura during the first lockdown in Victoria. Eight local artists were commissioned to create work in a direct response to the lived experience of enforced isolation by the Victorian Government which came into effect 25th March 2020. Each artist captured 1 photograph per day for 20 consecutive days and with 20 words to accompany each photograph. Artists involved were Domenico de Clario, SianLee Harris, Filomena Coppola, Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Anjelie Beyer, Anne Spudvilas, Oli Gasperini and Rachel Kendrigan (writing).
Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, 7:45pm, Saturday 23 May 2020. What the world needs now is love...
Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, Installation view, Home2020, Image Courtesy Arts Mildura
Filomena Coppola, Covid Hands - family
Filomena Coppola, Covid Hands - corona
Home2020 - not my home. I left my home to travel to Mildura before the imposed lockdown to spend this time with my elderly parents. This work is an observation of familial ties, of hands that work, create, nurture and support. Each of the twenty words is stitched into the photographs, across the hand in red thread. Red representing the ancestral bloodline. Like a tattooed stigmata, these hands are marked by the words, in the same way that our corporal bodies will carry an imprint of the trauma and isolation imposed by Covid-19.
Audio of Filomena Coppola talking about her work with Arts Mildura is available here.
Mildura Arts Centre is a partner for the forthcoming Care Exhibition
Mural artist Sharon Billinge is working on a new project funded by Create NSW, for a mural at 34 Golden Grove in Darlington. She will be starting work soon, in collaboration with The Settlement, a local community group that presents a range of programs to children, young people and families.
A La Trobe University Creative Arts and English research seminar on CARE was held on 30 April, 2020, presented by Dr Jacqueline Millner. The seminar features presentations by a number of artists exhibiting in the Care Exhibition Program, and members of the Care Network. The seminar is available to view on Youtube.
Elizabeth Day has launched a new website. Her work is also appearing in the group exhibition Older Than Language at The Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart, 16 Jun – 8 Aug 2020. Older Than Language is the Salamanca Arts Centre’s major exhibition and public program for 2020. Curated by Nina Miall and featuring 32 artists from across the country, the exhibition and its accompanying series of talks, performances and community events explore the contemporary migrant experience within Australia today.
Elizabeth Day, detail from Liverpool/Liverpool, 2011-2020.
Elizabeth Day's WORKING IN THE TROUBLE, opened on the 4th October at Articulate 497 Parramatta Rd, Leichhardt. Working in the Trouble is a series of work based in Day's work over 25 years working in marginal spaces. In 2011 she began developing work along the Parramatta River where there are the remains of colonial prisons and institutions, that continue into the 20th century (and 21st) to be a focus for mental health services. Much of her work has considered the image of 'the prison on the landscape' as a way to focus the damage on the Australian landscape wrought by colonisation.
Elizabeth Day, Porous/Transgenerational Trauma, 5.1 X 2.1 m varied re-cycled white yarns knitted on felt backing
Rachael Haynes in Threads of Resistance - Museum of Brisbane, 9 Aug 2019 - 8 Mar 2020
The artist draws from language from the many voices of contemporary feminism in her interactive installation, Threads of Resistance. Presented as part of New Woman, the installation includes text-based drawing and fabric works derived from Rachael’s research into feminist social history archives. Museum visitors are invited to express their hopes and visions for a better future by creating their own mini protest banners at our interactive Pocket Placard activity.
Families and children are welcome.
Rachael Haynes, Threads of Resistance exhibition at Museum of Brisbane. Photos: David Chatfield. Courtesy Museum of Brisbane
Danica Knezevic PhD exhibition - Sydney College of the Arts September 5-14, 2019.
Performances: Performances Thursday 5 September 2019 – 6 pm – 8 pm. Saturday 7 September 2019 – 2 pm – 4 pm.
Thursday 12 September 2019 – 2 pm – 4 pm. Saturday 14 September 2019 - 2 pm – 4 pm.
Sharon Billinge is painting a new mural as part of EDGE Ashfield - Moon Art Festival.
Civic Precinct Time: Saturday 27 - Sunday 15 September, various times.
The Moon Festival is an inherently Chinese festival celebrated by the gathering of loved ones together over food. this mural features the beautiful idea that we all see the same moon phase on or around the same date wherever we are across the globe. This theme of unity seems a fitting framework to celebrate Ashfield’s unique mix of cultures. The mural shows people taken from various community groups in Ashfield coming together to celebrate Autumn and its harvest surrounded by the lanterns of the Moon Festival.
Live painting - Sharon is painting her mural each day between 9-5pm until it is completed.
ARTIST PARENTS
Nina Ross, Lizzie Sampson and Jessie Scott recently completed a survey of artists who have children in Victoria, and found that over 60% said that they found galleries and art spaces to be unwelcoming to children, families and parents.
They have released their survey results via a new website - Artist Parents - which includes further surveys for Gallery workers and Artist Parents.
The survey identified galleries as key sites of social and professional access for artists.
Respondents said: galleries made them and their children feel like they were too noisy, disruptive and did not belong galleries were inaccessible - physically, and in the timing of events and openings galleries’ lack of change facilities, toilets, seating, and child friendly food and drinks or a space to consume them were inhibiting. This lack of welcome and accommodation negatively impacts the ability of artist parents, particularly mothers (who made up 90% of respondents), to maintain their practice and their career, hampering their ability to access crucial networks and opportunities after having children. Serious issues of systemic sexism in perception, and exclusion of, artist mothers were also revealed in the responses we received. You can read the full report, recommendations and access a range of resources related to parenting in the arts on the website.
This project will be launched with an event at West Space on 29 June.
Illustration courtesy of Stephen Palmer
FEM-aFFINITY
Image left: Yvette Coppersmith, John Safran, 2009, right panel, oil on plywood, 120 x 90 cm. Image right: Lisa Reid, Life Drawing-seated, 2002, ink on paper, 50 x 60 cm.
Curated by contemporary artist and academic Catherine Bell, FEM-aFFINITY brings together female artists from Arts Project and wider Victoria, to uncover shared perspectives and variations on female identity. Drawing upon interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches, and understanding artworks as a complex and nuanced way of thinking about embodied knowledge, the exhibition reveals how feminism materialises in distinctive and uncanny ways.
Featuring works by: Fulli Andrinopoulos, Dorothy Berry, Yvette Coppersmith, Wendy Dawson, Prudence Flint, Helga Groves, Bronwyn Hack, Janelle Low, Eden Menta, Jill Orr, Lisa Reid, Heather Shimmen, Cathy Staughton and Jane Trengove.
Exhibition dates: 15 June – 20 July Opening: Saturday 15 June, 3-5pm. Arts Project Australia 24 High St Northcote.
FEM-aFFINITY is a NETS Victoria and Arts Project Australia touring exhibition and will travel regionally and nationally throughout 2020 and 2021.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.
This exhibition is supported by NETS Victoria, Limb Family Foundation, Leonard Joel and Art Guide Australia.
Lecture at Melbourne Museum by Anh Nguyen
Refugees, Museums and the Digital Diaspora Wednesday 19 June 2019, 6.00pm–7.00pm
Refugee Man Man, on Manus Island, with some of his crochet work.
Discover how social media is connecting refugees - and learn about its impact on Museums Victoria’s engagement with refugee culture and collections. There is a growing digital diaspora of refugees and asylum seekers reconnecting in real time reunions with other refugees, aid workers and war veterans - and curating their own history on social media. Listen to Anh Nguyen discuss how this online community is shaping contemporary museum practice. Learn how crochet from a Burmese detainee on Manus Island, photographs from detention and refugee stories were all recently acquired by Museums Victoria. Anh, who was a child refugee and is now an active digital citizen in this diaspora, will explain how friendships on Facebook helped facilitate these acquisitions.
Speaker Anh Nguyen is a Research Associate at Museums Victoria and is completing her PhD at the University of Melbourne about Vietnamese child refugees and the digital diaspora. She has designed collaborations using game design and animation for engagement with the contemporary life and histories of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Australia. She will be joined by Jill Parris, Michael Green and Nam Huynh.
Kylie Banyard in two exhibitions -
The National 2019: New Australian Art Museum of Contemporary Art Australia 29 March – 23 June 2019
Blue Ridge Moon Galerie pompom 15 May - 9 June 2109
Kylie Banyard, Soft Wall, 2018, oil, acrylic and appliquéd fabric on canvas, 330 x 500 cm Installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney. Photo: Zan Wimberley, Courtesy Galerie pompom.
DIASPORE ITALIANE – ITALY IN MOVEMENT A Symposium on Three Continents
Filomena Coppola will be presenting about her work in Genova Italy, for the conference DIASPORE ITALIANE – ITALY IN MOVEMENT A Symposium on Three Continents: Australia • United States • Italy
• Living Transcultural Spaces – Melbourne: 4-8 April 2018 • Transnationalism and Questions of Identity – New York: 1-3 November 2018 • Between Immigration and Historical Amnesia – Genova: 27-29 June 2019.
This symposium is a collaboration between three diverse Italian migration organisations – a welfare and cultural agency, a tertiary institute and a museum – each deeply connected with the community, institutions and culture of a cosmopolitan city which is also iconic of the Italian migrant and diasporic experience. This symposium – the first international conference of its kind – brings together researchers and practitioners from Australia, the United States, Italy and other locations to explore the vicissitudes of Italians and Italian identity in the transcultural spaces defined by mobility.
Filomena will present her works Mother Tongue, Wallflower - Mirror Mirror and the trilogy of Chasing the Disappeared, Mother Tongue and Aloha Sound, during the panel 'Visual and verbal memories: italian migrant creativity across the world', chaired by Prof. Fred Gardaphé (USA), John D. Calandra Italian American Institute New York.
She writes: This series of work gives the first generation a voice and attempts to create a reconnection to; the socioeconomic conditions which created this mass migration; to language; dialect and the weight of familial disconnection for subsequent generations. It acknowledges the difficulty of leaving their mother country, the resilience of making a new home and their need to recreate a familiar environment in a new country. I intend to present a case for creating a space where it is safe to remember and share stories of migration from different decades. It also acknowledges that in sharing these stories we can remember our own cultural connections and this can encourage empathy for migrants past, present and future.
Mother Tongue 20 drawings, each titled after one of the 20 regions of Italy, pastel on paper, 345h x 615w cm, 2013. Alphabet sound component, recorded and edited by Filomena Coppola and Robert Klarichand documentary film, shot and edited by Robert Klarich and Filomena Coppola