A&D ANNUAL 19 Symposium
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When
- Where
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Address
Cnr Oxford St & Greens Rd, Paddington NSW 2021
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Hours
10AM–12PM
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Phone
+61 2 8936 0888
Presented across UNSW Galleries and Kudos Gallery, the A&D ANNUAL 19 Symposium brings together emerging artists and designers graduating from UNSW Art & Design to discuss their practices.
Starting at UNSW Galleries, the symposium includes performances from Holly Dixon and Sïan Kelly, a talk from emerging curator and art theorist Lilia Jackson, as well as a design talk from Forough Najarbehbahani. At Kudos Gallery, Master of Art graduates Michael Blake, Karen Lee, and Shamanthi Rajasingham provide a series of artist talks.
UNSW Galleries
10.00–11.30am
Performance | Holly Dixon
Holly Dixon is a Fine Arts Honours student at UNSW Art & Design, working between the mediums of sculpture, video, performance and installation. Dixon’s recent works leverage this hybrid practice in order to interrogate her own understanding of the conditions and boundaries of performance, specifically focusing on an investigation of the way in which material documents can perform in themselves, and also as scripts inform future re-performances. Re-tracing (again) is one outcome of potentially infinite iterations of re-performance. The ceramic tiles over which the performer moves hold fixed and permanent traces of past performances; documenting the gestures that marked them, yet when taken up as scripts they present a multiplicity of potential re-performances, none of which can ever perfectly recreate the original mark-making.
Performance | Sïan Kelly
Sïan Kelly is an interdisciplinary emerging artist based in Sydney, Australia. Their research-based practice revolves around themes of gender and the body, explored through drawing, ceramics, performance, installation, sculpture, text and sound.
Talk | Lilia Jackson
Lilia is an emerging curator and art theorist with an invested interest in museum practices. Lilia has worked with nationally and internationally recognised art organisations, such as the Biennale of Sydney, Leonard Joel Auction House, Sculpture by the Sea and UNSW Galleries. Dedicated to exploring the growing development of experimental museum practices, Lilia seeks to explore how these practices encourage a holistic change to museums, and develop collaborative relationships between museums and their visitors.
Reimagining Museums & their Visitors: Dialogue, Experimentation and the Van Abbemuseum
To stay viable in the rapidly expanding competitive leisure industry, museums today are increasingly presenting spectacular and evocative exhibitions to captivate and engage visitors. Within this climate, the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, The Netherlands operates in an unconventional manner, working in an experimental way with its visitors to reshape the museum. Invited into the museum as collaborators, visitors’ contributions are valued as a pivotal factor in the museums process of continual development. Through addressing the long-term application of these experimental practices at the Van Abbemuseum, Lilia’s talk will explore how the museum has developed expanded notions of curatorial practice that encourages critical engagement and dialogue between visitors and the museum.
In Conversation | Eleanor Zurowski & Gabrielle Chantiri
Emerging artists and friends Eleanor Zurowski and Gabrielle Chantiri share a conversation about the politics of friendship and how they approach this through their practices.
Design Talk | Forough Najarbehbahani
Forough Najarbehbahani is an emerging designer who has recently finished her Honours degree in Design at UNSW Art & Design. Forough has featured in several group exhibitions locally and was shortlisted for WORKSHOPPED and Designing Bright Futures at the Australian Design Centre. Her current project Demarcation is inspired by her personal story and vision for a world without borders. It will combine high-tech manufacturing processes and surface design in order to create a data-driven, dynamic installation. By visually referencing the transparency of an opal, an iconic Australian stone, to depict hypothetical borders that we can see, the work critiques the opaqueness of Australian government border policy.
Kudos Gallery
11.30am–12.00pm
Artist Talk | Michael Blake
Michael Blake is a Sydney-based artist working with virtual reality, robotics and technological media. His work investigates simulation, the human condition, and the automation of the everyday, imbuing the familiar with new possibility. He once got to ask Buzz Aldrin a question and it was a little awkward, to be honest. A spiralling galaxy, an increasingly decaying and rebuilding statue, and a distant, impossible view of a real-time physics simulation combine in VRXP03 - Theory of Mind [Speculative interior galaxy]. This work is inspired by the psychological construct of the same name, and the hidden simulations we run of each other.
Artist Talk | Karen Lee
Karen Lee is an emerging artist who has recently finished her Master of Arts at UNSW Art & Design. Her works, influenced by her background in visual design, include digital videos, interactive installations, and prints. She has exhibited in Sydney and Melbourne in several group shows, and has received several commissions, including The Fairfield City Council and CSIRO’s Space Technology Future Science Platform. Originally from Singapore, she has also been inspired by her time living and working in New York and Tokyo. In her work, Karen Lee explores ‘Colour Resonance’, the qualia (i.e. subjective sensory and emotional experience) of complimentary and dissonant colour ‘chords’ expressed using abstraction, geometry, motion and time. She uses graphic, moving and tactile elements to blur the boundaries between the physical and digital. Lee’s work extends the experience of colour beyond light and hue with a conscious intent to actively engage and challenge her audience’s other senses. Qualia is an exploration of colour, time and abstraction. Similar to how composers use musical progression, Karen developed a central theme which she explored, combined and progressively refined into a singular experience.
Artist Talk | Shamanthi Rajasingham
Shamanthi Rajasingham is a Sydney-based artist and designer, originally from Sri Lanka. Her practice explores questions around technology-mediated life, from the perspectives offered by the ‘offline’ medium of drawing. Her work focuses particularly on the construction and performance of online identity, and the relationships between social media platforms and their users. Shamanthi has exhibited in Sydney, Colombo and New Delhi. She has also worked on community art projects, both locally and overseas, most recently with 107 Projects in Sydney. Shamanthi has also created book cover illustrations, most recently for Penguin Random House, and currently works as a designer at a leading fintech scale-up in Sydney. At UNSW, Shamanthi is completing a Master of Art degree, and has been the winner of the Annual 18 design competition, a featured artist at Artsweek, a muralist for the UNSW Creative Collective, and a Dean’s List recipient. Life in the Square explores the idea of curating visual fragments of one’s life on social media in order to construct and perform an online identity.
If you have any questions regarding access to UNSW Galleries exhibitions or programs please call us on +61 2 8936 0888 or email unswgalleries@unsw.edu.au