Art and Performance by Research

Art and Performance

by Research

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Art & Performance

by Research Anindita Banerjee Jane Bartier Bindi Cole Chocka Sandy Gibbs Shelley Jardine Shane McGrath Merinda Kelly Jem Noble Monique Redmond Raffaele Rufo Amber Smith Dario Vacirca Sorcha Wilcox Deakin University Art Gallery 26 July to 1 September 2017

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The Museum is a School

The Deakin University Art Gallery is pleased to be presenting Art and Performance by Research an ambitious exhibition which surveys current PhD candidates from the School of Communication and Creative Arts. Co-curated

by Professor David Cross, Dr Patrick Pound and myself, the exhibition features over fifty artworks from thirteen artists in four locations presented simultaneously across the University. It reflects upon the strong research cultures at Deakin University in the fields of the visual arts and performance and the interdisciplinary practices of our leading artists and thinkers.

Art and Performance by Research continues a long standing tradition of collaboration between the Deakin University Art Gallery and the School of Communication and Creative Arts that has fostered under the careful stewardship of Leanne Willis, Manager of the Art Collection and Galleries. Notable exhibitions include: the Project series (2007-2009); Discovery (2011); Face to Face (2012); Reconnoitre (2014) and Still in Progress (2016). I would also like to acknowledge the continued support of Professor Matthew Allen, Head of School, School of Communication and Creative Arts and Brenda Cherednichenko, Executive Dean, Faculty of Arts and Education.

This year’s iteration has expanded outside the confines of the Deakin University Art Gallery to include the Main Library gallery space at Melbourne’s Burwood campus, the newly opened Deakin Downtown ‘Pop Up’ Gallery and the Sally Walker Project Space at the Geelong Waterfront Campus. We are delighted to present the works of artists Anindita Banerjee, Jane Bartier, Bindi Cole Chocka, Sandy Gibbs, Shelley Jardine, Merinda Kelly, Shane McGrath, Jem Noble, Monique Redmond, Raffaele Rufo, Amber Smith, Dario Vacirca and Sorcha Wilcox.

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This exhibition aspires to support Deakin’s artists and their research, providing professional development opportunities and a platform for their ideas and material thinking. Whilst busily preparing and installing this big sprawling project over these last weeks I have reminded myself of the work of the Uruguayan artist Luis Camnitzer, one of the early conceptual artists working in New York. In 2009, Camnitzer gifted a work to MOMA which is a sign that is to yet be installed on the façade of the Guggenheim building. The sign reads: The Museum is a School; the artist learns to communicate; the public learns to make connections.

Beyond the traditional roles of cultivation, appreciation and making, Camnitzer’s statement redefines the central roles of the museum, the artist and audience in an exchange of what he calls ‘Art thinking’1. The artist’s role is key, unlocking ideas and emotions and the transformative effects of the audience. Art thinking is a way of confronting knowledge with unbounded and limitless imagination, so we gain new insights, alternatives and possibilities for the future. Let’s begin.

James Lynch Curator, Art Collection and Galleries 1. Camnitzer, Luis interview with Gila Kolb The Art Educators Talk https://arteducatorstalk.net/en/?interview=luiscamnitzer-art-thinking-2 [Accessed 4 August 2017]

A discussion between Cameron Bishop, David Cross and Patrick Pound 4 August 2017

CB: With a large and diverse Higher Degree by Research (HDR) cohort to choose from, what was the rationale for the selection of these artists?

PP: The Deakin Arts and Performance HDR programme has grown quite quickly. We have put a lot of energy into developing a strong and diverse cohort. In the selection of the candidates we have focused on two things. First the quality of the candidate and the potential of their research. We are really after practitioners who have a rich and critically engaged practice where the art making leads the research in what we would call thinking through making. Secondly, we have tried wherever possible to establish and grow distinct yet related areas of research so that candidates have a fertile ground and a communal critical context where the research can grow and where creative investigation and the contest of ideas might open up new knowledge. Baring this in mind: we have selected from across the range of practice-led research types, but have tried to find and put forward some of the subtle connections between types of practice and across those different types.

DC: This is the second substantial exhibition we have developed of higher degree research candidates’ work. It follows on from the 2016 Deakin Art Gallery exhibition, Still in Progress which featured the work of twelve candidates.

While we didn’t set out to create a disciplinary divide between two, three and four-dimensional work, the 2016 exhibition focused more on drawing and painting practices as well as a focused examination of photographic practice. This exhibition pushes out further into performance, video and material investigation and includes a number of candidates working in what might be described as public sphere research. It’s also great to be able to include a number of our international candidates who

have made work specifically for the exhibition.

I think it would be fair to say we have sought to create a tissue of correspondences across the works but to do so with a light touch and in a way that highlights the distinct research foci of the candidates.

CB: The exhibition is quite ambitious in its scale with four venues across Melbourne CBD, Burwood and Geelong. Is it one exhibition or four distinct and different thematic approaches under one curatorial umbrella?

PP: The venues have quite distinct characteristics.

We have matched the artists and their work accordingly. While some art might work in any of the four spaces, we’ve tried to think carefully through the various practices and see how some work might make trouble for some types of space and vice versa. For example: Jem Noble has a research practice that subtly asks questions of international networks, of knowledge systems and of fiction and representation and reality in the age of ‘fake news’. It occurred to us that his work might effectively register with – and respond to– the very high end corporate space of Deakin Downtown. The exhibition space there was not specifically designed as an exhibition space but has been effectively utilised for exhibitions. You need to ascend a rather spectacular and surprisingly grand spiral staircase to find this carpeted corporate enclosure. Interestingly, Jem’s work also adds value, if you will, to the collection of artworks that are very elegantly displayed across the floor of the building below. While they are hung as exemplary objects, of recent acquisitions of a major university collection, Jem’s work is very much an installation whereby the contents and the building are arranged to open a critical dialogue between art, artist, state and bureaucracy. Jem’s practice is something of an

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A discussion between Cameron Bishop, David Cross and Patrick Pound 4 August 2017

ongoing series of interventions in the neo liberal edifice. Here they agitate quietly like some listening device.

On the other hand, the more conventional - purpose built - exhibition space of Deakin Gallery houses a range of work and approaches to work that rub up against each other. So there is everything from Jane Bartier’s woven finds to Shane McGrath’s restaging of a long lost (disbanded) Victorian Rules Football club. Both of these practices take and replace their content from real world communities to the gallery space.

Whereas Jane might repurpose street finds of flotsam and jetsam into new nests for new ideas, Shane builds a model world made up of remnants of a defunct club’s historical artifacts from a model clubhouse to a restaged team talk reiterated in video form. While these are completely different approaches they are earthed in contemporary public realities and human situations and experiences. They reflect their findings in the face of loss.

Monique Redmond’s ‘project’ can also be read in relation to this contemporary public domain, and how artists might productively respond to the ‘real world’, only her work incorporates change as its active ingredient as the iteration unfolds over the timeframe of the exhibition. Her installation is ‘made up’ of a large photograph of a flower. That photograph is printed on vinyl. It is taped directly to the wall – like some elegant (reusable) pasteup. Nearby is a plinth. On that plinth is a bunch of flowers in a vase. Those flowers are the real thing.

By arrangement: they are changed at regular intervals as they deteriorate. The photograph remains the same – for now at least. Against the wall, on the floor, there are three piles of picture cards. Each one has a photograph of a bunch of flowers. Each bunch of flowers depicted is in transit. Likewise, as cards, they are ready to be taken home by the gallery visitors. This is a casual form of network distribution. Interestingly, with all of our candidates, the community is never far from mind. This is really perhaps more an art of engagement rather than an art of an outsider expressing a reaction to things, and to their world. This attitude if you will, seems to be emerging from many of the candidates we have

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here across these exhibition venues. I think it was Lucy Lippard who said ‘art can’t change the world but at least it can be part of the changing world’.

It seems to us that for many of our candidates, art registers by direct engagement rather than by objective response. Some of them adopt this as a tactic, others as an undercover informant.

DC: The multi-sited aspect of the show, or what I have tongue in cheek called the Deakin biennial, also constitutes the different locations of our candidates both in Geelong and Burwood and internationally. One of our curatorial conceits was to swap the exhibition locations so that candidates based in Geelong would show at Burwood and vice versa. Being a multi-campus programme, we are constantly looking at ways in which we can build and foster dialogue across the cohort. We felt it would be beneficial to the candidates who are not in close geographic proximity to one another to have the opportunity of eliding their practices. An example of this is Shelley Jardine’s site-responsive painting installation in the Deakin Burwood library. Shelley has shown regularly in Geelong at the Sally Walker Project Space, but her work was largely familiar to Burwood-based candidates only via Powerpoint imagery at one of the regular crit sessions we hold at Loop Bar in the city. Shelley’s geometric painting is very site-responsive and especially subtle in its surface treatment that captures light in particular ways, it was great for Burwood candidates and academics to see the work and its myriad of relations ‘in the flesh’.

PP: They appear at first as subtle abstract angular shapes, lightly coloured and softly rendered in geometric exactitude with a deft and clear single hand. Positioned in the entrance gallery, Shelley has arranged a wall based hang of paintings of several sizes on neat thin boards. Each floats on the wall punctuating the space like an elegant diagram that at once seems to remark on that space and on our various occupations of it, and movements within and through it. Curiously, they are records of other spaces, abstract patterns generated by the artist’s observation of audience movement in gallery spaces. Here the fixed and controlled, and painterly data set is cast adrift. We are left to reflect on its record of

movement through this architecturally designed space. Subtly, as if by proxy, this all reminds the spectator that the library is a highly systematic rendering of space and research activity. The art reflects and comments on its context, and in turn the context talks back. This isn’t so much a gallery space than, as a dialogue box.

DC: The other works at Deakin Art Gallery take us in a range of directions. Bindi Cole Chocka’s text work focuses on religion and specifically the often fraught and complex relationship between Christianity and art. In keeping with her interest in tugging at the frayed edges of representation, the work fuses her own experience as a Christian with a conceptual and poetic sensibility that speaks to a topic often considered unpalatable in contemporary art. Anandita Banjeree’s project likewise deals with cultural difference offering a meditation on the productive tensions inherent in Western art and Indian cultural practices and material forms. Her sculpture brings together these disparate contexts but highlighting a shared sensibility based on process, sequencing and pattern.

DC: The Sally Walker Project Space at the Waterfront campus is a new gallery that Patrick has described quite rightly as a more ‘contemporary’ art space model. The gallery is ‘beautifully rough’ and art-ready with a sort of warehouse chic feel. It occupies a ground floor site in the Sally Walker building on the Geelong waterfront and features two distinct galleries that connect to the promenade via floor to ceiling windows. It is increasingly becoming a key lab in our practice-led research model, as well as a very nice exhibition space here at Deakin. This is an ideal space for the diverse range of artmaking that artists are engaging in now and includes a number of projection spaces where video work can be viewed at all hours of the day and night.

Nocturnal strollers get an especially good view of Wellington-based artist Sandy Gibbs’ video of her re-staging the lighting of the Olympic flame.

Performing the role of the torch-bearer, Gibbs ascends a public walkway in costume looking both nervous and delighted to be charged with this important task. The work which weaves together research into the representation of

female athletes (specifically what constitutes success and failure in the elite field), with a disarming Kiwi deprecating humour is part of her series of works investigating the 1968 Mexico City Olympic games.

PP: In this space, we have several types of practice represented. Several thematics might be found to emerge across the works, but one seems key. The artists are all concerned with process and performativity. Across the installation there is a direct engagement with embodied experience and expression. Several of the works demonstrate both a physical and ideational translation of experience into material form. Sorcha Wilcox’s Appropriation Prompt series investigates lines of logic. These photographs feature the transformation of individual abstractions collectively forming a new whole, representing not only a transference of visual characteristics but also of energy, and as we see through the lens of quantum theory, this energy can be a characteristic of a system.

These prints then chat away with Merinda Kelly’s sculptural three-dimensional forms alongside them, and strike up a long distance conversation with the painted Jardine’s down the highway.

DC: Dario Vacirca for instance uses his own body as a site to investigate gender identity and specifically the fluid permutations of masculine representation. Across a series of three screens he plays out the curious and unstable connection between costume, appearance and identity.

Likewise, Raffaele Rufo employs video to capture his dance practice occupying and intervening in the architecture of the Sally Walker Project Space.

Activating the complex tension in dance practice with its emphasis on liveness, Rufo traverses both the real and virtual while transforming the gallery into a performance space with his body mapping and contextualizing its architectural features.

The physical and ideational translation that Patrick mentions is also a key feature of Merinda Kelly’s work. Her research into social systems and relational actions specifically connected to Geelong and its changing industrial landscape, highlights a strong interest in how the people and communities can play a role in co-authoring artistic projects.

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Installation view Deakin University Art Gallery

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Jane Bartier Site connections... responding to an industrial landscape... 2017

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Monique Redmond Standard delivery 2017 Frontyard arrangement 2017 Photo by Patrick Pound

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Monique Redmond Standard delivery 2017 Frontyard arrangement 2017

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Anindita Banerjee Mongol Ghot 2017

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Bindi Cole Chocka A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing 2013

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Shane McGrath On the Outer 2015

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Shane McGrath On the Outer 2015 Photo by Kieran Watson-Bonnice

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Shelley Jardine Various works 2015-2017 Installation view Deakin University Main Library Gallery

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Shelley Jardine Various works 2015-2017 Installation view Deakin University Main Library Gallery

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Sandy Gibbs Lighting an old flame 2017

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Installation view Sally Walker Project Space

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Installation view Sally Walker Project Space Merinda Kelly Tread Project 2015 - ongoing Sorcha Wilcox Appropriation Prompt 1-4 2017

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Merinda Kelly Tread Project 2015 - ongoing Photo by Kim Tobin

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Sorcha Wilcox Appropriation Prompt 2 2017

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Raffaele Rufo Site Responsive Performance 2017 installation view

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Raffaele Rufo Site Responsive Performance 2017

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Amber Smith I collect, therefore I am 2016-2017 (detail)

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Is the artist yet dead?

Or are we yet to have killed them off?

What is the best way to dispose of an artist?

Out the window?

In full public view?

Or in private where we don’t need to see their demise.

And have it remind us of our own?

It was said the artist speaks through the soul, But in a world where the soul is a tradeable ‘good’, Surely the artist does not now have to agree and speak through this ‘good’?

The artist can redefine the soul.

To themselves.

And to those in relation.

And outwards from there shall we ripple our understanding, And attempt to see this new sense, an old sense re-born, re-worded, re-known, Seeing as far as the sea can see…

But that is just poetry, what meaning can this have in the sense we make of it together now?

Meaning is value.

What then is the value of this?

Exchange, Possibility, Idea.

We need to fight for ideation in the creative sense and against ideation in the self-death sense. Or maybe the other way around. But we may need to know it in metaphor. For living (in) a way, out of time, in a context known to a few, whilst the multiplicity of beings, others, our communities of living selves, whilst these many face close to demise, or slavery, or just simple depraved precarity, is it fit to practice? Is it wise to funnel the self, is it helpful to speak through the soul?

How can we work to maintain our communities; multiple, connected communities of living beings?

To acknowledge our place amongst the continuum.

To seek beyond what we don’t believe but that we have consented to. Through tactics we know, through criminal activity in the light of day, and in the light of night we have in ourselves and in our collectives allowed so much control, dominion, and lack drive our everyday into every other day. We know this. It does not need to be repeated. Or, maybe it is time, again, for us to repeat the problems as they are, the ground we live on, the lies we are bred on, the very life we lead together.

Who else can question thus and offer up a new, again?

Let me try something with you. I am not. You are neither. Together we are. I don’t think therefore I am, there is thought and therefore I appear.

How about this? This country you live in, the nation who’s law you abide or oppose, the sovereign state we acknowledge as existent; this is only a fabrication.

We know this, you, I, and most of those we meet. But we don’t speak it. We don’t want to admit the edges of our borders are as porous as the gap between me, and so called you.

Or how about this? As a man, I was born with a penis between my legs. And I saw - my father, and I learned from my classmates, and teachers, and more importantly from the wide, all-encompassing cultural industry that was anywhere I opened my ears and eyes to. This, before I even knew what

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life I was leading, lead me to be the man I have been. And my choices, made, in conjunction with others, and their affect, and the effect of others on them. These, performances of being, occurring constantly without reverence to becoming, or sitting inside, acknowledging I would be dead, or perhaps already was, and that, I too, affected others with my performance, of being, of me, of this person I was then also becoming, without being aware.

This man is not wholly true. And neither are you, whether known as woman or man. I am not referring to biology here. I am of course extending outwards from the consciousness, which may be a strand of the bio-centric paradigm but which i am using here as a way to explore that space between knowing and not knowing. My body, your body, the body, the bodies.

This is where we go swimming. I am sure you, I, we, can accept the idea of a swing, a scale, a spectrum, an unsolid, quantum state of constant transformation.

But, can we live it? Knowingly? Can we put it in deep in our bodies, in our personal bodies, these flesh vehicles who drive us, we drive, we drink coffee with, that asks us for coffee? And the wide body, to protect us from our wild natural selves, our collective sense, can we embody it there? Can you admit the ‘land and property-upon-it-that-you-own is not yours? Or that this country you defend has no right to not let others in that it does not consider its own? Or the energy out there, under the water, somewhere between here and another there is not yours to buy from a corporation who sold the rights to distribute and profit from it from a state who stole it from another? That none of it is ours. Or theirs. That we are in transition between each other, with each other, without even knowing it, and especially without ever really knowing each other.

But maybe we can know, and through this becoming closer somewhere towards the flow that is already inherent in our very beings anyway. Being in this, flowing on this chain, and not hanging on, or anchoring down, or holding firm, or securing a structure to, or deliberately ignoring the integrity of one form’s attachment, connection, affect upon another. Is maybe… the way.

But it takes a fight. It takes organisation. It takes taking power away from those that know how to get it, and use it over you. It takes swimming together, in a sea of unknowing and giving in to a collective idea. It takes ideation, in both senses of the word.

Which has to change all the time. Or else it is the same as that we just took down. But maybe we can agree upon one or three things as we move into the many things to find ourselves again walking, listening, talking, be-coming ….

A wise person, not the one who gave me this frankincense whilst my baby was growing inside her mother, but another wise person said: I am sorry, I forgive you, I love you.

Actually, that is wrong, I just looked it up, it is in the intention of Hooponopono to get to “the state of Zero, where we would have zero limits. No memories.

No identity.” And in this we say: “I love you. I’m sorry.

Please forgive me. Thank you.”

“I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.”

Dario Vacirca Artist statement 2017

Dario Vacirca Emergent Urgency (EU) 2017

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Jem Noble notwiththingsastheyare 2017 Installation view Deakin Downtown ‘Pop Up’ Gallery

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Jem Noble notwiththingsastheyare 2017

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Jem Noble notwiththingsastheyare 2017

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Jem Noble notwiththingsastheyare 2017

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List of works All works are copyright of the artist Photography by Simon Peter Fox unless otherwise stated.

DEAKIN UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY Anindita Banerjee Mongol Ghot 2017 terracota, fabric, wire, timber, synthetic polymer and oil paint rice flour and water with assistance from Nandita Nadkarni 70 x 400 x 15 cm (approx.)

Courtesy of the artist Bindi Cole Chocka A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing 2013 pigment print on rag paper 3 panels 200 x 150 cm (overall) Courtesy of the artist and Nellie Castan Projects, Melbourne Jane Bartier Site connections... responding to an industrial landscape...

2017 found materials, woven dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist Shane McGrath On the Outer 2015 video documentation of performance event 5 mins textiles, timber, tin, audio components, digital print on paper, found photographs, crepe paper dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist

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Monique Redmond Standard delivery 2017 Flowers Vasette, Brunswick Street 3 floral deliveries: - 1/ Wednesday 26th July - 2/ Wednesday 9th August - 3/ Wednesday 23rd August Seasonal flowers: proteas, carnations, everlasting daisies, Queen Anne’s lace, magnolia, budding magnolia branches (replacement flowers: cherry blossom, camellia, rhododendron, azalea) 3 copies /same flower arrangement /2-weekly seasonal changes/ in-store florist flowers.

Flowers in transit (Postcard series) 2017 FREE FOR TAKEAWAY 3 post cards 100 in each set 14.8 x 10.5 cm Frontyard arrangement 2017 magnolia banner, digital print on vinyl iPhone photo 122 x 162.5 cm All works courtesy of the artist DEAKIN MAIN LIBRARY GALLERY SPACE Shelley Jardine Dimension One – Seven 2017 all synthetic polymer on board dimensions variable

Geometric Non-yellow 2015 synthetic polymer on board 100 x 100 cm Geometric One - Three 20152016 synthetic polymer on board 20 x 20 cm Untitled 2015 synthetic polymer on board 90 x 90 cm Untitled 2015 synthetic polymer on board 100 x 100 cm Geometrics Shifting 2015 synthetic polymer on board 100 x 100 cm All works courtesy of the artist SALLY WALKER PROJECT SPACE: Sorcha Wilcox Appropriation Prompt 1 – 4 2017 35mm film photomontage, pigment prints All works courtesy of the artist Sandy Gibbs Lighting an old flame 2017 single channel video with sound, 16:9 Courtesy of the artist Merinda Kelly Tread Project 2015 - ongoing 50 formed acrylic Perspex, solar LED lights and performance Photo Kim Tobin Courtesy of the artist

Dario Vacirca Emergent Urgency (EU) 2017 3 channel HD video, performance documentation with sound Courtesy of the artist Raffaele Rufo Site Responsive Performance 2017 HD video with sound 25 mins looped video collaboration with Anne Wilson Courtesy of the artist Amber Smith I collect, therefore I am 20162017 Ruminations on the river’s mouth and a sense of knowing (When I have fears that I may cease to be) 2016 1920s wooden writing box, vintage map of London and surrounds (x2), blue felt, wood, jar with vintage pins, assorted vintage stationary, found feathers, jar with opal, handmade marbled paper, assorted vintage match boxes, cotton wool, jar with gold-flakes, string The naturalists’ rehearsal (It was snowing butterflies) 2016 vintage ‘honey-eater’ tin, pill boxes (x6), assorted minerals, hand-stamped labels, handmarbled paper, small kangaroo vertebrae (x7), quail eggs (x2), cotton wool, budgerigar feathers, koala claws (x8), 2 x jars, flame aura quartz, jasper, map paper, plastic divider, vintage jar, scrolled note with string from Charles Darwin’s ‘Voyage of the Beagle’. All natural specimens obtained through fieldwork and the maceration/preparation of found dead animals.

The last vestiges of my locality: Remnants and remains of a fading landscape 2016 vintage printer’s tray, handmarbled paper, vintage map paper, vintage tins (x2),

velvet, cotton wool, rain moth, miniature model of Lucy skull, kangaroo knuckle bone, kangaroo tooth, artists’ nieces baby tooth, pheasant feet, string, jaw bones (x5), various kangaroo bones and vertebrae, koala vertebrae, jars (x30) containing feathers, minerals, koala claw, insect specimens, moth (x2), common fly, kangaroo brain fibre. Beetle shell, budgerigar skull (x2), butterfly wing fragments, sugarglider arm bone, kangaroo claw and knuckle bones, fire-tailed finch, budgerigar eggs (x3), ammonite halves. All natural specimens obtained through fieldwork and the maceration/ preparation of found dead animals. All specimens found and preserved by artist.

A study in preservation and collation (Entomological typologies as the fount of enlightenment) 2016 vintage tiled wooden box, pink felt, hand-marbled paper, hand-stamped labels, various beetles, insect (x2), arachnid, plastic display cases. All specimens found and preserved by artist.

On contemplating grounding and the earth (opalescence of sky and sea) 2016 vintage ‘palm oil lake soap’ tin, opal in composite rock (x3), cotton wool, found image.

Of beetles, sweetbreads and shards: An archaeological study of the self 2016 second-hand jewellery box, blue felt, fossilised coral (x5), broken geode, shell fragments (x3), moth, cocoon, various budgerigar feathers, assorted minerals, hand-marbled paper, jars (x6). All specimens found and preserved by artist.

On thinking of foreign lands (formulating flight) 2016 second-hand jewellery box, broken butterfly specimens (6x), pins, vintage atlas paper.

On balance, familiarity and topography (I am vertical) 2016 second-hand box, hessian, coated string, box lining found image, chicken feet. Process: physical removal of feet from deceased specimen, sun drying of feet.

On attempting to capture the essence of existence, impression and the cosmos: a greater ontological project 2016 Kangaroo skulls (x4), sheep skull, antler, half skull and antlers, quartz and granite composites (x4), vintage tins (x8) containing vintage map papers, cotton wool, coal, granite, megalodon tooth, velvet, shells (x6), jars (x3) with minerals, foreign paper money and coins, slate (x2), string, glass dome, emu egg, timber burl, Australian receptacle, jar with jewels, koala spine and pelvis, various vertebrae, koala bones, turtle shell, possum teeth (x2), collection of pheasant feathers, juvenile quails (x2), quail legs (x3), quail skull, quail skull with vertebrae, koala skull, coral (x2), hand-made book excerpt from Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’, assorted feathers (x6), crab-tree magnifier, compass and velvet pouch, ornamental shells (x2), engraved pocket watch with velvet pouch, kangaroo leg bones, emu feathers, sparrow wing, shell, fossilised beetle, jawbones (x2), possum skull, vintage tissue paper, kangaroo jaw bones (x5), vintage linen .

Process: restoration of cabinet; warm and cold bio-washing powder maceration, handcleaning/picking off of flesh, and subsequent sun bleaching of bones; restoration of

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specimens; collection, curation and preparation of various containers. All specimens found and preserved by artist.

I sat alone and reticent on the edge of the world 2016 vintage round wooden receptacle, found broken butterfly wings.

On thinking about science, metaphor and the honeycomb (beauteousness in the unexpected) 2016 vintage wooden tool box, hand-marbled paper, minerals (x15), broken geode, jars (x2), bees (x2).

Take me back to a south Tallahassee (a refuge, a love lost and opportunities) 2016 found wooden box, blue fabric, found image of a lake, lowbrass shotgun shell (used), engraved lighter, set of found old keys.

Upon viewing where the land met the sea (Purity, middle grounds and old treasures a-new) 2016 second-hand shell box with orange velvet lining, jar, frankincense (x5), pyrite, velvet cushion and stand, fossilised coral (x5), rat skull.

All specimens found and preserved by artist.

Vessels as containers for the survey of ornithological genus 2016 various vintage and secondhand jars, assortment of feathers (budgerigar, peachfaced lovebird, cockatiel, cockatoos, galah, rosella, kookaburra, magpie, raven), watercolour brush.

On process: restoration of objects long forgotten, permuted by the entropy of Mother Nature and her power 2016

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koala skull in glass dome + various other singular bones, bull horns. Process: warm and cold bio-washing powder maceration, hand-cleaning/ picking off of flesh, and subsequent sun bleaching of bones.

All the steps, thoughts and dreams that traced the base of the You Yangs and its surrounding landscapes 2016 second-hand vinyl jewellery box, yellow felt, black felt, vintage atlas index paper, clear quartz, chrysalis, flattened reptile egg, moth, insect, sediment, marsupial bones, pink agate, jar with insect, shells and shell fragments (x73), hand-marbled paper, large vials (x2), assorted feathers (cockatiel, budgerigar, lovebird), cotton wool, hessian, limestone, hand-made book (excerpts from Charles Darwin’s ‘The Voyage of the Beagle’), small jars (x8) containing moths (x2), shell fragments (x6), large jar containing back molar tooth of artist, velvet cushion, rosella wing and feathers, small mineral collection. All specimens found and preserved by artist.

All works courtesy of the artist DEAKIN DOWNTOWN ‘POP UP’ GALLERY Jem Noble notwiththingsastheyare 2017 Flexible academic office space, 843 x 861 cm Office dividers consisting of wood, fabric, metal, 480 x 161 cm digital print on 440gsm cotton canvas100 x 100 cm QR code and analytic resources by goo.gl; online video, with Maxim Golubchikov (Ukraine), Wiktoria Kannabiz (Belarus), Xu Yinyin (Indonesia), and Victor Dladla (South Africa), via upwork.com Selected contract

documentation and correspondence laserjet colour prints on 80gsm A3 copy paper Hybrid Modos-Vision-vitrine 200 x 150 x 120 cm (all over) with assistance from the Bowen Group and icreateretail (Australia) including: The Fountainhead, 25th anniversary edition with William Morris binding by Rafael Palacios; duplicated book insert, inkjet print on Epson Hot Press Natural Paper, 13.5 x 20 cm; Hisense 24” LED TV screening HD video from hand processed 16mm film, DRM DVD rip, Youtube video rip with VLC glitch, audio from Youtube video rip [RAIN ON A TIN ROOF | Relax, Meditate, Sleep.

10 Hours Rain Sounds White Noise], looped The Fountainhead, VHS video cassette and DVD case The Fountainhead, torn pages, 10.5 x 17.5 cm The Fountainhead, modified introduction and end pages, inkjet prints on 300gsm Epson Hot Press Natural Paper, 10.5 x 17.5 cm, with Maxim Golubchikov (Ukraine) via upwork.com black spheres, 3D printed Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, 5 cm (diameter), with DG Print (Canada) The Fountainhead, magnified text detail, inkjet print on 300gsm Epson Hot Press Natural Paper, 14 x 21.5 cm; Le Rebelle, promotional movie card, 14 x 20 cm Modified Rafael Palacios map, from Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, with Maxim Golubchikov (Ukraine) via upwork.com, inkjet print on 300gsm Epson Hot Press Natural Paper 15.2 x 22 cm All works courtesy of the artist

Acknowledgements

There are many people to thank in the development and delivery of an exhibition of this size. Firstly, my sincerest thanks to the artists for lending their works, sharing their artistic endeavours and their research for the exhibition.

To single out a few, thank you to Merinda Kelly and Anindita Banerjee who will be performing and engaging audiences in public programs.

Also a special thanks to artists Anindita Banerjee, Monque Redmond, Raffaele Rufo, Dario Vacirca and Sorcha Wilcox whom have all created new works for this exhibition. Also another important thank you, to our internationally based artists including Monique Redmond and Sandy Gibbs both based in New Zealand and Jem Noble, working out of Vancouver. Jem Noble worked tirelessly in the realization of a major new work notwiththingsastheyare at the Deakin Downtown ‘Pop up’ gallery for this exhibition. Jem’s project has been kindly supported by the Bowen group, so thank you for their support and to Elliot Arnup and Tony Phillips at Bowen Interiors for your generosity. I also wish to thank Marc Dunstan and Lisa Waldron at Deakin Downtown for their continued support.

Collection and Galleries and the art gallery team, Julie Nolan, Claire Muir and Vanja Radisic.

Finally thanks to our exhibition technicians Brad Rusbridge and Tom Dudley.

This exhibition is testament to our ongoing collaboration and partnership with the SCCA and the Faculty of Arts and Education more broadly - we hope it leads to further collaborations and opportunities in the future.

James Lynch

The Deakin University Art Gallery team team have enjoyed working very closely with School of Communication and Creative Arts. Thanks to my co-curators Professor David Cross and Dr Patrick Pound and thank you to Head of School, Professor Matthew Allen for supporting the project and for his opening remarks. I also wish to convey my gratitude to Dr. Anne Wilson who assisted in many ways with the exhibition at the Sally Walker Project Space. I also wish to thank, Bradley Axiak, Acting Manager, Technical Group and members of his team Kate Banakh, Victoria Holessis and John Syme at the Waterfront.

Thank you to Leanne Willis, Manager Art

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Art and Performance

by Research Anindita Banerjee Jane Bartier Bindi Cole Chocka Sandy Gibbs Shelley Jardine Shane McGrath Merinda Kelly Jem Noble Monique Redmond Raffaele Rufo Amber Smith Dario Vacirca Sorcha Wilcox Exhibition dates 26 July to 1 September 2017 Deakin University Art Gallery, Deakin University Main Library Gallery Space Melbourne Burwood Campus, Deakin Downtown ‘Pop Up’ Gallery and the Sally Walker Project Space at the Geelong Waterfront Campus.

Jem Noble’s exhibition at Deakin Downtown has been kindly supoported by the Bowen Group.

© 2017 the artist, the authors and publisher. Copyright to the works is retained by the artist and his/her descendants. No part of this publication may be copied, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher and the individual copyright holder(s).

The views expressed within are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views held by Deakin University. Unless otherwise indicated all images are reproduced courtesy the artists.

Photography is by Simon Peter Fox unless otherwise indicated.

Image measurements are height x width x depth.

Exhibition curators: James Lynch, Professor David Cross and Dr Patrick Pound Published by Deakin University 978-0-9944025-7-8 Edition 500 copies Catalogue design: Jasmin Tulk Deakin University Art Gallery Deakin University Melbourne Campus at Burwood 221 Burwood Highway Burwood 3125 T +61 3 9244 5344 E artgallery@deakin.edu.au www.deakin.edu.au/art-collection Gallery hours Tuesday – Friday 10 am – 4 pm Free Entry Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

Facebook.com/ArtDeakin Twitter.com/ArtDeakin Instagram.com/deakinartgallery izi.travel - sculpture walk at Burwood

Cover image: Dario Vacirca Emergent Urgency (EU) 2017 Inner and back cover image: Jem Noble notwiththingsastheyare 2017 modified Rafael Palacios map from Asimov’s Guide to the Bible with Maxim Golubchikov (Ukraine) via upwork.com

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