Phuong Ngo awarded the 2021 Georges Mora Fellowship
The Georges Mora Fellowship Board is proud to announce that Phuong Ngo has been awarded the 2021 Georges Mora Fellowship, including a $10,000 grant. A panel of judges including Pip Wallis (Curator of Contemporary Art, National gallery of Victoria), Raafat Ishak (Head of Painting, Victorian College of the Arts), Charlotte Day ( Director, Monash University Museum of Art), Caroline Field (Curator, Australian Catholic University Art Collection), Zara Sully (Director, Sawtooth ARI), Linda Short (Senior Curator, State Library Victoria) and Jade Hadfield (Exhibitions Curator, State Library Victoria), were impressed by Ngo’s proposed project, Racist Furniture.
Ngo will source and dismantle European Labour Only furniture and reconstitute them into new art and design objects, centring his own labour and addressing historical exclusion and othering.
Chairman of the Georges Mora Fellowship Board, Clive Scott AM, said: We are delighted to award Phuong the 2021 Fellowship, and to support him in bringing 'Racist furniture' to life. It is a remarkable project that will allow locals and visitors alike to connect to a time in Victorian culture. We wish Ngo’s the best of luck with his project.
Phuong Ngo Biography
Phuong Ngo is a Vietnamese-Australian artist and curator living and working in Naarm (Melbourne). He is currently co-director of Hyphenated Projects with Nikki Lam, and curator at large at the Substation. His practice is concerned with the interpretation of history, memory and place, and how it impacts individual and collective identity of the Vietnamese diaspora. Through an archival process rooted in a conceptual practice, he seeks to find linkages between culture, politics and oral histories and historic events. Ngo’s collaborative practice with Hwafern Quach, Slippage, examines the cycles of history in conjunction with current geopolitical and economic issues through the lens of vernacular cultures, artifacts and language. Taking their Vietnamese and Chinese ancestry as a starting point and foregrounding their work in the personal, Slippage utlises ceramics as a medium to further critique issues closely linked to historic and contemporary forms of imperialism and global politics. His notable exhibitions include, APT10, QAGOMA (2021); Drunken Swine, First Draft (2019); Expansionism V, Bendigo Art Gallery (2019); Article 14.1, Sydney Festival & MCA (2019); Primavera, MCA (2018); New Histories, Bendigo Art Gallery (2018); Conflicted: Works from the Vietnam Archive Project, The Substation (2017); Article 14.1, Next Wave Festival (2014); Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria (2013); Domino Theory, Centre for Contemporary Photography (2012).
2021/22 Applications Now Open
2021/22 Applications Now Open
We are excited to announce that applications are now open for the 2021/22 Georges Mora Fellowship!
The Fellowship is awarded each year to an artist who has shown a continuous commitment to the field of contemporary art. In these uncertain times we are pleased to be able to provide an artist with some financial security and ongoing residency support.
The fellowship will receive a cash grant of $10,000, one year's premium membership to the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA), international residency opportunities, access to organisations and individuals with specialist knowledge to support the artist to research, experiment and create. The fellow can choose to annex their research with a secure desk at the State Library of Victoria, providing access to the rich resources of the Library. Please see application guidelines and further information on our website.
The Georges Mora Fellowship is awarded with funds generously donated by arts supporters and with the support of State Library Victoria, Alliance Française de Melbourne, the National Association for the Visual Arts and other partners.
Applications close Tuesday 8th September, 2021.
Apply here!
Collaborative partnership with State Library of Victoria
We are pleased to be continuing our ongoing collaboration with the State Library of Victoria (SLV). Each year the GMF fellow has access to a secure desk at the SLV which provides uninterrupted time to work with the rich resources of the Library, including access to a private study which can be used outside normal opening hours.
Georges Mora Fellowship Alumni
The Georges Mora Fellowship has a rich history of fellows including; Jude Walton, James Geurts, Inez de Vega, Catherine Evans, Brook Andrew, Trent Walter, Trihn Vu, Philip Brophy, Linda Tegg, Ross Coulter, Cyrus Tang, Ruth Höflich, and Shivanjani Lal. Below we have collated some highlights from our past fellows with links to the various projects they are currently working on.
GARRU NGAJUU NGAAY
Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA)
Alumni Brook Andrew’s work, GARRU NGAJUU NGAAY, which was commissioned by and is currently being exhibited at Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA).The exhibition runs until the 4th of October 2021.
As written on Andrew’s website “GARRU NGAJUU NGAAY (magpie, I see) is a wall drawing, incorporating text and neon. It creates an immersive environment of patterns and markings inspired by the Wiradjuri and Gamilaroi traditions of tree and shield carving that have been practiced for millennia. The bold colours – white, black, red, blue and yellow – reference both the Aboriginal Flag and the Union Jack.”
Brook Andrew is represented by Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris and Brussels. His studio is located in Melbourne, Australia on the lands of the Kulin Nations.
To Feed your Oracle
Linden New Art
Ruth Höflich’s solo exhibition ‘To Feed your Oracle’ is currently on show at Linden New Art. As written on the galleries website; ‘In an installation of video, photography and site intervention, To Feed Your Oracle will explore how we might understand, or predict, things that we can’t see and how our expectations might affect how we experience the unknown.’ The show runs till the 22nd of August.
From Australia: An Accumulation
Trent Walter & collaborators
Watch This Space ARI, NT
In March of this year alumni Trent Walter exhibited From Australia: An Accumulation at Watch This Space ARI. The exhibition “is an imagining of Australian nationalism made through drawing, printmaking, community-engaged workshops, publications and exhibitions.” As written on Watch This Space’s website; “Recently there has been a much needed re-evaluation of Australian history and the legacies of colonialism, and the ways this can be addressed through artwork. From Australia builds from this work and extends the trajectory of historical printmaking portfolios by creating an ongoing, inclusive and reflexive examination of collective Australian identity. The project is ongoing.” This project can also be viewed online at fromaustralia.net.
TarraWarra Biennial
Slow Moving Waters
Past fellow James Geurts recently exhibited as part of the TarraWarra Biennial: Slow Moving Waters, curated by Nina Miall. Slow Moving Waters responds to two related cues: the idea of slowness, and the gentle, measured flow of the nearby Birrarung (Yarra River). The exhibition’s title comes from the translation of the local Woiwurrung word ‘tarrawarra’, after which the Museum, and its surrounding area of Wurundjeri Country in the Yarra Valley are named. The exhibition “explores processes of deceleration, delay and the decompression of time, proposing a stay to the ever more rapid flows of people, commerce and information that characterise the dynamic of globalisation.”
Although the exhibition has now finished you can still purchase the catalogues online here.
Catherine Evans' fictionella, Copper, was published as part of the Lost Rocks series. An accumulative event of mineralogical, metaphysical and metallurgical telling, Lost Rocks (2017–21) is a unique library of forty three books composed by forty five contemporary artists from around the world. Part artwork, part curatorial platform and part experiment in publishing as art practice. Increments of absence. This life that is all at once. Love. Grief. Relation.
Catherine Evans exhibition ‘Exploded View’ is currently on show at PhotoAccess including catalogue text by Margaret Woodward. The exhibition runs July 21st - 14th of August. Exploded View is a new work that takes Evan’s personal memory of the 1997 Royal Canberra Hospital implosion as a starting point to examine how digital media acts to distort our perception of time, relation to place and personal and collective memory.
McClelland sculpture park and gallery
Site & Sound: Sonic art as ecological practice
Philip Brophy’s work Atmosis was exhibited at McClelland sculpture park and gallery as part of the exhibition Site & Sound: Sonic art as ecological practice. You can listen to the artwork online here. As written on Brophy’s website “Atmosis is an ongoing series of impressionistic musical compositions based on slices of real-time location recordings produced in noisy urban/city environments. Each location recording has been transcribed into a musical composition. The chordal drones of air-conditioning ducts, the high-pitched squeal of car brakes, the deep hum of passing trucks - all these typical urban 'noise' generators have been analysed to discern chords and pitches hiding within their apparently-unmusical sound.”
Sky Orchestra
Incinerator gallery
Alumni, Cyrus Tang's exhibition Sky Orchestra is on show at Incinerator gallery, 25 June 2021 - 1 August 2021. Sky Orchestra is a project exploring Confucian values of filial piety through the lens of Chinese history and pop culture, and how it relates to the artist’s existence within a Western context. Through Sky Orchestra, Hong Kong-born artist Cyrus Tang, delves into the history and legacy of a poem by a well-known Chinese poet Su Shi of the Song Dynasty, written during the Moon Festival in 1076. Expressing feelings of loss and yearning, the words of the poem evoke the joys and sorrows of human existence from a Buddhist worldview.
MA Artists' Film & Moving Image
Goldsmiths London
Shivanjani Lal has recently exhibited at Goldsmiths London as part of the postgraduate exhibition. As an artist living in Australia, she is tied to a long history of familial movement; her work uses personal grief to account for ancestral loss and trauma. She is a member of the indentured labourer diaspora from the Indian and Pacific oceans. Lal also has work coming up in January 2022, as part of the Mona Foma festival.
Support the Georges Mora Fellowship!
The Georges Mora Fellowship is made available through the generous financial support of art lovers. All donations, no matter how large or small, enable the significant development of an artist’s ideas. All donations are tax deductible. Further information available on the website.
We would greatly appreciate your support at this time. Please join us in fundraising to provide artists with time, space and support!
Donate now!
Shivanjani Lal awarded the 2020 Georges Mora Fellowship
Shivanjani Lal awarded the 2020 Georges Mora Fellowship The Georges Mora Fellowship Board is proud to announce that Shivanjani Lal has been awarded the 2020 Georges Mora Fellowship, including a $10,000 grant. A panel of judges including Annika Kristensen (Senior Curator, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art), Melissa Keys (Curator Buxton Contemporary) and Simon Maidement (Senior Curator, Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Victoria), were impressed by Lal’s proposed project, An Area of Darkness.
Over the next year, Lal will be building on her current research into Indentured Labour of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. This research considers 2020 as a date which marks the centenary of the end of indentured labour. This historical moment is the crux of Lal’s research and what she hopes to reflect upon in the United Kingdom and Bangladesh. She will be using this award to support her time in the UK visiting the Ameena Gafoor Institute, and the Goldsmiths Film Archives. During this time she will also be mentored by Mauritian British artist Shiraz Bayjoo. In conclusion she will do a residency at the Bengal Art Foundation, in Dhaka Bangladesh.
The Georges Mora fellowship provides security as I work towards ambitious and timely research. It will enable me to develop new networks in the United Kingdom as well as nurture and continue my relationships within the Bangladesh Arts Sector. It allows me to feel confident in my arts practice and its future. Shivanjani Lal, August 2020.
Chairman of the Georges Mora Fellowship Board, Clive Scott, said: In these strange times we are delighted that we can continue to support Shivanjani Lal as our 2020 Fellow. Her practice exemplifies Georges Mora’s desire to assist artists that push the boundaries in contemporary art – showing us new thinking.
Shivanjani Lal Biography
Shivanjani Lal is a twice-removed Fijian-Indian-Australian artist and curator. As an artist living in Australia, she is tied to a long history of familial movement; her work uses personal grief to account for ancestral loss and trauma. She is a member of the indentured labourer diaspora from the Indian and Pacific oceans. She employs intimate images of family, sourced from photo albums, along with video and images from contemporary travels to the Asia-Pacific to reconstruct temporary landscapes. These landscapes act as shifting sites for diasporic healing - from which she emerges. A fundamental concern in her work is how art develops and represents culture as it transitions between contexts, while also probing the experiences of women in these situations of flux.
About the Georges Mora Fellowship
Named in honour of renowned restaurateur, art dealer, mentor and cultural catalyst Georges Mora, the Georges Mora Fellowship aims to encourage the development of art in Australia by providing artists with the resources to explore fresh thinking and to research progressive ideas.In his lifetime, Georges Mora was an avid supporter of the arts and Australian artists, including Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd, Joy Hester, Sidney Nolan, John Olsen, John Perceval and Albert Tucker. The Georges Mora Fellowship was established by Mora’s wife, Caroline Williams Mora, and launched in 2006 by Baillieu Myer with Dame Elisabeth Murdoch as its founding patron. Previous Fellows include Inez de Vega, Brook Andrew and Trent Walter (collaboration), Linda Tegg and Ross Coulter.
For further information visit georgesmorafellowship.org.au.
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Support the Georges Mora Fellowship! The Georges Mora Fellowship is made available through the generous financial support of art lovers. All donations, no matter how large or small, enable the significant development of an artist’s ideas. All donations are tax deductible. Further information available on the website. We would greatly appreciate your support at this time.
Please join us in fundraising to provide artists with time, space and support!Donate now!
For media enquiries, images and interviews please contact Clive Scott via georgesmorafoundation@gmail.com.
Available for interview: Shivanjani Lal, 2020 Georges Mora Fellow. Clive Scott, Chairman of the Georges Mora Fellowship Board.
Georges Mora Foundation 2020 Applications Open
2020/21 Applications Now Open
We are excited to announce that applications are now open for the 2020/21 Georges Mora Fellowship!
The Fellowship is awarded each year to an artist who has shown a continuous commitment to the field of contemporary art. In these uncertain times we are pleased to be able to provide an artist with some financial security and ongoing residency support.
The fellowship will receive a cash grant of $10,000, one year's premium membership to the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA), international residency opportunities, access to organisations and individuals with specialist knowledge to support the artist to research, experiment and create. The fellow can choose to annex their research with a secure desk at the State Library of Victoria, providing access to the rich resources of the Library. Please see application guidelines and further information on our website.
The Georges Mora Fellowship is awarded with funds generously donated by arts supporters and with the support of State Library Victoria, Alliance Française de Melbourne, the National Association for the Visual Arts and other partners.
Applications close Tuesday 5th May, 2020.
Collaborative partnership with State Library of Victoria
We are pleased to be continuing our ongoing collaboration with the State Library of Victoria (SLV). Each year the GMF fellow has access to a secure desk at the SLV which provides uninterrupted time to work with the rich resources of the Library, including access to a private study which can be used outside normal opening hours.
The SLV currently has an extensive range of virtual content available to access from home, including; Community Collecting, Digital Collections, Book Club, Online Image Pool, E-books, Journals & Music, and Family History Resources.
Georges Mora Fellowship Alumni
The Georges Mora Fellowship has a rich history of fellows including; Jude Walton, James Geurts, Inez de Vega, Catherine Evans, Brook Andrew, Trent Walter, Trihn Vu, Philip Brophy, Linda Tegg, Ross Coulter, Cyrus Tang, and Ruth Höflich. Below we have collated some highlights from our past fellows with links to the various projects they are currently working on.
NIRIN
22nd Biennale of Sydney
Past fellow Brook Andrew is the current Artistic Director of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney. For nearly 50 years, the Biennale of Sydney has presented some of the most dynamic contemporary art from around the globe in iconic venues across Sydney. This year’s exhibition, titled NIRIN and meaning ‘edge’ in Wiradjuri, is an artist- and First Nations-led biennale showcasing more than 700 artworks by 101 artists and collectives. A global platform for diverse cultures and perspectives, the Biennale unites people across the world, stimulating dialogue and inspiring change.
The exhibition is no longer open to the public, however, there is easily accessible online programming linked to the seven themes that inspire the exhibition which will be held daily on the Biennale of Sydney’s website and social channels. In a first for the Biennale of Sydney - audiences around the world will be able to engage with NIRIN on the Google Arts & Culture platform. Creating a virtual Biennale that will bring the exhibition and programs to life through live content, virtual walkthroughs, podcasts, interactive Q&As, curated tours and artist takeovers.
At times like these, it is more important than ever that we find ways to connect, to help each other, listen, collaborate and heal – all core themes of NIRIN.
The Habitat of Time
Arts Catalyst, London
James Geurts is part of the group exhibition The Habitat of Time, at Arts Catalyst, London, curated by Julie Louise Bacon, exploring the role of time as a medium in shaping human and more-than-human worlds.
His work 'International Dateline' measures the start of a new day on the earth, based on a constructed geopolitical line positioned at 180° longitude in relation to the Prime Meridian 0° longitude at Greenwich, London. Read further information about the exhibition on their website.
Psychosonic Cinema
Resonance FM, London
Renowned Australian soundtrack theorist, and GMF past fellow, Philip Brophy presents 90 minutes of loud and luscious soundtrack dynamite, broadcast weekly on Resonance FM, London, Psychosonic Cinema is a radio series on film soundtracks.
Each week features a selection of tracks which loosely fit a theme. The purpose is to celebrate the widely varied ways musicians and composers have put their sounds into the film score. Psychosonic Cinema enables these great tracks to speak for themselves, and radio is the ideal platform for presenting them. Tune in live here.
NIRIN NGAAY
Reader for the 22nd Biennale of Sydney
Past fellow, Trent Walter alongside Stuart Geddes have worked collaboratively with the Biennale of Sydney to produce the NIRIN NGAAY reader. The publication, whose title translates to ‘reading the edge’, combines new works by Australian and international artists, commissioned for the occasion, with previously published pieces of note.
As an extension of its physical production, Walter and Geddes brought the reader to Aesop The Rocks in a conceptually and materially dynamic installation designed to appeal to all five senses—an expanded, immersive means of ‘reading’. Reader catalogue available from Biennale of Sydney website.
Standing Stone
2020 Neukölln Art Prize, Berlin
We are proud to announce that past fellow Catherine Evans was awarded first prize in the 2020 Neukölln Art Prize for her work Standing Stone.
Standing Stone is an exciting attempt to find a system. What looks like an objective diagram is fed by subjective coordinates. The position of the stones on the wall corresponds to the position of the birthmarks on the artists own back. With this poetic mapping, Evans transforms the body into a three-dimensional drawing system. In this way it reaches into the cosmic, the supra-individual. The work is installation and drawing at the same time. The result is a fragile balance of stones and rods, levitation and heaviness, body and line - a metaphor for the artist's existence and for life itself.
Support the Georges Mora Fellowship!
The Georges Mora Fellowship is made available through the generous financial support of art lovers.
All donations, no matter how large or small, enable the significant development of an artist’s ideas. All donations are tax deductible. Further information available on the website.
We would greatly appreciate your support at this time. Please join us in fundraising to provide artists with time, space and support!
Donate now!
Georges Mora Foundation Announces 2019 Fellow
We are thrilled to share the news that Melbourne-based artist Ruth Höflich has been awarded the 2019 Georges Mora Fellowship, receiving $10,000, a residency at State Library Victoria and a membership with The National Association for the Visual Arts.
Ruth was born in Munich, Germany and holds an MFA from Bard College, New York and a BA (Hons.) from The Slade School of Fine Art, London. Her artistic practice encompasses photography, video and print.
During her Fellowship, Ruth will develop new audio-visual material working with the concept of 'magic', drawing inspiration from the collections at State Library Victoria. Combined with a personalised database of images, video and sound, this material will be the basis of a new time-based artwork entitled ‘Reality Is Only A Word’.
Ruth's interest in magic lies in its disruption of logical sense patterns, and in its potential to offer alternative modes of being in and experiencing the world. As part of her research project, she will also produce a stand-alone printed work to be included in the State Library Collection.
The Georges Mora Foundation congratulates Ruth on her Fellowship success, and we look forward to following her work.
Named for the patent dealer, art dealer and restaurateur Georges Mora, the Georges Mora Fellowship was established in 2007, and aims to ignite courage and fresh thinking in art, and to promote contemporary art in Australia. Learn more about previous Fellows here.
2018 Georges Mora Fellowship Fundraiser →
On Thursday 18th October art lovers and supporters of the Georges Mora Fellowship donned their chic attire to attend the annual fundraiser at Sofitel Melbourne on Collins. Read more and see images from the event.
2018 Georges Mora Fellow announced
We are pleased to announce that Melbourne-based artist Jude Walton is the recipient of this year's Georges Mora Fellowship.
Jude will use her Fellowship to research the women who existed on the margins of the Surrealistic movement in Paris and Melbourne, towards an activated installation and performance based on the book Nadja by André Breton. This project, which has the working title Nadja-Léona (remembering a woman who...), will be presented by the Alliance Française de Melbourne in November 2018, and a version will also be presented in Paris next year. Jude is currently in Paris, working with dancer Gesa Piper, who will perform the work in November.
Jude Walton's work spans site-specific, installation, and screen-based practice. She has directed solo and group works in art galleries and specific sites in major cities across Australia and overseas. Her practice is at the edge of the ephemeral and the material, in which the performances create visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic environments that invite experiential, embodied responses from the viewer.
Recent practice has focused on the process of 'response-to-site' initially developed during a CultureLab residency at the Meat Market, North Melbourne with Structural Adjustments (2007) and continued with Lehte // (2015) at Heide Museum of Modern Art, and The Drill Hall Project (2017/18) at the Drill Hall, CBD Melbourne. All are concerned with the formulation of new discourses around the intersections of spatial practice, live bodies, sound and installation. In 2010 a list of positive things for later when things may not be so positive, a collaboration with Aleks Danko, was presented in the Adelaide Botanical Gardens, as part of DUETTO, Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AEAF), Adelaide.
In 2009 she was resident artist at the International Centre for Fine Arts Research, London as part of the 'From Scratch' festival at The Drawing Room, Tannery Arts, London exploring the legacy of British composer Cornelius Cardew.
Interview: Catherine Evans reflects on her time as 2017 Fellow
Catherine Evans talks about discoveries she made during her residency at the State Library of Victoria, where she undertook research for her art project The View from Mount Disappointment.
Read more2017 Fellowship Fundraiser at Sofitel Melbourne On Collins
In late October, the Georges Mora Fellowship Board, our past Fellows, and our supporters celebrated the life and legacy of Georges Mora with a French-Resistance themed fundraising event at Sofitel Melbourne On Collins.
Guests enjoyed the delicious canapes, eclairs, crepes and live music while bidding on the Silent Auction items and hearing current Fellow Catherine Evans and past Fellow Trent Walter speak about development of their art. A big thank you to everyone who attended and made the evening such a great success, and congratulations to our winning bidders!
The Georges Mora Fellowship is made available with the generous financial support of art lovers. All donations, no matter how large or small, enable the significant development of an artist’s ideas. If you weren't able to attend the event but would like to contribute to the future of Australian contemporary art, you can download a copy of our donation form here. Or to learn more about other ways that you or your organisation can become involved with the Fellowship, contact us.
We'd like to thank all the wonderful supporters of this event: Sofitel Melbourne On Collins, Alliance Francaise, Donegans, LaTrobe Art Institute, NAVA, State Library Victoria, Keon Couture, Madam Rouge, Marriner Group, Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Melbourne Theatre Company.
Interview: Meet our 2017 Fellow
Melbourne and Berlin-based cross-disciplinary artist Catherine Evans has been awarded the 2017 Georges Mora Fellowship, including a $10,000 grant, a residency at State Library Victoria. We spoke to Catherine about her practice, and winning the Fellowship.
Read moreGeorges Mora Fellowship Fundraiser
In late October friends and supporters of the Fellowship joined us at our annual Fundraiser event, held at the Sofitel Melbourne on Collins.
The evening featured presentations by current Fellow James Geurts and former Fellow Cyrus Tang (2008) who shared the development of their artistic practice; a silent auction featuring works by Geurts, Tang, and GMF Founder and artist Caroline Williams Mora; delicious wines, canapes and a decadent chocolate fountain.
Our sincere thanks to all who attended, supported and contributed to the event - we are grateful for your support of Australian contemporary art.
All images by Fiona Hamilton
National Gallery of Victoria to exhibit works of two past Georges Mora Fellows
Two former Georges Mora Fellows, Brook Andrew (2013, with Trent Walter) and Ross Coulter (2010), will have their work exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2017.
Brook Andrew: The Right to Offend is Sacred
Brook Andrew’s exhibition presents his most memorable works, alongside formative works that have had limited exposure. It will also include new sculptural work which will draw on the artist’s extensive personal archive and respond to important themes in his practice that issue from and resonate in books, objects, photographs and postcards, newspapers and the media.
3 March to 4 June 2017
NGV Australia, Federation Square
Free Entry
Ross Coulter: Audience
Audience is a photographic series that documents audience members who were photographed in more than seventy Melbourne galleries and museums between 2013 and 2016. Coulter invited members of the local art community to attend a photo-shoot and they were instructed to imagine viewing a performance art event. Drawing on the visual language of 1970s performance art documentation, the work constructs a photographic archive of audiences. As an installation, comprised of more than 400 photographs, the work is a form of performance for the camera, whilst also recording the appearance, dress and body language of various social groups at a particular moment in time.
17 March to 16 July
NGV Australia, Federation Square
Free Entry
We are delighted to see our former Fellows achieving such recognition for their work. We hope you will join us at their exhibitions!
pictured:
Brook ANDREW
dhalaay yuulayn (passionate skin) (2004)
enamel paint on anodised aluminium and wood, neon
125.0 x 170.0 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds from the Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2005
2005.72
© Brook Andrew, courtesy Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne
2016 Georges Mora Fellow: James Geurts
Melbourne and Netherlands-based artist James Geurts has been awarded the 2016 Georges Mora Fellowship, including a $10,000 grant, a residency at State Library Victoria, one year’s premium membership to the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA), and – for the first time – a residency at the La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre (VAC) in Bendigo.
Read more2016 Fellowship Information Session
On Thursday 18 February, State Library Victoria will host an information night detailing the range of Fellowships it will host in 2016...
Read moreInez de Vega's 'The Gifted Child'
A new solo exhibition from 2014 Georges Mora Fellow Inez de Vega will take place across all three gallery spaces of the Alliance Française heritage-listed mansion in St Kilda from mid September 2016.
Read moreROSS COULTER'S "AUDIENCE" SERIES
Having secured funding to publish a book, 2010 Georges Mora Fellow, Ross Coulter, is in the process of photographing an audience gathered in every gallery in Melbourne, watching a performance that doesn’t exist. The project tilted “Audience” is a photographic series that documents an audience who is gathered in a gallery space and has been instructed to imagine that they are viewing a performance art event. Participants are required to stand or sit in an empty gallery, in which there is no art, while black and white photographs are taken of them. The subjects are asked to direct their gaze to different parts of the gallery space and evoke a variety of expressions.
By drawing on the visual language of 1970s performance art documentation images, he is seeking to construct a photographic archive of an audience witnessing a number of performance (non) events in and around Melbourne. In this series of black-and-white photographic prints however, the performer and performance are absent, cropped out of the picture. The focus of the images is both the audience, looking on with a variety of expressions as they bear witness to a non-event, and the identity of the gallery space itself. Australian artist and art historian Charles Green notes that, “through documentation (of performance art happenings or events), the exemplary ‘truthfulness’ of performance deteriorates.”
INEZ DE VEGA'S 'PERFORMING DISORDER!'
With a planned production date of October 2017, Performing Disorder! will be the outcome of Inez de Vega’s 2014/2015 Georges Mora Fellowship in partnership with the State Library of Victoria.
Performing Disorder! is a fully immersive spectacle of spoken word, dance, song and projected image that will take place under the library's famous dome. At night, the panopticon of the dome will erupt with a madness and pathos that will unveil the true stories of women incarcerated in Victoria’s psychiatric institutions. Set in an institutional time warp, the audience will be transported from the 1890s, through the now and into the future.
Half theatre/half art-installation, it involves collaboration with up to 35 artists, dancers, singers, composers, choreographers, producers, technicians and mentors, and is De Vega's most ambitious project to date.
INEZ DE VEGA: BED THERAPY AT ACCA
Inez de Vega, Bed Therapy, 2014, ACCA Upstarts. Photos: Ben Taranto
Read the essay by Catherine Deveny here.
Inez de Vega's Bed Therapy
Inez de Vega will be therapist-in-residence in the pop-up shipping container gallery in the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art forecourt from 11th to 15th November.
Bringing her own brand of street counselling to weary city dwellers who feel alienated and in need of support, she will provide a welcome source of unexpected comfort (in a cosy bed) for passers by who feel ill at ease with the demands of urban life.
Inez will have one participant at a time join her in bed (though the public can listen in). She will engage her participant in an intimate discussion about their life, the challenges they face and their feelings. Inez’s bed is a place where we are encouraged to admit we carry wounds beneath the veneer of strength that we show to the world.
We are all wounded, yet as we go about our business in the urban environment we are expected to present a robust and uncomplicated exterior. Inez is offering her participants a rare moment of vulnerability in a communal space — where the public might risk an intimate encounter with a caring stranger and access their deeper feelings.
Bed Therapy will take place from 11.30am – 2.30 pm daily. Each therapy session will run for 40 minutes. If you would like to book in for therapy with Inez, please contact ACCA reception on (03) 9697 9999 (sessions are free).