By Jacqui Shelton — 7 August, 2020
This piece is the fourth in a five-part series of responses for BLEED—an online biennial festival from Arts House and Campbelltown Arts Centre. This article was written in response to Angela Goh and Su Yu Hsin’s ‘Paeonia Drive‘ (2020), which you can view here. Walking my dog in the city council-maintained garden, I notice the…
By Audrey Pfister & Eleanor Zurowski — 13 December, 2019
We started writing this piece a month ago on the Gadigal land of the Eora Nation, in a week where over seventy fires burned across (so called) New South Wales. We would like to extend our gratitude and acknowledgement to the insects, animals, plant life, waters, people and bodies of knowledge that have cared for…
By John Citizen — 6 December, 2019
ARRIVALS & ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES On the way to the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) I pass three things: the New South Wales Police Force Wall of Remembrance; a Navy officer (walking to work); and, a bronze statue inscribed with the text ‘the offerings of war.’ BUILDINGS & BREAK-ROOMS Before…
By Fiona McGregor — 20 November, 2019
‘I am fascinated by dualisms, mirror images, blindness and invisibility, subject/object reversals, the roles of artist and audience and all my work, since my earliest performances of the 1970s exacerbates such tensions, as the deeper structure of both thought and image.’ Mike Parr, (January 1998) Entering the space, you see a large rectangular installation…
By Neha Kale — 15 November, 2019
1. A Saturday evening at Carriageworks. A trestle table topped with gin bottles. Friends huddle in neon jumpsuits. Their murmurs bounce off the walls of the old railway yard, recreating the push-pull anxiety of walking into a high-school disco before it starts. Chicks on Speed’s Alex Murray-Leslie appears on stage, cocooned in a cloud of…
By Claire Cao — 13 November, 2019
I. PANG Communicating with ghosts is simple in theory. Dying is like stepping off a tarmac and on to foreign soil, my parents said in Mandarin. You’ll be severed from your bed, the grocery shops you know best, the people you love—no landmark in sight, save the cloudy bulk of winter sky….
By Marcus Whale — 1 November, 2019
Partway through Body of Knowledge, Samara Hersch’s new performance for Liveworks, an attendee’s phone goes off. Except, it’s not exactly their phone, but one assigned to them—a smartphone. In fact, each of the dozen-or-so audience members has been assigned a device, and by the time it’s my turn to participate, almost everyone has a phone…
By Neha Kale — 21 June, 2019
PARADISE Nightclubs are places, but they are also ideas. For 50 Cent, ‘the club’ is the logical nexus of hedonism and capitalism (You can find me in the club/ bottle full of bub). Kendrick thinks it’s a bad habit (Don’t say I didn’t tithe for you/ or push the club to the side for you)….
By Amelia Zhou — 5 April, 2019
What does home teach us? This is the question that consolidates in my mind after a five-hour train ride from Sydney to Cootamundra, the plains as unfamiliar to me as I am to them. The landscape is dominated by yellows and greens dulled by the sun; the roads are double the width of those in…
By Fiona McGregor — 22 March, 2019
‘Since fun is pleasure without guilt, as in the euphemistic ‘fun-loving’, we are bound to feel it must be inherently trivial; in a Judeo-Christian culture, half the fun of the thing is the guilt, anyway.’ Angela Carter, ‘Fun Fair’ There’s a new show in town. There’s a new town too. An hour and a half…