Announcing ACCA’s 2020 Exhibition Program
In 2020 ACCA continues to promote new art and bold ideas with major new commissions, solo exhibitions by Australian and international artists, and curatorial survey projects and public programs that collectively explore contemporary art’s relationship to wider social, cultural and political contexts.
AUTUMN SEASON: CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIAN SOLO SERIES
FRANCES BARRETT: MEATUS
4 April – 8 June 2020
Led by Frances Barrett, with Nina Buchanan, Hayley Forward, Brian Fuata, Del Lumanta and Sione Teumohenga
Curator: Annika Kristensen
Drawing on her background in performance, curating and collaborative models of making, Sydney-based artist Frances Barrett will extend the parameters of the Katthy Cavaliere Fellowship’s solo commission to present new sonic compositions and live performances by multiple artists.
A ‘meatus’ – to which the exhibition title refers – is an opening or passage leading to the interior of the body, such as the ear or mouth; a juncture between the internal and external, where the body opens itself to the world. For this project ACCA’s galleries are conceived as a form of meatus for the audience to enter; a passage in which to experience multiple voices, embodied knowledges, affective territories, deep listening and relational practice in an immersive and sensory exhibition of sound and light.
Frances Barrett’s Meatus is part of Suspended Moment: The Katthy Cavaliere Fellowship, a suite of three new commissions in support Australian women artists working at the nexus of performance and installation, presented in a partnership between the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Carriageworks, Sydney, and the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona), Hobart.
WINTER SEASON: THE MACFARLANE COMMISSIONS #2 – 2020
OVERLAPPING MAGISTERIA
20 June – 6 September 2020
Artists: Robert Andrew, Mimosa Echard, Anna McMahon, Sam Petersen and Isadora Vaughan.
Curators: Max Delany and Miriam Kelly
The second edition of the Macfarlane Commissions in 2020 will feature ambitious new commissions by emerging and mid-career Australian and international artists, with a focus on the role of biology, ecology, archaeology and site, as well as ideas of material transformation and alchemy. Generously supported by The Macfarlane Fund, the works of commissioned artists engage with organic materials, laws of nature, deep time, ideas of growth and shapeshifting, as well as formlessness, entropy and abjection. ACCA’s galleries will offer audiences intense sensory and material experiences, with works encompassing living and artificial organisms, alongside installations of narrative and material significance.
SPRING SEASON: THE ACCA INTERNATIONAL
LAURE PROUVOST
19 September – 22 November 2020
Curators: Max Delany and Annika Kristensen
A new commission will be presented in association with Govett Brewster / Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, New Zealand; and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen
Bringing the work of significant international artists to Australian audiences at critical moments in their career, the 2020 ACCA International will present the first major solo exhibition in Australia of work by French artist Laure Prouvost, following her solo representation of France at the 2019 Venice Biennale. Prouvost will transform ACCA’s imposing architecture into a labyrinthine and other-worldly installation, with a rich assortment of architectural interventions, found objects, furniture, sculptures, signs and drawings, and a new commission produced especially for the exhibition developed in partnership with the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery / Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, New Zealand and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen.
SUMMER SEASON 2020–21: BIG PICTURE SERIES
WHO’S AFRAID OF PUBLIC SPACE
12 December 2020 – 14 March 2021
Curators: Max Delany, Miriam Kelly and Annika Kristensen, in collaboration with the curatorial advisory group including Marnie Badham, Eugenia Lim, Grace McQuilten, Timothy Moore, Nikos Papastergiadis and Nur Shkembi
Who’s Afraid of Public Space is a multifaceted exhibition, publication and research project that extends beyond the walls of ACCA’s galleries into public space itself. Engaging in off-site, temporal, performative and interventionist works in public and urban realms, from the street to digital airwaves, Who’s Afraid of Public Space animates recent global discussions and debate around the contested nature of public space, and the character of public culture and the composition of public life itself.
Currently showing:
ACCA’s SUMMER SEASON 2019–20: NEW CURATORIAL PERSPECTIVES
FEEDBACK LOOPS
Until 22 March 2020
Presented in association with AsiaTOPA
Artists: Madison Bycroft, Tianzhuo Chen, Lu Yang, Sahej Rahal, Justin Shoulder, Zadie Xa
Curator: Miriam Kelly
Featuring new commissions and existing works by six local and international artists whose practices sample ideas and images from our past and present to speculate on the future. Feedback Loops brings together works by artists born in the 1980s, who grew up alongside the growth of the internet and who enmesh technology and popular culture with ritual, spirituality, myth and speculative fiction with a cyclical sensibility that is at once playful, spectacular and challenging.
FEEDBACK LOOPS PUBLIC PROGRAMS (FEBRUARY-MARCH 2020)
Justin Shoulder in conversation with Kate Ben Tovim
Wednesday 19 February, 6–7.00pm
FREE, registration essential
6.30-7.00pm, Thursday 20 February, 8.00-8.30pm, Thursday 20 February
6.30-7.00pm, Saturday 22 February. $10/$15, registration essential
Justin Shoulder emerges as Carrion, a chimeric creature, in a performance that compels us to consider post-human embodiment in our state of planetary disarray. As a continuation of Shoulder’s repertoire of bestiary, Phasmahammer, this hybrid human/animal/cyborg delves into ancient wisdoms, the mess of the present and polymorphous complexity of a speculative future. Carrion: Episodes are part of Shoulder’s club performance series and the greater ongoing body of work Carrion.
Material World: Live game demonstration with Lu Yang
3-4pm, Sunday 1 March
FREE, registration essential
A live game demonstration by Feedback Loops artist and computer game extraordinaire Lu Yang, who navigates the ten stages of her game, The Great Adventure of Material World, and speaks informally about the inspirations behind this ambitious and captivating new work. This session is presented in association with AsiaTOPA 2020, supported by with the support of Arts Centre Melbourne and the Sidney Myer Fund.
Art and Emerging Technology Forum
6–7.00pm, Tuesday 3 March 2020
FREE, registration essential
A lively discussion about the role of new and emergent technologies in the visual arts and contemporary culture and what it means to live, work and create in the pre-history of the future. Moderated by Rae Johnston, multi-award-winning STEM journalist, Science and Technology Editor for NITV, and host of That Startup Show, with a panel that includes Feedback Loops and Sinofuturists exhibiting artists Tianzhuo Chen and Lu Yang, with Professor Uwe Aickelin Head of School of Computing and Information Systems at University of Melbourne, and Dr Claire Roberts, Associate Professor Art History, University of Melbourne. This forum is co-presented with Melbourne University and AsiaTOPA 2020’s Sinofuturist program, with the support of Arts Centre Melbourne and the Sidney Myer Fund.
PLUS ACCA’S popular Art Club returns in 2020 with a series of events, studio visits and artist talks. A monthly meeting group for art lovers, Art Clubbers explore the ins and outs of contemporary art in a small and convivial setting at ACCA and galleries around Melbourne.
Further details on Art Club and all ACCA programs via acca.melbourne/program/
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art
111 Sturt Street, Southbank VIC 3006
Melbourne, Australia
Opening hours: Tuesday – Friday 10am–5pm, Weekends 11am–5pm Entry free
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For further media information:
Katrina Hall
Publicity/Communications
0421153046 kathall@ozemail.com.au
ACCA acknowledges the Kulin Nations as sovereign custodians of the land on which we work and welcome visitors, and we extend our respects to ancestors and Elders past, present and emerging, and to all First Nations people.