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Tina Stefanou: You Can’t See Speed | Exhibition Kit

Tina Stefanou, You Can’t See Speed, installation view, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2025. Courtesy the artists. Photograph: Andrew Curtis
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Tina Stefanou: You Can’t See Speed is the first major solo exhibition by the Greek-Australian artist Tina Stefanou. Stefanou works with experimental forms of performance, film, sound/music, sculpture, ethnographic research, and socially engaged practice.

The exhibition continues Stefanou’s interest in the voice as medium, from spoken sonic soundscapes to vocal techniques such as humming. It also explores and expands her methodology of deep, long-term, co-creative collaboration and socially engaged practice involving interspecies-communal-performance.

Presented across ACCA’s four galleries (and bathrooms), Tina Stefanou: You Can’t See Speed transforms the building into a living instrument, merging subterranean engines with the intimacy of voice; all within a sensorial labyrinth of sculptures, films, live performances and dirt bikes. Altering perceptions and cultural hierarchies of sight and social access, the exhibition creates an experiential landscape, blurring the boundaries between vision-sound-touch.

Curator: Elyse Goldfinch

Online Publication: You Can’t See Speed

Download the wall labels

Art Kitchen #7: Explore your Voice with Tina Stefanou


How to use this Kit

This exhibition kit has been written by ACCA Education to support learning alongside the ACCA exhibition Tina Stefanou: You Can’t See Speed. Three key artworks from the exhibition have been highlighted, with discussion questions to prompt students’ thinking. Primary and secondary activities, mapped to the Victorian and Australian Curriculum, can be found in the For Teachers section. Upon request, VCE students and teachers can view Support Material for further reading and teaching notes drawn from ACCA’s VCE Programs.

  1. Introduction
  2. About the Artist
  3. Key artworks
    1. Tina Stefanou, Grief Ramp 2025
    2. Tina Stefanou, Field of Triggers: Centipede 2025
    3. Tina Stefanou, Field of Triggers: Agritemple 2025
  4. Support Material
  5. For Teachers

About the artist

Tina Stefanou is a Greek-Australian visual artist, performer, researcher, and filmmaker living on unceded Wurundjeri country in Wattle Glen, Victoria. With a background as a vocalist, she works undisciplined, with and across a diverse range of mediums, practices, approaches and labours: an embodied practice that she calls voice in the expanded field. Informed by diasporic and working-class experiences, Stefanou engages in sound, filmography, and research as social practice, exploring with and beyond all-too-human and more-than-human vocalities. She works with multiple communities over long periods of time and locations through para-ethnographic* field work, vocal workshops, performance making, and filmic traces. 

*para-ethnographic – emphasises a collaborative approach to research and artmaking, which recognises the value and knowledge systems of ‘so-called experts’ and non-experts. It values practical and/or lived experience that sits outside of the traditional/formally trained academy.

Artist Tina Stefanou, Horse Power 2019, single-channel HD video, black and white, two-channel sound. Photograph: Andrew Kaineder. Courtesy of the Artist.

Key Artworks

Tina Stefanou, You Can’t See Speed, installation view, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2025. Courtesy the artists. Photograph: Andrew Curtis

Tina Stefanou, Grief Ramp 2025

Aluminium steel sheets, scaffolding, Borax crystals grown on cotton and evil eyes, plaster cast from live equine hoof, speakers, concrete
2120.00 x 650.00 x 990.0 cm
Artist: Tina Stefanou
Original sculpture design and crystal dressing: Romanie Harper
Project manager and sculpture fabricator: Ellen Sayers
Fabrication: Richard Brownlee
3D design and installer: Glen Clancey
Scaffolding: Aaron Ellis from Super Safe Hire
Consulting producer: Anna Nalpantidis
Courtesy the artist
Photograph: Andrew Curtis

Commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art with support by Creative Australia, Arts House and Yamaha

Key Ideas and Concepts: Installation, collaboration, ‘blind vision’

Grief Ramp 2025 is a monumental sculpture in the shape of a stunt ramp, soaring across the gallery from floor to ceiling. Inspired by Stefanou’s collaborator, Matthew Cassar’s journey of riding dirt bikes while blind, including his ambition to achieve the world’s highest jump. The work literally and metaphorically (scaff)holds notions of trust, protection and transformation, as well as the dizzying heights of aspiration or the feeling of free-falling, and asks

What happens after the jump?
What will catch us?

Stefanou turns the sculpture into a living instrument as speakers are placed within the scaffold, vibrating and pulsing to the soundtrack of the accompanying film, You Can’t See Speed 2025. Rumbling along the ramp are the heavy industrial sounds of dirt bikes and low frequencies merged with melismatic singing, trumpets, and voice. A full sensory experience of musical and bodily compositions.

A waterfall of hand-grown crystals cascades from the ramp’s peak. Stefanou writes, ‘It is in grief, in salty residues, that crystallisation begins’. Embedded with evil eyes, Grief Ramp also acts as a totemic ribbon, protecting against and warding off threats both imagined and real. Just as Cassar becomes the evil eye totem in the film, Stefanou transfers that protection from the screen to the space, fortifying all of us within an embrace of metal, crystal and sound. 

Discussion questions:

  • Have you ever wanted to ride your bike off a large jump? Why or why not? How do you think it would feel without sight? Like Matthew Cassar, you would need courage and someone you trust to guide you at every step.
  • This artwork is called an installation and combines materials such as scaffolding, salt crystals and sound. Is this the type of artwork that you usually think of when you think of art? Why or why not?
  • Think of an ambitious goal or a dream that you would like to achieve but haven’t (yet). What feelings and symbols do you associate with that goal? How would you create an installation or artwork that symbolises that goal? What materials would you use, and what size would it be?
Tina Stefanou, Field of Triggers: Centipede 2025, installation view, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Courtesy the artists. Photograph: Andrew Curtis

Tina Stefanou, Field of Triggers: Centipede 2025

single channel video, sensor, wax casts from live equine hoof, wood, steel, wax, wool.
760.0 x 240.0 cm
Artist: Tina Stefanou
Editor and colourist: Wil Normyle
Sound designer: Alistair McLean
Wax casting: Ceren Sinanoglu
Equine collaborator: Breeze
Equine specialist: Sacajawea
Equine assistance: Tanika Mathews
Project manager, bench designer and fabricator: Ellen Sayers
Screen build: Steven Bellosguardo
Fabricator apprentice and metal welder: Georgia Brooks
Video collage and sensor designer: Steve Berrick
Wool: Sayers farm
Courtesy the artist
Photograph: Andrew Curtis

Commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art with support by Creative Australia, Arts House and Yamaha

Key ideas/concepts: Installation, video art, performance art, film as sculpture, care, ethics, interaction 

Field of Triggers: Centipede 2025 is a film sculpture. In Gallery 4 (our back gallery space), there is a large billboard-sized screen, which evokes a drive-in outdoor cinema. Below the screen is a line of metal legs with wax hooves, inspired by agricultural machinery, specifically the immense scale of harvesters. As both monument and anti-monument, the screen carries its own sculptural significance. In this installation, cinema takes on the same magnitude, reflecting both agribusiness and the film industry, each with its own massive environmental footprint.

A sensor is positioned within the bench, which, when triggered, reshapes the visual and sonic material experienced across the gallery. The bench is covered in wool, which retains both the oil and smell of sheep. At each end of the bench are grey wax castings of a horse’s hoof and legs. These elements extend the viewer’s experience beyond the screen by activating their sense of smell. Through sitting on the bench, the audience co-shapes the filmic environment, affecting how others encounter the exhibition. This raises questions about care, tenderness, bodily responsibility and ethics, including in relation to the interaction between audiences and art institutions.  

Discussion questions:

  • Why do you think the artist included smell as one of the senses explored in this artwork?
  • Why do you think the artist has made this space resemble an outdoor drive-in cinema? What happens or what is possible at a place like this?
  • How does it feel to know an audience member can physically alter this artwork? What ideas does this interaction convey?

Tina Stefanou, Field of Triggers: Agritemple 2025

eight channel video, eight channel sound, cotton bed sheets, aluminium.
390.0 x 400.0 x 400.0 cm
Artist: Tina Stefanou
Video collage designer: Steve Berrick
Editor, colourist: Wil Normyle
Sound designer: Alistair McLean
Project manager and sculpture fabricator: Ellen Sayers
Screen maker and sowing: Stephanie Kirkbright
Fabricator apprentice and metal welder: Georgia Brooks
Fabrication support: Richie Brownlee
Courtesy the artist
Photograph: Andrew Curtis

Commissioned by Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne with support from Creative Australia, Arts House and Yamaha

Key ideas/concepts: Installation, video art, performance art, film beyond vision, film as object, community, collaboration, multi-species relationships

Field of Triggers: Agritemple 2025 presents fragments of documentation from Tina Stefanou’s performances, filmed between 2021–24. The films are played using an algorithmic* program. The films are projected onto eight fabric screens (fraying white bed sheets), which reference the everyday or domestic. These sheets hang from a metal ring, creating a kind of temple. Positioned in the centre of Gallery 3 in an open circular formation, the work simulates an ‘Agritemple’ which viewers can enter. The footage is organised using different categories, which form a dynamic composition. The works talk to each other, forming a chorus that is never experienced the same way twice. 

Within the temple we witness echoes of peasant practices through a contemporary Greek-Australian family unit: a woollen-clad tractor dragged across a dead canola crop; rural town halls and regional streets galvanised by encounters with hums, poetry, and processions; alongside animals like horses and chickens, shifting landscapes, and the rhythms of family life. All meditate on the resilience and destruction of agrarian** communities in the face of ecological and political change.

The soundtrack features creative vocal resonances and spoken descriptions. These were written and recorded in collaboration with the film’s participants. The sound creates a quadraphonic*** cacophony**** of lived experiences, oral storytelling, and emotive expression. 

*algorithmic – connected with or using an algorithm, which is a mathematical instruction for calculating an answer to a problem. Algorithms are often used in partnership with computer programs.
**agrarian – relating to cultivated land or the cultivation of land (e.g. agriculture).
***quadraphonic – a system using four audio channels, creating a surround sound effect with speakers positioned at the four corners of a listening area.
****cacophony – a harsh or jarring mixture of sounds.

Discussion questions:

  • In this artwork Tina Stefanou has created an installation to present film. In this way she has presented the film as an object. How does this change the way you interpret what is on the screens?
  • The artist has incorporated everyday materials in this work. Why do you think she has done this?
  • Tina Stefanou often uses her family members in her artworks. Have you ever used anyone in your family as a subject in your art? Would you like to?

For Teachers

Primary activities

Sound Sculptures

In this activity, students will respond to artworks in the exhibition, with a particular focus on Grief Ramp 2025 by Tina Stefanou. During a performance at the gallery, Exhausted Vocalities 1986- ongoing, Stefanou used the scaffolding of the ramp as an instrument. Students will be inspired by this unique transformation of a sculptural object into one that can also make sound.

For this activity, you can be very creative and resourceful with your materials. You may like to collect a range of recycled materials like cardboard tubes (old postage tubes with lids are great), PVC pipes, paper cups, plastic drink bottle lids, bells, string, beads, tape as well as food from the supermarket like lentils or beans. You could visit somewhere like Reverse Art Truck to help source materials, or get students (and other teachers) to collect materials for the project – a great way to encourage recycling!

Prompt students to consider how they can use the recycled materials to create a unique sound sculpture. For example, lentils or beans can be poured into a cardboard tube, which can be taped at either side, creating a kind of ‘rain stick’ instrument. This can then be decorated using colourful gaffa or washi tape, perhaps with the addition of bells on strings. Encourage students to be led by the materials and open to experimenting with what kinds of sounds they can create by pairing different materials. Students can consider the effect of the different sounds, including how they make them feel.

Extension:
Rather than (or in addition to) creating their sculpture, students may like to create a collaborative sculpture. Students can consider scale, as well as how to create an instrument that makes a range of different sounds (loud, soft, etc.). Once the work is completed, students can brainstorm where and how best to display the piece e.g. somewhere in the yard, where students from other classes can interact with it, could be interesting.

Australian Curriculum / Visual Arts / Years F-6

Australian Curriculum / Visual Arts (Version 9) / Years F-6

  • Use play, imagination, arts knowledge, processes and/or skills to discover possibilities and develop ideas (AC9AVAFD01)
  • Use visual conventions, visual arts processes and materials to plan and create artworks that communicate ideas, perspectives and/or meaning (AC9AVA6C01)
  • Share and/or display artworks and/or visual arts practice in informal settings (AC9AVA4P01)

Victorian Curriculum / Visual Arts / Levels F-6

  • Experiment with different materials and techniques to make artworks (VCAVAV018)
  • Create and display artworks to express ideas to an audience (VCAVAP023)
  • Explore visual arts practices as inspiration to create artworks that express different ideas and beliefs (VCAVAE029)

Victorian Curriculum / Visual Arts (Version 2.0) / Levels F-6

  • Explore ideas for artworks through play and visual arts processes (VC2AVAFE02)
  • Present and share artworks in informal settings (VC2AVA2P01)
  • Plan and create artworks using visual conventions, visual arts processes and materials to communicate ideas, perspectives and meaning (VC2AVA6C01)

Curriculum Interpretation

This activity is devised in response to artworks in the exhibition, specifically Grief Ramp 2025 by Tina Stefanou.

By undertaking these activities, students:

  • Experiment with sound as an art element
  • Use a range of recycled materials to create an interactive sound sculpture
  • Engage in playful approaches to art making

Secondary activities

Drawing Beyond Sight

In this activity, students respond to the artworks from the exhibition, including You Can’t See Speed 2025 by Tina Stefanou. In this new commission, as in many of her works from the exhibition, the artist is challenging the ‘ocular centrism’ of visual art (e.g. the focus on the visual, or what can be seen). In this activity, students will use a range of drawing exercises to explore ways they can utilise and emphasise other senses beyond sight.

For this activity, you will need paper and some kind of drawing tool, such as a pencil, pen, fine-liner, or similar. Start by communicating that the focus of this activity will be less about the product (the finished drawings) and more about the process itself.

For the first activity, students can create a blind contour drawing. For this, they will need to choose an object (or person, or animal) to draw. However, they cannot look at their paper or drawing at all – they can only look at the object. While this exercise does use sight (direct observation), the constraint of not looking at the paper will create an unusual, likely abstracted image of what they were seeing. It is a fantastic way to loosen up and let go of expectations or judgment.

Next, students can experiment with drawing from touch. Again, they can select an object, and then they will need to close their eyes. For this exercise, they are simply using touch as a guide for their drawing. Encourage students to take their time with this drawing, slowly feeling their object, exploring its textures and considering how best to represent these on their paper (e.g. speed, pressure, short or long strokes, etc.).

In the final exercise, encourage students to consider how they can draw the invisible. For example, instead of drawing objects, they may like to focus on what is not seen, e.g. the space or air between objects, people, trees or plants. They might like to listen for sounds, and consider how to capture these on paper. Or there may be vibrations or sensations that can be felt, then drawn. Students might like to use light lines, overlapping marks, or erased areas to suggest these unseen forces.

Extension:
Instead of or in addition to these individual drawings, students might also like to create a collaborative drawing (with one other person, or ideally a group). The prompts can be the same; however work on a large sheet or roll of paper. Each person adds their marks to the same piece of paper, so they overlap and become layered. Consider how the shared drawing reflects the space, movement, and presence of others. Once completed, the drawing can be installed somewhere around the school. Encourage students to consider where and how the drawing can be hung, taking into consideration its large scale and the ideas it was exploring. How can the display of the work emphasise the theme of ‘drawing beyond sight’?

Australian Curriculum / Visual Arts / Years 7-10

  • Develop ways to enhance their intentions as artists through exploration of how artists use materials, techniques, technologies and processes (ACAVAM119)
    Present artwork demonstrating consideration of how the artwork is displayed to enhance the artist’s intention to an audience (ACAVAM122)

Australian Curriculum / Visual Arts (Version 9) / Years 7-10

  • Experiment with visual conventions, visual arts processes and materials to develop skills (AC9AVA8D01)
  • Generate, document and develop ideas for artworks (AC9AVA8C01)
  • Select and manipulate visual conventions, visual arts processes and/or materials to create artworks that represent ideas, perspectives and/or meaning (AC9AVA8C02)

Victorian Curriculum / Visual Arts / Levels 7-10

  • Explore visual arts practices as inspiration to explore and develop themes, concepts or ideas in artworks (VCAVAE033)
  • Explore how artists use materials, techniques, technologies and processes to realise their intentions in artworks (VCAVAE034)
  • Select and manipulate materials, techniques, and technologies and processes in a range of art forms to express ideas, concepts and themes (VCAVAV042)

Victorian Curriculum / Visual Arts (Version 2.0) / Levels 7-10

  • Reflect on, analyse and document their own and others’ visual arts practices to inform decisions they make in the exploration, development and resolution of their artworks (VC2AVA8D02)
  • Select and apply visual conventions, visual arts processes and materials to create artworks that reflect personal expression, and communicate and/or challenge ideas, perspectives and meaning (VC2AVA10C02)
  • Curate and present examples of their visual arts practice and/or artworks to communicate ideas, perspectives and/or meaning to audiences (VC2AVA8P01)

Curriculum Interpretation

This activity was devised in response to artworks from the exhibition by Tina Stefanou, in particular You Can’t See Speed 2025.

By undertaking this activity, students:

  • Take inspiration from the contemporary practice of Tina Stefanou
  • Experiment with unusual drawing techniques
  • Explore the use of senses other than sight (e.g. touch, hearing, etc.)
  • Practice the ability to take creative risks and let go of expectations

 

 

Contact ACCA

This education resource has been produced by ACCA Education to provide information and classroom support material for education visits to the exhibition Tina Stefanou: You Can’t See Speed. The reproduction and communication of this resource is permitted for educational purposes only.

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