Who’s Afraid of Public Space?

Who’s Afraid of Public Space? engages contemporary art and cultural practices to consider critical ideas as to what constitutes public culture and to ask who is public space for? The exhibition is inspired by, and seeks to animate recent global debates related to the incursion of private interests in the public sphere, politics of land and place, and patterns of urban transformation, gentrification and technological change.

Who’s Afraid of Public Space? also explores the ways in which public institutions, capital and technology impact and transform our understanding of public space, culture and values. As an extension of this, questions of what now comprises ideas of community, collectivity and the commons also underpin this exhibition. The recent radical shift from, and oscillation between, the civic space of the public square to the virtual space of the digital commons – as accelerated by the global pandemic, in tandem with questions of sustainability and access – has added further urgency to these discussions.

Through multiple installations and interventions, the exhibition reflects on the dynamic relations between urban design, safety and surveillance, as well as unsanctioned counter-positions of self-organisation, improvisation and play. Works in the exhibition also span themes of work, housing, democracy and social enterprise as they play out in the intersections and overlaps between private and public, corporate and state, profit and public good.

Who’s Afraid of Public Space? is organised according to a dispersed, distributed structure, encouraging a polyphonic and polycentric understanding of our increasingly complex public realm. It is informed by a series of think tanks, workshops, and offsite projects developed in the lead up to the exhibition that helped shape the thematic concerns and format of the exhibition. Taking place at ACCA over the summer months, the project extends across the city through a number of dedicated off-site projects programmed both in the lead-up to, and throughout, the exhibition, as well as through related satellite exhibitions and events programmed by institutional partners including Abbotsford Convent, Arts Project Australia, Blak Dot Gallery, Bus Projects, Chunky Move, Footscray Community Arts, Metro Tunnel Creative Program and Testing Grounds (supported by City of Melbourne).

Who’s Afraid of Public Space? adopts a collective curatorial model, led by ACCA’s curatorial team – Artistic Director Max Delany, Curator-at-Large Annika Kristensen and Senior Curator Miriam Kelly. The project has been developed in collaboration with a curatorial advisory group comprising the following members: Dr Marnie Badham, Senior Research Fellow, School of Art, RMIT University; E. Flynn, writer, arts worker, community organiser, and PhD Candidate at Queensland University of Technology; Eugenia Lim, artist, editor and Artistic Director of APHIDS; Dr Grace McQuilten, Lecturer in Art History and Theory, and Leader of the Contemporary Art and Social Transformation Research Group, School of Art, RMIT University; Dr Timothy Moore, Director of Sibling Architects, lecturer at Monash University Art, Design and Architecture, publisher and curator of Melbourne Design Week; Professor Nikos Papastergiadis, School of Culture and Communication; and Director of the Research Unit for Public Culture, University of Melbourne; Nur Shkembi, artist, curator and PhD candidate, University of Melbourne; and Jarra Karalinar Steel, artist, First Peoples Arts officer at City of Port Phillip, creative and cultural consultant, and Master of Arts (Art in Public Space), RMIT University.