At a moment when globally public monuments are being critically re-appraised for the identities and histories they represent, this panel will look at the diverse ways that artists have contributed to, and are continuing to animate our civic spaces.
Public sculpture and monuments have helped to shape our experience of public space by reflecting back at us aspects of our communal identities and histories. This highly visible platform represents an exciting possibility for artists, as a chance for art to operate within the space beyond the confines of the gallery, a space which is of course layered and highly complex.
Join ACCA Artist Educator Andrew Atchison and artists Emily Floyd, Kathy Temin and Trent Walter to hear diverse reflections on the monument and public sculpture. Taking the current ACCA exhibition, Tom Nicholson: Public Meeting, as a starting point this panel will reflect on how the form of the traditional monument might be re-imagined to better engage the contemporary context and our collective futures.
The ACCA Masterclass series is designed with university students at a postgraduate level in mind, and is particularly suited to artists as well as students of art, art history, and curatorial and social practices. The classes are open to all interested parties and members of the public, and this session will appeal to anyone with an interest in the constitution of our public spaces.
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Kathy Temin
Kathy Temin’s sculptural practice explores memory, history and materiality. Her work is structured around the tension between oppositional dialogues such as remembrance and play and monumentality and protection. The artist’s signature choice of medium, synthetic fur, subverts the monumental scale of her sculptures, to draw allusions to childhood and play. Temin obtained her PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2007. She is Professor and Head of Fine Art at Monash Art Design & Architecture, Monash University. Temin’s work is nationally and internationally recognised, and is included in public museum collections within Australia. In 2018 My Monument: Black Garden, 2010 was in Spacemakers and roomshakers: Installations from the Collection, Art Gallery, NSW. She recently completed a commission for Kanye West and Kim Kardashian in Los Angeles. In 2015 she made The Remembrance Project for the Gus Fisher Gallery in Auckland and in 2009 her work was the subject of a 20 year survey exhibition at the Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne.
Emily Floyd
Working in sculpture, printmaking and public installation, Emily Floyd creates text-based sculptures and pedagogically inspired works that combine a strong focus on visual qualities with an interest in the legacies of modernism. Her work engages a wide range of disciplines including social activism, design and typography, literature and cultural studies, community participation and public education. Emily has completed a number of high-profile public art commissions, most notably for Heide Museum of Modern Art, the Arsenale for the 56th Venice Bienale, Melbourne’s EastLink Motorway, the Docklands Precinct, Sydney’s mid-century architecture precinct, and Monash University Museum of Art’s first annual commission for Ian Potter Sculpture Court, This Place Will Always Be Open. In 2017 Floyd completed a landmark commission for the Art Gallery of New South Wales Central Court. Emily Floyd is Senior Lecturer in the Fine Art Program at Monash Art Design and Architecture, she is an Australia Council and Myer Fellow and is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery.
Trent Walter
Trent Walter is an artist, printer and publisher interested in the intersection between printed matter and contemporary art. Walter’s collaborations take the form of artists’ books, print series and, increasingly, workshops that explore the social aspects of printmaking practice. The latter has seen his work shift increasingly into the public realm to engage with marginalised communities and ideas of national identity expressed through print-based media. Along with Brook Andrew, Walter was commissioned by the City of Melbourne to create a permanent, public artwork commemorating the lives and public execution of Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner. The pair were also joint recipients of a George Mora Fellowship in 2013–14. Walter is a sessional lecturer in printmaking at Monash University, Art, Design and Architecture.
