How can smell function as a social organiser?

Doubting Cottard is a lecture and workshop exploring the material qualities of smell. Cottard, refers to the  three year-old character in by Albert Camus’ book The Plague. In this lecture, the all male dialogue in Camus’ book has been translated into a female rhetoric, aiming for an exchange between narrative, language, the bodily authority of voice and the social implications of odour.

The short lecture will transition into a workshop with an introduction to how we smell, curated by the artist Michelle Mantsio. Through the exploration of olfactory thresholds, the workshop aims to bring attention to the disruptive potential of smell and challenge how a human can extend to use different senses. Participants will be asked to smell a variety of scents provided. In response to this, they will experiment with distances, descriptors and the effect of working with different participants.

On the basis of these findings participants will be asked to explore their response to the political implications of these smells. Could they be disruptive to a dominant narrative? Generate new meanings? Contribute to a feminist methodology? Experimentation is welcomed and encouraged.

The workshop will conclude with a discussion on how these responses to smell could be further explored as a catalyst to re-imagine public space and agency.

Open to adults and children of all ages.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Michelle Mantsio’s art practice is research-based; she undertakes interviews and fieldwork that become instructions that guide her subsequent art-making. She completed a degree in Fine Art with Honours and a Master of Art in Public Space at RMIT University, Melbourne and is currently completing a PhD at VCA, Melbourne. Mantsio is a member of the Melbourne writing collective Stamm. Mantsio has participated in numerous international workshops, think tanks, symposiums and conferences and has exhibited nationally and internationally.

Join members of the Women’s Art Register (WAR) at the Round Table to hear their stories of their own ‘unfinished business’ on the final day of the exhibition Unfinished Business: Perspectives on art and feminism. The panel will focus on the role of WAR historically, and its current position in relation to feminist art practice in Australia today and in the future, to reposition WAR as a critical force in contemporary politics and culture.

The panel is composed of members and volunteers to the Women’s Art Register, including Stephanie Leigh, Danielle McCarthy, Caroline Phillips, Rosemary Mangiamele, Juliette Peers and Katherine Edwards.


ABOUT THE WOMEN’S ART REGISTER

The Women’s Art Register is Australia’s living archive of women’s art practice (non-binary and Trans inclusive) and a National, Artist-Run and Not-for-Profit community and resource.
Designated a ‘Collection of National Significance’ by the Heritage Collections Council in 2009, this unique archive houses the images, catalogues, posters and ephemera of over 5000 Australian and International artists. Since 1975 the Women’s Art Register has provided an inclusive, independent platform for research, education, advocacy and support for its members and the Arts and Education sectors, enhancing the status of women artists and addressing issues of equity, professional practice and cultural heritage.

 SPEAKER BIOS

Stephanie Leigh is a Melbourne based artist and a volunteer with the women’s Art Register. Working with painting, sculpture and installation, Leigh’s work draws on feminist tropes of the historical and modernist canon such as the reclining pose, ideas about beauty, the naked fetish and cultural and political oppression. Stephanie has been recently awarded a Bundanon Trust Artist Residency, which she will undertake in 2018.

Danielle McCarthy is an interdisciplinary visual artist and a volunteer with the Women’s Art Register. Danielle has a special interest in the expanded fields of painting and drawing that includes large-scale installation and performance projects that seek to engage with life’s momentums and the elaboration of difference through repetitive gestures, interventions and actions. Her creative practice acknowledges its debt to feminism through an engagement with those forces that hold bodies together.

Caroline Phillips is Secretary of the Women’s Art Register, and an artist, independent curator and researcher. Caroline has recently been awarded a PhD on feminist, relational practice by the University of Melbourne/Victorian College of the Arts. 
Phillips also works as an independent curator and researcher on collaborative projects that highlight the strength of women’s art practice and challenge systemic inequities in political and cultural systems.

Rosemary Mangiamele is a committee member of the Women’s Art Register and an artist. Rosemary has worked in painting for over 25 years, exploring abstraction in over 50 exhibitions.

Juliette Peers is a member of the Women’s Art Register committee. An esteemed historian and lecturer, Juliette has published over thirty books and articles on women’s art practice and lectures at RMIT. She published many essays relating to contemporary art and feminist studies in Australia.

Katherine Edwards is a member of the Women’s Art Register committee, an artist and a gallerist. Katherine works in painting, and is an Art consultant for Libby Edwards gallery.

You’ve Got a Mouth is an interactive discussion at the Round Table led by Veronica Caven Aldous and a diverse group of artists. During this event, artists will read and discuss their own ideas and statements on and about feminism, creating opportunities to deepen each other’s ideas on the relationship between feminism and the visual arts. The statements discussed will be diverse and encompass narratives biographical, historical, performative, poetic and current. Audience participation is warmly welcomed.

ARTIST BIOS

Veronica Caven Aldous’ practice includes printmaking, painting, sculpture, light works, installation, curating shows and discussions that draw on her interests in feminism, art history and the history of philosophy particularly from Indian Vedic literature. Rather than only exhibiting works she is interested in the ideas that surround them.

Caroline Phillips’ work explores topologies of feminism through the exploration of material objects. The conjuncture of craft practices and a minimalist abstracted form activates relationships of movement, agency and affect. Her work seeks to propose a potential aesthetic of relatedness.

Danielle McCarth is an interdisciplinary visual artist with a particular focus on the expanded fields of painting and drawing that includes large-scale installation and performance projects that seek to engage with life’s momentums and the elaboration of difference through repetitive gestures, interventions and actions. Her creative practice acknowledges its debt to feminism through an engagement with those forces that hold bodies together.

Janice Gobey‘s practice intends to experiment with the concept of creating empathy through paint in a world that is increasingly disconnected and alienating. She is interested in connecting with the viewer and giving them the opportunity to sense the emotions of the human and animal subjects in her paintings, through the use of highly tactile materials such as fur and drapery.

Juliette Peers’ varied interests include both historical and contemporary art and design, with a particular focus on fashion, dolls and women’s history. She is widely published as an art historian both in Australia, and for various British and North American publications including Pre-Raphaelite Sculpture and the Dictionary of Women Artists. In addition to these, Peers has also published many essays relating to contemporary art and feminist studies in Australia.

Kalinda Vary’s practice explores emotionality, vulnerability, power, humiliation, constraints of language and the problems with representations of identity. Recent works have focused on queer concerns of the body, performance within social structures and imposed cultural identities.

Kathy Heyward is a Melbourne-based artist, designer and educator whose practice aims to promote authentic and meaningful community engagement. She has maintained both independent and collaborative arts practices since graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2000 and again in 2009 with a post-graduate degree.

Nina Ross is a Melbourne based artist working predominantly with video, performance and photography. With a strong research-led practice, Ross’ work responds to experiences of using and sharing language and its repercussions on the body as a metaphor for a sense of self.

Tania Smith is a performance artist with a sense of humour. She works with video, photography and costume, and her work explores liberation, bodily freedom, and pleasure.

This writing workshop and discussion, led by Lucinda Strahan, will explore modes of nonfiction writing that respond to contemporary art by interrogating the dominant masculinist hegemon of theory and the conventions of both assessment and explanation that often constrict art historical writing.

Participants will discuss extracts from essays by Maggie Nelson, Dodie Bellamy and Rachel Blau DuPlessis in a group, considering art as an emotional prompt, a thematic trampoline and a narrative trigger for writing that explores both personal and visceral experiences alongside the intellectual and analytical.

The workshop aims to create a dialogue between how these modes of writing with, writing through and writing from art enable a more nuanced voice through which the writer can weave a more complex and productive engagement between writer and art work. Participants will have the opportunity to create a spontaneous piece of writing in response to a work in the exhibition, and will have the opportunity to read and share their early ideas in a welcoming and supportive space. Writers of all levels and experience are welcome.

SCHEDULE
10am–11am: Introduction and discussion

11am–12pm: Writing exercises responding to exhibition

12pm–1pm: Sharing and further discussion

PRESENTER BIO
Lucinda Strahan has published widely on contemporary art and culture in newspapers, journals and exhibition catalogues nationally. Her work has appeared in The Age, The Australian, ABC online, Crikey, The Big Issue and Harpers Bazaar, and her exhibition reviews have been published in UNmagazine, Broadsheet and RealTime. Strahan has a long-standing interest in visual and experimental writing and her creative works have featured in both art and literary contexts. Her literary-visual essay A Redacted History for dufunctmag.com was nominated for the 2014 Pushcart Prize. In 2017 convened a panel on Essaying the Literary-Visual at the  NonfictionNow conference in Reykjavik, 2017. Strahan is Lecturer in the Professional Communication program at RMIT University and a researcher in RMIT University non/fictionLab. She is currently completing a literary-visual autobiography as part of a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Wollongong.

Come to the Round Table to sit and read, or listen with EcoFeminist Fridays. These public ‘read-ins’ aim to create a kind of refuge for critical ecological feminist thought and action.

In these sessions we will be reading aloud, as a collective, from the opening of Karen Barad’s groundbreaking work of theoretical physics and feminist theory, Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007). Bring your own copy of the text to read from, or share with a member of the group.

EcoFeminist Fridays is convened by Hayley Singer, and made up of small group of artists and scholars who are committed to traversing the texts that make up the histories of critical ecological feminist thought and action. They are driven by the need to engage in slow, emergent and collective modes of learning. Together, they work with the idea that reading aloud is a generous and generative act, which inspires wild conversations and stirs up unexpected stories from participants.

Click here to read more about the Round Table.

Come to the Round Table to sit and read, or listen with EcoFeminist Fridays. These public ‘read-ins’ aim to create a kind of refuge for critical ecological feminist thought and action.

In these sessions we will be reading aloud, as a collective, from the opening of Karen Barad’s groundbreaking work of theoretical physics and feminist theory, Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007). Bring your own copy of the text to read from, or share with a member of the group.

EcoFeminist Fridays is convened by Hayley Singer, and made up of small group of artists and scholars who are committed to traversing the texts that make up the histories of critical ecological feminist thought and action. They are driven by the need to engage in slow, emergent and collective modes of learning. Together, they work with the idea that reading aloud is a generous and generative act, which inspires wild conversations and stirs up unexpected stories from participants.

This Round Table Reading Group will occur again on Friday 16 February 10am–12pm.

Click here to read more about the Round Table.

How has the dominant feminist narrative failed to accommodate for those who don’t identify with or align with this dominant narrative?

This discussion led by Reworked begins by addressing this question and aims to build on and give nuance to the multiplicities of the feminisms that concurrently exist within our communities. The panelists will reinstate their aspirations for the future of feminist actions and the implementation of diverse feminist practices.

An afternoon session of informal creative sharing will follow this event, during which, spoken word artists and poets will perform works and engage in discussions about their creative process and how feminist practices direct, influence, or are imbued in this process.

ABOUT REWORKED
Reworked is a collaboration between Alec Reade of New Wayfinders, Josie Alexandra and Sofia Skobeleva on a series of group discussions that aim at challenging hegemonic feminist discourse by giving voice to marginalised perspectives within their local community. Reworked events create an inclusive space for learning and sharing of theories and practices, for building a stronger intersectional artistic community within Naarm (Melbourne).

These events provide a platform to voices from IaWOC (Indigenous and Women of Colour), IaQTIPOC (queer/trans and/or intersex Indigenous and People of Colour), trans, gender diverse and first-generation immigrant and refugee communities who are frequently excluded from the feminist discourse, to share their voices, prose and ideas about the contemporary conditions and urgencies that inhabit their lives and work.

Centring around a diverse array of masculine experiences and perspectives, this discussion at The Round Table presented by Reworked, aims to contextualise the urgency of intersectional feminism. Addressing topics such as toxic masculinity, masculine privilege, and trans masculinity, this panel will highlight the virtues, flaws and nuance of masculinity, as well as, how identity might work cohesively with and within intersectional feminist practice to heal individuals and community.

An afternoon session of informal creative sharing will follow this event, during which, spoken word artists and poets will perform works and engage in discussions about their creative process and how feminist practices direct, influence, or are imbued in this process.

ABOUT REWORKED

Reworked is a collaboration between Alec Reade of New Wayfinders, Josie Alexandra and Sofia Skobeleva on a series of group discussions that aim at challenging hegemonic feminist discourse by giving voice to marginalised perspectives within their local community. Reworked events create an inclusive space for learning and sharing of theories and practices, for building a stronger intersectional artistic community within Naarm (Melbourne).

These events provide a platform to voices from IaWOC (Indigenous and Women of Colour), IaQTIPOC (queer/trans and/or intersex Indigenous and People of Colour), trans, gender diverse and first-generation immigrant and refugee communities who are frequently excluded from the feminist discourse, to share their voices, prose and ideas about the contemporary conditions and urgencies that inhabit their lives and work.

Do we need a Women’s Museum in Australia? Why? Why not? What should it do? What would it look like?

Her Place Women’s Museum Australia is a not-for-profit organisation that celebrates the social, civic and entrepreneurial achievements of all Australian women and their role in shaping our nation. The vision for Her Place is to create a public space that honours the achievements of women, through exhibitions, public programs, education resources and an archive.

Contribute to this discussion at The Round Table, convened by Penelope Lee, General Manager and Clare Williamson, Curator of Her Place, with:

• Paola Balla, Wemba-Wemba and Gunditjmara woman, artist, curator, speaker, educator and cultural producer. Paola developed Footscray Community Arts Centre’s first Indigenous Arts and Cultural program, and was a Senior Curator for Melbourne Museum’s First Peoples exhibition. Paola is currently based at Moondani Balluk Indigenous Academic Centre, Victoria University as a lecturer and PhD candidate focussed on Aboriginal women’s art and practices of resistance, she is the inaugural Lisa Bellear Indigenous Research Scholar. In 2016 she co-curated Sovereignty at ACCA with Director Max Delany and is a co-curator of Unfinished Business: Perspectives on art and feminism.
• Stella Bridie,  former Fitzroy High School student and passionate activist who co-founded the FHS Feminist Collective and has written articles for Rosie Respect, Young Vagabond, and Sheilas.
• Dr Natalie Kon-yu, creative writer and feminist academic. She wrote the piece ‘Welcome to the Museum of Australian Women’s History’ which envisions what a national women’s museum in a major Australian city might look like. Currently Natalie is a director on the Her Place Women’s Museum Australia Board.
• Kate MacNeill, Associate Professor in the School of Culture and Communication and Director of the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She is an art historian whose doctoral research focused on nation and identity construction in contemporary art in Australia. As an activist she has been involved in campaigns for equal pay and other work-related feminist claims.

Babes in Books is taking over the Round Table with a reading group convened by Catherine Connolly and Stephanie Van Schilt, with a reading by  Jessica Knight. The reading group will focus on Nadja Spiegelman’s I’m supposed to protect you from all this (2016), a recent memoir about three generations of women. Spiegelman’s book, which embraces ideas around matriarchs, intimacy, intergenerational trauma, identity and sexuality, will be the starting point for both personal and political conversations on issues affecting contemporary feminism.

Writer Jessica Knight will give an and introduction to Nadja Spiegelman’s book, and perform a reading of a short piece of her own writing to spark conversations.

Babes in Books is a reading group dedicated to celebrating, discussing and critically engaging with the work of contemporary female identifying authors. It aims to increase awareness, conversation and engagement with contemporary feminist literature.

SPEAKER BIOS
Catherine Connolly is a Melbourne-based artist, curator and programmer. She is also the Co-Director of Girl Gang | Siteworks, a Brunswick-based project for female identifying creatives and socially invested practices, that will launch in 2018. She has curated, programmed and produced exhibitions, events and creative projects across festivals, galleries, community spaces and artist-run spaces nationally. Connolly has a particular interest in using creativity as a means of exploring gender equity and environmental justice.

Stephanie Van Schilt is host of Sisteria, a feminist podcast, and a freelance writer. She is the former Editor of The Lifted Brow and co-host of the Rereaders, her writing has been published in The Australian, Australian Book Review, The Saturday Paper and Junkee, among others.

Jessica Knight is a Melbourne-based feminist, writer, poet and artist. She was awarded a Creative Partnerships Australia grant in 2014. She is the author of a poetry collection Tongue Between Teeth. Her writing has been published in The Victorian Writer, and her artwork has been shown in Paper Dolls, D11 Docklands, 2014.