Curatorial Clinics
ACCA held three Curatorial Clinics in 2007, with a total of 36 artists meeting with members of ACCA’s curatorial team and three invited curators/artists. Gerardo Mosquera, freelance curator and art critic based in Havana and Adjunct Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, met with six emerging artists including those exhibiting in NEW07. Thirteen emerging artists from around Australia met with a panel consisting of members of the ACCA curatorial team (Juliana Engberg, Anna MacDonald and Gabrielle de Vietri) and Tony Schwensen, Curatorial Clinic alumnus and teacher at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Bristol-based independent curator and writer, Claire Doherty met with a total of 17 emerging and established artists over three days.
Schools Program
ACCA’s popular schools program continued to grow, with many repeat visitations, especially to NEW07 which has become part of the annual calendar for many schools. Over 8,000 students accessed ACCA’s program including 3,500 who attended workshops and guided tours tailored to the curriculum and presented by ACCA’s professional education staff.
Public and Education Programs
Go West
This 2006 initiative supported by the Besen Foundation targeted schools in the Western suburbs who may not otherwise be able to come to ACCA. The Go West program provided free buses to transport 24 secondary school classes to ACCA for free workshops linking the exhibition program to the education curriculum.
MSO/ ACCA music and art collaboration for schools
A highly successful event in April was a concert by secondary music students from Caulfield Grammar School. The students worked with staff from ACCA and MSO over a series of weeks to compose musical scores in response to the art pieces in NEW07. These were then performed for the public in the gallery spaces on a Saturday afternoon.
Art in Your Ear
This successful 2006 ACCA initiative continued with the production of 20 new recorded guides by artists and ACCA curators.
Regional Program
ACCA delivered 12 workshops through the “Arts Immersion: Starting Points” program in partnership with Malthouse Theatre and Chunky Move. The program attracted an increased number of students from a range of regional Victorian schools to undertake day workshops across the 3 art forms of visual arts, theatre and dance. The Victorian Arts Centre’s, VRAP9 program, in collaboration with ACCA, continued to offer regionally based Year 9 level students with the opportunity to gain access to and engage in talks surrounding cutting-edge contemporary art.
Look Who’s Talking
ACCA’s Look Who’s Talking free weekend talks featured artists, curators and guest speakers in the gallery space. In 2007 this popular program continued with 18 free Sunday afternoon talks by artists, curators and social commentators linked to the exhibition program.
Talk – Peter Clarke, artist
4 February 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Mike Nelson: Lonely Planet.
Talk – Jonathan Green, journalist
11 February 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Mike Nelson: Lonely Planet.
Talk – Chris Wallace-Crabb, poet
18 February 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Mike Nelson: Lonely Planet.
Talk – Rebecca Coates, curator
25 February 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Mike Nelson: Lonely Planet.
Talk – Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro, artists
18 March 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW07.
Talk – Anna Macdonald, curator
25 March 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW07.
Talk – Christian Capurro, artist
1 April 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW07.
Talk – Brendan Lee, artist
15 April 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW07.
Talk – Anastasia Klose, artist
29 April 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW07.
Talk – Damiano Bertoli, artist
6 May 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW07.
Talk – Nick Devlin, artist
13 May 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW07.
Talk – Juliana Engberg, curator
20 May 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition NEW07.
Talk – Kirsten von Bibra, theatre director
19 August 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Sonia Leber and David Chesworth: Always Everywhere Apparent and A Kind of You: 6 Portraits by Roni Horn.
Talk – Sonia Leber & David Chesworth, artists
26 August 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Sonia Leber and David Chesworth: Always Everywhere Apparent.
Talk – Alison Bell, actress
2 September 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Sonia Leber and David Chesworth: Always Everywhere Apparent and A Kind of You: 6 Portraits by Roni Horn.
Talk – Nikos Papastergiadis, cultural theorist
9 September 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Sonia Leber and David Chesworth: Always Everywhere Apparent and A Kind of You: 6 Portraits by Roni Horn.
Talk – Robert Nelson, critic
16 September 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Sonia Leber and David Chesworth: Always Everywhere Apparent and A Kind of You: 6 Portraits by Roni Horn.
Talk – Charlotte Day, curator
23 September 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Sonia Leber and David Chesworth: Always Everywhere Apparent and A Kind of You: 6 Portraits by Roni Horn.
Talk – Juliana Engberg, curator
30 September 2007
Held in conjunction with the exhibition Sonia Leber and David Chesworth: Always Everywhere Apparent and A Kind of You: 6 Portraits by Roni Horn.
29 August 2007
In honour of Australia’s largest ever involvement in the 52nd Venice Biennale, Think with the Senses – Feel with the Mind: Art in the Present Tense, ACCA’s Artistic Director, Juliana Engberg discussed the 2007 Venice Biennale with participating Australian artists, Callum Moron, Susan Norrie and Daniel von Sturmer.
Venice Revisited invitation
A Constructed World CHANGE Forums
These events, as part of the major, monographic survey of one of Australia’s most enduring and experimental partnerships saw the spaces of ACCA activated with ad hocery and artistic spontaneity while creating an opportunity for reflection about A Constructed World’s evolving body of work:
ACW Performance – The Melbourne Complaints Choir
3 June 2007
A choir of singers and non-singers performed a song full of complaints in the first installment from the Melbourne chapter of the Helsinki Complaints Choir
http://www.complaintschoir.org/
ACW Forum: Open Call Video Salon
6 June 2007
Artists were invited to show their video works at ACCA, and have them discussed by a panel including an artist, a critic and someone from another profession.
ACW Performance: Truck Dance
9 June 2007
A flat-bed truck travelled around Melbourne’s CBD laden with estactic dancers (referencing ACDC’s 1976 performance on a truck of ‘It’s a long way to the top’).
ACW Forum: Collectivity
10 June 2007
Open invitation to discuss the idea of ‘Collectivity’, and whether there are any real benefits from working together.
ACW Forum: Publications Open Call
13 June 2007
A Constructed World invited artists and independent publishers to present their print projects to an audience.
ACW Forum: We live in an environment of publishing without publishers.
17 June 2007
A Constructed World invited the audience to discuss the self-publishing industry, in particular art book publishing.
ACW Forum: The changing audience for contemporary art.
20 June 2007
Who is the audience for contemporary art?
ACW Forum: Losers and Failure
24 June 2007
What is the-role-in-culture for those who don’t get selected, accepted, chosen, acknowledged?
ACW Forum: Politics and Art in Australia
27 June 2007
Are these overlapping fields, or separate concerns. Who is interested?
ACW Performance: Explaining contemporary art to live eels
30 June 2007
Based on a Joseph Beuys work How to explain pictures to a dead hare (1965), which was concerned with explaining what was unknowable.