WHAT’S ON
DEAN CROSS | PARADE
5 – 21 July, 2019
OFF-SITE: 1/170 Montague Rd, South Brisbane
Opening Event: 5 July 2019, 6pm
PARADE is facilitated by Boxcopy and hosted at Outer Space.
In 1988 I was wheeled off a train in Brisbane, strapped to a rickety pram, my eyes were wide at the crush of people that surrounded me. I was rolled along a boulevard toward a monolithic inflatable kangaroo, and as my creaky carriage was pushed past this mega-fauna, it looked at me and winked. It was Matilda, the mascot from the 1982 Commonwealth games, and I was at Expo ’88.
This is my earliest memory.
The Expo as a concept has a long history rooted deeply in colonial showboating and self-congratulation. The expo’s would echo the agenda that to be civilised meant to be modern and that to be modern meant forward progression along some kind of invented trajectory out of Africa and toward iphones. The Expo’s would proudly display the spoils of the colonial project and, like the Olympics and Commonwealth Games, reinforce separatist nativism and celebrate authoritarian power. Like it is something to be proud of.
This collection of works – this parade – is the pavilion the Expo forgot. Maybe. It is two rooms of things created by one person (with the help of many others). It is an echo detached from its source.
Now I love kangaroo’s and hate overcrowded public transport. It is easy to understand why.
Bio:
Dean Cross was born and raised on Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country and is of Worimi descent. He is a trans-disciplinary artist primarily working across installation, sculpture and photographic mediums. His career began in contemporary dance, performing and choreographing nationally and internationally for over a decade with Australia’s leading dance companies. Following that Dean re-trained as a visual artist, gaining his Bachelor’s Degree from Sydney College of the Arts, and his First Class Honours from the ANU School of Art and Design. Dean has shown his work extensively across Australia. This includes the Indigenous Ceramic Prize at the Shepparton Art Musuem, curated by Anna Briers and Belinda Briggs (2018), Tarnanthi at the Art Gallery of South Australia, curated by Nici Cumpston (2017), RUNS DEEP a solo show at Alaska Projects, Sydney (2018), The Churchie Emerging Art Prize (2016), The Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize (2015), and the Macquarie Group Emerging Art Prize (2015) where his work was awarded the Highly Commended prize by artist, Joan Ross. In 2018, Dean created “Pilot” for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and also exhibited at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, as a part of the NEXTWAVE Festival Melbourne, with curator Amelia Winata, and at Artbank, Sydney in Talia Smith’s “In a World of Wounds”. Also, in 2018, Dean was a year-long Artist in Residence at the Canberra Contemporary Art Space (CCAS) as well as being selected to be a part of the 4A Beijing Studio Residency Program in Beijing, China.
In 2019, Dean has undertaken the inaugural Canberra/Wellington Indigenous Artist exchange, where he was supported by the ACT Government to undertake research with the National War Memorials in both Canberra and Wellington.
Bathroom Gossip
Charlie Donaldson & Hamish Lonergan / curated by Sophie Rose
Opening | Friday 12 July 2019 6-8pm
Exhibition | 13 – 27 July 2019
Artist talk Saturday 27 July 3-4pm
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House (1951) is important for architectural modernism—with its radical transparency, open plan and meticulous detailing—but at least some of its fame is gossipy. Mies was rumoured to be sleeping with the client, Dr Edith Farnsworth, and when their friendship soured they sued each other. Mies insisted on two bathrooms for a one-bedroom house, reportedly obsessed that guests might see Farnsworth’s dressing gown. The two bathrooms are separated from the exterior to preserve the continuous glass façade; small, windowless, beige spaces in a house filled with light and natural vistas. There are few blank surfaces to hang art in the house, so the next owner hung his collection in hermetically sealed frames in the shower.
‘Bathroom Gossip’ reinstates rumour in architecture. Bringing together the work of architectural graduate Hamish Lonergan and artist Charlie Donaldson, the show includes a 1:1 model of the left bathroom and (faux) archival material exposing Mies and Farnworth’s relationship and a wider conspiracy to use modernism as a cultural weapon in the Cold War effort.
Lonergan and Donaldson propose an alternative narrative of the Farnsworth House. In this account, clean formalism is replaced by messy love affairs; the Avant-garde becomes a guise for nuclear warfare; and direct chronology gives way to tabloid frenzy. The history offered by Lonergan and Donaldson is patchy and deeply neurotic—so strange that it might just be true.
Now That You’re Here
Olivia Lacey
Opening | Friday 12 July 2019 6-8pm
Exhibition | 13 – 27 July 2019
Artist talk Saturday 27 July 2019 6-7pm
Entry free but RSVP needed
OFFSITE: Music City Karaoke Rooms
Level 2, 134 Adelaide Street Brisbane City
‘Now That You’re Here’ marks Olivia Lacey’s return to performance and video art. She recreates the space of a karaoke room in order to deconstruct the aesthetics of the stage and examine the paradoxical limitations of self-expression through pop culture. The selected songs bring in themes of place, transporting viewers from the karaoke room to abstract concepts of romanticised places in lyrics at odds with their background imagery.
Olivia Lacey is a Brisbane based artist. Her practice employs processes of transcription and translation to explore the ambiguities, slippages or humour that can arise in interpersonal interactions. Her works combine referents appropriated from art historical texts, pop music lyrics and everyday conversations in order to examine the romantic dialogue as an intersubjective space of exchange. Recent exhibitions include Love Me, Love Me (2019), Metro Arts; Future Proof (2018), Boxcopy; Hatched: National Graduate Show (2018), Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts; and Maybe We Could Meet Again (2018), 3331 Arts Chiyoda.
Boxcopy is proud to be a founding member of All Conference – a national organising network comprised of 15 artist-led, experimental and cross-disciplinary arts organisations.
Representing a crucial stratum of the Australian arts ecology, All Conference members present diverse and innovative artistic programs which support the practices of living Australian artists. They connect these practices to diverse audiences via a passionate localism coupled with significant national and international peer-to-peer networks.
Founding members include: Alaska Projects (NSW), BLINDSIDE (VIC), Boxcopy (QLD), Bus Projects (VIC), c3 (VIC), Constance (TAS), FELTspace (SA), Firstdraft (NSW), Kings ARI (VIC), Moana (WA), Liquid Architecture (VIC), Runway (NSW), Seventh (VIC), Trocadero Artspace (VIC), and Un Projects (VIC).
