Sunday Arts Magazine

Experimenta announces its most ambitious triennial: Experimenta Life Forms

2021—2023

Experimenta, champion of art unbound by convention, announces its most ambitious international

triennial to date – Experimenta Life Forms: International Triennial of Media Art. Exploring our

changing relationship and definitions of life forms, this triennial is Experimenta’s eighth national touring

exhibition, premiering at Hobart’s Plimsoll Gallery in March 2021.

Experimenta Life Forms will astonish audiences with 20

international and Australian artists showcasing a range of

emerging artforms, including robotics, bio-art, screen-based

works, installations, participatory and generative art. Curated by

Jonathan Parsons, Lubi Thomas and Jessica Clark, the

exhibition thought provokingly engages with ideas of how new

understandings of biological and artificial life are challenging

human-centric thinking. The triennial features established and

emerging contemporary artists; adventurous creators who work

with technology in unexpected ways.

Signalling the role Australia’s ancient landmass plays in our understanding of the development of life

on this planet is Dominic Redfern’s installation First Forms. This multi-screen video work introduces

us to the pre-Cambrian world through his careful study of cyanobacteria that over time build up

sedimentary forms known as stromatolites. Stromatolites still exist in only a few locations globally,

including sites in Western Australia, home to the oldest known fossils dated to 3.5 billion years.

Cyanobacteria, because of their oxygen producing capability, are credited with significantly altering the

earth’s conditions, supporting the emergence of complex life.

The exhibition features four works from First Nation’s artists in Australia, Aotearoa (New Zealand) and

the USA. As Oglála Lakȟóta artist Kite writes “Indigenous ontologies already exist to understand forms

of ‘being’ which are outside of humanity.” Kite has collaborated with Devin Ronneberg on the

interactive installation Itówapi Čík’ala (Little Picture) inviting audiences to interact with a non-human

entity. Narungga artist Brad Darkson’s multi-media work Smart Object contrasts two processes: his

carving of a wooden plongi (club) and an avatar of the artist carving. This work critiques humanity’s

reliance on the digital processes that sever our spiritual connection to country.

Pioneers of the Bioart movement Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr will present an installation work entitled

Biomess. The artwork celebrates the diversity of life forms highlighting natural and artificial life that

confound our cultural notions of identity, sex, gender and reproduction. Natural history specimens,

sourced from significant local collections, feature in this installation and will vary as the exhibition tours.

A number of the triennial works provoke viewers to consider what may happen as engineering becomes

more sophisticated. French artist Justine Emard’s uncanny video work titled Soul Shift (video still

pictured above) documents the staged encounter between two generations of the Alter robot, developed

by renowned Japanese roboticists Hiroshi Ishiguro and Takashi Ikegami. The viewer wonders

whether the transference of Alter’s data between generations is a form of reincarnation without flesh?

Dutch artist Floris Kaayk’s speculative fiction work The Modular Body prompts audience to consider

the ethical questions involved in biotechnology research and development. This multi-channel video

installation explores the power that visual media has in distorting the lines between truth and fiction. It

asks us to consider the ethics of human manipulation of life by bringing us back to the core question:

Featuring the iconic music of Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus (ABBA) with book & lyrics by Tim Rice, the worldwide stage hit CHESS THE MUSICAL will be presented as a semi-staged concert style production featuring Logie-nominated and recent star of CHICAGONatalie Bassingthwaighte (Grease, Rent, Love, Loss, and What I Wore); Aria chart-topping vocalist Paulini (The Bodyguard, Saturday Night Fever, Hair); New York Metropolitan Opera singer Alexander Lewis (West Side Story for Handa Opera, The Merry Widow, Ragtime); semi-finalist in The Voice 2020 Mark Furze (Home and Away, Underbelly, It Takes Two); musical theatre favourite Rob Mills (Wicked, Ghost, Grease); opera singer Eddie Muliaumaseali’i(Show Boat, Das Rhinegold, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest)and musical theatre all-rounder Brittanie Shipway (The Voice, Big Fish, The Sapphires) with backing by a professional twenty-five piece orchestra.

CHESS THE MUSICAL is inspired by extraordinary real-life events and first premiered to glowing reviews in London’s West End in 1986 starring the beloved Elaine Paige. The West End season ran for three years, resulting in a BBC listener poll ranking CHESS THE MUSICAL seventh in a list of ‘Number One Essential Musicals’ of all time.

Featuring hits including I Know Him So Well – recognised in the Guinness Book of Records as the biggest selling UK chart single ever by a female duo – and the upbeat pop favourite One Night in Bangkok, music from CHESS THE MUSICAL is known the world over, with the original concept album described by Rolling Stone as having a “dazzling score (which) covers nearly all the pop bases”. Time Magazine declared the score as “rock symphonic synthesis ripe with sophistication and hummable tunes”.

CHESS THE MUSICAL tells the story of a complex love triangle combined with dramatic political intrigue, set against the background of the Cold War in the early 1980s, where Soviet and American forces attempt to manipulate an international chess championship for political gains.

CHESS THE MUSICAL is produced by impresario Adrian Storey from StoreyBoard Entertainment (Barnum, Follies, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and directed by renowned director Tyran Parke (Barnum, Follies, Sunday in the Park with George) and with Musical Direction by David Piper (Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, The Boyfriend, The Boy From Oz), Set & Costume Design by Dann Barber (Barnum, 33 Variations), Choreography by Freya List, Lighting Design by Gavan Swift & Sound Design by award-winning designer Michael Waters.

StoreyBoard Entertainment presents CHESS THEMUSICAL

With music by Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus (ABBA), lyrics by Tim Rice & Björn Ulvaeus and book by Tim Rice

Touring nationally April – June 2021

 

Melbourne

Regent Theatre

Thursday 22 April at 7:30pm – NEW PERFORMANCE ADDED

Friday 23 April at 7:30pm – NEW PERFORMANCE ADDED

Saturday 24 April 2021, 2:00pm and 7:30pm

Geelong Gallery

55 Little Malop Street

Geelong VIC 3220 Australia

Geelong Gallery

27 February to 16 May 2021

Geelong Gallery is proud to announce

the rescheduling of RONE in Geelong

following nationwide gallery closures

due to the COVID–19 pandemic.

The exhibition will now open on

27 February 2021.

Acclaimed for his major transformations

of abandoned spaces worldwide and

his sell-out installation, EMPIRE, at

Burnham Beeches in 2019, RONE returns

to his hometown of Geelong with his

first survey exhibition and a unique and

immersive experience set to delight

audiences.

Over the last two decades, RONE

has built an exceptional reputation

for large-scale wall paintings and

entrancing installations that explore

concepts of beauty and decay. Geelong

Gallery’s presentation will include the

first comprehensive solo survey of

the artist’s career from early stencil

works and street art, to photographs

that document his transformation of

abandoned spaces (one of which will

be brought to life in a 3D recreation,

commissioned for this exhibition).

The exhibition will also take visitors on a

journey through a unique commissioned

installation, with RONE transforming one

of the Gallery’s most significant rooms

in response to the architecture and

history of the building, as well as the

Gallery’s permanent collection. A multi-

media experience will connect visitors

back into the urban environment where

the artist’s works have been painted in

abandoned properties.

For the commissioned installation,

RONE has taken inspiration from the

architecture of the Douglass Gallery,

one of the most historical rooms in

the building’s evolution. This room’s

scale and architectural and ornamental

features—such as ionic pilasters,

horizontal dado, and ceiling skylights—

have led RONE to consider the beauty

and grandness of the architecture of

earlier eras, and the inevitable decay of

spaces (when not valued and cared for).

Additional inspiration has come from

the highly decorative interiors of

Baroque grand palazzos in Venice, and

the traditions of trompe l’oeil painting

employed to simulate architectural

details. Working with interior stylist Carly

Spooner, RONE’s transformation of the

room from a grand reception venue to

a now derelict site, will incorporate his

signature painted murals and a haunting

new soundtrack by composer and

collaborator Nick Batterham.

The project has also seen RONE’s

re-engagement with a collection

he visited in his youth. Works such

as the Gallery’s iconic A bush burial

by Frederick McCubbin (1890) and

several portraits are referenced in the

installation, as are a number of early

landscapes of Geelong. The decorative

arts collection—and particularly the work

of local early 20th century china painter

Florence Royce—has inspired the

general colour palette of the installation.

Artist, RONE says ‘Working in my home

town is special. I had to leave to come

back, but Geelong Gallery has given me

the recognition to further my career; my

first institutional solo exhibition. Geelong

has done that for me’.

RONE continues: ‘My show is an ode to

abandoned spaces and a reminder to

value the original treasure they once

were. Influenced by the architecture

of the building and the toll of time,

the central installation preserves an

imagined moment of the space adorned

at its finest and left to slowly deteriorate.

Featuring a push and pull between light

and dark, viewers may be compelled

Rohan talks about all things Arts.

ASH KEATING PRESENTS DUALITY

13 February 2021 – 16 May 2021

IMAGE > Ash Keating with works Aerial #1 – #4 in his studio, 2020, pigment, urethane acrylic, perlite and mica flakes on canvas. Photograph by Dan Preston.

Following a year of creative experimentation and marking a major transition in technique, leading mid-career Melbourne based artist Ash Keating’s new series expands the physical and psychological complexity of his work.

The exhibition includes four very large canvases and a series of eight smaller domestically scaled paintings. These stunning new works have been formed by the application and manipulation of countless layers of media, including pigments, perlite, mica flakes, paint and water. The process of building and paring back has involved an eclectic set of equipment such as seed sprayers, leaf blowers, wire brush, electric sanders, vacuums, and Stanley knives.

Forged over the period of one month at the end of 2020, towards the end of the lengthy COVID-19 lockdown in Melbourne, the works have been designed to be viewed in real life rather than virtually via a screen. Their surfaces hold an intense depth and richness and their appearance changes depending on the light and angle from which they are viewed. The series has a meditative quality that invites slow and reflective viewing. Created as an antidote to isolation and anxiety, the works encourage reconnection, reflection and solace.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a public art project commissioned by the City of Port Phillip.

“My very first studio paintings, going back 18-22 years, were textured abstract aerial landscapes, inspired by my light aircraft flights in north east Victoria with my Grandma Elva Rush. I learnt to fly with my Gran when I lived with her in Mansfield in the school holidays when I was 15-18 years old, and it was these flights that inspired me to take photographs of the landscape and create several works on canvas in response.

“I am positioning a body of work as a means to reflect change, like the seasons, like the way we as a society have endured significant change over the course of this past year and equally as individuals. I hope these works will be able to provide a space for the viewer to connect with themselves, physically and metaphysically,” says Ash.

ABOUT ASH KEATING

Ash Keating works within an expanded contemporary field, through painting, performance, sculpture, video and intervention. Keating’s large outdoor murals, created with paint filled fire extinguishers, can be found across Melbourne.

Keating has exhibited extensively in galleries and created numerous large-scale, site-responsive art projects in Australia and internationally since 2004. He has undertaken numerous large-scale painting commissions in public spaces, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2013), the Adelaide Festival Centre (2015) and Sydney’s Domain (2018). His works are held in many public and private collections including the NGV, NGA, MCA, AGNSW, MUMA and Artbank.

Marriner Group boasts five of Melbourne’s magnificent landmark heritage venues, all having played host to some of the biggest shows and stars of the entertainment world.

Venues include:

* Regent Theatre

* Plaza Ballroom

* Princess Theatre

* Comedy Theatre

* Forum Melbourne

 

Marriner Group is renowned for its event production, theatrical expertise, world class venues, the finest food, and for delivering the most spectacular events in Melbourne.

Whether it be the breathtaking Plaza Ballroom with its Spanish Rococo architecture, or the Romanesque ambience of the Forum Theatre, these five venues offer the most unique and spectacular settings. From Gala Dinners, Cocktail Receptions and Product Launches, to AGM’s, Conferences or Exclusive Theatre Hospitality Packages, Marriner Group can cater to any event requirement.

SINGLE LADIES

Written by Michele Lee

Directed by Bagryana Popov

INK World Premiere

6 February – 14 March

Featuring Caroline Lee and Andrea Swifte, & Jem Lai

Set & Costume Design Romanie Harper

Lighting Design Rachel Lee

Sound Design Elissa Goodrich

Written by the award-winning writer of Going Down and

Rice, Michele Lee, Single Ladies is a hilarious buddy story of

three lone women told over the course of one day.

Set in the sanitised grunge of Collingwood, Anne, Lilike and Rachel are from different generations and backgrounds and hold different

allegiances to their neighbourhood – but a chance happening outside the local Coles sets them on the path to an unlikely friendship.

This world premiere of Single Ladies was developed through Red Stitch’s unique INK playwriting program and was in its first week of

previews in March 2020 when it had to close due to Covid-19 restrictions. During lockdown, Michele developed a series of short

audio works based on the three characters from Single Ladies. As an introduction to the three characters, the monologues created

during Covid-19 can be found at www.redstitch.net.

The INK playwriting program plays a vital role in the Australian theatre landscape, developing and producing new Australian plays,

and nurturing works to their fullest potential. The INK program has been responsible for developing works such as Jurassica by Dan

Giovannoni, The Honey Bees by Caleb Lewis, desert, 6:29pm by Morgan Rose, Lamb by Jane Bodie and Control by Keziah Warner.

Michele Lee is a Hmong-Australian playwright with a razor-sharp eye for the contradictions of multiculturalism and the interplay

between sexuality, identity, displacement and desire in contemporary culture. At 29, she wrote her debut novel, Banana Girl, an

irreverent and poignant memoir about living in an on-line world, Gen Y yearnings and the pressures of being a young artist.

The world premiere of Single Ladies will be realised by an entirely female team. Directed by Bagryana Popov (Subclass 26A, Cafe

Scheherezade, Sarajevo Suite, Of Cows, Women and War, Studies in Being Human) it features Red Stitch Ensemble members Caroline

Lee and Andrea Swifte alongside guest actor Jem Lai, with set and costume design by Romanie Harper, lighting by Rachel Lee, and

sound design by Elissa Goodrich.

Venue: Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre, Rear, 2 Chapel Street, St Kilda East 3183

Previews: 6 – 9 February

Opening Night: Wednesday 10 February

Season: 6 February – 14 March

Times: Wednesday – Saturday 8.00pm, Sunday 6.30pm, Saturday 13 March 2.00pm

Following the success of his walkthrough art experience Blinking into the Sunlight in 2019, renowned street-artist Mysterious Alpresents SPOOKHOUSE — a new multi-sensory art exhibition experience set inside a re-imagined fairground ghost train. Climb aboard a rickety cart and journey through a twisting labyrinth of animated characters, paintings, projections and special effects created by Mysterious Al.

 

SPOOKHOUSE will take over a secret location in Melbourne to be revealed closer to the date, and becomes Al’s most ambitious project yet. Opening Friday 19 – Sunday 28 March for people of all ages, the world first concept continues the artist’s long history of hosting art exhibitions in unusual spaces.

 

Fans of Al’s work will recognise his distinctive style. SPOOKHOUSE showcases 70 new works that will haunt the ten-person ghost train and inhabit an adjoining gallery space.

 

 

It’s artwork meets robotics, and Mysterious Al delivers a one-of-a-kind experience brimming with art and filled with scares, mystery and a touch of humour.

 

Featuring paintings, projections and the artist’s first foray into sculpture — SPOOKHOUSE challenges the way we interpret and consume art by playing on the nostalgia of a traditional 1950’s ghost train.

“There aren’t many travelling ghost trains in Australia, so finding the right one involved going down a few rabbit holes. The machine we sourced will have to travel through three states to get here,” says Al.

 

After the ride, visitors step straight into a gallery space of Al’s paintings and paper works. All artwork is for sale and limited-edition merchandise is exclusively available on site during SPOOKHOUSE.

 

Tickets go on sale Wednesday 10 February via EventBrite or mysteriousal.com and range from $8-$12 plus a booking fee, with kids under three permitted free entry. Tickets are limited and 60-minute sessions apply.

 

Mysterious Al is a contemporary artist from London UK; living and working in Melbourne, Australia since 2011. Al rose to fame in the early 2000’s through the explosion of street art, developing a notoriety for his colourful, energetic works. Al’s current paintings are based on ancient tribal masks, reimagined in wild contemporary colours. His work is striking and fun. But look closer and you’ll see fragility, vulnerability and pieces that poke fun at man’s psyche and a fragile sense of self. Mysterious Al has shown extensively at galleries and art fairs worldwide and has collaborated with major brands suc...

Boroondara Arts’ first exhibition of 2021 will be Reconfigured/Rediscovered, as part of the PHOTO 2021 International Festival of Photography, showing Saturday 23 January – Sunday 11 April 2021. Six artists will come together to question the relationship between image and reality, asking how images operate and how they can be created without a camera.

Reconfigured/Rediscovered brings together a group of artists to extend our perceptions of photography and image-making into new realms, challenging the very nature of pictorial representation and photography’s inherent self-reflexivity with examples of bold, boundary-pushing experimentation. Featuring artists Christian Capurro, Ben Cauchi, Danica Chappell, Peta Clancy, Daniel Crooks, Izabela Pluta and Robyn Stacey.

Christian Capurro is an artist, photographer and filmmaker using digital and analogue tools, media and processes. For this exhibition Capurro has re-purposed tripods, a large specimen being the first object to be encountered in Act One of Two Shores (pictured above). Secured upside-down to the floor, it towers up on a slight incline, as if to greet us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ben Cauchi is a New Zealand photographer based in Berlin, represented by Darren Knight Gallery in Sydney. Cauchi’s practice examines the nature of photography, the passage of time, and the psychological dimensions of viewing, using very early photographic techniques on glass or metal. For Reconfigured/Rediscovered, Ben will showcase his One Owns Grey series. In his practice Cauchi uses traditional printing methods, such as ambrotypes and tintypes, to create darkly ethereal, contemplative images, which pose questions about mortality, the subconscious and pictorial representation itself.

Danica Chappell is a visual artist based in Melbourne who has a curiosity for spatial-temporal abstraction. Working with the elasticity of process from ‘darkroom haptic’ actions, Danica skirts the peripheries of photography to deconstruct material conventions.

Peta Clancy is a Melbourne-based artist who is a descendant of the Bangerang people from south east Australia. While her practice has incorporated a number of different media, Clancy is primarily a photographer and has a strong history of residencies and participation in academic conferences. Her work explores corporeality and a sustained interest in the physicality of photographic prints. (Work pictured above left)

Izabella Pluta’s practice embraces photography as a way of interpreting and re-conceptualising the function that images have in the present. Negotiating the possibilities of how material forms come together, she draws largely on finding, fragmenting, translating and reconfiguring things that are both photographed and found. Izabella explains: “I have this very precarious relationship with photography. I am invested, consumed by and in love with the medium and all the complex ideas that come from it, but then I try to resist its language, or I question its use. Maybe that’s why what I make is increasingly shifting – moving across, photographing out in the landscape or in the studio, collecting material that I then disorientate from the original source. An attempt to slow down the experience of looking but also to test different ways of imagining what a photograph can be and make us more attuned to how images operate.” (Work pictured above right)

Daniel Crooks works pre­dom­i­nant­ly in video, pho­tog­ra­phy and sculp­ture. He is best known for his dig­i­tal video and pho­to­graph­ic works that cap­ture and alter time and motion. Crooks manip­u­lates dig­i­tal imagery and footage a...

One of the fantastic new commissions that will be a headliner in the revamped museum is the visual art installation Darling Darling which will take up residency as the first solo gallery since the closure in 2019. This incredible work by Sydney-born, London-based artist Gabriella Hirst is the consequence of a $100k Ian Potter Moving Image Commission (IPMIC) grant – part of Australia’s most significant long term commissioning program of new contemporary moving art by Australian artists.

 

The work parallels the precise and elaborate care taken to preserve colonial paintings of the Australian landscape with the real-world preservation of the Murray Darling Basin, highlighting the tension between the two. A multi-screen video work, it juxtaposes the meticulous care taken to restore WC Piguenit’s 19th Century Romantic painting of the Barka-Darling River, The flood in the Darling 1890 (1895), with footage of the present-day ecological plight of the river system. Speaking to the importance of both artwork and the environment, it invites us to reconsider our relationship to the concept of conservation in the face of environmental degradation.