Sunday Arts Magazine

Stephen talks to David Hunt on all things Films.

The Schenberg Art Fellowship 2020, a cash prize of $50,000, has been awarded to Tina Stefanou, a graduate of Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne University for her works Horse Power (2019)and Antiphonea (2019). This generous fellowship, made possible by the Dr Harold Schenberg Bequest, is the most significant award for emerging artists in Australia.

Marco talks to David about his life, Artists in Melbourne and  Joy 94.9.

ACMI, Australia’s national museum of screen culture, has today unveiled details of its ambitious multiplatform museum model, delivering a digital experience  that will transport visitors far beyond its location in Melbourne’s Fed Square, as part of its $40 million AUD redevelopment.

Ahead of its highly anticipated 2021 reopening, the museum has outlined a multiplatform model powered by a new experience operating system (XOS). It will see physical and digital content connected in ways not yet seen in Australia –  setting the museum apart and establishing ACMI as one of the most innovative and digitally transformed museums in the world.

Conceptualised by ACMI Director & CEO Katrina Sedgwick OAM in 2015, long before pandemic thinking changed the way we interact with museums, the new model is designed to offer visitors a highly accessible and more multi-faceted contemporary experience – an offer where digital technology is not simply used as a marketing tool but is an inherent component of the experience itself. By investing in curatorial and digital expertise in parallel, ACMI has reimagined what a museum experience can be.

“The new ACMI will offer an immensely rich experience that people can engage with in new ways: at home, on their devices and here at the museum itself,” Sedgwick explains. “We are launching a new brand identity and entirely new online presence, inviting people to visit our museum no matter where they are in the world. In the same way we curate and design exhibitions and programs for the physical museum, we have been developing them specifically for online across the breadth of screen culture – film, TV, videogames and art.”

In collaboration with Melbourne Fringe’s Fringe Furniture program, the Naomi Milgrom Foundation today released the design for the MPavilion 2020 stool, by local interior designer and architect Holly Board in partnership with Peter Grove, both of BoardGrove Architects. The commission—titled STOOL DOLLY—is part of MPavilion’s response to a pandemic year with greater investment in local artists and designers, while also being an extension of the Fringe Gender Equality Initiative, supported by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation. From December until the end of the MPavilion 2020 season, the stool will be used across multiple physical locations in and around Melbourne.

Responding to the necessity of ‘physical distancing’ in this time of pandemic, Stool Dolly considers how individuals can informally create separation through spatial means. Reminiscent of children’s paper dolls—where folded paper is cut into a simple human form, before becoming a train of people connected by their stretched-out arms—each plywood Stool Dolly chair can be positioned in two states: at ‘arm’s length’ (1.5m), or interlocked. When used at MPavilion events, the resulting configuration allows its users to be safely apart, together.

He is back talking to David about all things Arts.

Now showing at the Dirty Dozen space in the normally bustling Campbells’ Arcade under Flinders St Station in Melbourne, ‘Youth and Interaction’ was installed the day before Stage 4 came into effect and now sees little to no-one.

Taken at various gigs in Melbourne, the collection of black and white images collaged onto black depicts gestures and interactions that seem now so carefree. “I could never envisage showing this exhibition at such a time of heavy restriction.  I’ve found some comfort in the fact that the meaning of the exhibition is delivered more strongly because of the circumstances which surround it. It’s kind of poetic in a way.  Maybe that is actually how it supposed to be,” says Jess.

The exhibition is made up of 12 large black and white striking 1.5m x .75m, aluminum di-bonded prints hang suspended in the 12 white display cases.  Suspended in this way, they serve as a reminder of our memories suspended, while the actual images (which are repeated in different alignment from blur to complete focus) follow a recollection of times in our mind of freedom, fun and closeness with friends and strangers. Lit by blue fluorescent tubes, the images challenge us to reflect on our warmest memories and the tension that exists between now and those times.

Spring exhibition program

 

The following on-line and physical exhibitions are planned to open at the National Portrait Gallery in coming months.  For those who can’t travel at present, selected works from all exhibitions will be included online.  The NPG also runs popular Virtual Tours every Tuesday (see below) as well as a range of other activities via PortraitureComesHome on the NPG website, portrait.gov.au. Included here is long-time favourite, Portrait Stories, a series of over 100 mini-movies showcasing the collaboration between portrait artists and their subjects.