Shapeshifters: New Forms of Curatorial Research
Shapeshifters is a two-day public symposium presenting research at the cutting edge of curatorial practice, including work on indigenous land rights, the threat and potential of eavesdropping, beholding through blindness, queering the curator and a biography of the nymph Daphne.
Monash Curatorial Practice doctoral candidates Frances Barrett, Fayen d’Evie, Camila Marambio, Mihnea Mircan, Melanie Oliver and Joel Stern will present their research throughout the two days.
Marking the fifth anniversary of the Monash Curatorial Practice PhD, the event reconsiders the nature of curatorial research and the genre of the symposium, a familiar but often unsatisfying format. The program incorporates artists commissioned to invigorate and challenge the event, examining its values and peculiar sociability, and introducing elements that include nurture, myth, embodiment, nature, and self-reflection.
Commissioned artists include Caitlin Franzmann (Brisbane); Brian Fuata (Sydney); Lucreccia Quintanilla (Melbourne); Snack Syndicate (Andrew Brooks and Astrid Lorange, Sydney); and Charlie Sofo (Melbourne).
Symposium Keynote – 13 March, 6pm
Los Angeles based art historian and editor J. Myers-Szupinska will give a keynote address titled “Forms of Being Together”. The lecture sketches out a new crisis of the group-form in art, arguing that the Romantic forms of group association that have governed art’s worlds for the last two centuries—cults, clubs, avant-gardes, and subcultures—ceased to function in the early 2000s, under the pressure of new economies of space, time and socialisation.
A symposium reception will be hosted by the Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), whose exhibition Shapes of Knowledge will be on view.
| Wednesday 13 March | MADA Gallery |
|---|---|
| 10.00am | Registration |
| 10.30am | Welcome to Country followed by welcome by Tara McDowell |
| 11.00am | Camila Marambio, Dear Translator |
| 12.00pm | Lunch |
| 1.00pm | MADA Art Forum Asia Art Archive (G1.04) |
| 2.00pm | Mihnea Mircan, Anahuman |
| 3.00pm | Afternoon tea |
| 3.30pm | Joel Stern, Earwitness: Listening to Manus Island Recording Project’s how are you today? and Joel Spring’s Hearing, Loss |
| 4.30pm | Brian Fuata, No chair left unturned |
| 5.00pm | Symposium reception at MUMA |
| 6.00pm | Keynote lecture J. Myers-Szupinska (G1.04) |
| Thursday 14 March | MADA Gallery |
|---|---|
| 9.30am | Acknowledgement of Country by Brian Martin and welcome by Helen Hughes |
| 10.00am | Frances Barrett, cLUB bENT: A staged history |
| 11.00am | Melanie Oliver, Singing our histories: Shannon Te Ao’s my life as a tunnel |
| 12.00pm | Lunch |
| 1.00pm | Fayen d’Evie, Hallucinating the Absent Exhibition |
| 2.00pm | Lucreccia Quintanilla, A rhythm so steady and consistent |
| 2.30pm | Closing afternoon tea |
The event is organised by Tara McDowell, Director of Curatorial Practice, with the support of Dr Helen Hughes and a design program by Beaziyt Worcou.
Expressions of interest from prospective international applicants seeking scholarships close 15 July 2019. Application details here.