HELLLO I NEED A CAT

Stemming from a climate-aware curatorial choice by Dr Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris, the works in HELLLO I NEED A CAT are selected from the Monash University Collection featuring artists Michael Cook, George Egerton-Warburton, Eliza Hutchison, Tim Johnson and Raquel Ormella. As opposed to commissioning resource intensive new-works, this exhibition delves into the extensive collection to look anew at the university as a site for pedagogy, experimentation and protest.

A thread of protest runs through the selected artworks, highlighting the radical potential of higher education and the university as a place where critical thinking unfolds—Michael Cook creates photographic reimagings of Australia as an Indigenous majority state, and Eliza Hutchison’s photo-collages depict climate protests in a glitchy post-digital age. Taking its enigmatic title from text embedded within Hutchison’s artwork, HELLLO I NEED A CAT takes an expansive understanding of photography and shares aesthetic renderings of protest and artistic re-imaginings of society.