Jo Higgins

August 2, 2015

Events, Musings

What It Means to be Me, Western Plains Cultural Centre, Dubbo, 26 July 2015

Jo Higgins

August 2, 2015

Events, Musings

Kaldor Public Art Project’s pilot regional engagement program wrapped up last weekend. I’m elated, exhausted, proud and a bit overwhelmed by its success and all the very positive feedback we’ve received from the participants and various stakeholders.

Below are some images from the final exhibition, held last weekend at the Dubbo Regional Gallery, Western Plains Cultural Centre. The exhibition was opened by the Hon. Troy Grant, NSW Minister for the Arts and John Kaldor, director of Kaldor Public Art Projects.

Photos: Alex Wisser / Kaldor Public Art Projects

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE ME.

There’s an immediacy and honesty to performance art that lends itself, perhaps more than any other form of art, to an exploration of what it means to exist in any one particular moment in time.

Over the last 10 weeks, seven rather extraordinary local teenagers have pioneered their own understanding of performance art as part of Kaldor Public Art Project’s Pilot Regional Engagement Program. This pilot, which has formed a central part of the wider education and public program for the recent Project 30 – Marina Abramovic: In Residence at Sydney’s Pier 2/3, culminates today in this very special one-day exhibition, What It Means to be Me.

Throughout the program, the participants have explored and tested ideas of presence, movement, the role of the body in art and how we interrogate and construct ideas about ourselves and about the world around us.

The seven works presented here express their very personal experiences and enquiries about love, misunderstanding, imagination, disconnection, social expectation, empathy and something of the magic of Marina.

In presenting these beautifully deft explorations of what it means to be them at this moment in time, they hope also to ask, what it does it mean to be you?

Artists:

Justen Beehag

Caitlyn Coman-Sargent

Grace Farmilo

Shanae Gosper

Kate Hagan

Clare Noonan

Sam Read

The Kaldor Public Art Project Pilot Regional Engagement Program has been supported by Arts NSW and the Federal Ministry for the Arts in partnership with Western Plains Cultural Centre and Orana Arts.

Melbourne Art Fair 2014

Jo Higgins

August 21, 2014

Events, Musings

Ken and Julia Yonetani, The Last Suppermarket, Melbourne Art Fair, 2014 — Ken and Julia Yonetani, *The Last Suppermarket*, Melbourne Art Fair, 2014

I haven’t been to Melbourne in, god, maybe six or seven years. But it’s as brilliant a city as I remember it and the Melbourne Art Fair was the perfect excuse to make a return visit.

Art fairs being what they are – ostensibly very glossy, visually stimulating, champagne-soaked exercises in high-end retail – I’m always fascinated by the way they expose, so matter of factly, so much of the art world ecology – the collector, the dealer, the price tags.

Frieze London left a huge impression of me the first time I went – more H&M-Oxford-St-flagship-store-two-days-before-Christmas crazy than anything else, but I was grateful nonetheless for the experience and the insight to it all. I particularly appreciated the Frieze Projects platform, offering emerging artists and more experimental art the opportunity for critical consideration amidst the ringing of cash register bells.

As uncomfortable as it makes me, thinking about art in terms of its retail potential, it’s a bit naive to think that the art world can exist without its market. So I suppose it’s a question of power really – and who that ultimately lies with.

But I really enjoyed the Melbourne Art Fair and it was a great opportunity to connect with some artists and galleries that I’ve worked with or interviewed before. And the venue, the Royal Exhibition Hall in Carlton Gardens, is pretty spectacular.

While I was there I conducted several “On the Couch” artist interviews for Art Collector magazine. I’m not sure I have a career in television journalism ahead of me but nonetheless I enjoyed the experience and was reminded yet again how much I get from talking to artists about their work and what motivates them to make what they do.

And because no trip to Melbourne would be complete without some street art watching…

Fresh Faces Symposium: Art Gallery of New South Wales

Jo Higgins

June 24, 2014

News, Events

I’m thrilled to have been invited to give a paper on 21st Century Portraits at the Art Gallery of New South Wales this coming August as part of the Archibald exhibition’s public programme.

And I’m in fairly illustrious company. I can’t wait.

What It Means to be Me, Western Plains Cultural Centre, Dubbo, 26 July 2015

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Melbourne Art Fair 2014

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Fresh Faces Symposium: Art Gallery of New South Wales

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