With its lens aimed at the complexities of how we inhabit and perceive public space, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art’s (ACCA) new offering could have been entirely theoretical had it been limited to its Southbank gallery. In an extraordinary move, Who’s Afraid of Public Space? extends outward, stretching as far as Melbourne’s outermost suburbs to engage with all sorts of unexpected artists and audiences who might not usually go to the Sturt Street arts precinct.
Although ACCA director Max Delany is clear that Who’s Afraid of Public Space partly functions as a research project, it also resembles a mini-festival. Across exhibitions, performances, talks, meeting spaces, installations and more, a breadth and geographical spread of content will grapple with tough questions about surveillance, private incursions on “public” spaces, occupying Country, and the place of public artworks.
Conceived in 2019, Who’s Afraid of Public Space? has gained momentum and relevance during the pandemic. “It has been fascinating watching the changes in our relationship to public space during the lockdowns,” Delany says. “We abandoned public space and rapidly migrated to the digital realm. But, equally, over the past 18 months we have had a much more intense relationship with it—walking and engaging with local parks, people improvising with public spaces, occupying the outdoors in interesting ways and generally having a more intense relationship with neighbourhoods.”
At ACCA itself, several spaces have an audience-first premise to encourage meeting and debate, with one space focusing on the history of Melbourne’s public sculptures, featuring engaging maquettes, and another—the Gathering Place— exploring materiality and Country. The program’s satellite shows range from Northcote-based photographer David Wadelton occupying disused shopfronts with his well-known photography, to a community project about a new housing estate in Cardinia, using house floor plans as a muse.
Who’s Afraid of Public Space?
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art
4 December 2021—20 March
This article was originally published in the January/February 2022 print edition of Art Guide Australia.
Sneakers are a cultural phenomenon made up of paradoxes. Some see them as an accessible and inclusive force in fashion that serve as an outlet of self-expression for many; yet to others they are a symbol of out-of-control consumerism. Two Queensland exhibitions are embracing these dualities, though from contrasting angles: Sneakers Unboxed: Studio to Street at HOTA on the Gold Coast, and Torsion at Brisbane’s Metro Arts.
For Betty Muffler art making and healing are indistinguishable. Evoking Country through the view of the eagle, she’s now showing in the NGV Triennial alongside a host of international names.
A comprehensive new survey at the National Gallery of Australia pays tribute to Emily Kam Kngwarray and the Country she loved.
Adelaide’s annual Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art festival returns, and this year includes the first-ever survey exhibition by Vincent Namatjira, as well as artworks by over 1500 Indigenous artists.
Since the 1960s Mike Parr has been defining performance art. Known for his performances of extremis, from hacking off a fake arm to burying himself underneath a Tasmanian road for three days. With a new, three-part exhibition at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Parr talks about catharsis, the institutionalisation of performance art, and the motivations behind what he does.
As representations of contemporary life, especially the domestic and intimate, continue to be meaningful, the still life genre endures—as 16 women artists attest in a new show at Bett Gallery.
