Engages,

Body Politics

“Body Politics”
EOI due midnight, 4th September 2018
Performance workshop series takes place from Sep-Dec 2018
Apply now via the online form

Throughout September-December Bus Projects presents ‘Body Politics’ a free workshop series that invites artists into the gallery space to experiment and explore with the dynamics of performance. Devised and convened by Melbourne based artist and curator, Zoë Bastin, this program aims to respond to the growing interest in performance within the gallery space and to foster emerging performance-based work. Body Politics is a free series of workshops facilitated by artist mentors Shelley Lasica, Bridie Lunney and Torie Nimmervoll, and Eugenia Lim, who use gallery spaces in performative ways. Body Politics will experiment with new formats for showing and viewing performance at Bus. This program will provide successful applicants with a series of three workshops in the space as well as the potential of presenting work generated through this process in 2019.

Interested in how bodies become in gallery spaces we will explore the social and cultural dynamics of exhibition spaces, how they are activated, what happens to bodies in an encounter with an artwork and what happens when performing in a gallery. The workshops themselves will be a combination of discussions, physical exercises and group development. The structure of each workshop will be up to the facilitator, and will be a window into their own process. Bus Projects will be empty for these sessions, so all five gallery spaces will be available to play with. This series will be delivered at no cost to participants.

First Session: 30 September, 2 - 4pm
Shelley Lasica

Second Session: 28 October, 2- 4pm
Bridie Lunney and Torie Nimmervoll

Third Session: 25 November, 2- 4pm
Eugenia Lim

WHO CAN APPLY
Bus Projects welcomes applications from individual practitioners in performing and visual arts at all career stages. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander practitioners are particularly encouraged to apply. Bus Projects favours applications involving practices that are critical and/or experimental in nature, and that include dance, performance, installation or sculptural aspects.

ABOUT BUS PROJECTS
Bus Projects is an Artist-Run organisation dedicated to supporting the critical, conceptual and cross-disciplinary practices of Australian artists, writers and curators. Our programs exist within a dual context: as a physical space housed within a former mid-century English paint factory; and as part of the culturally diverse community of Collingwood, part of the Kulin nations and land of the Wurundjeri people. From this complex position, we produce exhibitions, performances, screenings, workshops, forums, research and publishing. These programs are driven by an artist-centred philosophy that gives primacy to artists decision-making and recognises the need to support the process and presentation of creative works. As such, we work closely with artists throughout the lifecycle of their projects, providing curatorial and technical support.

EOI PROCESS
The Bus Projects’ Body Politics EOI closes at midnight Tuesday 4th of September, 2018. Applications should be submitted through our online form. After the closing date, a shortlist of applicants will be invited to participate in the workshop series. Applicants are encouraged to check the dates as we would like to involve all participants in all three sessions as an ongoing process.

SUBMISSIONS
The EOI process has been designed to be as simple as possible. The submission should include:
~ A concise 200 word artist statement
~ No more than one A4 page Curriculum Vitae
~ A short summation of how Body Politics would be beneficial to your practice (max 150 words)
~ 6-10 images of previous work;

If you require further information or wish to discuss your application before you apply (including any issues regarding support material or electronic submission), please contact: Nina Mulhall, Curator, Public Programs nina@busprojects.org.au

Bios:

Zoë Bastin:

Zoë Bastin is a Melbourne based artist and curator who works in-between sculpture and dance creating choreography, objects, videos, photos and performances. Exploring the materiality of bodies and objects, her practice re-imagines her body and its connection to spatial, material and social contexts. Sculpture approximates the body through material while dance re-creates experiences using the body itself. Currently undertaking her PHD at RMIT University, Bastin researches the materiality of bodies and objects by using the multifaceted possibilities of the body; and its relationship to place, context and environment.

Recent projects include ‘Milk with one please’ for Treatment; ‘Flightlines’ public art project curated by Cameron Bishop and David Cross at the Werribee Treatment plant (Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, Melbourne Water, Wyndham City Council and Deakin University), ‘Becoming (again and again)’, a residency at Testing Grounds (2017), and an ongoing performance work titled That which was once familiar first performed at the Experimental Music and Movement workshop and currently in development to be performed later in 2018.

Upcoming projects include curating Presence with Brigid Hansen at BLINDSIDE Art Space, participating in the Power of Immersion Spring School at Freie Universitat Berlin and solo exhibitions at Seventh gallery and C3 Art Space in 2018.

Bridie Lunney:
Combining practices of sculpture, jewellery and durational performance, Bridie Lunney
acknowledges the body as a conduit between our emotional and psychological selves
and the physical world. Performative and sculptural gestures in the works suggest
psychological shifts and a reconfiguration of hierarchical relationships between
architectural space, objects and the body.

Recent projects include From Will to Form, Tarrawarra Biennale, New Histories at Bendigo
Art Gallery, 2018; Fold for Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture, Federation Square, 2017; An Imprecise Science Artspace, Sydney, 2015; This Endless Becoming for Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, 2014; Drawing Weight for 30 Ways with Time and Space,
Performance Space, Sydney, 2012.

Lunney is a lecturer in Contemporary Practice at Monash Art Design and Architecture and in. Sculpture and Spatial Practice at Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne University. She is currently a PhD candidate at Monash University.

Torie Nimmervoll:
Torie Nimmervoll is a Melbourne based artist who has been exhibiting for 17 years. Her practise is object and performance based often working collaboratively with other artists. Predominate collaborates are Bridie Lunney and Jason Maling. Lunney and Nimmervoll received funding for an arts residency in Japan in 2014 through Arts Victoria. They are have an evolving/developing relationship with their practises.

Shelley Lasica:
Shelley Lasica is an independent choreographer and dancer whose practice is characterised by cross-disciplinary collaborations and an interest in presenting dance in various spatial contexts.

With over 30-years’ experience, Lasica’s choreographic works illustrate an enduring interest in thinking about dance, movement and the many contexts in which they occur. Her works have been presented by Melbourne Festival; National Gallery of Victoria; Artspace, Sydney; Centre Nationale de la Danse, Paris; Siobhan Davies Studios, London; Dance Massive 2015; 20th Biennale of Sydney; Murray White Room and Anna Schwartz Gallery.
Since the 1990s she has worked collaboratively with a large number of visual artists, writers, composers, and designers including Paul Schutze, Lyndal Jones, Kathy Temin, Gail Hastings, Robyn McKenzie, Franc Tétaz, Martin Grant, Helen Grogan, Bridie Lunney, and Anne-Marie May.

Eugenia Lim:
Eugenia Lim is an Australian artist who works across video, performance and installation. Interested in how nationalism and stereotypes are formed, Lim invents personas to explore the tensions of an individual within society – the alienation and belonging in a globalised world.
Conflations between authenticity, mimicry, natural, man-made, historical and anachronistic are important to the work. To this end, Lim finds inspiration in sites and objects that are both ‘contemporary’ and ‘out of time’, embodied and virtual. Model homes, suburban sprawl, CCTV, online chat rooms, fake food, historical parks and the Australian landscape have all featured in the work. Counterpoint to these sites, Lim has performed the identities of Japanese hikikomori; a Bowie-eyed rock star; the cannibal Issei Sagawa; a suburban beautician; Miranda from Picnic at Hanging Rock and currently, a gold Mao-suited ‘Ambassador’. This dialogue between place and performance reflects the push-pull between Australian and Asian, the mono and the multicultural.