Engages,

Georgina Criddle, Debris Facility, Georgia Hutchison, Nic Tammens, Sarah Werkmeister, and A Centre for Everything Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Join us on the final day of Bus Project’s Fourth Editions Exhibition for a conversation exploring the capacity for artists’ actions to affect sector-wide change. Facilitated by Bus Projects’ Director, Channon Goodwin and featuring Georgina Criddle, Debris Facility, Georgia Hutchison, Nic Tammens, Sarah Werkmeister, and A Centre for Everything (Will Foster and Gabrielle de Vietri) ‘Keep the Aspidistra Flying’ will examine what makes artist initiatives, spaces and collaborations potent sites of resistance and contestation and propose alternative models not currently in play locally.

The structures, and strictures, of the art world can often seem intractable. In Australia, with a lineage of fickle government support, lingering cultural cringe, and a small commercial art market, the challenges faced by artists and small-scale arts organisations can be a deadening force on progressive forms of production.

In this environment, artist’s labour is of vital importance in mounting a challenge. They do so through a variety of collectivist strategies and collaborative actions, which allow artists to take control of the means of production, and agitate for change and recognition. This can be seen especially through artist’s voluntary work founding organisations, galleries, festivals, project spaces, cooperatives, discussion groups and publications. Through these collective actions, artists are able to resist the established system and offer alternatives to the structures of existing institutions.

Georgina Criddle is a visual artist, writer and educator. She teaches Visual Culture at Monash University where she completed an MFA in 2014. She currently serves on the committee of TCB art inc. Recent exhibitions include The Object as Score,Margaret Lawrence Gallery, 2015; If this exhibition were a text, Slopes, 2014; Practice, TCB artinc., 2014; Linger, TCB artinc., 2013; and One Place After Another, Kings ARI 2013. In 2006, Criddle completed her BA Honours at École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris and her work has been exhibited internationally at the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel; GIZ-Haus, Berlin; Rote Fabrik, Zurich; and La Genérale en Manufacture, Paris.

The Debris Facility Pty Ltd undertook a Corporate Takeover of the former practice Dan Bell in 2015 as a means to Amplify Processes of Resource Re-purposing, Affective labour exchanges, De-materialisation of Value, and Mutations through transport and logistics. The Facility utilises a haptic program of Alterations to objects and contexts, with Public Occurrences existing in States of Flux. The Facility staff aim to provide High Quality services to its Stakeholders in Any Means Engaged. Standards of Excellence will be weaponised to Address any and all Situations The Facility will Encounter: the Adsorption and Parasitic Methods generate a Sumptuous Platter to Feast on.

Georgia Hutchison is an independent designer and artist based in Melbourne, Australia — pursuing creative strategy, industrial design, production, curation and contemporary art practice. She has formed a multidisciplinary practice working on independent, collaborative and client driven projects with designers, artists and cultural organisations. Her practice explores on material narratives, inclusiveness and cultural exchange in a social context — with a design-led emphasis on audience experience. Hutchison has exhibited widely in Melbourne, interstate and internationally and in late 2013 released a commissioned photographic series titled ‘Moved Objects’, published by Perimeter Editions. Georgia also co-founded and directs a community food social enterprise, Open Table.

Nicholas Tammens is an independent curator, masters student at the European Graduate School, and sometimes designer of books (Helen Johnson, ‘Painting is a Critical Form’, Christopher LG Hill, ‘Tink Thank’, et al). He has worked and continues to contribute to Yale Union, a centre for contemporary art in Portland Oregon that has contributed largely to contemporary discussions on alternative institutional practices. Currently he is curating a series of exhibitions and events titled 1856 at the Victorian Trades Hall, bringing art under the roof of trade unionism and the production of art into question.

Sarah Werkmeister is a freelance writer, researcher, radio producer and curator based in Melbourne. She currently works with Public Art Melbourne Biennial Lab and has most recently worked with Next Wave Festival, L’Internationale Online, VCA and the Emerging Writers’ Festival. She is undertaking a Master of Art Curatorship at The University of Melbourne. Her interests, broadly, are in the intersection of contemporary art and issues of political or social urgency.

A Centre for Everything is an independent creative and pedagogical project that engages individuals and communities to learn, create, discuss and eat together. Our collaborative events brings together three diverse topics as performances, presentations, workshops, readings, discussions, demonstrations, critiques and meals. As the name suggests, our program incorporates an unwieldy range of interests. Recurring themes include active responses to current political issues, game-play and its application to wider modes of social behaviour, collective creativity and the intersection of artistic, social and pedagogical thinking.