Engages,
Curated by Grace McQuilten and Amy Spiers, with Dewi Cooke and The Social Studio, David Mackenzie and Youthworx, and Irine Vela and Outer Urban Projects Takeover
Dates: March 2022
Takeover is a program of public events for Who’s Afraid of Public Space? that celebrates the agency of our communities of diverse young and emerging creatives, and creates the opportunity to take back public spaces following Melbourne’s successive COVID-19 lockdowns.
Curators Grace McQuilten and Amy Spiers have partnered with Dewi Cooke (The Social Studio), David Mackenzie (Youthworx) and Irine Vela (Outer Urban Projects), and their three organisations that foster the creativity of young people from culturally diverse, asylum seeker, First Nations, neurodivergent and disabled communities through training and employment in fashion design, digital media production and performing arts respectively. Together, the curatorial team have commissioned young artists from each art organisation to present works that activate Melbourne’s public spaces, and Bus Projects’ and ACCA’s institutional platforms.
Takeover at Parliament Steps
For ACCA’s Who’s Afraid of Public Space? The Social Studio’s young fashion designers have teamed up with Outer Urban Projects’ ensemble of talented young performers from the outer northern suburbs of Melbourne to present a fashion parade celebrating modest wear on Sunday 6 March 2022, 2-3pm at Parliament of Victoria’s steps, the home for political debate and democracy in Victoria. The parade will feature textile and fashion works that reflect upon notions of modesty across cultures, accompanied by dancers, vocalists and a percussionist in an ecstatic, lively celebration of diverse young peoples’ return to public expression and public space. Register here.
Takeover at Crawl Space Radio
Coinciding with and informed by the Takeover program, Bus Projects together with Composite have invited young artists from Outer Urban Projects, Youthworx and The Social Studio to perform a series of radiophonic takeovers of Crawl Space Radio. Guided by the creative and critical agency of young and emerging creatives, Crawl Space Radio will activate and amplify their voices, and the perspectives of their communities, who have been impacted by the public housing towers lockdown, the racialised and heavy-handed police enforcement of pandemic restrictions, increasing gentrification and marginalisation in and around Narrm/Melbourne, while also instrumental in the activation of community care and social connection over the course of the pandemic. Broadcasts will be aired over March at Crawl Space Radio as well as at DAS BOOT: Artist Car Boot Fair held at ACCA’s forecourt on Saturday 19 March, 2022.
Films by Ruci Kaisila and Damian Seddon of Outer Urban Projects from this project are also presented at ACCA, in the Project Space: The Hoarding over the duration of the exhibition.
Curators Grace McQuilten and Amy Spiers have partnered with Dewi Cooke (The Social Studio), David Mackenzie (Youthworx) and Irine Vela (Outer Urban Projects), and their three organisations that foster the creativity of young people from culturally diverse, asylum seeker, First Nations, neurodivergent and disabled communities through training and employment in fashion design, digital media production and performing arts respectively.
Dewi Cooke is a creative leader and CEO of The Social Studio, as well as an experienced reporter, editor and producer of digital media and podcasts. She was a print reporter at The Age newspaper for more than a decade writing on migration and multicultural affairs.
David MacKenzie is a video artist, filmmaker and media trainer/mentor at Youthworx. He has worked across video art, documentary and collaborative media for over ten years.
Grace McQuilten is a curator with a passion for contemporary art and community development. McQuilten founded The Social Studio in 2009, a fashion-based social enterprise that supports young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds. From 2006-2021 she has curated 12 major exhibitions/projects at venues including the Immigration Museum and NGV International.
Amy Spiers is an artist and researcher with an interest in socially engaged and politically charged art. Spiers has also produced and curated numerous public programs and exhibitions including Counter-monuments: Indigenous settler relations in Australian contemporary art and memorial practices symposium with Genevieve Grieves (ACCA, 2021) and AAANZ Conference (RMIT, 2018).
McQuilten and Spiers are also researchers at RMIT School of Art working on a four-year Australian Research Council project which analyses how creative organisations support marginalised youth. Grace and Amy curated “Joining my future”: Art, Work, Inequality and Crisis for Bus Projects gallery in early 2021 with artists from The Social Studio, Outer Urban Projects and Youthworx.
Irine Vela is a composer, director, musician, producer, dramaturg, theatre maker and artistic director of Outer Urban Projects. She has collaborated with many of Australia’s finest performers, writers, directors and theatre companies including the MTC, Melbourne Workers Theatre and Brunswick Women’s Theatre.
Films by Ruci Kaisila, Joseph Samarani and Damian Seddon of Outer Urban Projects from this project will also be presented at ACCA, in the Project Space: The Hoarding over the duration of the exhibition.
