One of Australia’s largest multi-arts precincts, Carriageworks, has announced NO SHOW – a three-week presentation of projects by 11 artist-led initiatives from across NSW. Featuring the work of more than 50 largely early-career Australian artists and writers, NO SHOW will take over the Carriageworks Public Space and Bay 19 from 12 February until 7 March 2021 with a constantly evolving display of art installations, screenings, performances and writer residencies.
Developed by Carriageworks curator Aarna Hanley and presented free to the public, NO SHOW highlights the activities of artist-run spaces, cooperatives, digital platforms, online publications and studios in NSW, each presenting an independent program across the three weeks.
Based locally, regionally and online, the invited organisations are ANKLES, Boomalli, Firstdraft, KNULP, Our Neon Foe, newly established Pari in Western Sydney, Prototype, digital publications Running Dog and Runway Journal, Studio A, and new regional initiative WAYOUT Artspace.
Sydney-based architects Youssofzay + Hart have been commissioned to design a light, modular structure for the artists and writers to work within that is demountable and recyclable. Created using off-the-shelf materials, the discrete but connected spaces will support the program of exhibitions, screenings, residencies, talks and performances.
“Through NO SHOW we recognise the persistent importance of independent initiatives to our arts community. Nimble and resourceful, artist-led organisations run largely on the volunteered time and support of their community but operate at the heart of experimental and critical practice in NSW,” said Carriageworks CEO Blair French.
“These ambitious spaces and platforms provide emerging as well as established practitioners with opportunities to connect with each other, find their audiences and experiment with ideas and practices that drive the future of contemporary arts in NSW. After a year of too much separation, NO SHOW looks to connect artists, art practices and publics.”
NO SHOW takes place at Carriageworks: 12 February – 7 March 2021. For more information, visit: www.carriageworks.com.au for details.
Image: Nathan Beard, Limp-wristed Gesture (i), 2020 (detail) – photo by Bo Wong
The independent presentations featured in NO SHOW include:
- Alexandria based ANKLES presents a solo exhibition by artist Ella Sutherland. Framed by various physical, archival and conceptual threads related to the ‘the broadcast’ and ‘the forecast’, Whether the Weather combines wide-ranging research in the field of communication with the poetic potential of the weather.
- Long-running Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative presents Loom – a group show featuring five emerging artists, including Rubyrose Bancroft, Chenaya Bancroft-Davis, Jamie Eastwood, Jenny Fraser and Maddison Gibbs. Curated by Kyra Kum-Sing, the multi-disciplinary exhibition will highlight the artists’ experimental and fluid practices including works on canvas and paper, animation, Claymation, multimedia works and site-specific installations.
- Australia’s longest running artist-led organisation Firstdraft presents five independent presentations by emerging artists Tom Blake, Jazz Money, Amy Claire Mills, Athena Thebus, and Leo Tsao. Each new commission explores complex material and conceptual concerns, including: First Peoples sovereignty and determination; the challenge and deconstruction of ableist bias; queer methodologies and materialities; and the modes and choreographies of social justice.
- Camperdown artist-run initiative KNULP ’s conceptual art project, Good Will Hunting negotiates the complex interplay between art, labour, funding and philanthropy.
- Parramatta Road studio and gallery project Our Neon Foe presents a performance series and exhibition by studio artists including Priscilla Bourne, Kate Brown, Mark Brown, Chris Burton, Simon Lawrence, and Nicola Morton.
- New Parramatta artist-run space Pari presents 5 from 5 – featuring an artist from each of the five exhibitions the space has presented since opening in October 2019. Reflecting on Pari’s first year of operation in Western Sydney the chosen artists include Richmond Kobla Dido (Kobla Photography), Leila El Rayes, Kath Fries, Mehmet Mevlütoglu and Feras Shaheen.
- A film series titled Radical Ecologies by digital moving image platform Prototype uses documentary techniques in a contemporary art context to consider how artists navigate the anthropocene. The series features a new commission by artist Jodie Whalen, a new piece by writer Phoebe Chen and several works from Protoype’s archive including artists Tiyan Baker, Hannah Brontë, Amelia Hine, Robert Nugent and Sam Smith.
- During the exhibition run, online arts publication Running Dog will facilitate three one-week micro-residencies that will see emerging writers June Tang, Anne-Marie Te Whiu and Chloe Whatfern (in collaboration with Skye Saxon from Studio A) produce and publish new work in the space and online.
- Running Dog will also showcase their digital archive, which includes contributions by international and national writers, coders and artists, as well as producing two print publications: the 2020 series of ‘Letters from the Editor’ and Sarinah Masukor’s fiction column about the creative process.
- Digital platform Runway Journal invites artist Nathan Beard to guest edit Issue 43: Divine. Presented in the space and online, the issue will be developed in parts, with the first including new works and writing by Aisyah Aaqilumito, Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson, Diego Ramirez and JD Reforma. Throughout the event, audiences will be invited to submit a proposal for part two of the issue, to be published in May 2021.
- An interactive exhibition by social enterprise Studio A – who support artists living with intellectual disabilities, will invite visitors to explore the internal universes of three studio artists as they enter a self-styled fortress painted by Mathew Calandra, sit with performance artist Skye Saxon as she reads tarot cards and join artist Jaycee Kim in creating a giant rainbow plait as he slides between identities.
- The Bitter Crust presented by new regional initiative the WAYOUT Artspace , an offshoot of the acclaimed Cementa Festival based in Kandos, offers a memento mori for the year that was and features work by nine artists including Gus Armstrong, Leo Cremonese, Flavia Dujour, Karen Golland, Michael Petchkovsky, Georgina Pollard, Dr Greg Pritchard, Julie Williams and, Alex Wisser.