Who's Afraid of Public Space? Think Tank Series

Six Walks is a series of audio walking tours, commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), and released in the lead-up to the forthcoming exhibition and research project Who’s Afraid of Public Space?, opening in the summer of 2021–22. Continuing ACCA’s series of Big Picture exhibitions, Who’s Afraid of Public Space? explores the role of public culture, the contested nature of public space, and the character and composition of public life itself, engaging with contemporary art and cultural practices to consider critical ideas as to what constitutes public culture and to ask, and who might it be for?

Continuing a rich history of artists, writers and thinkers engaging with, describing and depicting the various pleasures of walking, Six Walks began as an invitation to six Melbourne-based writers to develop a narrative response to an area of the city that held a particular interest to them either personally or professionally, socially or culturally. Largely written while under strict COVID-related lockdowns – at a time when walking was one of few freedoms afforded to those of us in Melbourne – Six Walks has been timed to release with the easing of these restrictions, allowing for expanded horizons and encouraging a renewed interest in our surrounding natural and urban environments and to the narratives, knowledge and histories latent within them.

Across Six Walks writers Idil Ali, Timmah Ball, Tony Birch, Sophie Cunningham, Eleanor Jackson and Christos Tsiolkas take us from the Birrarung to Royal Park, from regal cinemas to abandoned military defence force bases, tracing desire lines as much as designated paths. They tackle concerns from public housing to motherhood, colonisation, migration, gentrification, restoration, surveillance, resilience, leisure and pleasure. In following their words, walking becomes a form not only of art and literature, but of thinking, observing, research, remembering, poetry, protest, mapping and making. What is revealed is a complex portrait of Melbourne as a city that is constructed from diverse, diverging and overlapping cultural, social, political, economic and historical paths.

Access Information:

Six Walks has been conceived to be ideally listened to in situ, with headphones on a personal mobile device. Maps, directions and access notes are included with each walk to assist with orientation. ACCA reminds participants to be aware of their surroundings and to adhere to road safety guidelines at all times. Please note that when undertaking a walk, participants must assume personal responsibility for any liability, injury, loss, or damage in any way connected with their experience of Six Walks.

Recorded in a podcast format, Six Walks can also be listened to from anywhere and at any time.

Text versions of each walk will be available for download.

ACCA acknowledges the support of Creative Victoria in the development of the Six Walks series.

Who's Afraid of Public Space? Six Walks

Listen now to the third conversation in the Think Tank series as part of the forthcoming exhibition Who’s Afraid of Public Space?

Presented in partnership with Art Projects Australia (APA), this session will be moderated by ACCA’s Public Programs Coordinator Bianca Winataputri and include contributors Dewi Cooke, Eleanor Jackson, Sim Luttin, Michael Camakaris and Ed Service.

ACCA is pleased to co-host further Think Tanks over the coming year to consider a wide array of considerations pertinent to the exhibition and the work of our partner organisations and co-hosts. The Think Tank discussions will continue to feed into the critical concerns of the overarching Who’s Afraid of Public Space? project, contributing to a polyphonic and polycentric understanding of our increasingly complex public realm.

Who’s Afraid of Public Space? Think Tank #3 – Visibility and Accessibility

Employment: Art, labour and changing modes of working

This program is part of ACCA’s 2021 Lecture Series, Experimental Institutionalism: Contemporary Art and Curatorial Ecologies and features two short lectures by Alana Kushnir and Julieta Aranda followed by a conversation with ACCA Curator Miriam Kelly.

Alana Kushnir explores collaboration, labour and scaling-up the artist’s studio in the context of the contemporary art ecology, and Julieta Aranda examines our relationship – as beings, as humans, as artists, as cultural workers – to the toxic environments that we have created.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
Alana Kushnir an art lawyer, curator, art advisor and Director and Founder of Guestwork Agency based in Melbourne, Australia. She is the Principal Investigator of the Serpentine Galleries R&D Platform Legal Lab and a sessional lecturer at The University of Melbourne, teaching subjects on curating, contemporary art and art law.

Julieta Aranda is an artist and co-director of the online platform e-flux. Her artistic practice spans installation, video, and print media, with a special interest in the creation and manipulation of artistic exchange and the subversion of traditional notions of commerce through art making. 

Read more, including full speaker biographies here: https://acca.melbourne/program/experimental-institutionalism-employment/

Read more about the series here: https://acca.melbourne/series/experimental-institutionalism-2021

Experimental Institutionalism: Employment with Alana Kushnir and Julieta Aranda

Speakers: Biljana Ciric and iLiana Fokianaki

In this lecture, curator and researcher Biljana Ciric discusses her educational platform What Could/Should Curating Do? and long-term project 'As you go... the roads under your feet, towards a new future' as experimental models for cross-cultural collaborations. Writer and curator iLiana Fokianaki shares her curatorial journey in establishing the non-profit gallery ‘The State of Concept’ in Athens and her interdisciplinary program 'The Bureau of Care'. Ciric and Fokianaki also reflect on the future of art institutions and the responsibility of curators and arts workers in these changing times.

Read more here: https://acca.melbourne/program/experimental-institutionalism/

Experimental Institutionalism: Rethinking infrastructures and curatorial practice

This panel discussion explores ideas of safety, movement, surveillance, physical distancing, visibility and invisibility within Melbourne’s public spaces.

Think Tank Moderator Nur Shkembi, artist, curator and PhD candidate, University of Melbourne, and Curatorial Advisory Group member for Who’s Afraid of Public Space?, is joined by esteemed local cultural contributors including Idil Ali, writer, performer, youth practitioner and community organiser; Antony Hamilton, Artistic Director, Chunky Move; Nicole Kalms, Associate Professor in Department of Design and founding director of Monash University XYX Lab; and Steven Rhall, artist, curator and PhD candidate at Monash University.

This Think Tank is fourth in the series presented by ACCA and produced as part of 'Who’s Afraid of Public Space?'

MTalks—Who’s Afraid of Public Space? Think Tank #4: Movement of People & Safety in Public

Listen to N’arweet Carolyn Briggs AM, Sarah Lynn Rees, Andrew Atchison, Stephanie Pahnis, Lauren Crockett, Nicola Cortese, Timothy Moore, and John Tanner as they share their approaches to transforming ACCA’s four galleries to become civic spaces: Gathering Space: Nargee Djeembana, Education Space: Creating Art in Public, Reading Space: The Common Room, and Project Space: The Hoarding.

Artist Talks: Who’s Afraid of Public Space? – Onsite exhibition spaces

Join artists Sean Lynch and Mikala Dwyer, and writer Alicia Sometimes for a panel discussion about public art, presented in association with the recent launch of two major City of Melbourne temporary public art commissions in University Square, Carlton.

Panel discussion: City of Melbourne Commissions

Join Melbourne Art Library for the second in their series of discussions about experimental modes of sharing information as part of Who's Afraid of Public Space?.

The forum panel includes: Nell Fraser (Melbourne Art Library), Caroline Phillips (Womens Art Register), and Nick Henderson (Australian Queer Archives).

Distribution series #2: Alternative Collections

Join artists Jon Campbell, Guled Abdulwasi, and Laresa Kosloff at ACCA as they discuss their commissioned works as part of Who’s Afraid of Public Space? offsite projects.

Artist Talks: Who's Afraid of Public Space? – Offsite projects #2

Listen to Melbourne Art Library for the first in their series of discussions about experimental modes of sharing information.

Reflecting on the library of written materials on public art, public culture and public space in the Reading Space: The Common Room, Melbourne Art Library unpack the role of the contemporary art librarian.

Forum Series: Distribution
What power dynamics are at play in the distribution of information? How democratic is ‘collective’ knowledge? And how are individuals and collectives disrupting the flow of information?

The Distribution forum series prods, unravels, makes-visible, and excites non-mainstream ways of information sharing. Engaging publishers, editors, and alternative institutions, the series explores active projects in Naarm/Melbourne that question the traditional flow of information.

Presented by Melbourne Art Library, a not-for-profit lending library exploring art librarianship as a philosophy and mode of practice; a practice guided by collaboration, criticism, and exchange.

Distribution series #1: Introduction to Art Librarianship

Listen to ACCA’s Artist Educator and Curator of the Education Space Andrew Atchison with artists Ross Coulter, Eugenia Lim and  James Nguyen for a discussion about art and working in public space. This program is associated with the Education Space: Creating Art in Public, a hybrid studio, classroom and gallery designed to promote active participation with, and careful consideration of, public art practices and the diverse and inventive approaches artists adopt when creating artwork for public space.

Artist Talks: Education Space with Ross Coulter, Eugenia Lim and James Nguyen

Urbanists and planners need to engage in broader and messier practices if they are to design inclusive and accessible public spaces. The production of space is as much a social and political process, as a physical one, and identities of places are often latent, contested and invisible. A new genre of artists and creative practitioners are engaging in public space, using site-based practices that catalyse new uses, build new constituencies, and amplify marginalised voices.

Moderated by Mel Dodd, this roundtable event brings together five leading creative practitioners from Monash Art, Design and Architecture (MADA) – Gene Bawden, N’arweet Carolyn Briggs, Emily Floyd, Timothy Moore and Sarah Lynn Rees – all working in the public realm, to reveal a more representative city and explore the ways we can make spaces truly public.

Making Spaces Public

Creative practice researchers: Prof Carol Brown, Dr Troy Innocent, and A/Prof Linda Knight, chaired by Rachel Iampolski addresses how artistic practices offer insurgent modes for developing reconnection with urban spaces after a prolonged lockdown, and sustained anxiety around public spaces.

The panel shares their practical and creative approaches for being in the world and the key role that insurgent artistic modes will play in redeveloping our confidence in public space. The experimental visual art practices, digital and gestural drawing, sound art and sonic practices, walking, creative movement, performance and installations explore emotion and affect, aesthetics, the sensorial as well as conflict, tension and congestion, and activism and play in the post-pandemic urban space. Collectively the panel advocates for the generative potential of insurgent modes for urban reconnection.

Insurgent modes for urban reconnection: Scaling, augmenting, and counter-mapping public space

Listen to Melbourne Art Library for the final in their series of discussions about the values of the public library.  Reflecting on the library of written materials on public art, public culture and public space in the Reading Space: The Common Room, Melbourne Art Library discuss the purpose and complexities of developing a community library collection and archives.

Forum Series: Distribution

What power dynamics are at play in the distribution of information? How democratic is ‘collective’ knowledge? And how are individuals and collectives disrupting the flow of information?

The Distribution forum series prods, unravels, makes-visible, and excites non-mainstream ways of information sharing. Engaging publishers, editors, and alternative institutions, the series explores active projects in Naarm/Melbourne that question the traditional flow of information. 

Presented by Melbourne Art Library, a not-for-profit lending library exploring art librarianship as a philosophy and mode of practice; a practice guided by collaboration, criticism, and exchange.

Distribution series #3: Publishing Art Serials

This conversation was recorded in association with the exhibition 'Frances Barrett: Meatus', now showing at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne until 19 June 2022.

In this conversation we hear from artist and curator Frances Barrett and from Daniel Mudie Cunningham, who is head of Programming at Carriageworks.
 
'Frances Barrett: Meatus' forms part of Suspended Moment: The Katthy Cavaliere Fellowship, an initiative designed to support a solo exhibition by Australian-based female artists who work in performance and installation. Over the past two years this has included exhibitions at the Museum of Old and New Art, and Carriageworks, and at ACCA, as well as a nationally touring iteration.
 
In this conversation, Frances and Daniel discuss 'Meatus', as well as the influence on both their practises of the late Australian performance artist Katthy Cavaliere, whose life and work is honoured in the exhibition series.

In Conversation: Frances Barrett and Daniel Mudie Cunningham

This Artist Talk was recorded in association with the exhibition ' Like a Wheel That Turns: The 2022 Macfarlane Commissions', now showing at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne until 4 September 2022.

In this Artist Talk we hear from exhibiting artists Lucina Lane, Betty Muffler and JD Reforma.

Artist Talks: Lucina Lane, Betty Muffler and JD Reforma

Listen to our Artist Talks with Gian Manik, Jason Phu and Jahnne Pasco-White.

This Artist Talk was recorded in association with the exhibition ' Like a Wheel That Turns: The 2022 Macfarlane Commissions', now showing at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne until 4 September 2022.

Artist Talks: Gian Manik, Jason Phu and Jahnne Pasco-White

Listen to the lecture by editor Mykaela Saunders speaking on the critically acclaimed anthology 'THIS ALL COME BACK NOW'.

'THIS ALL COME BACK NOW' is the world’s first anthology of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander speculative fiction – written, curated, edited and designed by blackfellas, for blackfellas and about blackfellas. In these stories, ‘this all come back’: all those things that have been taken from us, that we collectively mourn the loss of, or attempt to recover and revive, as well as those that we thought we’d gotten rid of, that are always returning to haunt and hound us.

This critically acclaimed anthology was a collective undertaking, and editor Mykaela Saunders discusses how she worked with others at each different stage of the project. From the first conception of the anthology through to publication and beyond, Mykaela has ensured that the project has been built from good relationality – the very stuff that all healthy communities are made of.

Mykaela Saunders is an award-winning Koori and Lebanese writer, teacher and community researcher, and the editor of the critically acclaimed 'THIS ALL COME BACK NOW', the world’s first anthology of blackfella speculative fiction (UQP).

This lecture was recorded at ACCA on Thursday 4 August 2022, 6–8pm. Read more about the free event here: https://acca.melbourne/program/writing-concepts-lecture-with-mykaela-saunders/

Image: Cover, 'THIS ALL COME BACK NOW'. Courtesy Mykaela Saunders and University of Queensland Press

WRITING & CONCEPTS Lecture with Mykaela Saunders

Listen to the in conversation with artist Paul Yore and Nick Henderson, volunteer committee member at the Australian Queer Archives, and Curator at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. They will be discussing Yore’s extensive survey exhibition 'Paul Yore: WORD MADE FLESH', unpacking the past fifteen years of his practice, with a focus on the major new immersive installation commissioned by ACCA.

This lecture was recorded at ACCA on Saturday 1 October, 5–6pm. Read more about the free event here: https://acca.melbourne/program/paul-yore-in-conversation-with-nick-henderson

Image: Paul Yore, 'WORD MADE FLESH' 2022, installation view, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Photograph: Andrew Curtis.

Paul Yore In Conversation With Nick Henderson

This recording is part of a video commissioned for 'Writing in the Expanded Field IV: Touching Feeling Writing' developed in conjunction with ACCA’s exhibition ‘Paul Yore: WORD MADE FLESH’ (23 September – 20 November 2022). The digital publishing project exploring new compositional modes and publics for art writing will be released in early 2023.

Credits: 
Rebecca Bracewell, sound editor 
Sofie McClure, videographer 
Lucinda Strahan, editor and program leader 
Loni Jeffs, editorial coordinator 
Michaela Bear, participant 
Ange Crawford, participant 
Mig Dann, participant 
Rachel Keir-Smith, participant  
Carmen-Sibha Keiso, participant 
Shari Kocher, participant 
Josephine Mead, participant 
Nasim Patel, participant 
Sofia Stavrou, participant 
Denise Thwaites, participant

Presented in partnership with RMIT University non/fictionLab.

Read more and watch the video here: https://acca.melbourne/program/writing-in-the-expanded-field-iv-touching-feeling-writing/

Writing in the Expanded Field IV: Touching Feeling Writing (Audio-only)

Listen to artist Mithu Sen in conversation with Max Delany, ACCA’s Artistic Director & CEO, alongside special guests Irina Aristarkhova, Professor at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design and Digital Studies Institute of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Deepanjana Klein, Director of Acquisitions and Development, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA). 

They discuss Sen’s major solo exhibition 'mOTHERTONGUE', which surveys the past two decades of her compelling art practice, including a series of major new installations.

This conversation was recorded at ACCA on Monday 24 April, 6–7pm and is presented with the support of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi (KNMA).

Read more about the free event here: acca.melbourne/program/mithu-sen-in-conversation

Image: Mithu Sen, Museum of unbelongings 2016. Courtesy the artist

Mithu Sen in conversation

Listen to writer and curator Laura Raicovich discuss the artworks and methodologies that inform Mithu Sen’s exhibition 'mOTHERTONGUE' in relation to Raicovich’s own practice which calls for institutional change to improve cultural spaces.

This conversation was recorded at ACCA on Tuesday 16 May, 6–7pm and is presented with the support of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi (KNMA).

Read more about the free event here: acca.melbourne/program/laura-raicovich-undoing-and-redoing/

Image: Opening event, 'Mithu Sen: mOTHERTONGUE' 2023, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Photograph: Casey Horsfield

Laura Raicovich: Undoing and Redoing

Through a series of media and artworks, Mimi Ọnụọha’s performance lecture explores absence, knowledge, and how what is missing is still there.

Mimi Ọnụọha Performance Lecture

Roe v. Wade is overturned while gene editing is opening entirely new reproductive futures. What does kin mean as reproductive technologies shift our relationships? How much control should we have over a birthing person’s body, and over a life before it begins?.

‘The Surrogate project began with a desire to serve as a surrogate. During the pregnancy, the parents would have an app I made that provides 24/7 access to all my biodata, and an interface to control me. So in essence, they could have complete control over my body in which their baby is growing.

The past few years of the pandemic have reshaped our bodily boundaries. We’ve swabbed and spit in tubes and traded ownership of our bodily substances in an attempt to feel safe. But these fluids hold the data of our DNA, our personal information, and our identity.

I’m fascinated by the ways we’re taught to interact with data, and how this shapes the way we interact with each other. Central to my work is a critique of the simultaneous technological and social systems we’re building around ourselves. What are the rules? What happens when we introduce glitches?’

Lauren Lee McCarthy In Conversation With Jenny Kennedy

Listen to the performance lecture 'Expositio, Iudicium, Lacrimae, or, Does an AI God Have an Ass?' by exhibiting artist Zach Blas exploring the idea of religious-un/conscious thriving in today’s tech industry. Charting his encounters with various artificial intelligence gods, Blas tells of a computational world of divine judgment and devout submission, where artificial intelligence exists alongside mystical glyphs, occult sigils, captured bodies, and corporate transcendence. Through a consideration of religious sermons, offerings of worship, and spiritual iconography, an AI religiosity is traced, in which flesh becomes biometric and emotional crying transmutes into a symbolic language of holy quantification.

Zach Blas Performance Lecture

Listen to performance lectures 'Loops, Echoes, Phonophanies, and other Détournments' by Suvani Suri and 'Listening to Misrecognition' by Thao Phan, as well as an Artist Talk with Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne on their new digital commission 'Offset'.

Suvani Suri with Aasma Tulika, Uzma Falak, Shareeka Helaluddin, Mehak Sawhney

What is the sound of racialisation? How might we listen to misrecognition? What does machine error tell us about the precision of racism? And how can the tools of a racist system be used to transcribe new forms of resistance?

This experimental presentation is a collaboration between feminist technoscience researcher Thao Phan and Machine Listening, an ongoing investigation and experiment in collective learning, instigated by artist Sean Dockray, legal scholar James Parker, and researcher, curator and artist Joel Stern. Part lecture and part performance, this event brings together critical work on race and algorithmic culture with new techniques for dissecting and analysing automatic speech recognition, applied to personal and public archives drawn from Thao’s life and research. It features a discussion and demonstration of the Word Processor tool, developed in 2021 by the Machine Listening team and Reduct, a US-based tech company co-founded by the artist Robert Ochschorn.

Thao Phan Performance lecture: Listening to Misrecognition

Listen to exhibition artists Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne for a talk about their new digital commission 'Offset' on the ACCA Digital Wing.

Tega Brain & Sam Lavigne Launch of 'Offset'

Internationally acclaimed Irish-born, London-based artist Eva Rothschild discusses her new and recent sculptural works with Max Delany Artistic Director and CEO, ACCA in the lead up the first survey exhibition of her work in Australia at ACCA. 

This conversation is presented in partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria.

This event was recorded on Saturday 22 September 2018, hosted at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

Further references:
https://acca.melbourne/exhibition/eva-rothschild/

Eva Rothschild: In conversation

This Think Tank is the first in a series of public forums that will take place over the next twelve months that will both feed into and highlight the ideas and concerns of ACCA’s forthcoming 2021 research, publication and exhibition project, 'Who’s Afraid of Public Space?'

This forum featured key thinkers in public culture, art and design to consider the impacts of the rapid turn to the digital, messaging around fear, accessibility, as well as other recent global discussions and debates around the contested nature of public space, and the shifting character of public culture.
 
Speakers: Dr Marnie Badham; Eugenia Flynn; Dr Grace McQuilten;  Professor Nikos Papastergiadis; Nur Shkembi and moderated by ACCA Artistic Director and CEO Max Delany.

Recorded on 29 April 2020. Graphic recording and hero image by Sarah Firth.

For more information visit:  acca.melbourne/program/think-tank-whos-afraid-of-public-space/

ACCA Think Tank #1: Who's Afraid Of Public Space?

In our final ACCA Book Club, Ellen van Neerven discusses 'Throat', their newly published poetry collection, which explores love, language and land, and shines a light on Australia’s unreconciled past and precarious present with humour and heart.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning writer of Mununjali Yugambeh (South East Queensland) and Dutch heritage. They write fiction, poetry, plays and non-fiction. Ellen’s first book, Heat and Light, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. Ellen’s second book, a collection of poetry, Comfort Food, was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize and highly commended for the 2016 Wesley Michel Wright Prize. Throat is Ellen’s highly anticipated second poetry collection.

Further information: https://acca.melbourne/program/acca-book-club-ellen-van-neerven/

ACCA Book Club with Ellen van Neerven

Listen to ACCA’s Senior Curator Annika Kristensen in conversation with ACCA Open artists Archie Barry, Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey, and Amrita Hepi and Sam Lieblich to discuss their new digital commissions that respond to the unusual times and cultural conditions in which they are produced.

ACCA Open Artist Talks: Archie Barry, Amrita Hepi and Sam Lieblich, Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey

A lively digital discussion, Think Tank #2 will engage with ideas of collaboration, collectivity, community engaged practice and the commons, as part of the Think Tank series as part of ACCA’s forthcoming exhibition Who’s Afraid of Public Space?

Presented in partnership with Footscray Community Arts Centre (FCAC), and moderated by FCAC Artistic Director and co-CEO Daniel Santangeli, the panel will include contributors Eugenia Flynn, Kent Morris, Roberta Joy Rich and Kate Sulan. Read more about the speakers via the link below.

ABOUT 'WHO'S AFRAID OF PUBLIC SPACE?'
Developed with an assembly of advisors and collaborators, Who’s Afraid of Public Space? is a research, publication and exhibition project which ACCA is developing over 2020–22.  ACCA has partnered with Abbotsford Convent, Arts Project Australia, Blak Dot, Bus Projects and FCAC to present a dispersed program of exhibitions and projects that consider critical ideas as to what constitutes public culture and to ask who might it be for?
More information: https://acca.melbourne/exhibition/whos-afraid-of-public-space/

Who’s Afraid of Public Space? Think Tank #2 – Collaboration and Community

DEFINING MOMENTS LECTURE SERIES: Founding of Gallery 4A and the inaugural exhibition in 1997 with Dr Mikala Tai

ABOUT THIS LECTURE: In this lecture, Dr Mikala Tai discusses the founding of Gallery 4A in Sydney and its inaugural exhibition in 1997 featuring three Asian-Australian artists: Emil Goh, Lindy Lee and Hou Leong, curated by Melissa Chiu, 4A’s first curator and director. Tai considers the exhibition and the context in which the organisation launched and how 4A continues to expand and thrive.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Dr Mikala Tai is the Director of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, and a curator, researcher and academic specialising in contemporary Asian art and Australian design. Tai has collaborated with local, national and international organisations to strengthen ties between Australia and Asia. As an academic Tai has lectured at both RMIT and the University of Melbourne, and devised and delivered the inaugural Contemporary Asian Art syllabus at RMIT (2012 – ) and the first China Fieldwork Course (2015 – ) with Rebecca Coates and Kate McNeill at the University of Melbourne. Tai was the founder and director of Supergraph – Australia’s Contemporary Graphic Art Fair, which has been held twice at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne and exhibited at Somerset House, London (2015). Tai currently sits on the board of BUS Projects, Melbourne. 

THANK YOU TO OUR PARTNERS:
Presenting Partner Abercrombie & Kent; Research Partner Centre for Visual Art (CoVA); Event Partners Melbourne Gin Company, Capi and City of Melbourne; Media Partners Art Guide Australia, The Saturday Paper, 3RRR FM
Produced by Gatherer Media.

Further information: acca.melbourne/series/defining-moments/

Defining Moments: Founding of Gallery 4A with Dr Mikala Tai

This episode featuring Timmah Ball is part of Six Walks an audio walking tour series commissioned by ACCA – Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

Find bio, access notes, images and further information here: https://acca.melbourne/six-walks-episode-five-timmah-ball/

ABOUT THIS EPISODE: 
Hidden between parkland and suburbia along the Maribyrnong River, a 128-hectare site formerly occupied by the Australian Defence Force lies vacant as government planners and private developers speculate its future use. Timmah Ball takes us on a walk around the periphery – considering the colonial history of the site, its use by the military in producing explosives and ammunition, its eery abandonment in the present-day, and predicted future gentrification. Considering the resonance between the military history of the site and the unprecedented limitations imposed upon Melbourne during COVID-related lockdowns, Timmah asks, as the city begins to open again, what futures can we imagine as we walk past the site’s forbidding walls? 

Timmah Ball is a nonfiction writer, researcher and creative practitioner of Ballardong Noongar heritage. Read the extended bio via the link above.

Curator: Annika Kristensen
Audio technician: Simon Cotter

ABOUT THE SERIES:
Six Walks has been conceived to be ideally listened to in situ, with headphones on a personal mobile device. Maps, directions and access notes are available with each walk to assist with orientation. ACCA reminds participants to be aware of their surroundings and to adhere to road safety guidelines at all times. Please note that when undertaking a walk, participants must assume personal responsibility for any liability, injury, loss, or damage in any way connected with their experience of Six Walks.

Six Walks can also be listened to from anywhere and at any time and Text versions of each walk are available for download.

ACCA acknowledges the support of Creative Victoria in the development of the Six Walks series.

Six Walks Ep 5: Timmah Ball on exploding the Maribyrnong

This episode featuring Idil Ali is part of Six Walks an audio walking tour series commissioned by ACCA – Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

Find bio, access notes, images and further information here: https://acca.melbourne/six-walks-episode-four-idil-ali/

ABOUT THIS EPISODE: 
In this episode of Six Walks, storyteller Idil Ali guides you through an extended period of over ten years of gentrification at the Carlton Housing Estate. Based on her personal perspective, having grown up and witnessed the effect of this gentrification on both herself and her community, Idil attempts to dig up memories buried underneath an updated infrastructure.

Idil Ali is a proud Somali woman raised by the east African community in the Carlton flats. A settler on unceded Wurundjeri land, Idil embeds her belief in freedom, sovereignty and resistance into her work as a writer, performer, youth practitioner and community organiser. 

Curator: Annika Kristensen
Audio technician: Simon Cotter

ABOUT THE SERIES:
Six Walks has been conceived to be ideally listened to in situ, with headphones on a personal mobile device. Maps, directions and access notes are available with each walk to assist with orientation. 

ACCA reminds participants to be aware of their surroundings and to adhere to road safety guidelines at all times. Please note that when undertaking a walk, participants must assume personal responsibility for any liability, injury, loss, or damage in any way connected with their experience of Six Walks.

Six Walks can also be listened to from anywhere and at any time and Text versions of each walk are available for download.

ACCA acknowledges the support of Creative Victoria in the development of the Six Walks series.

Six Walks Ep 4: Idil Ali on the Carlton Housing Estate

This episode featuring Eleanor Jackson is part of Six Walks an audio walking tour series commissioned by ACCA – Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

Find bio, access notes, images and further information here: https://acca.melbourne/six-walks-episode-three-eleanor-jackson/

ABOUT THIS EPISODE:
New parents are frequently told about the importance of art in a child’s development. From fostering creativity to visual, motor and social skills, art is considered a vehicle for enriching children’s communication abilities, nourishing new thoughts, and aiding expressive exploration. But how do we locate motherhood out of the domestic space and into the public realm, particularly the worlds of contemporary and public art? In her piece for Six Walks, Eleanor Jackson considers the ways in which mothers and caretakers occupy public space, blurring and reinforcing conventional understandings of mothering – using galleries, parks, libraries and the streets in a manner not always anticipated by planners and designers – all the while performing the role of “being mothers” with all the associated complex, gendered connotations that this brings. 

Eleanor Jackson is a Filipino Australian poet, performer, and arts producer. She is the producer of the Melbourne Poetry Map, Vice-Chair of the Stella Prize and a Board Member of Queensland Poetry Festival. Eleanor is currently Chair, and was formerly Editor in Chief, of Peril Magazine, an online magazine celebrating Asian Australian arts and culture. Read extended bio via the link above.

Curator: Annika Kristensen
Audio technician: Simon Cotter

ABOUT THE SERIES:
Six Walks has been conceived to be ideally listened to in situ, with headphones on a personal mobile device. Maps, directions and access notes are available with each walk to assist with orientation. ACCA reminds participants to be aware of their surroundings and to adhere to road safety guidelines at all times. Please note that when undertaking a walk, participants must assume personal responsibility for any liability, injury, loss, or damage in any way connected with their experience of Six Walks.

Six Walks can also be listened to from anywhere and at any time and Text versions of each walk are available for download.

ACCA acknowledges the support of Creative Victoria in the development of the Six Walks series.

Six Walks Ep 3: Eleanor Jackson on art, motherhood & taking up space in the Melbourne Arts Precinct

This episode featuring Sophie Cunningham is part of Six Walks an audio walking tour series commissioned by ACCA – Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

Find bio, access notes, images and further information here: https://acca.melbourne/six-walks-episode-two-sophie-cunningham/

ABOUT THIS EPISODE:
In this episode of Six Walks, author Sophie Cunningham invites you on a walk through Royal Park. Established in 1854, Royal Park’s very existence was both a gesture towards the colonial administrator's belief in the role of public spaces to improve the health of the new town’s citizens, and a strategic way of building a green fortress around the city: that is parks were established as a way of displacing the traditional owners, the Wurundjeri people, from significant lands.

Sophie’s narration of her walk is interspersed with readings from her collection of essays, City of Trees, supported by the sonic landscapes of composer Martin Friedel. Read full bios via the link above.

Curator: Annika Kristensen
Audio technician: Simon Cotter

ABOUT THE SERIES:
Six Walks has been conceived to be ideally listened to in situ, with headphones on a personal mobile device. Maps, directions and access notes are available with each walk to assist with orientation. ACCA reminds participants to be aware of their surroundings and to adhere to road safety guidelines at all times. Please note that when undertaking a walk, participants must assume personal responsibility for any liability, injury, loss, or damage in any way connected with their experience of Six Walks.

Six Walks can also be listened to from anywhere and at any time and Text versions of each walk are available for download.

ACCA acknowledges the support of Creative Victoria in the development of the Six Walks series.

Six Walks Ep 2: Sophie Cunningham on Royal Park

This episode featuring Tony Birch is part of Six Walks an audio walking tour series commissioned by ACCA – Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

Find bio, access notes, images and further information here: https://acca.melbourne/six-walks-episode-one-tony-birch/

ABOUT THIS EPISODE:
Tony Birch’s walk, along a section of the Birrarung (Yarra) river from the Children’s Farm at Collingwood to the Fairfield ‘pipe-bridge’ and surrounding country, is located on the land of the Wurundjeri People of the greater Kulin Nation. Each time we walk we consider the privilege of being on Wurundjeri land and pay respect not only to their Elders – past, present and emerging – but all of their people. The Birrarung River is an ancient waterway. It precedes the birth of what we know today as Port Phillip Bay by tens of thousands of years. Prior to the formation of Port Phillip Bay and Bass Strait, during the end of the Ice Age, the Birrarung flowed across a land mass known as the Bassian Plains, that joined what we know today as Victoria and Tasmania. The ancient Birrarung eventually flowed into the Southern Ocean. While the contemporary Birrarung River has changed significantly over thousands of years, we know that the original bed of the Ice Age river remains, and can be located around 100 metres below Port Phillip Bay at the heads of the bay. The significance of this geological, cultural and spiritual reality should not be lost on us as we walk by the river today. We are sharing a story of both the past and the present, enmeshed in the country beneath our feet.

Tony Birch is an award winning author. He is a frequent contributor to ABC local and national radio, a regular guest at writers’ festivals, and a climate justice campaigner. Read the full bio via the link above.

Curators: Annika Kristensen and Miriam Kelly
Audio technician: Simon Cotter

ABOUT THE SERIES:
Six Walks has been conceived to be ideally listened to in situ, with headphones on a personal mobile device. Maps, directions and access notes are available with each walk to assist with orientation.

ACCA reminds participants to be aware of their surroundings and to adhere to road safety guidelines at all times. Please note that when undertaking a walk, participants must assume personal responsibility for any liability, injury, loss, or damage in any way connected with their experience of Six Walks.

Six Walks can also be listened to from anywhere and at any time and Text versions of each walk are available for download.

ACCA acknowledges the support of Creative Victoria in the development of the Six Walks series.

Six Walks Ep 1: Tony Birch on the Birrarung

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