“Rules of Engagement”
Gabrielle de Vietri, Danius Kesminas, Azlan McLennan, Dane Mitchell, Patrick Pound and Antoine Prum
25 May → 16 June 2007

Curated by Mark Feary
Part of Making Space: artist run initiatives in Victoria.

Rules of Engagement is a provocative visual art exhibition examining relationships, power and exchange within the art system. It is concerned with the communication between various stakeholders within the arts industry and how positions are negotiated, especially in relation to how artists define their role within an industry that has amassed, and continues to proliferate, around their creative output.

Rules of Engagement features a selection of Australian and international artists including Gabrielle de Vietri (Aus), Danius Kesminas (Aus), Azlan McLennan (Aus), Dane Mitchell (NZ), Patrick Pound (NZ) and Antoine Prum (Lux).

In spite its obvious military connotation, rules of engagement is used within this context to make reference to the knowledge required to participate in a predetermined activity. In the context of a game, for example, players can not hope to properly compete in, let alone win, a game with which they not fully versant.

Rules of Engagement is intended to present works by a selection of artists whose practices explore, critique and challenge some of the relationships and structures operating within the art industry. These generally take the artist as the central point of cultural production and then investigate the relationship between art and artist with the mechanisms of presentation, commerce, validation and exposure.

The exhibition includes the infamous work Post-traumatic Origami , 2002 by mid-career Australian artist Danius Kesminas which involves the compressed car wreckage of esteemed art critic Robert Hughes' accident in Western Australia in 1999. Dane Mitchell will exhibit his Recent Acquisitions , which provoked a dramatic response when Mitchell attempted to exhibit the project at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces in 2002. This exhibition will also present the Australian premiere of Antoine Prum’s significant film work Mondo Veneziano, which was exhibited in the Luxembourg Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2005.

Making Space is an ambitious program of events from April to June 2007, involving 21 artist-run initiatives (ARIs) around Victoria presenting exhibitions, forums, performances and workshops designed to celebrate the diversity of this network and their contribution to Australian contemporary art.

Making Space has been developed collaboratively by the Victoria Initiatives of Artists Network (VIA-n) and was initiated by the Australia Council and Arts Victoria. This project has also been generously supported by Joyce Nissan.