“The Conversational Cosmos”
Laura McLean, Melanie Bonajo, Pony Express, Benjamin Forster, Karen Kramer, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Alexandra Navratil, Rachel Pimm and Lori E. Allen
7 Apr → 13 May 2017
Curated by Laura McLean, The Conversational Cosmos features works by artists which speak for, and to, the non-human – encompassing entities of the natural world and nature as a whole, as well as technologically enabled agents and artificial intelligences.
Interconnections forged and made visible through accelerated technological capabilities and environmental devastation, and our position as subjects embodied and embedded in a complex, de-centred field of relations are highlighted in this collection of works that give voice to environmental, animal, and technological ‘others’, including a deceased fox in Fukushima, a worm passing through deep time, and a contaminated lake in Germany.
Bringing together newly commissioned works with others shown for the first time in Australia, The Conversational Cosmos seeks to foster an expanded cosmopolitan conviviality, and bring the ‘others’ closer.
Featuring work by Melanie Bonajo (NDL), Pony Express (AUS), Benjamin Forster (AUS), Karen Kramer (UK), Lynn Hershman Leeson (US), Alexandra Navratil (CH), and Rachel Pimm with Lori E Allen (UK)
Image: The Eye That Articulates Belongs on Land was commissioned for the Jerwood/FVU Awards: Borrowed Time, a collaboration between Jerwood Charitable Foundation and FVU, in association with CCA, Glasgow and University of East London, School of Arts and Digital Industries. Supported by The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. FVU is supported by Arts Council England. Field research in Japan which resulted in Karen Kramer's proposal for The Eye That Articulates Belongs On Land was supported by Arts Catalyst and NPO S-Air.
Laura McLean is a curator, writer, and researcher based in Sydney. A graduate of Goldsmiths College and Sydney College of the Arts, she has curated projects for Photo Access, Canberra; MuseumsQuartier, Vienna; Maldives Pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale; UNESCO, Paris; and Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney, among others. Her writing has been presented by publishers including Arena, Maretti Editore, Frame Finland, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and The MIT Press. She is currently an editor of Runway Australian Experimental Art magazine.
Melanie Bonajo (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, Dutch artist, filmmaker, feminist, sexological bodyworker, somatic sex coach and educator, cuddle workshopfacilitator and animal rights activist. Through their videos, performances, photographs and installations, Mel examines current conundrums of co-existence in a crippling capitalistic systems, and address themes of eroding intimacy and isolation in an increasingly sterile, technological world.
Pony Express is an experimental, Live Art duo led by Ian Sinclair and Loren Kronemyer. Through their pandrogynous collaborative process, Pony Express work across platforms of media art, performance, video and transdisciplinary research. Creating immersive alternate realities that reflect themes of adaptation, global weirding and the slow apocalypse. Presenting in a diverse array of traditional and non-traditional venues and cooperating with communities, organisations and subcultures at the forefront of environmental futures.
The duo focus on queer ecologies and nonhuman politics to build worlds that trouble the ethical landscape of the present day.
Benjamin Forster does not have any pets. He was a professional artist for many years. Now he is somewhat unconcerned with professionalilty except as a concept. He has a number of formal papers, like an honours degree in Visual Arts from the Australian National University, a graduate diploma in Library Science from Curtin University, and a soon to expire learners drivers license from the NSW Roads and Maritime Services. In 2016 he co-founded Frontyard Projects in Marrickville.
Karen Kramer’s work often takes the form of mythologising natural phenomena — embedding a critique of putative distinctions between the natural and manmade. She graduated with a BFA from Parsons School of Design, New York, in 2003 subsequently working in graphic design for the Center for Coastal Studies in Cape Cod Massachusetts.
Lynn Hershman Leeson (b. 1941) is a multimedia American artist and filmmaker based in San Francisco, California. Her work combines art with social commentary, particularly on the relationship between people and technology. Leeson is a pioneer in new media, and her work with technology and in media-based practices helped legitimize digital art forms. Her interests include feminism, race, surveillance, and artificial intelligence and identity theft through algorithms and data tracking. She has been referred to as a "new media pioneer" for the prescient incorporation of new science and technologies in her work.
Alexandra Navratil lives and works in Zurich and Amsterdam. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the SMBA Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Dan Gunn Berlin, CCS Centre Culturel Suisse Paris, BolteLang Zurich and in groupshows at the ICA Philadelphia and the MUSAC, Spain amongst other venues.
Rachel Pimm (they/ them/ theirs) is a research-based artist searching for the origin of things, telling material stories, looking for the political - the feminist, queer, sick, and de-colonial - in the animal, vegetable, and
mineral. Their work is often collaborative and has been presented with the Serpentine Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, and Royal Academy in London, and art centres in the US and around Europe. Rachel is Associate
Lecturer at Camberwell College, UAL.
Lori E. Allen (b. 1975, St. Louis, MI) is a sound artist and experimental composer working with sound, text, video and sculpture to understand materiality of thought as it morphs in no particular order into belief systems, social anxiety, competition, closed circuits, and the loss or assertion of self.