BOOK LAUNCH: Permanent Recession: a Handbook on Art, Labour and Circumstance

Co-Chaired by Ben Eltham and Catherine Ryan and featuring Andy Butler, Megan Cope, and Hannah Mathews.

• When: 28th November, 3-5pm
• Where: MUMA, Monash University

——

We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we present this event. We pay our respects to elders past, present and future, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.

——

All Conference is pleased to announce the release of its first major publication Permanent Recession: a Handbook on Art, Labour and Circumstance.

Permanent Recession is an enquiry into the capitals and currencies of experimental, radical and artist-run initiatives in Australia.

Excavating a shared history of independent practice stretching back to the 1980s, this publication situates new research within a rich continuum of debate about the Australian artmaking context.

Part research, part advocacy document, part literature review, part reader, Permanent Recession is a living contribution to current thought. As a handbook, it is a compilation of useful information in a compact and handy form. It should be used!

Contributors:

Including new and republished texts by Peter Anderson, Andrew Brooks, Andy Butler, David Corbet, Léuli Eshrāghi, Ben Eltham, Catherine Ryan, Colleen Chen, Tristen Harwood, Mark Jackson, Georgie Meagher, Macushla Robinson, Anne Marsh, Jacqueline Millner, Kate MacNeill, Bernice Murphy, Margo Neale, Spiros Panigirakis, Francis Russell, Kate Scardifield, Philipa Veitch, Amelia Wallin, and Tian Zhang; and transcribed discussions with Esther Anatolitis, Hana Pera Aoake, Marnie Badham, Clare Cooper, Sarah Gory, Lucie McIntosh, Lisa Radford, Pip Shea, Talia Smith, Pip Wallis, Katie Winten, and Tian Zhang. Edited by All Conference co-convener, Channon Goodwin.

About the speakers:

Andy Butler is a writer, curator and artist based in Narrm (Melbourne). His writing on art and politics has been published widely, including by The Monthly, The Saturday Paper, Overland, Art + Australia and Runway. He is on the board of SEVENTH Gallery and is a co-director of Mailbox Art Space.

Megan Cope is a Quandamooka woman (North Stradbroke Island) in South East Queensland. Her site-specific sculptural installations, video work and paintings investigate issues relating to identity, the environment and mapping practices. Cope’s work often resists prescribed notions of Aboriginality and become psychogeographies across various material outcomes that challenge the grand narrative of ‘Australia’ as well as our sense of time and ownership in a settler-colonial state. Cope’s work has been exhibited in Australia and internationally including at Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Chapter Art Center, Cardiff Wales; MONA, Hobart; Museum of Brisbane; Cairns Regional Art Gallery; Koorie Heritage Trust, Melbourne; City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand; Para Site Contemporary Art Space, Hong Kong; Careof Art Space, Milan; the Australian Embassy, Washington USA. Megan Cope is a member of Aboriginal art collective proppaNOW. She is represented by This Is No Fantasy, Melbourne.

Megan Cope is a Quandamooka woman (North Stradbroke Island) in South East Queensland. Her site-specific sculptural installations, video work and paintings investigate issues relating to identity, the environment and mapping practices. Cope’s work often resists prescribed notions of Aboriginality and become psychogeographies across various material outcomes that challenge the grand narrative of ‘Australia’ as well as our sense of time and ownership in a settler-colonial state. Cope’s work has been exhibited in Australia and internationally including at Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Chapter Art Center, Cardiff Wales; MONA, Hobart; Museum of Brisbane; Cairns Regional Art Gallery; Koorie Heritage Trust, Melbourne; City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand; Para Site Contemporary Art Space, Hong Kong; Careof Art Space, Milan; the Australian Embassy, Washington USA. Megan Cope is a member of Aboriginal art collective proppaNOW. She is represented by This Is No Fantasy, Melbourne.

Hannah Mathews is Senior Curator at MUMA. Mathews is an experienced curator who has worked with contemporary art organisations such as the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (ACCA), Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) and the Sydney Biennale, as well as working prolifically as an independent project initiator and director. She has an impressive track record of ambitious projects including Framed Movements, ACCA (2014), Action/Response, Dance Massive Festival (2013), Power to the People: Contemporary Conceptualism and the Object in Art, ACCA (2011), as well as NEW 11, ACCA and Primavera 2008 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Hannah has a Master of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne (2002).

Catherine Ryan is an artist, writer and performer from Melbourne. Catherine works in time-based media including performance, sound, video and installation. She has exhibited at galleries and festivals in Australia and Europe, including Gertrude Contemporary, MUMA, the Royal College of Art (London), the Vienna Biennale and the Melbourne Art Fair.

About All Conference

All Conference is an organising network established in 2016 and comprised of fifteen Artist-Run, experimental and cross-disciplinary arts organisations from around Australia. The network is the result of a national collectivising impulse by a dynamic group of organisations focused on the production and presentation of new contemporary art. The group’s current members are BLINDSIDE, Boxcopy, Bus Projects, c3 Contemporary Art Space, Cool Change Contemporary, Constance ARI, FELTspace, Firstdraft, KINGS Artist-Run, Liquid Architecture, Outer Space, Runway Journal, SEVENTH Gallery, Trocadero Artspace, un Projects, Watch This Space, and West Space. Working together, this alliance forms a platform for research, publishing and knowledge-sharing. All Conference champions the important role that artist-centric organisations play in sustaining the Australian arts ecosystem and in imagining alternative futures. All Conference is co-convened by Channon Goodwin (Bus Projects), Georgia Hobbs and Claudia Roosen (Firstdraft).