Concrete Culture

Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan (Philippines/Australia)
Richard Goodwin (Australia)
Ou Ning (China)
SquatSpace (Australia)
Ashok Sukumaran (India)

Curator: Felicity Fenner

Concrete Culture presents a range of contemporary art projects occurring at the interface of art and architecture by artists from Australia and Asia whose practice explores intersections between private and public spaces. There is a clear imperative by all the artists in Concrete Culture to scrutinise and record those aspects of urban and cultural change that disseminate local communities and devastate people's sense of place. The ongoing Da Zha Lan project being undertaken by Ou Ning and SquatSpace's subversive yet enlightening Tour of Beauty offer creative responses to the politics of space and gentrification in working class areas of Beijing and Sydney. Richard Goodwin's performative expeditions into fortressed city skyscrapers probe the covert barriers that protect and prohibit, while Ashok Sukumaran employs as material and metaphor a shared utility - light - to transgress the boundaries between public and private spaces, wealthy and poor communities. Ironically, it is the lack of concrete, here symbolising a lack of certainty, which imbues with heartache the house of possessions built by Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan. The artists recently emigrated from the Philippines to Brisbane, their world adrift as they reassessed and redefined their material and cultural heritage in the context of a new city and culture.

Exhibition: 29 May - 5 July 2008*

*Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan's work will be on exhibition from 10 June

Forum: Monday, 23 June 2008, 9.20am - 5.45pm
EXTRA/ORDINARY CITIES: The Cultural Dynamics of Urban Intervention
Convened by the Centre for Contemporary Art & Politics, UNSW and the Biennale of Sydney with Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre
Bookings: www.bos2008.com/app/biennale/event/8

WHERE & WHEN

 29 May - 5 July*

Reception with the artists at Ivan Dougherty Gallery on Monday 23 June, 5.45 - 8pm

Ivan Dougherty Gallery
Selwyn Street, Paddington
NSW 2021

Tel + 61 (0)2 9385 0726
email idg@unsw.edu.au

www.cofa.unsw.edu.au/galleries/idg/

Opening Hours Monday - Saturday 10am - 5pm. Closed Sundays and public holidays.

Admission is free. All welcome.

Un-imaginable

Dennis Del Favero, Korpys & Löffler, Susan Norrie and Peter Weibel, with young Australian filmmakers Jacob Nash, Warwick Thornton, Pauline Whyman and Adrian Wills.

Recent occurrences in different spheres of life from the ecological to the judicial have redefined our notion of the unbelievable. While maintaining continuities with a long history of the irreal, this new unimaginary confronts us with radically diverse realities, reformulating the condition and expression of life itself. Digital imagery plays a critical role in this reformulated notion, since it presents itself not only as a medium but also as a limit of contemporaneity. The Un_imaginable project invites a range of artists and writers to investigate this new unimaginary and explore the unique qualities of its terrain. The accompanying Un_imaginable publication is the first installment in the ZIP Digital Arts Edition series jointly produced by iCinema, ZKM Karlsruhe and the University of Pittsburgh.

Symposium: Friday 15 August, 1-5pm
Convened by UNSW Centre for Contemporary Art & Politics
 

 WHERE & WHEN

10 July - 16 August

Opening: Thursday 10 July, 6-8pm 

Ivan Dougherty Gallery
Selwyn Street, Paddington
NSW 2021

Tel + 61 (0)2 9385 0726
email idg@unsw.edu.au

www.cofa.unsw.edu.au/galleries/idg/

Opening Hours Monday - Saturday 10am - 5pm. Closed Sundays and public holidays.