ROSS COULTER'S "AUDIENCE" SERIES

Having secured funding to publish a book, 2010 Georges Mora Fellow, Ross Coulter, is in the process of photographing an audience gathered in every gallery in Melbourne, watching a performance that doesn’t exist. The project tilted “Audience” is a photographic series that documents an audience who is gathered in a gallery space and has been instructed to imagine that they are viewing a performance art event. Participants are required to stand or sit in an empty gallery, in which there is no art, while black and white photographs are taken of them. The subjects are asked to direct their gaze to different parts of the gallery space and evoke a variety of expressions.

By drawing on the visual language of 1970s performance art documentation images, he is seeking to construct a photographic archive of an audience witnessing a number of performance (non) events in and around Melbourne. In this series of black-and-white photographic prints however, the performer and performance are absent, cropped out of the picture. The focus of the images is both the audience, looking on with a variety of expressions as they bear witness to a non-event, and the identity of the gallery space itself. Australian artist and art historian Charles Green notes that, “through documentation (of performance art happenings or events), the exemplary ‘truthfulness’ of performance deteriorates.” 

INEZ DE VEGA'S 'PERFORMING DISORDER!'

With a planned production date of October 2017, Performing Disorder! will be the outcome of Inez de Vega’s 2014/2015 Georges Mora Fellowship in partnership with the State Library of Victoria.

Performing Disorder! is a fully immersive spectacle of spoken word, dance, song and projected image that will take place under the library's famous dome. At night, the panopticon of the dome will erupt with a madness and pathos that will unveil the true stories of women incarcerated in Victoria’s psychiatric institutions. Set in an institutional time warp, the audience will be transported from the 1890s, through the now and into the future.

Half theatre/half art-installation, it involves collaboration with up to 35 artists, dancers, singers, composers, choreographers, producers, technicians and mentors, and is De Vega's most ambitious project to date. 

Inez de Vega's Bed Therapy

Inez de Vega will be therapist-in-residence in the pop-up shipping container gallery in the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art forecourt from 11th to 15th November.

Bringing her own brand of street counselling to weary city dwellers who feel alienated and in need of support, she will provide a welcome source of unexpected comfort (in a cosy bed) for passers by who feel ill at ease with the demands of urban life.

Inez will have one participant at a time join her in bed (though the public can listen in). She will engage her participant in an intimate discussion about their life, the challenges they face and their feelings. Inez’s bed is a place where we are encouraged to admit we carry wounds beneath the veneer of strength that we show to the world.

We are all wounded, yet as we go about our business in the urban environment we are expected to present a robust and uncomplicated exterior. Inez is offering her participants a rare moment of vulnerability in a communal space — where the public might risk an intimate encounter with a caring stranger and access their deeper feelings.

Bed Therapy will take place from 11.30am – 2.30 pm daily. Each therapy session will run for 40 minutes. If you would like to book in for therapy with Inez, please contact ACCA reception on (03) 9697 9999 (sessions are free).

Linda Tegg's Grassland Installation for Melbourne Festival

Linda Tegg's Grasslands, a grand meditation on nature versus culture at the State Library of Victoria, is on exhibition from Sat 11 Oct – Sun 23 Nov as part of the Melbourne Festival. 

Grasslands is an attempt to re-create the pre-settlement grasslands that once occupied the site on which the State Library of Victoria now stands. Working with experts at The University of Melbourne Department of Resource Management and Geography, Tegg selected a plethora of specially grown native plants and grasses.

This project is supported by The Georges Mora Foundation, the State Library of Victoria, the Australia Council, the City of Melbourne and the Melbourne School of Land and Environment, Melbourne University.

Artist: Linda Tegg
Horticulturist: John Delpratt
Landscape Architect: Anthony Magen

Linda Tegg preparing Grasslands

Linda Tegg preparing Grasslands

Grasslands-(Site-test-SLV)-2014.-Linda-Tegg_0[1].jpg

Georges Mora Foundation welcomes Clive Scott & Laura Lantieri

The Georges Mora Foundation is delighted to announce that Clive Scott has joined the Georges Mora Foundation as Chair. Clive is the General Manager of Sofitel Melbourne on Collins and and Area General Manager – Sofitel Australia and Fiji and is a well-known and respected supporter of the arts in Melbourne. He is on the board of Craft Victoria, is Chairman of the Department of Management and Marketing Advisory Board at the University of Melbourne, and is Chairman of Judges for the 2014 Melbourne Awards. He was an ambassador of the 2014 Melbourne Art Fair. Clive has been honoured with the Gold Tourism Medal from the French Minister of Tourism for his contribution to tourism development between France and Australia.

We also welcome curator and arts writer Laura Lantieri to the board. Laura brings diverse experience, she currently works at Arc One Gallery and in 2013 she worked in Italy at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and the Australian Pavilion for the 55th Venice Biennale. She holds a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Honours) and a Master of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne

From left: Clive Scott, Chair of The Georges Mora Foundation Inez de Vega, 2014 Georges Mora Foundation Fellow Caroline Williams, Foundation Founder Louise Vigar, former Chair of the Georges Mora Foundation photograph courtesy of State Library of Victoria photographer James Braund.

From left:
Clive Scott, Chair of The Georges Mora Foundation
Inez de Vega, 2014 Georges Mora Foundation Fellow
Caroline Williams, Foundation Founder
Louise Vigar, former Chair of the Georges Mora Foundation
photograph courtesy of State Library of Victoria photographer James Braund.