OTHERING ARCHITECTURE: DIVERSITY ON SCREEN AND IN SPACE
Eugenia Lim’s The Australian Ugliness, like Robin Boyd’s book of the same name, seeks to question who architecture is built by and for. Bringing forward a female, Asian, performative and artistic perspective, TAU seeks to ‘other’ architecture, opening up its spaces, ideas and access to a broader, more diverse audience. TAU inserts people of colour, ambiguous and ageing bodies into some of the most iconic sites of our ugly-beautiful country. Featuring a panel of practitioners across art, film, design and curation, this talk looks at the intersection between art and architecture, screen and space – and the possibility for representations of a more diverse Australia.
Speakers: Amos Gebhardt (artist), Reko Rennie (artist), Eugenia Lim (artist), Simona Castricum (musician, performer, DJ and architecture academic)
9 AUGUST 2018 6.30-8PM
290 WALSH ST, SOUTH YARRA
$20 full / $15 concession / $10 Friends member; registrations essential
Book tickets here
THE AUSTRALIAN UGLINESS
The Australian Ugliness pays homage to modernist architect Robin Boyd (1919–1971) and his book of the same name, while exploring the ethics and aesthetics of our nation today. The three-channel video installation by Australian Artist Eugenia Lim brings forward a female, performative and Asian-Australian perspective to the screens and spaces of Australia. With visual poetry, pathos and wit, this is Australia rendered both familiar and strange, a country at once confident and ever-anxious.
Led by the gold-suited figure of The Ambassador (performed by Lim), the artist-filmmaker shape-shifts as student, tourist, client, property investor and resident across more than 30 sites and spaces across Australia, interrogating the diversity, liveability and the sustainability of “the Australian Dream”.
Working with WOWOWA, Eugenia will pay homage to one of Boyd’s last projects, Neptune’s Fishbowl (1970). With its unorthodox construction methods and utopian geodesic structure, Neptune’s Fishbowl is simultaneously ambitious, democratic and optimistic.
Eugenia Lim is an Australian artist who works across video, performance and installation. Interested in how nationalism and stereotypes are formed, Lim invents personas to explore the tensions of an individual within society — the alienation and belonging in a globalised world.
To see the full program, visit Open House Melbourne’s website.
The Australian Ugliness collaborators:
Eugenia Lim – writer, director, performer, editor
Alexandra George – producer
Virginia Kay and Jamie Houge – executive producers
Tim Hillier – cinematographer
Dan West – composition and sound design
WOWOWA with Robin Boyd – installation design
The Post Lounge – Kurt Royan (General Manager), Ela Furdas (Post Producer), Kali Bateman (Colourist), Alan Bennett (Online Editor)
Amos Gebhardt – mentor
Nat Cursio – choreography
Kat Chan – costume design and art department
Julia Spizzica – wardrobe assistant
Shylo Tui – lighting consultant (Walsh Street)
Tom Ross – stills photographer
Eleanor Orchard, Alice Cummins, James Andrews, Gregory Lorenzutti, Alice Dixon – costumed figures
Dan West, Jessie Finch, Emma McRae, Georgia Nowak, James Stephens, Louise Terry, Rachel Ferry, Simon Winkler, Belle Bassin, Sophia Cameron, Bridie Wilkinson – Walsh St partygoers
Miau Teng Tan, Daria Tolotchkov, Aryan Azizkhani, Rifat Muharram, Phoebe Kramer, Alex Jeanne Macdonald, Tamara Baksheev, Matthew Li – MADA Wearing the City designers
Tony Isaacson – project manager
Peter Felicetti – structural engineer
Lapel Industries – construction
Paul Christian, Emeile Dawkins and Johnson Fang – installation
3D Inflate – inflatable
Mitra Farjpoor – curtain maker
Jacqueline Miller and Grace Carver – studio assistants
Warren Davey – signwriter
THE PROJECT IS MADE POSSIBLE THROUGH THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF THE FOLLOWING PARTNERS:
Presented by
Open House Melbourne
Melbourne School of Design
Supported by
Australia Council for the Arts
Creative Victoria
City of Melbourne
Australian Culture Fund
Gertrude Contemporary studio program
Cultural Partners
The Robin Boyd Foundation
WOWOWA
Plot Media
The Post Lounge
Industry Partners
Kane Constructions
HASSELL
Ontera
Wojo Signs
Photo Credit: Eugenia Lim, The Australian Ugliness (2018) production still by Tom Ross