TRACTION
Online 17 Nov 2020
ACCUMULATE Speakers | Justin Ashworth, Chantelle Mitchell, Anita Spooner
Convener | Josephine Mead
50 mins.
TRACTION | Forthcoming:
GAIN | will be a discussion around artist's rights and the call for an artist's union.
PRIME | will be a discussion about matriarchal power, ageing and ageism in the arts, with mature artists discussing their lived experience.
ACCUMULATE
TRACTION is a four-part discussion series that will examine ideas of modification and renewal within creative practice, the needs for upholding artist’s rights, the power of mature knowledge, and new modes of education and exchange.
Under the umbrella title of TRACTION, BLINDSIDE will present four artist-focused professional development online presentations: PIVOT, ACCUMULATE, GAIN and PRIME.
ACCUMULATE is a discussion around free / accessible new models of learning and sharing in the arts.
Anita Spooner is an arts organiser and editor interested in film, performance, publishing and arts writing. She works as a producer at Next Wave and directs Free Association, a new platform for workshops and publishing. As Associate Producer at Next Wave Anita curates and produces public art, mentorship programs and public programs at the University of Melbourne and with Deakin University, focusing on interdisciplinary collaboration and experimental pedagogy. In her roles as Gallery Manager and Public Programs Coordinator at SEVENTH Gallery Anita coordinated inclusive and accessible workshops, talks and performance programs embracing risk and experimentation. Previously Anita has worked as Associate Editor at Millennium Film Journal New York, independent curator at Channels Festival, and directed Interval, a platform for programming and publishing expanded documentary practice. Anita is currently developing an autofictional novella through her research into telepathy, psychoanalysis, her Cuban heritage and her mother’s psychic diaries.
Chantelle Mitchell is a curator and writer, currently Secretary for BLINDSIDE, advisor for SEVENTH Gallery, and independent producer. Her work has appeared in Plumwood Mountain, Axon Journal, Marrickville Pause¸ The Lifted Brow, Heart of Hearts and others. She has delivered performance lectures for Bus Projects, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, and the Ian Potter Museum of Art. Chantelle is one half of Ecological Gyre Theory with Jaxon Waterhouse, an interdisciplinary research practice seeking to continue the momentum guiding the ecological turn which has come to dominate the humanities in the 21st Century. As part of EGT, Chantelle has been published in eflux, art+Australia, presented for ACCA, ANU and Oxford University. Upcoming engagements include presentations for the Norweigan Petroleum Museum and KTH University of Sweden, residencies in Sweden and Broken Hill, with forthcoming exhibitions for the University of Melbourne and Edith Cowan University.
Justin Ashworth is a sound artist/composer from Melbourne. He works across a range of different platforms including film and dance scores, live performance, installation, improvisation, music production, and curation.
Justin is one of the current co-curators of the Melbourne improvised music institution the Make It Up Club, and coordinates the online surrealist sound art collective Little Songs of the Mutilated.
Josephine Mead is a visual artist and writer based in Naarm (Melbourne). She is currently working as an Artistic Director for BLINDSIDE. She works through photography, sculpture, installation and writing to explore personal notions of support. Her recent work has positioned female family members as support-structures, considered the body as a site of discursive practice, explored notions of deep listening, and examined the temporal and sonic nature of writing and photography. She has held solo exhibitions at c3 contemporary art space, TAB Gallery (Turkey), Bus Projects and the Monash and RMIT faculty galleries. She has shown work in group exhibitions at a wide range of venues, including Blindside, Stockroom, Craft Victoria, Stacks Projects, Counihan Gallery, Five Walls, St Heliers Street Gallery, Kings Artist Run, Seventh, Blue Oyster Space (New Zealand) and as part of the TOMI Arts Festival (Japan). In 2018 she undertook the Arquetopia Foundation Residency (Puebla, Mexico), the Kings Emerging Writer’s Program, the Macfarlane Fund Residency (Kyneton, Victoria) and was published by Art+Australia and un projects. In 2019 she was awarded a Career Development Grant through the Australia Council for the Arts to undertake the Tasarim Bakkali TAB Residency (Istanbul, Turkey) and the Córtex Frontal Residency (Arraiolos, Portugal). In 2020 she commenced the ZK/U Residency at Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (Berlin, Germany). She is a current Room to Create studio artist at Collingwood Yards (supported by City of Yarra) and is a founding member of the Image Collective.
IMAGES | Justin Ashworth | Anita Spooner | Chantell Mitchell | Courtesy the speakers.