Alternate realities, memory fields, truth-telling, and material-semiotic worlds are open to exploration in Platform Arts’ latest art exhibition.
Contemporary and experimental arts organisation Platform Arts has the mind cogs turning again with their upcoming exhibition WORLDING. Bringing the works of eleven esteemed national and international contemporary artists to Geelong, the visual arts show explores the broad concept of world-building, inviting its viewers to consider how they consciously—or unconsciously—build, design, and organise a personal world.
Taking on a less terrestrial definition of world, curator Dr Amber Smith provides a fascinating take on the psychological and emotional practices that people cultivate to affirm their selfhood, agency, politics, and even personal myths. WORLDING also demonstrates the growing calibre of contemporary artists presenting in Geelong, including Madison Bycroft, Katthy Cavaliere, Alex Rizkalla, and Patrick Pound. The exhibition and public programming runs from 8 June to 19 July at Platform Arts.
WORLDING
- When: 8 June – 19 July 2024, with an opening event from 4pm Saturday 8 June
- Where: Platform Arts, 60 Little Malop Street, Geelong
- Artists: Brook Andrew, Madison Bycroft, Katthy Cavaliere, Daniel Crooks, Julie Davies, Patrick Pound, Alex Rizkalla, Si Yi Shen, Kieren Seymour, Batia Suter, and Tarryn Love, Lisa Couzens, and Dr. Vicki Couzens.
Stay up to date with what’s happening within the region’s art scene here.
Under the curation of Platform Arts’ Dr Amber Smith, the collection of works reflects how people reimagine their immediate world and what they are signalling to themselves and others, often ranging from acts of curating the past through memorabilia to crafting speculative future worlds. The art mediums span video and digital media as well as installation and sculptural works from an impressive cohort of artists including Brook Andrew, Madison Bycroft, Katthy Cavaliere, Daniel Crooks, Julie Davies, Patrick Pound, Alex Rizkalla, Si Yi Shen, Kieren Seymour, Batia Suter, and Tarryn Love, Lisa Couzens, and Dr. Vicki Couzens.
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These themes are familiar territory for Dr. Amber Smith who completed extensive research into the area during their 2022 PhD, Collecting, Display, and World-Building in Contemporary Art Practice: Putting the Wunderkammer back to work. This research saw Amber investigate the more unconscious motivations behind ‘accumulation’ as an art form, which further unravelled their interest in why people ‘collect what they collect’. Through WORLDING, Amber invites viewers to contemplate how one exists among, between, and surrounded by a deliberate network of material things.
“WORLDING is proposed as a life-long project where one is always thinking about and acting on what they desire their world to entail. By confronting our own attempts to world-build, we gain insight into the purpose of worlding being about identity and creating an environment that signals back to us—sometimes unconsciously—our identity and essentials like security and self-actualisation. We like to know that our immediate world fulfills our needs and desires,” explains Smith.
WORLDING runs as a six-week program that begins with a curator floor talk at 3.00pm, followed by an opening event at 4.00 pm on Saturday 8 June. Platform Arts will also host free public events in partnership with The Centre For Reworlding, including a screening and Q+A session on Friday 28 June; a cross-sector panel discussion drawing on worldbuilding expertise from an architect, author, game-designer, and exhibiting artist on the Saturday 15 June; and a film screening of Harry Hooton (1971) through Australian Film Workshop on Friday 21 June.
For more information and to register for events, visit here.
