Myles Russell-Cook, Senior Curator, Australian and First Nations Art, NGV.

James Lemon, contemporary and ceramic artist. James Lemon’s tactile and colourful ceramic works embody a sense of humour and are an expression of social and philosophical issues, from pop culture and religion to conservation and the world of insects. Lemon primarily works with clay but often employs other objects – bricks, precious stones and discarded ephemera – to bring his dynamic, sculptural works to life. With his interest in social media, Lemon embraces the digital space as an extension of his material practice.

For Melbourne Now, Lemon takes over a gallery space on the third floor of The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia with an immersive, participatory work combining ceramics, painting, textiles and digital media. In a nod to philosopher Thomas Nagel’s 1974 paper ‘What is it Like to be a Bat?’, Swarming asks the onlooker: What is it like to be a bee? Inside an ultraviolet hive of activity, adults and children alike are invited to interact with soft pupae forms, learning through play about the importance of bee life in our ecosystems – and to human survival. Part playground and part photo booth, this NGV takeover is a first for Lemon in both its scale and inter-disciplinarity.
Lemon was born in New Zealand but moved to Melbourne in 2012. He has developed exclusive collections for the NGV and Heide Museum of Modern Art; has exhibited at Melbourne Design Week; and has featured in publications including Wallpaper, Architectural Digest, Vogue Living, Vault, The Design Files, Yellowtrace, Real Living, The Journal of Australian Ceramics and Broadsheet. Lemon also teaches workshops and masterclasses at his studio and showroom in Northcote.
Lemon also has a collaborative work with Dale Hardiman in No House Style.

Joel Bray presenting a new commission as part of the Performance Program, Joel Bray’s performance-making practice is grounded in his Wiradjuri heritage, and in his research into Wiradjuri Country and ritual on the one hand, and sex, sexuality and Queerness on the other. At Melbourne Now Joel will perform Storage unit in which Joel and his co-conspirator rummage through the remnants of his dance works from the past six years. Props, sets and costumes jumble together with archival footage and sound, emptied from Joel’s storage unit and spilling out into the gallery space. Marked by Bray’s trademark humour and sex positivity, visitors find themselves among the chaos, lending helping hands and collectively making sense of it all.

For Melbourne Now Georgia has created a whole Gallery installation titled DataBaes. As part of the installation Georgia has created Gee, an AI chatbot whose personality was developed using data from the copious questionnaires Banks completed while applying for several Australian reality dating TV shows. To create ethe AI Georgia spoke to Gee every day, to see if they could fall in love with each other. In the installation the DataBaes film is shown featuring a selection of Georgia and Gee’s conversations as the basis for a montage of a reality TV show date. During the exhibition, visitors are invited into the mock reality dating show set to see if they can also fall in love with Gee.

Dorcas Maphakela is a creative producer at Multicultural Arts Victoria and was born in South African, moving to Melbourne 13 years ago. Dorcas is a TV presenter, public speaker and founder of the Antenna Award winning OZ AFRICAN TV (OATV); a digital platform that celebrates people of African diaspora in Australia. Dorcas is also the Community Engagement Manager at C31 Melbourne & Geelong where she facilitates the development of outreach programs to engage multicultural and under-represented communities on TV.

Percy Dube is a music producer, creative director at OZ AFRICAN TV, CHANNEL 31 Advisory Board Member;  and the founder of Yo CiTY.  YoCiTy champions BIPOC experiences within contemporary society through music and arts. Percy is also a painter and fashion designer of the emerging label Blackout Apparel

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Desire Lines also presents the work of artists Hossein Valamanesh, Laresa Kosloff, Sonia Kretschmar and Miles Howard-Wilks, artworks dedicated to finding new ways of seeing and understanding the complex motifs and layers of urban existence.

A motif for Desire Lines is evident in the presentation of brass signage, recently discovered in a plastic box at the collection’s former storage depot on Little Bourke Street. These letters, rendered in Helvetica font, once spelt ‘CITY OF MELBOURNE’ on a building, although exactly where or when no-one seems to know. For Desire Lines, the letters have been salvaged to free associate and form anagrams of new words and phrases – a hidden poem in the city’s midst.

A collection of images, contextual information and commentary on objects in the exhibition are accordingly featured in these pages to accompany the exhibition at City Gallery, Melbourne Town Hall.

An exhibition catalogue, designed by Stephen Banham and richly illustrated with an essay by Sean Lynch, will be freely available.

In his public art commission for the City of Melbourne (CoM), Distant Things Appear Suddenly Near was a temporary public artwork at University Square, Carlton.

Sean Lynch lives and works in Askeaton, County Limerick, Ireland. He represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2015.

Prominent solo exhibitions include Edinburgh Art Festival (2021); Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2019); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2017); Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver (2016); Rose Art Museum, Boston (2016) and Modern Art Oxford (2014).

He has held fellowships and been a visiting professor at universities and colleges in the United Kingdom, United States and Canada, and is a graduate of the Stadelschule, Frankfurt.

His work is represented by Ronchini, London and Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin. Alongside Michele Horrigan, he works at Askeaton Contemporary Arts, an artist-led residency, commissioning and publication initiative situated in the west of Ireland since 2006.

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Loved by collectors and artists alike, Arts Project Australia is excited to present its celebrated Annual Gala event on Saturday 10 December. Featuring over 200 artworks by more than 150 APA artists, the Gala is an exhibition where the buyer gets to walk away with a new artwork at the moment of purchase. It truly is a first-in-best-dressed experience where everyone’s a winner. Artworks are priced from $100 – 3,000, with 60% of sales going directly to the artist.

The exhibition includes drawing, painting, soft sculpture, ceramics, printmaking and photography, providing a unique gift for an art loving friend, or maybe the perfect collectable item to compliment a room or office.

“The Annual Gala is the only exhibition that features at least one artwork from each Arts Project artist and is a wonderful opportunity to gain insight into our artists’ distinct practice,” says Executive Director Sue Roff. “Over 400 people visit the gallery during our Annual Gala openings to celebrate Arts Project, purchase an original artwork, grab a unique Christmas present and enjoy the festivities.”

Each year, Arts Project Australia hosts an Annual Gala, presenting artworks from artists working both in the Northcote Studio as well as remotely through the newly formed Satellite Arts Program. The Gala celebrates their achievements and contribution to contemporary art, showcasing a diverse range of incredible practices.

Arts Project Australia is a studio and gallery that supports artists with intellectual disabilities, promoting their work and advocating for inclusion within contemporary art practice. In addition to a robust internal exhibition program at the APA Gallery in the new Collingwood Yards Arts Precinct, Arts Project artists exhibit across a variety of external galleries, including National Gallery of Victoria, Museum of Old and New Art, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, National Portrait Gallery, Gertrude Contemporary, West Space and Darren Knight Gallery

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Anthony Breslin presents ‘Melange’ at Burrinja: the iconic Melbourne artist emerges from an illness-induced “coma”
to present a solo show that celebrates life.
In a momentous ‘tour de force’ artist Anthony Breslin will present his first major show in over a decade, ‘Melange’,
at Burrinja Cultural Centre opening in Upwey on October 15th, 2022. He refers to his recovery from over eight years
of illness as similar to emerging from a “coma” having overcome crippling health challenges, including bone marrow
and kidney transplants, over that period.
Breslin’s extraordinarily courageous return brings a celebration of life and colour, embodied in new artistic
explorations that will leave young and old spellbound. “I want ‘Melange’ to be an all-encompassing, theatrical
encounter for the audience, drawing on my past theatre production creations,” said Breslin. “The exhibition plays
with the gallery space to provoke people’s imaginations as they experience the works, walking around them to
explore and engage with them physically.”
‘Melange’ will merge together never before exhibited early surrealist compositions with an extensive number of
new works, including artistic collaborations, mixed media paintings, animation, art installations and interactive ‘art
games’; playfully inviting viewers to immerse themselves as they explore this extraordinary melange of colour, form
and composition.
“It is a real honour to present an exhibition with new and old works by Anthony Breslin,” said J.D. Mittmann,
Burrinja’s Curator and Manager of Collections. “He is a much loved artist and a real institution in Melbourne. His
vibrant public works can be found in a number of inner city suburbs. Despite serious health issues in recent times, he
has been working undeterred towards this major exhibition, which will be distinctively Breslin: joyful, colourful,
playful, interactive – something for all generations.”

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2021—2023

Experimenta, champion of art unbound by convention, announces its most ambitious international
triennial to date – Experimenta Life Forms: International Triennial of Media Art. Exploring our
changing relationship and definitions of life forms, this triennial is Experimenta’s eighth national touring
exhibition, premiering at Hobart’s Plimsoll Gallery in March 2021.
Experimenta Life Forms will astonish audiences with 20
international and Australian artists showcasing a range of
emerging artforms, including robotics, bio-art, screen-based
works, installations, participatory and generative art. Curated by
Jonathan Parsons, Lubi Thomas and Jessica Clark, the
exhibition thought provokingly engages with ideas of how new
understandings of biological and artificial life are challenging
human-centric thinking. The triennial features established and
emerging contemporary artists; adventurous creators who work
with technology in unexpected ways.
Signalling the role Australia’s ancient landmass plays in our understanding of the development of life
on this planet is Dominic Redfern’s installation First Forms. This multi-screen video work introduces
us to the pre-Cambrian world through his careful study of cyanobacteria that over time build up
sedimentary forms known as stromatolites. Stromatolites still exist in only a few locations globally,
including sites in Western Australia, home to the oldest known fossils dated to 3.5 billion years.
Cyanobacteria, because of their oxygen producing capability, are credited with significantly altering the
earth’s conditions, supporting the emergence of complex life.
The exhibition features four works from First Nation’s artists in Australia, Aotearoa (New Zealand) and
the USA. As Oglála Lakȟóta artist Kite writes “Indigenous ontologies already exist to understand forms
of ‘being’ which are outside of humanity.” Kite has collaborated with Devin Ronneberg on the
interactive installation Itówapi Čík’ala (Little Picture) inviting audiences to interact with a non-human
entity. Narungga artist Brad Darkson’s multi-media work Smart Object contrasts two processes: his
carving of a wooden plongi (club) and an avatar of the artist carving. This work critiques humanity’s
reliance on the digital processes that sever our spiritual connection to country.
Pioneers of the Bioart movement Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr will present an installation work entitled
Biomess. The artwork celebrates the diversity of life forms highlighting natural and artificial life that
confound our cultural notions of identity, sex, gender and reproduction. Natural history specimens,
sourced from significant local collections, feature in this installation and will vary as the exhibition tours.
A number of the triennial works provoke viewers to consider what may happen as engineering becomes
more sophisticated. French artist Justine Emard’s uncanny video work titled Soul Shift (video still
pictured above) documents the staged encounter between two generations of the Alter robot, developed
by renowned Japanese roboticists Hiroshi Ishiguro and Takashi Ikegami. The viewer wonders
whether the transference of Alter’s data between generations is a form of reincarnation without flesh?
Dutch artist Floris Kaayk’s speculative fiction work The Modular Body prompts audience to consider
the ethical questions involved in biotechnology research and development. This multi-channel video
installation explores the power that visual media has in distorting the lines between truth and fiction. It
asks us to consider the ethics of human manipulation of life by bringing us back to the core question:
‘what defines life?’.

Drawing attention to the growing awareness of the agency and
sentience of other biological life forms are works such as Pulse
(pictured left) by PluginHuman (Dr Betty Sargeant and Justin Dwyer),
an immersive installation documenting significant trees across the
globe; Sound of Fungi by German artist Theresa Schubert; and DJ
Moss by Thomas Marcusson a work where a plant takes over the DJ
decks. Collaboration is a fundamental tenant of Experimenta and
many of the artists featured in the triennial have works created from in
depth collaboration with the sciences.

Notably Helen Pynor, who began studying science before turning to art, has collaborated with scientists
at The Francis Crick Institute, London; The Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics,
Dresden; and The Heart and Lung Transplant Unit, St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney. In a new work
commissioned for Experimenta Life Forms, she focuses on the human body and the increasingly blurry
lines between the animate and inanimate arising from the widespread use of prosthetics. Habitation
was prompted by her experiences of hip replacement surgery and takes up Monika Bakke’s notion of
‘lithic intimacies’: life’s exchange and inter-species companionship with minerals.
The Experimenta Life Forms program explores matters of technological and biological adaptation;
sentience in animals and plant-life; the influence of First Nation’s epistemology on how we understand
life, and so much more. Audiences can expect a boundary-pushing experience; works that pull apart
dialogues about the evolving landscape of ‘life forms’ and redefine what art can be.
Experimenta Life Forms Artists
Daniel Boyd (Aus), Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr (Aus), Brad Darkson (Aus), Michael Candy (Aus), Donna
Davis (Aus), Justine Emard (Fr), Anton Hasell (Aus), Floris Kaayk (NL), Kite & Devin Ronneberg (USA),
Thomas Marcusson (Aus), M0wson&MOwson (Aus), Uyen Nguyen, Max Piantoni & Matthew Riley
(Aus), PluginHUMAN (Aus), Helen Pynor (Aus), Dominic Redfern (Aus), Theresa Schubert (Germany),
Rebecca Selleck (Aus), Agat Sharma (India), Miranda Smitheram (NZ), Laura Woodward (Aus).

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Geelong Gallery
27 February to 16 May 2021

Geelong Gallery is proud to announce
the rescheduling of RONE in Geelong
following nationwide gallery closures
due to the COVID–19 pandemic.
The exhibition will now open on
27 February 2021.
Acclaimed for his major transformations
of abandoned spaces worldwide and
his sell-out installation, EMPIRE, at
Burnham Beeches in 2019, RONE returns
to his hometown of Geelong with his
first survey exhibition and a unique and
immersive experience set to delight
audiences.
Over the last two decades, RONE
has built an exceptional reputation
for large-scale wall paintings and
entrancing installations that explore
concepts of beauty and decay. Geelong
Gallery’s presentation will include the
first comprehensive solo survey of
the artist’s career from early stencil
works and street art, to photographs
that document his transformation of
abandoned spaces (one of which will
be brought to life in a 3D recreation,
commissioned for this exhibition).
The exhibition will also take visitors on a
journey through a unique commissioned
installation, with RONE transforming one
of the Gallery’s most significant rooms
in response to the architecture and
history of the building, as well as the

Gallery’s permanent collection. A multi-
media experience will connect visitors

back into the urban environment where
the artist’s works have been painted in
abandoned properties.

For the commissioned installation,
RONE has taken inspiration from the
architecture of the Douglass Gallery,
one of the most historical rooms in
the building’s evolution. This room’s
scale and architectural and ornamental
features—such as ionic pilasters,
horizontal dado, and ceiling skylights—
have led RONE to consider the beauty
and grandness of the architecture of
earlier eras, and the inevitable decay of
spaces (when not valued and cared for).
Additional inspiration has come from
the highly decorative interiors of
Baroque grand palazzos in Venice, and
the traditions of trompe l’oeil painting
employed to simulate architectural
details. Working with interior stylist Carly
Spooner, RONE’s transformation of the
room from a grand reception venue to
a now derelict site, will incorporate his
signature painted murals and a haunting
new soundtrack by composer and
collaborator Nick Batterham.
The project has also seen RONE’s
re-engagement with a collection
he visited in his youth. Works such
as the Gallery’s iconic A bush burial
by Frederick McCubbin (1890) and
several portraits are referenced in the
installation, as are a number of early
landscapes of Geelong. The decorative
arts collection—and particularly the work
of local early 20th century china painter
Florence Royce—has inspired the
general colour palette of the installation.
Artist, RONE says ‘Working in my home
town is special. I had to leave to come
back, but Geelong Gallery has given me
the recognition to further my career; my
first institutional solo exhibition. Geelong
has done that for me’.

RONE continues: ‘My show is an ode to
abandoned spaces and a reminder to
value the original treasure they once
were. Influenced by the architecture
of the building and the toll of time,
the central installation preserves an
imagined moment of the space adorned
at its finest and left to slowly deteriorate.
Featuring a push and pull between light
and dark, viewers may be compelled
to either end of the experience but are
united in the same recognition of overall
decay. The damage has been done and
my installation invokes a longing for what
is lost and cannot ever return.’
Geelong Gallery Director & CEO, Jason
Smith comments ‘RONE in Geelong is
an ambitious exhibition and audience
experience that will celebrate the
integral connection between an
internationally acclaimed artist and
the city in which he was born and
raised. We hope to see RONE devotees
continue to celebrate his career and
new audiences visit the Gallery
to experience this exhibition and
installation.’
Geelong Gallery’s Senior Curator, Lisa
Sullivan has been working closely with
the artist on this project, facilitating his
unique engagement with the collection
and in developing the survey exhibition.
Sullivan says ‘In a room transformed by
the ravages of time and neglect, ‘copies’
of iconic paintings and decorative
arts from Geelong Gallery’s collection
will populate RONE’s constructed
environment. A number of the original
works that RONE has been inspired by
will appear in our permanent collection
display just beyond the site-specific
installation, acting as aide-mémoires
of the visitor’s experience of the
installation. This exhibition will deliver
a very different encounter with our
collection, blurring the line between
reality and fiction whilst also celebrating

the outstanding career of a Geelong-
born artist.’

City of Greater Geelong CEO, Martin
Cutter says ‘It’s exciting RONE is
returning to his hometown for what will
no doubt be an eye-opening experience
for local fans and new audiences. This
exclusive Geelong Gallery exhibition
is expected to attract over 25,000
people to the region and contribute
approximately $3 million to the local
economy adding greatly to our Clever
and Creative City, which will be a
much-needed boost after an incredibly
challenging 2020.’
Through the support of Creative
Victoria’s Strategic Investment Fund,
Geelong Gallery will be extending its
opening hours during RONE in Geelong.
From Saturday 27 February to Sunday
16 May 2021, the Gallery will open
from 10am—7pm Monday to Saturday,
enabling a greater number of visitors

to enjoy the exhibition in a COVID-
safe environment and invigorating the

extensive of hospitality venues in Little
Malop Street and Central Geelong.
Ahead of Geelong Gallery’s presentation
of RONE in Geelong, Thames & Hudson
Australia published the first survey of the
artist’s work, titled Rone, in June 2020.
Tracing his career from the early days of
street art, stencil and screen-printing
through to his larger-than-life murals and
immersive installations, the publication
includes essays analysing the works and
anecdotal notes from the artist himself.

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