Museum of Me: a student belonging exhibition
RMIT Gallery
19 October 2020 - 5 March 2021
How will you remember 2020?
When you look back on this disrupted year what will you recall of the cultural inspiration that helped you get through social isolation? Think of the music, online streaming, cooking, Zoom sessions and memes and art that provided a sense of hope and belonging over the long months of lockdown and social distancing.
Museum of Me is an RMIT Gallery online student exhibition showcasing creativity across the university.
RMIT students curated an exhibition about themselves, submitting photos, music, creative writing, drawings, soundscapes, or videos they have created this year.
Students also selected creative works from the public domain, as well as RMIT’s very own Cultural Collections (RMIT Design Archives, AFI Research Collection, RMIT Art Collection), that have provided a jolt of inspiration, or simply brought joy.
The exhibition is completely student run – a creative team of RMIT Culture interns are responsible for Museum of Me’s design, curation, promotion and an accompanying digital publication.
Amy Bartholomeusz, a Master of Arts (Arts Management) student and part of the exhibition’s creative team, explains the genesis of the exhibition:
“As we found ourselves confined to the indoors, Museum of Me was born. Transcending the traditional notion of what we understood the Gallery to be, this exhibition has been produced purely online and created by a creative team who have only ever seen and spoken to each other through a computer screen.
“It is in this way, that Museum of Me is unique and representative of the future of RMIT student work and collaboration. Museum of Me is an introspective of the self. Who am I? Where have I come from? Where will I go? These are the questions that are interwoven throughout the exhibition.
“As someone who is a ‘digital native’, this project supports the coming together of creativity and technology. This is something I am deeply interested in. Upon completing my own Museum of Me submission, I found myself looking back at my childhood and the artworks that have come and gone throughout my life into adulthood to shape me into who I am today – and who I will become.
“Through this reflection I only hope that the students involved in this project discover more about themselves. Learning who we are, and to be able to share that with others, is a valuable thing.
“Incorporating works from RMIT’s impressive Cultural Collections, and presented alongside students’ creative practice, Museum of Me celebrates resilience and the connection we have with each other throughout this pandemic.
“Now more than ever it is important to foster this student bond at a time that we may feel detached from both each other and the University. Museum of Me brings creativity and cultural inspiration into the light at a time when many of us may feel we have been caught in the dark.”
RMIT student exhibitors: Jade Armstrong, Amy Bartholomeusz, Taygan Bassi, Jean Baulch, Andrew Briganti, Rhys Cousins, Mackenzie Curtis, Aleisha Earp, Brayden Fraser, Angie Geary, Holly Goodridge, Tamar Gordon, Roberta Govoni, Hui Wen Beverly Hew, Evangeline Hoare, Rohan Kalisch, Sharon Li, Cherry Lin, Jerome Lin, Alexandra Linehan, Jiayi Liu, Lucy Maddox, Alisha Mahendran, Spoorthi Marakkini, Anya Minko, Subhasree Mohapatra, Zai Lat Naw, Natalie de Niese, Zoe Perks, Gemma Romiti, Louise Samuelsson, Tab Sejoe, Sacha Shaw, Lu An Shih, Kirtan Singh, Cristina Ulloa Sobarzo, Leanne Sta Ana, Phoebe Thompson, Sally Won, Yuchen Xin.
Creative Team support: Helen Rayment, Elizabeth Marsden, Evelyn Tsitas. Digital exhibition development: Evelyn Tsitas
The new (ab)normal
RMIT Gallery (Virtual Exhibition)
18 June - 16 October 2020
RMIT Gallery’s inaugural online exhibition The new (ab)normal provides a real-time snapshot of how artists are responding to their new working conditions and circumstances during the COVID-19 global health crisis.
Curated by Helen Rayment, RMIT Galleries Curator, and Dr Tammy Wong Hulbert, Lecturer of Arts Management (specialising in curating), the exhibition is presented in partnership with RMIT’s School of Art with creative responses from more than 40 School of Art staff, HDR students, and industry partners.
The project honours the value of the work of those who teach and study at RMIT at this time of deep disruption. They have been invited to contribute both written and visual artworks reflecting the impact of their locked down experience.
What does the life of an artist look like at this time; is work created at home, or is there still access to a studio? Are there children to educate too? What does an ordinary day look like in this new territory? These creative responses reflect the reality of this period, giving us an insight into the personal, emotional and transformative.
The new (ab)normal provides us with a timely insight into how art can unite us, and that although we may be physically distant, our social connections remain strong and are perhaps even strengthened under these challenging circumstances.
Artists: Sogan Alamdarfard, Rushdi Anwar, Robert Baines, Sofi Basseghi, Kay Mei Ling Beadman, Alison Bennett, Pie Bolton, Susan Buchanan, S. Chandrasekaran, Christy Chow, Kris Coad, Jennifer Conroy-Smith, Simon Crosbie, Mig Dann, Rhett D’Costa, Phil Edwards, Yiannis Galanopoulos, Yue Gu, Andrew Gunnell, Guang Hui Huang, Pennie Jagiello, Priyanka Jain, Tassia Joannides, Varuni Kanagasundaram, Martin Kay, Lan Lan, Kit Man Leong, Ye Liu, Peng Liu, Daniel Marks, Christine McFetridge, Jerome De Perlinghi, Robyn Phelan, Milenko Prvacki, Marlaina Read, Steven Rendall, J. Rosenbaum, Benjamin Sheppard, Fleur Summers, Cordelia Tam, Lesley Turnbull, Lan Wang, Peter Westwood, Jude Worters, Theresa Yang
Curators: Tammy Hulbert Wong and Helen Rayment. Digital exhibition development: Evelyn Tsitas
To read the full image descriptions, please click on the individual image above.
METAHAVEN: FIELD REPORT
RMIT Design Hub Gallery
5 March - 8 May 2020
Metahaven: Field Report reflects upon today’s condition of information overload. Everybody has become a broadcaster, designer, filmmaker, prosecutor, judge, key witness, perpetrator and storyteller. This is not merely a political and social fact, but an aesthetic and cinematic regime. Propaganda is now a lived reality, necessitating novel forms of media literacy.
The exhibition features the inaugural presentation of major film and sound installation Eurasia (Questions on Happiness), 2018 in Australia. Eurasia is a cinematic assemblage of landscapes of the south-eastern Urals (Russia) and Macedonia built around a narrative of political fragmentation in Europe. Like much of Metahaven's previous work, Eurasia is itself a field report on the incongruencies of lived experience through digital media, in which the Eurasian steppe interjects with soft, heavenly nothingness — a space vast, tender, and forgiving, without dimension or aspect ratio.
The exhibition also presents Arrows, 2020, a series of tapestry works comprised of several parts that together form a larger megastructure or timeline. The work is reminiscent of timelines in film editing software such as Premiere, and is inspired by the arrow-shaped video playhead, which commonly symbolises linear temporal progress. Arrows I, II and III is one body of work within a series that engages with the notion of time. The tapestries materialise research from Metahaven’s book-length essay Digital Tarkovsky (Strelka Press, 2018), an exploration of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky’s noted use of slow, long takes and their significance to the experience of time in the digital age. The tapestries look at the ways (historical) timelines are constructed and how, having become images, they contribute to our mental construction of long-term duration.
The work of Metahaven consists of filmmaking, writing, and design, and is united conceptually by interests in poetry, storytelling, propaganda, and digital superstructures. Films by Metahaven include The Sprawl (Propaganda about Propaganda) (2015), Information Skies (2016), Hometown (2018), Eurasia (Questions on Happiness) (2018), and Elektra (2019). Their work is frequently exhibited and published throughout the world. Recent solo exhibitions include Turnarounds at e-flux New York (2019), Version History at the ICA London (2018), and Earth at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2018). Recent screenings and group exhibitions include An evening with Metahaven MoMA, New York (2019), Ghost:2651, Bangkok (2018), the Sharjah Biennial (2017), and the Gwangju Biennale (2016). Recent publications by Metahaven include PSYOP (2018, edited with Karen Archey), and Digital Tarkovsky (2018).
Exclusively developed for RMIT Design Hub Gallery, Metahaven: Field Report is presented in collaboration with the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV).
The Melbourne Art Book Fair took place from Friday 13 March to Sunday 15 March at the National Gallery of Victoria.
Metahaven: Field Report is conceived and designed by Metahaven, Netherlands.
Guest exhibition curators: Brad Haylock (RMIT) and Megan Patty (NGV).
Part of Open House Melbourne 2020.
