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LAI acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia and upon whose land our work takes place. We recognise the people of our First Nations and their continuing connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to them and their cultures; and to elders both past and present.
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EDITION #1
CONNECTED: Working Together

Welcome to the first edition of LAI's journal – MATTER.
 
We are pleased to introduce our new journal, which comes to you via email format during this new time of remote learning, social isolation, and economic hibernation. MATTER is a platform for delivering a variety of content and it focuses on ways in which art and arts practice helps us better understand the world and our place in shaping it.

Art is a powerful tool, with relevance and relation to all manner of human pursuits. At LAI we work with artists and La Trobe University research, making connections with ideas through the prism of art. We work with ideas in mathematics, linguistics, biology, ecology, chemistry, law and many other areas, using art as a pathway into learning about society and the environment. At the very heart of what we do is artists and the wonderful work they do.


Our first edition of MATTER is themed CONNECTED: Working Together. It takes one of our key cultural qualities at La Trobe University as its motivating force – being connected. In the current global situation we find ourselves trying to still function as a society even though we have been physically fragmented. How can we think about ways of working together, working collaboratively and collectively, that might help us understand how to work better together? In the following articles, podcasts, activities, essays and exhibitions we ponder this conundrum and hope to evoke some important questions and hint at suitable answers.
 CONTENTS: 

Article         -     On Collaboration
Education Resource  -  
Collaboration: Short Video (All ages activity)
Education Resource  -  Artist Collaboration: Lesson Plan/Workshop (Yrs 9&10, VCE Art & Studio Art)
Watch          -     Kay Abude for Castlemaine State Festival
Read           -    Ted Snell on University Galleries
Read           -     Collaborative arts writing with Diego Ramirez + Katie Paine
Residency   -     Akira Takaishi and the Art School
Listen          -     Bold Thinking Podcast, 'The La Trobe Three'
Connect      -     Nell's Quilt Project
Article          -     #wfh, The Challenge of Working From Home  

View            -     NGV virtual tours
 ON COLLABORATION: 

We believe so fundamentally in the power of collective endeavour at LAI that we have developed a series of exhibitions exploring how collaboration is undertaken in arts practice.

What also runs across each of the collaborations undertaken in this series of investigative exhibitions is a sense of discovery – whether it is Jon Cattapan and Ben Aitken learning more about their intuitive habits in mark making on canvas through an exposure to another artist’s incursion into their image construction, or whether it is LTU Research scientist Dr Jasim Al-Rawi’s revelation that “I learn from my students all the time. Collaboration, even from students, I mean – I even learn from a child!” The excitement that comes from learning new things is an energy force. It is a motivation that encourages us to strive.

 EDUCATION RESOURCE
 
We all our have our ways of doing things. Collaboration challenges us to do things differently.

Watch this short video for some creative collaborative ideas, suitable for all ages.

 WATCH

Kay Abude worked with local business Shedshaker Brewing for her exhibition at the Castlemaine State Festival in 2019. This is a terrific example of tiered and layered collaborative engagements and outcomes. For Kay, her interest was in working directly with a local manufacturing business, to get to know their processes and the ergonomically-relevant needs of the staff for uniforms. She then designed uniforms for the brewers and the front-of-house staff serving in the Taproom. 

For LAI, this was an opportunity to develop a public-private partnership that coordinated four component parts – educational institution, commercial enterprise, professional artist, cultural institution. It's success is a testament to manifold networks with a defined objective, and directed and inspired by artistic vision.
 READ: 

University art galleries and museums are a unique sector, with qualities and characteristics endemic to their specific nature, forming one significant part of the terrain of the broader arts institutional ecology. Twenty two of these organisations, including LAI, are bonded together as members of the Australian University Art Museums Australia (UAMA)
 

Ted Snell, Winthrop Professor and Director Cultural Precinct at University of Western Australia gives some insight into the impact of lockdown on this particular part of the arts industry, with insight into what some of these institutions are doing to continue staying connected in a time of fragmentation.

Read more here.

IMAGE CREDIT: The Long Kiss Goodbye, Virtual Tour 2020, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, University of Western Australia. Artworks L-R: Iain Dean, Sarah Contos and Brent Harris.
 #WFH: 

Working from home is a challenge for many workplaces, no less so at La Trobe University.
 
We have all become fragmented physically as a result of isolation requirements but, perhaps as a result, have to learn to work together even more necessarily than before. Indeed, the act of isolation itself is a paradox of collective action, as we work together in unison – alone and separated – for the greater good of all.

Click here to read how La Trobe staff are finding their way forward together, alone. 
 CONNECT | WORKSHOP: 

A collective quilt making project encouraging social cohesion at a time of social distancing.
 
McCahon House intended to welcome Australian artist Nell for a one-month Residency during April 2020. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic Nell’s plans have become impossible. McCahon House have taken Nell’s project online so those interested can participate from home.
 

Whether you are a first-time sewer or an experienced needle worker, Nell invites you to decorate a piece of fabric with the name of a woman who has had meaning in your life. These will be quilted together forming a patchwork of many women’s names in homage to women’s creativity and craft, work and labour. 
 
Nell is also exhibiting with LAI in One foot on the ground, one foot in the water in November 2020.

More information here.

IMAGE CREDIT: Nell, working drawing for NELL ANNE QUILT, 2020
 EDUCATION RESOURCE: 

At LAI learning and education is fundamental to our approach. We engage with primary, secondary and tertiary students using the prism of contemporary art to address ideas about society and the environment to help understand our place in the world.

We produce educational materials for a variety of audiences and for this edition of MATTER we have combined all our Collaboratory Education resources here for use in classrooms, remote learning or just for fun at any time. Click the image below to access:

 
 ESSAY: 

There has been much discussion about the state of arts writing, particularly critical arts writing in Australia. Is there a reduction in criticism that is in inverse relationship to the rise of the contemporary curator? Perhaps the intermingled nature of the contemporary art world makes it difficult for critical arts writing because few writers wish to engage critically with the work of peers they invariably know well or work with across different projects or institutional settings.
 

Our approach has been to pursue a different avenue of arts writing altogether. LAI commissions new arts writing that sits parallel to the exhibitions we program. Writers are encouraged to pursue any content and style they desire.

For the first Collaboratory, we commissioned Diego Ramirez and Katie Paine to produce a collaborative writing piece. Read it here.

See more images of Collaboratory (2018) here.

 LISTEN: 

In this episode from the Bold Thinking series hear the full story of the university student protestors dubbed the La Trobe Three.

Protest action is a collective enterprise. Brian Pola, Fergus Robinson and Barry York were in their 20s in the early 1970’s when they were locked up in Melbourne’s notorious Pentridge Prison for defying a University trespass order.

They are joined by respected La Trobe historian, Professor Katie Holmes, who will explore the social and political context of the time and the broader cultural repercussions of the ‘70s student movement. Hosted by writer and journalist Francis Leach.

 ARTIST RESIDENCY: 

From 26 February – 16 March 2020 visiting artist Akira Takaishi from Tokyo undertook the project Dam. The project consisted of an earthwork made from clay mixed with soil derived from the dried up section of the dam bed in bushland on La Trobe’s Bendigo campus.




The project is the result of an exchange and partnership between Dr Ry Haskings, a lecturer in Visual Arts and Akira Takiashi, a member of the Art Center Ongoing collective in Tokyo. The exchange and partnership consisted of reciprocal exhibitions, residencies and hosting opportunities shared between the two artists and their associated organisations.

Read more about it here.

Watch artist's video here.
 VIEW: 

The NGV has launched a series of self-guided virtual tours of seven current exhibitions including Keith Haring | Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines.



As the exhibition Learning Partner, La Trobe University has provided a range of dynamic lectures and pop-up talks that enrich the exhibition experience, including talks from LAI’s Senior Curator Dr Kent Wilson and Public Programs Coordinator Dr Karen Annett-Thomas.
Danica Chappell, Glimmer (working title for picturing objects)  (2019), daguerreotype table. Image courtesy of the artist.


At this time we would have been exhibiting the work of Danica Chappell in the next iteration of Collaboratory. Danica has been working with La Trobe University Bruce Stone Fellow in Chemical Biology Dr Donna Whelan to produce a new body of work. We have postponed the exhibition until January 2021, which also allows for it to remain part of the PHOTO 2021 state-wide festival of photography.

Learn more about PHOTO 2021 here.
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