Structural Integrity is a monumental and melancholic World’s Fair-styled exhibition and residency initiative that is a keynote project for this Next Wave festival. Exploring independent arts cultures from across Australia and Asia, Structural Integrity includes the work of six Australian and five Asian Artist Run Initiatives (ARIs) including West Space.

Working on-site at the Meat Market in the month leading up to the Festival, each artist group has created a large-scale structure, or ‘pavilion’, inside this vast historical building. The pavilion structure has long been loaded with cultural values and ideals: think of the grand expositions of the 19th Century, or of the Venice Biennale. With this in mind, each pavilion in Structural Integrity will be developed as an expression of the participating ARIs’ artistic principles in relation to their particular cultural or geographic situation. Playfully questioning the values and ideals that motivated many of these grand international fairs and expositions, Structural Integrity examines national and local cultural identity through the lens of innovative contemporary arts practice, taking in the shared, as well as distinctive, characteristics of grass-roots artistic culture across the region.

Special performance at the opening by Science-Art Club The Science-Art Club consists of a collection of students and staff from Brunswick Secondary College and visual artist Scott Mitchell. The club was formed in 2009 during an artist in schools program funded by Arts Victoria and the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. The Science-Art Club has, over many lunch-time meetings, constructed a large wooded machine capable of producing giant smoke rings. The Science-Art Club will be firing smoke rings at the opening of Structural Integrity. Rumoured to be the largest smoke ring machine in the southern hemisphere, this event is not to be missed.

Artwork: Greatest Hits, Veronica Kent, Alanna Lorenzon, Rowan McNaught, Scott Mitchell + the Brunswick Secondary College Science-Art Club, Safari Team, Ben Sheppard, Nick Waddell, Jordan Wood, Nicki Wynnychuk.

Pavilion: Kelly Fliedner, Veronica Kent, Phip Murray, Ben Sheppard

Download the Structural Integrity program here