Archie Barry, Teresa Busuttil, Ahmed Coshnow, Brian Fuata, Helen Grogan, Rosie Isaac, Joanna Kitto, Basim Magdy and Joshua Pether
“Stranger than fiction Symposium ”

Held as an accompaniment to the exhibition of the same name, the Stranger than fiction Symposium explored the slippage between reality and fiction as a narrative tool through lively discussions, performance, food and film screenings.

Curated by Helen Grogan and Joanna Kitto, this day-long event engaged the exhibition's ideas, methods, and ethics. Focusing on the artists' strategies and practices, we explored their satirical, humorous, and sensual approaches.

Here on West Space Offsite, residue of the program has accumulated in a responsive approach between artists and audiences. With this extended frame, the artists’ lived knowledge is a critical dimension of the work.

Archie Barry

Archie Barry brought language to the gallery through lyrical hand movements and singing, activating their work in Stranger than fiction.

Archie's performance unfolded across a pale yellow wall, in harmony with two humming voices emanating at the height of the artists' mouth, embedded within the gallery walls themselves. With their hands adorned in fingernails fabricated from multicoloured pencils, Archie sang as they made marks, letters, words and shapes that push and pull the written word apart.

The work references an important, eccentric and troubling figure in the history of trans organising, Reed Erickson (1917-1992), and forms part of the artist's ongoing research around a trans ontology of disembodiment, perceptions and sensations of being out-of-body.

https://youtu.be/jqw3nS00jf0

Ahmed Coshow

Blurb here about Ahmed's responsive work (images place-holders for videos)

Two individuals are performing into a microphone in a large, white space with windows letting through light. There is a large crowd of onlookers seated on white chairs in the background filling up the room.
Brian Fuata and Archie Barry hum together at the 'Stranger than fiction' Symposium, August 2024, Collingwood Yards. Photography by Machiko Abe.

Rosie Isaac

Bathtub Analogy

An individual stands on a stage behind a podium stand speaking into a microphone. There is a large projection screen behind them showcasing an artwork. There are two green couches on the stage that have a microphone resting on each of them.
Rosie Isaac presents her performance lecture 'Bathtub Analogy' the 'Stranger than fiction' Symposium, August 2024, Collingwood Yards. Photography by Machiko Abe.

On storytelling and subversion: the use of absurdity to understand and accept reality

Basim Madgy, Teresa Busuttil, Joanna Kitto

Three people on stage sitting on a couch with a projected image behind them. Man on the left of the couch is speaking to a seated crowd using a microphone.
Basim Magdy, Teresa Busuttil and Joanna Kitto at the 'Stranger than fiction' Symposium, August 2024, Collingwood Yards. Photography by Machiko Abe.

Brian Fuata

Performance in response to Stranger than fiction, the conversations and the audience

A person with eyes closed speaking to the microphone.
Brian Fuata performs at the 'Stranger than fiction' Symposium, August 2024, curated by Helen Grogan and Joanna Kitto. Photography by Machiko Abe.

Panel 2

On critical connective practice: Strategies for engaging and staging artists’ lived experience

Archie Barry, Brian Fuata, Rosie Isaac, Joshua Pether, Helen Grogan

Five individuals sit cross-legged on a green couch on a stage, lit up by a spotlight. A projection screen can be seen behind them.
Rosie Isaac, Archie Barry, Joshua Pether, Brian Fuata, Symposium co-curator Helen Grogan at the 'Stranger than fiction' Symposium, August 2024, Collingwood Yards. Photography by Machiko Abe.

Andrea Illés

sorry I was so hungry

The Stranger than fiction evolutive program continues with sorry I was so hungry, a duration livestream performance by Andrea Illés' durational livestream performance, grappling with the Sisyphean task of image-making as true representation of the self.

The artist occupied her studio - directly above West Space - making images with her body, viewable both in-person and transcribed by screens, in the gallery, or on our computers or phones. The audience was asked to decide how to view Andrea's transcription.

A woman stands behind a door against a wall during a performance. Someone is holding a bright pink light that is shining on her and lighting the room.
Andrea Illés performs as part of 'Stranger than fiction', 2024, West Space Studio. Photography by Kenneth Suico.
A group of people watching Andrea Illes perform in a small room bathed in red light. Andrea is rolling around on the floor performing
Andrea Illés performs as part of 'Stranger than fiction', 2024, West Space Studio. Photography by Kenneth Suico.
A woman sitting in front of a computer bathed in red light uses a webcam reflection to do her eyeliner.
Andrea Illés performs as part of 'Stranger than fiction', 2024, West Space Studio. Photography by Kenneth Suico.
A blurred image of a camera set up for a livestream. There is a figure on the screen crawling toward the camera
Andrea Illés performs as part of 'Stranger than fiction', 2024, West Space Studio. Photography by Kenneth Suico.

The Stranger than fiction Symposium was held across various sites in Collingwood Yards on Saturday 24 August 2025. Captured on video by Ahmed Coshnow and supported by This event was generously supported by the City of Yarra through Yarra City Arts' Annual Grants Program.

A person presenting performance lecture on the stage through the screen to a group of people.
a piece of blotting paper died pale blue with organic dyes is held up by a magnet that is long and rectangular in shape
An individual stands on a stage behind a podium stand speaking into a microphone. There is a large projection screen behind them showcasing an artwork. There are two green couches on the stage that have a microphone resting on each of them.
two flat, space-ship-shaped, shiny forms made of a transparent acrylic are suspended from the ceiling using a thicker beam. They are independently suspended however join in the middle between each form with the same bar material.
Three individuals sit on a green couch on a stage discussing with one another. A projection screen is visible behind them. A crowd of people are seated on white chairs listening.
A film still from Basim Magdy's film 'FEARDEATHLOVEDEATH'. A close up shot of an eye with the reflection of a face within the iris. The whole image is cast in red colour.
Three people on stage sitting on a couch with a projected image behind them. Man on the left of the couch is speaking to a seated crowd using a microphone.
A still of a film by Basim Magdy shows a yellow tulip with a small face drawn on one of the petals. There is a subtitle at the bottom that reads "Abstract behaviour is the way of this world"
Three individuals sit on a green couch on a stage discussing with one another. There is a jar of tall yellow flowers to the left of the couch. There is a large projector screen behind them. In the foreground of the photo there are individual crowd members watching the stage, one who's head is blocking a portion of the camera.
A guest holds a plate of Persian food, their face cut out of frame with the camera centred in on the plate. Another guest in the background is serving themselves another plate of Persian food.
A portrait photo depicts a man in a white shirt performing into the microphone. Around him are three individual crowd members who have their heads turned to watch as he does. There is a screen behind him with an image that reads "Stranger than Fiction", with a photo of an eye behind the text.
Two individuals perform into a microphone with a photo taken from the back view. We see one of the individual's closed eyes and expression as they perform. Some out of focus white chairs seating audience members can be seen in the background.
Five individuals sit cross-legged on a green couch on a stage, lit up by a spotlight. A projection screen can be seen behind them.
Five people in conversation on the couch in front of a screen.
Orange, blue, green and pink pencil line drawings write the word 'somewhere' on a cream wall.
Five individuals are sitting on a green couch on a stage talking with one another. A projection screen is visible behind them. There is a crowd of people seated on white chairs listening.
A person standing in front of a white wall with hands on waist.

Archie Barry's artwork is autobiographical, somatic and process-led. Through performance, video, singing, sculpture and music composition their practice reaches towards often imperceptible forces including spirits, affects, thoughts and the vibrant echoes of trauma. Their artworks trouble dominant notions of selfhood as singular, stable, legible and sequential.

Teresa Busuttil is an Australian artist of Maltese heritage working between Tarntanya/Adelaide and Malta. Her practice blends personal stories, family history, and fantasy through multidisciplinary forms of art, including sculpture, installation, and moving image. Drawing on a kitsch aesthetic and religious iconography, Teresa explores culture, grief and memory influenced by her connection to Malta and her experiences within the Maltese diaspora.

Ahmed Coshnow is a filmmaker who works with contemporary dance artists documenting their live performances by focusing on how it is observed as the audience. He has worked alongside choreographer Alexander Powers, over the years of their friendship, along other artists such as Gabriella Imrichova, Mara Galagher, Daniel R Marks.

Brian Fuata is a Samoan artist born in Aotearoa and based in Sydney, Australia. Broadly informed by lived experience and social discourse, together with tradition and customary knowledge, Brian Fuata’s work incorporates a diverse array of performance and communication modalities, including spoken word, concrete poetry, authentic movement (dance), correspondence, clowning, glossolalia (speaking-in-tongues), and sound art. In many works, he inhabits the role of trickster; engaging humour in his blurring of lines, between autobiography and fiction, audience and performer, art and the everyday. His prodigious and enigmatic output speaking, contemporaneously, of the body, place, self, and other.

Helen Grogan is an artist with qualifications in dance, philosophy, and visual art. Her experience in performance archives, exhibition archives and time-based art documentation includes work with Naarm/Melbourne based organisations Liquid Architecture, Performance Review, Gertrude Contemporary, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, and Arts House; and New York based organisations The Kitchen, Performance Space New York, and Movement Research. Helen is the founding director of Open Practice Studio, concerned with the process, production, and documentation of performance, dance, installation, live and sonic arts.

Rosie Isaac is a visual artist and writer in Naarm/Melbourne. Interested in art-making that imagines different material and social futures, Rosie's research-based practice focuses on language as it is experienced in the body while reading, in relationships, and via social institutions. Rosie has recently presented across the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Liquid Architecture, Next Wave, Gertrude Contemporary and Adelaide Contemporary Experimental.

Joanna Kitto is an arts worker focused on refining her inclusive, personable and receptive approach to the presentation of contemporary art. She is currently the Director of West Space. In 2014, Joanna co-founded fine print, an independent platform cultivating experimental and critical discourse online and in public spaces.

Basim Magdy is an artist from Assiut, Egypt, living in Basel, Switzerland whose work uses fictitious pasts and dystopic futures to critique the present. He has shown across M HKA Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, Belgium; MAAT Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon; La Kunsthalle Mulhouse, France; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; MAXXI National Museum of the 21st Century Arts, Rome; Jeu de Paume, Paris; CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux; Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, Berlin; South London Gallery, London; Art in General, New York; State of Concept, Athens; and University Galleries of Illinois State University, USA.

Joshua Pether is of Kalkadoon heritage living and working on Wurundjeri country in Naarm/Melbourne. He is an experimental performance artist, dancer and choreographer of movement, temporary ritual and imagined realties. His practice is influenced by his two cultural histories- indigeneity and disability and the hybridization of the two with particular interest in the aesthetics of the disabled body and also that of the colonized body. In 2024, Joshua joined the West Space Artist Committee. He currently holds the position of CEO of Arts Access Victoria as CEO.