“The Trouble with Remuneration”
Mladen Stillnović, Liat Berdugo, Chris Burden, Oskar Dawicki, Zachary Formwalt, Kate Meakin, Ian Milliss, Elizabeth Newman and Debris Facility Pty Ltd
17 June → 9 July 2016
All galleries
The Trouble with Remuneration explores the variety of ways in which artists and their work interact with capital. If we accept that artworks paradoxically share the same conditions as contemporary capitalism then what occurs when artists use these conditions as the material for works? The Trouble with Remuneration presents a range of projects with differing strategies of navigation of these systems, namely resistance, refusal, complicity, activism and entrepreneurship that have been employed by artists in order to position their practice in an art world increasingly fixated on production and profit.
The exhibition responds to a number of local recent events such the 2015 Federal Government’s decision to remove $60 million over four years from the Australia Council, of which $12 million per year has been diverted into the Government's new Catalyst arts funding program. Additionally, the boycott of the 2014 Sydney Biennale, which saw several exhibiting artists withdraw their participation in the exhibition in light of the major financial sponsor, Transfield’s involvement in the management and construction of Australia’s offshore detention centres. These incidents speak more broadly to the shifting economic landscape and the prevalence of and increasing reliance on private money in the arts — a phenomenon somewhat belatedly developing in Australia compared to more established global markets.
Mladen Stillnović is an artist in Zagreb, Croatia. He was a member of the Group of Six Artists (1975–79) and also ran the PM Gallery in Zagreb from 1982–91. His works include collages, photographs, artist books, texts, paintings, installations, actions, films, and video. Since the 1970s Stilinović has exhibited extensively in solo and group shows worldwide.
Liat Berdugo is an artist, writer, and curator based in Oakland, California. Her work strives to create an expanded, thoughtful consideration for new media and digital culture. Berdugo has been exhibited in galleries and festivals internationally, and she collaborates widely with individuals and archives.
Chris Burden first gained international attention in the 1970s as an influential and often controversial figure in the West Coast body art, performance and conceptual art movements.
Oskar Dawicki was educated as a painter, but already during his studies he became interested in performance art. His works a combine a romantically-tragic component (highly saturated with his own existential dilemmas) with poetics and the critical dimension of conceptual art. The self-reflection over his own institutional status as a contemporary artist is tightly interwoven with reflection on his own identity, or rather on its transitoriness, conventionality and weakness.
Zachary Formwalt is an artist and filmmaker based in Amsterdam. He has presentedsolo projects at the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, 2015; Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, 2014; Wexner Center for the Arts: The Box, Columbus, 2010; and Kunsthalle Basel, 2009. In 2013, his film, Unsupported Transit, received a Tiger Award for Short Films at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (NL).
Kate Meakin is a Melbourne-based artist. Recent solo exhibitions include Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Punk Café 2015; seeds are borne on wispy silken tufts, TCB artinc., 2014. Recent group exhibitions include the 9th Berlin Biennale (in collaboration with HB Peace), 2016; Lurid Beauty - Australian Surrealism and its Echoes, National Gallery of Victoria, 2015; and held in a half globe, as if cupped by hands, with Virginia Overell, Vaerelset, Copenhagen. Meakin also ran the exhibition space Flake from 2013 -2015.
Ian Milliss is the youngest member of the late 1960s Central Street Gallery group. By 1971, his work had quickly progressed from formalism to conceptualism into cultural activism beyond the conventional art world. This included green bans, resident action movement, trade unions, squatting, sustainable farming and coal mining. He participated in protests around the Sydney Biennale that led to the foundation of the Artworkers Union.
Elizabeth Newman is an artist living in Melbourne, and has been making work since the 1980s. Elizabeth Newman is represented by Neon Parc gallery.
Debris Facility Pty Ltd is a Melbourne-based cross media artist, often generating installation, sculpture, jewellery and other wearable works. Since graduating from ANU, Canberra School of Art, they have sustained an active art practice with projects through Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia.