Women-Led Programmes Dominate Melbourne Art Fair’s 2024 Edition
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Tamsin Hong (Serpentine), Shelley McSpedden (ACCA), and Anador Walsh (Performance Review) are announced as curators of the fair's artistic programme sectors.
Left to right: Tamsin Hong, Shelley McSpedden, and Anador Walsh. Courtesy Melbourne Art Fair.
Melbourne Art Fair has announced its parallel artistic programme for 2024, in what is described as 'its most ambitious yet'.
Over 50 events are announced; among them six performances, four large-scale installations, two significant new commissions, and a talks programme with a lineup of international speakers including artists, curators, and sector leaders.
Three major sectors of Melbourne Art Fair's artistic programme, organised to complement the main fair, are curated by Tamsin Hong, Shelley McSpedden, and Anador Walsh.
Tamsin Hong, the Australian-born, London-based exhibitions curator at Serpentine Galleries, has brought together five moving image artworks for the fair's VIDEO sector. Speaking to Ocula Magazine on the place of video media in an art fair, Hong described 'the importance of having that space—which lends itself much better to object-based art—reflect the diverse practices of contemporary artists.'
Featured artists include Buhlebezwe Siwani, whose captivating installation, The Spirits Descended (Yehla Moya) (2022), opened the Gwangju Biennale last year. Siwani will travel to Melbourne to partake in a public talk with Hong during the fair.
Shelley McSpedden, senior curator at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) in Melbourne, has curated BEYOND, a collection of four large-scale installations and spatial interventions. Included are artists Dane Mitchell (in collaboration with Keiji Haino), Louise Paramor, and artist/poet Jazz Money.
Taking place within the convention centre, LIVE, subtitled Performing Care, is an onsite performance programme with newly commissioned works by emerging Naarm-based artists Diego Ramírez, Georgia Banks, Arini Byng, and Kori Miles. It is curated by Anador Walsh, founding director of critical online platform for live art, Performance Review.
Further programmes include CONVERSATIONS, which includes a panel talk on rethinking museum collections led by Yorta Yorta curator Kimberley Moulton, who is adjunct curator (First Nations and Indigenous art) at Tate Modern and senior curator for Melbourne's RISING festival, and an artist talk with pioneering Australian feminist artist Julie Rrap.
A discussion on platforms supporting artistic independence will take place between Sharjah Biennial 16 co-curator Megan Tamati-Quennell, co-artistic director of the 24th Biennale of Sydney Cosmin Costinaș, and artistic director/CEO of PHOTO festival Elias Redstone, which will be moderated by Artspace Sydney director Alexie Glass-Kantor.
Writer and editor Jennifer Higgie will be in conversation with ABC journalist Patricia Karvelas about the research behind her latest book, The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World (2023).
This year's edition of Melbourne Art Fair is presented under the collective theme of ketherba/together, meaning 'together' or 'togetherness' in the Boon Wurrung First Nations language.
Melbourne Art Fair's 2024 edition includes 60 galleries from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Singapore. It takes place at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre from 22 to 25 February. Tickets are on sale now. —[O]
