ACCA launches its Influential Australian Artists series
May 8, 2019
The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) in Melbourne has launched the first exhibition in its Influential Australian Artists series supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
The exhibition, Tom Nicholson: Public Meeting, is the first major survey of Tom Nicholson’s practice in Australia and abroad. It runs from 6 April to 16 June and showcases existing and newly commissioned works.
The first anthology of Nicholson’s work, Lines towards Another, edited by Amelia Barikin and Helen Hughes, accompanies the exhibition. The more than 450-page hardcover monograph will be distributed internationally by Sternberg Press.
The exhibition showcases Nicholson’s multidisciplinary practice spanning drawing, sculpture and social action. It engages with themes of memory, memorials and speculative futures, and draws links between traces of history and new cultural forms.
The artist says, “The exhibition at ACCA is a remarkable opportunity to test my work at a new scale and ambition. It is perhaps above all the civic character of ACCA as a space of gathering and as a public institution that is exciting, since my work so recurrently engages what it is to be public, how we imagine collectively – in relation to both our past and our possible futures – and how we constitute ourselves as a society through art, monuments and actions.”
ACCA is a first-time Cultural Fund recipient, with a three-year grant of $54,000 to support the Influential Australian Artists series. The series is managed by the centre’s CEO and Artistic Director Max Delany, Senior Curator Annika Kristensen and Curatorial Manager (and current John Fries Award Guest Curator) Miriam Kelly, and is a crucial platform that gives artists national and international exposure.
Each artist will undertake ambitious new commissions supported by accompanying publications, educational materials and a program of public and professional events, such as artist and curatorial talks and symposia.
As Max Delany notes, “The Influential Australian Artists series gives artists an opportunity to create some of their most ambitious works at ascendant moments in their career and to make a significant contribution to the development of contemporary art practice in Australia.”
In 2020 ACCA will present The future echoes (working title), a new solo project by Sydney-based artist Frances Barrett whose practice is at the intersection of installation and performance art. The series will continue in 2021 with an ambitious solo exhibition of existing work alongside major new commissions, with the artist due to be announced in 2020.
Applications for the first round of Cultural Fund grants for organisations close at 1pm (AEST) on Monday 13 May 2019. Learn more about this grant round, contact the Cultural Fund team to discuss potential proposals, or submit an application via SmartyGrants.