Interventionist Guide | Urban Curation | Platform Gallery Melbourne | October 2009
Exhibition / Platform Gallery. Degraves Street Subway / Launch: October 2 2009 / Season of Interventions: October 16-18 2009
During the month of October 2009, the Platform Gallery at Flinders St Station was transformed into a virtual map of Melbourne. Showcasing ten artists whose practice interrogates the urban fabric, the exhibition revealed sites for individuals and groups to creatively and temporarily intervene with the city. Artists included: Ilan Abrahams, Caz Guiney, Ceri Hann, Rayna Fahey, Anthony Magen, Men in Suits, Projector Obscura, Roarawar-feartata-collective, Neil Thomas and Cye Wood.
For more detailed information go to the project website:
The Interventionist Guide was an exhibition which applied the principles of a flexible armature within a curatorial context – both framing my Masters research and providing a context for an ongoing practice. The intention of this project was to establish organisational and physical structures which could provide or highlight opportunities for risk taking by way of public acts of creativity.
The project works on a range of scales – from the broad context of mapping, to the interpretation of the city within the subterranean display cabinets at Platform Gallery to A5 sized self-published zines, to the 1:1 emersive and experiential interventions within the city fabric itself.
EXHIBITION: Each cabinet within Platform acted as a ‘deposit box’ of ideas which changed over the month long exhibition– representing a wide range of temporal practices which sat beyond the gallery, exploring creative urban opportunism and social engagement as well as a shift in scales from the intimate wearable to the sound walk.
INTERVENTIONS: The exhibition was the basis of a three day season of temporal events where each artist produced a single or series of creative responses in-situ . In this way, extending the exhibition beyond its subterranean location to become a map and guide to potential creative scenarios for the city above.
PUBLICATION | ZINE: As part of the exhibition, a suite of ten self-published zines were collaboratively produced with each artist. These became the residual documentation of ‘The Interventionist Guide to Melbourne’ – which could be used, acted upon and added to either during or after the project.
“The Interventionist Guide to Melbourne is a city-wide project curated by Lynda Roberts of Public Assembly. Described as an interactive artistic wake-up call to confront all that is predictable and boring in our streets, it will include projections, lightjacking, performances and a temporary customisation of the city way-finder signs.”
Penny Modra. Be Guided. The Age. Wednesday October 14, 2009
Download here:
‘Interventionist Guide to Melbourne’. Landscape Architecture Australia.
No/126. May 2010. Article by Dan Nunan.