Exhibition

News

| Melanie Lazarow

 Rubicon ARI February 2018

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Persistence/Resistance…Rubicon ARI Opening Wednesday February 7th, 2018
For the last four yours I have been working with concepts of politics and art openly treading the fine line between art and polemic in exhibitions, articles,  drawings and in photos. I have been making installations of looping wire, videos and lately other materials and objects like cushions. Beginning with “It is right to protest” a 40 i-Pad installation for my end of year VCA MCA exhibition I presented crossing electrical wires exposed, for the message of interconnection, electricity and planning. The videos were taken by myself at protests I attended, not as an observer, but as a participant. I have . since used photographs, fabric banners paintings, and cushions in installations.
The media I use, including the tangled wires and cords,  is an inquiry into the common iphone, video, as memory, or as bypass. In a world of precipitous climate denial and incomprehensible mistreatment of refugees … I am walking the fine line between art and polemic inviting the question of that line. The self-portrait collage inserts that questioning in a painterly form. The horsefly that comes back is an artistic investigation into the belief that until we can fundamentally change the system of power, through strikes, protests and taking our streets.

Melanie Joy is a Melbourne based artist whose practice is predominantly installation based. Her history of displacement and self exile and her burning antagonism to injustice makes her art tread a fine line between polemics and investigation.

Moreland Summer Show: Noel Counihan Commemorative Award

My entry   “Always protest”  has been shortlisted for the Noel Counihan Commemorative Art Award.

Opening: Thursday 9 November, 6 – 8 pm

The Counihan Gallery In Brunswick’s annual Moreland Summer Show.

Moreland Summer Show: Noel Counihan Commemorative Award

Exhibition

Friday 10 November – Saturday 9 December

Opening: Thursday 9 November, 6 – 8 pm

The Counihan Gallery In Brunswick is pleased to announce the inaugural Noel Counihan Commemorative Art Award exhibition.

To be awarded annually, the Noel Counihan Commemorative Award will recognise an outstanding contemporary artwork by an artist who engages with social, political, cultural or environmental subjects.

This year’s theme is PEOPLE – POLITICS – PROTEST.

The 2017 prize is a tailored Professional Development package to the value of $3000. The winner will be announced at the opening of the exhibition on Thursday 9 November.

Comfortable Yet?

Exhibition was from 15th September – 7 Octoberfullsizeoutput_4f81

Can you sit amongst the cushions until the world burns and the refugees die at sea? Till Trump burns Asia with a nuclear bomb? Of course not! Most of us can’t. You are looking at the somewhat unsettling beauty of the burnt Grampian forests, a fire that swept through the mountains and destroyed most in its wake. At the same time as climate denial increases and Trump and Turnbull, turn up the volume of racism and anti-worker laws, ordinary people take to the streets to protest about the incomprehensible levels of cruelty. I am with them. I use images, and memories to create installations, videos, photos and banners to express where I stand. Never forget, always act, always record.

 

Capitalist Realisms

| Melanie Lazarow

CAPITALIST REALISMS, GROUP EXHIBITION

Exhibition Event 13th of November, 6pm–9pm
Exhibition Event is open to the public Exhibition runs from 13th of November to 3pm, 26th of November 2015.

Resistance or a “hunting for spaces of escape”, is a precarious enterprise
which is always about to be colonised by what it seeks to oppose or transgress.
My photos for this theme.

 

| Melanie Lazarow

MELANIE LAZAROW 

Concluded

Shattered 2 – 19 September 2015

Shattered by Melanie Lazarow

A spectre is haunting (Europe) and it is the spectre of Communism. Karl Marx

Photographs of protesters as they are projected and shattered through
the medium of the bottle/glass are captured either just as light, or the
image of the people moving through glass, a medium scientifically
interesting as a liquid which feels solid, but is sand. The temporality
of the past in time present, the ghostly images of people and light, who
were parading and marching for a better world, are illuminated.

Will time’s bottle shatter, let its contents go, create shards that can
split time? These specters of time’s past in time present are an
indication that time present will be time past. It is humanity’s actions
that will shape the final storyboard, and it still can be a positive one
of meeting human need. The questions of time/temporality and the
consequence of being caught in a difficult time of war, and injustice
are raised.

Melanie has recently graduated from the VCA with a Master of
Contemporary Art, First Class Honours, and is presently working at River
Studios, Creative Spaces. She actively participates in protests, and
always takes an artistic position from within protests.