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Exhibition, MelanieJoyLazarow, MelanieLazarow, Show

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Next Exhibition: Rubicon ARI Opening 7th February 6-8

The horsefly that .
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 fundamentally change the system of power, we
protesters are like a horsefly that repeatedly comes back, until…

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.1 (1)

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.

 

Biography

Short Biography

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Short Biography

Melanie’s work is a multimedia mix of installation, photography, painting and printed material. Her iPad installations show collective outcries in tangles of  wires,  plugs, and looping scenes catching anger and determination with words on banners, colours of flags, and the interaction of protesters. Currently Melanie is printing these scenes in unusual ways, banners and cushions.

Melanie has a Master in the History and Philosophy of Science from Melbourne University, and a Master in Contemporary Art from the VCA. 

MelanieLazarow

Exhibition Persistence/Resistance at Rubicon Ari February 2018

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In this space I immerse myself in the tangled problems of art politics and polemics. I remain with the question but i think it was an interesting one. These photos taken by Patricia J Casten look at my exhibition from am outsiders eyes. I enjoyed dwelling with her with her interpretation of my exhibition.

History, MelanieLazarow, My thoughts, Philosophy of art, Theory

Thoughts on Extraterritoriality

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X-it by Ted Colless

For the three or four years I attended the VCA I had little to do with Colless, the occasional lecture while completing the Graduate Certificate in Art before the Master degree. Reading his introduction to Art & Australia Volume 1 I found some genuinely interesting and new conceptual ways of dealing with what i think of as Gramsci’s problem, the old has ended but the new cannot be born, and in that interregnum a whole lot of monstrosities appear. Edward drills down into the details of these horrors, with descriptions of the unreachable, indescribable places (my words) ‘modern capitalism’ makes for exclusion, interrogation, imprisonment, and even a fear of others so deep it is a kind of leprosy. A rot.

The border and the fence are described as a place where x assemble. X is not only the refugee but also any entity that doesn’t belong. He then formulates a mathematical equation for the things all falling apart. He is not gripped by y Marxist need to break down the borders, to be out there visibly demanding not/this. But as a description of the world we now inhabit never before experienced quite like this, i have seldom seen better.